Silent Run - Barbara Freethy [62]
“You used to get headaches, migraines, when you were with me. You hated to take medication, and you wouldn’t go to the doctor. You always chose to tough it out. I guess you had to avoid anyplace where they might ask for insurance. When you had Caitlyn, I paid the hospital bill.”
That was probably true. There would have been questions to answer, papers to fill out, and she obviously hadn’t wanted to leave any kind of trail. It was hard to believe the facts she was learning about herself. She felt as if she’d stepped into someone else’s life. Then again, maybe that was exactly what she had done. Had the names and addresses on the fake IDs hidden away in the vent belonged to real people? Her head pounded with pain.
“I will take a shower,” she said, heading toward the bathroom. She needed a few minutes to regroup and she needed to do that away from Jake.
As Sarah closed the door, Jake pulled on his shirt and buttoned it up. He mentally ran down the list of people in their social circle, wondering whom Sarah could have contacted in San Francisco to make her fake IDs. But there was no one she knew that he didn’t. She’d been new to town, or so she’d said, when they met. After that, his friends had become her friends. Still, she had ventured out on her own during the day to do things all women did, get her hair cut, go to the supermarket, the post office, the bank. She could certainly have incorporated visits to someone else during those times. It wasn’t as if they’d been together every second.
Checking his watch, he pulled out his cell phone, hoping Dylan had come up with some new information.
“Hello,” Dylan said a moment later. “I was just about to call you, Jake.”
The optimistic note in his brother’s voice gave him a lift. “I hope that means you have some news.”
“Well, I have a strong suspicion that Catherine Hilliard’s missing friend, Jessica, is Sarah.”
Jake felt a surge of energy run through his body. Maybe they were finally going to catch a break. “What have you discovered?”
“Catherine doesn’t have photographs of Jessica, but she does have a portrait that she painted from memory, and the girl looks a lot like Sarah.”
“I don’t know, Dylan, a painting?” he asked doubtfully.
“Just listen. Catherine’s friend Jessica disappeared eight years ago. She was living in Chicago at the time, but she was originally from California. About a week before she vanished, Jessica left a message for Catherine saying she was in some trouble. Like Sarah, Jessica disappeared without leaving any clues behind. She was twenty years old at the time of her disappearance. Which would make her twenty-eight now.”
“The same age as Sarah,” Jake said.
“Yeah. I just got on the Internet, and I looked up the newspaper articles on Jessica’s disappearance. One had a grainy head shot that doesn’t definitively look like Sarah, but it’s close. Her hair is much shorter, straightened and blond, but the features are similar. In the articles, the police say they have no idea what happened to Jessica. The woman had no known enemies. She worked as a receptionist in a law firm, a temp job, so no one knew her very well. Her neighbor said she thought Jessica was dating someone, but she never met him. She just heard them out in the hall a few times. However, no boyfriend came forward to look for Jessica. It’s all very sketchy.”
“So the only thing we really have is that this woman looks a little like Sarah.”
“There are a couple of other facts that support my theory, like that Jessica’s parents died in a car crash, same as Sarah’s.”
“Anything else?”
“Catherine says that Jessica grew up in foster care with her.”
“Foster care? Sarah certainly didn’t mention that. I don’t know, Dylan. It sounds very circumstantial or coincidental.”
“Maybe she didn’t tell you because it was part of the past she wanted to hide from you. Jessica also had a doll named Caitlyn and a grandmother in Boston named Sarah. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a few too many coincidences.”
Jake’s mind raced with the implications. “Okay,