Chapter Twenty-Eight

Charlotte

I’d tried calling him three times now, but he wasn’t answering. I knew he was probably still mad at me, but something just didn’t feel right. Jesse would answer—even if it was just a text message telling me to stop calling him, he would answer. He hadn’t responded to texts either. Something was wrong. It had to be.

I had changed out of the dress once the plane got airborne, folding it up and putting it in my bag. I wasn’t going to need that again for a long time, if ever. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the jewelry, but Graham had been insistent on me taking it. It was wildly expensive, I could tell, but he would hear nothing of me returning it to him. He even told me to sell it and buy something wonderful if I wanted to.

Pacing in the plane for a few moments, I went to the little bar and opened it up. I had left right after the meal, and though I’d had a couple of glasses of wine, I felt like I still might need a little something to keep my nerves in check. It would have helped if he had answered any of my messages, but as it was, whiskey was looking like the best course of action.

I poured a small glass and turned on the television. I had to admit, this was the kind of lifestyle a girl could get used to. If I had never met Jesse, maybe I would have been content to have a loveless partnership. Probably not, but it was fun to imagine a life like this. Though I wondered if it would be all that fun if it were every day, or if the only reason it was so neat was because I never experienced it otherwise.

Trying to relax was proving useless, though. None of the shows were of any interest, and I didn’t want to start a movie knowing I’d end up leaving before it finished. The only other thing left was sports, and I had even less interest in that. So I put on a cooking show and left it on in the background while I stared out of the window and wondered how much longer it would be before I was on the ground.

I went back to the bar, looking for something to munch on and found a bag of pretzel chips. They weren’t exactly the healthiest thing in the world, but they were something. I was so nervous and so upset I needed to chew on something, even though I was still pretty full from the dinner in Paris hours ago.

I kept looking down at my phone, checking to see if he’d seen my messages or if he was calling back. I was a half hour away from landing when I decided to try one more time. I dialed his number and waited for the familiar fourth ring pickup of his full mailbox.

Instead, on the third ring, it picked up.

“Hello? Jesse?”

Silence greeted me on the other end.

I strained to listen and could hear something in the silence. It sounded like people talking, but they were muffled. Had Jesse answered my call accidentally?

There were two voices, a man and a woman, but the man’s voice didn’t sound like Jesse. Instead of the smooth, velvety baritone he spoke with, this was gruff and deep and brutal. It was also weirdly familiar, though I couldn’t place it. It was right there, on the edge of my memory.

The woman’s voice spoke again, and it seemed like she must have shifted because everything became clearer.

“…because I don’t want to, that’s why…”

“…tonight… again.”

“…. God, Oland.”

I froze.

Why would someone be talking to Oland with Jesse’s phone? And why would there be Oland and a woman talking and not Jesse? Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

They seemed to be arguing, though I couldn’t quite make out about what. Their voices were raised, and they were shouting, but it was garbled, and the volume sometimes reached the top of what the phone could make out individual sounds for. I tried to listen as closely as I could until I heard another word that made my blood turn to ice.

“… the body…”

Suddenly, the call went dead, and I sat there staring at it for a moment, trying to process what I’d just heard. I couldn’t tell who that woman was, but I had a feeling it wasn’t Trish. I could recognize her voice, and that wasn’t it. But it did sound familiar. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like it was Lacey Banks. But why would she be talking to Oland? And why would she have Jesse’s phone?

Unless…

I tried calling it again, but this time it didn’t even ring. It went right to the voicemail, which was full. I gave it a few seconds and tried again, and again, it went to the mailbox. Whoever had his phone had turned it off. They’d turned it off because they realized that I’d been able to overhear something.

I was going to try one more time when my screen lit up with an incoming call. It was Amber, which was odd. Amber never called me directly. I swiped it open, fully prepared to tell her that I couldn’t talk right now and why, only to have her cut me off.

“Charlotte? Are you there?”

“Yes, Amber, what’s going on?”

“Are you still in Texas?”

“Sort of. I’m on a plane that’s landing in Dallas in just a few minutes. Why? What’s going on?”

“You need to get to Foley. Actually, you need to just get to Louisa county. As fast as possible.”

“Amber, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

“Meet me at the hospital. Text me when you are close. You need to come here. It’s Jesse. He’s alive, but you need to be here.”