Finding Tessa by Jaime Hendricks (best ereader for comics .TXT) 📗

And just like that, all eyes are on Evan as he regales them with the story. Jace gives my other arm a little squeeze. Partners.

It’s a nice feeling, having someone in my corner. Drew didn’t tell his colleagues that someone threw boiling water on me, either. He told them I poured it on myself because I’m clumsy and I couldn’t cook if my life depended on it. Ironically, half the time I did fear my life depended on presenting a hot meal.

Over dinner—chicken parm, one of my favorites—I hear a lot about Jace as a teenager and college kid, which fascinates me. He played cool instruments—drums and a little guitar, not band-geek instruments like a tuba. He was in honors classes.

They even talk about his brother, Tommy. Tommy was two years older than Jace, and dated Evan’s twin sister Pamela—Evan’s a twin?—for a few months in high school. When Jace goes silent, Mr. Soderberg mentions that “it’s a shame they never caught that drunk bastard” so I assume it was a hit-and-run. Jace looks at me, because he knows I don’t know.

“It was a few months before we graduated,” he says, nodding toward Evan. “Tommy was finishing his sophomore year at Ohio State. He and some friends were heading out to blow off steam after cramming for finals. There was an accident. His friend that was driving lost an arm, but Tommy didn’t make it after surgery. The two guys in the back seat were okay. Said it was a black truck, the kind with those huge wheels. Rammed into the passenger side at double the speed limit after blowing a stop sign. Then sat there for thirty seconds after the crash and took off.”

Very detailed explanation, yes. I take it as Jace not wanting me to ask questions about it later because it makes him too upset to talk about. His eyes mist over. I’m not sure if changing the subject is insensitive but I don’t want him to feel pain.

Luckily, Mrs. Soderberg mentions that she talked to Jace’s mother in Florida and she’s so happy that the cancer is gone—something else I don’t know about. But at least everyone is in better spirits, talking about the medical miracle.

Jace seems to have had enough pain and loss to last a lifetime. I promise myself, right then and there, I’ll make sure he never feels pain again.

For the most part, I get out of the evening unscathed—every time something came up that Jace knew I wouldn’t talk about, even with him, he covered for me. Everything from answering about my exes: Come on, a girl’s gotta have her secrets to answering about the town where I grew up: Her high school had the same mascot as us. Remember when our lion backflipped at that pep rally . . . ? Not only did he trick everyone into thinking they were learning about me, but he also showed at the same time how much we had in common.

Even if it was all a lie. They didn’t know that. But I did have so much in common with Jace. Just not those things. I didn’t come from a happy home and eat fresh-baked cookies while I did my homework. I didn’t attend pep rallies. I didn’t graduate from high school.

The only thing they know, or Evan knows, anyway, is how Jace and I really met. The night with Damon, his old roommate. What could’ve happened to me. God, it seems like a lifetime ago.

I wonder what ever happened to Damon Moretti?

28

JACE

Of all the shitty things that could’ve happened since the moment he arrived home to an empty house the night Tessa disappeared, being arrested for a different murder was the last thing that Jace expected to happen. And now, there he was, wrists pinned behind his back and perp-walking into the police station. Thankfully, he supposed, they found the gun (whose fucking gun was that?) and arrested him immediately—there was no time for the media to get involved. Although, he had a feeling when, if, he got out of there, the vultures would be waiting to snack on whatever was left of him.

Jace was led down a hall and into a room, where he had to hand over everything personal to be sealed in a bag and locked away, possibly forever. He was observed as he took off his clothes and fitted with an orange jumpsuit. The administrators took his watch, his wallet, and Jesus, did his heart clench when he slid off his wedding ring. The portly woman behind the counter snatched it up in her fat little hand and threw it into a plastic bag with zero regard for what it was, what it meant to him. Then it was sealed and tossed into a bin, like garbage.

Jace didn’t need his phone call, because thankfully Evan was at his house when the arrest was made, and as Jace was being pushed into the back of the police cruiser, Evan told him that he’d get a criminal attorney that he knew to the courthouse for the arraignment, and to wait. To not talk, and to wait.

So, he didn’t talk. Not when Solomon pulled him in a room and asked him questions about Rosita, or when he tossed postmortem pictures of her in front of him on the table. He didn’t say a word. Solomon wasn’t amused and threw his ass in a cell.

He waited.

He sat in a cell—a fucking jail cell—overnight, while the cops played goddamn TV detectives with a chip on their shoulder, trying to pin anything on the husband. All of this was a distraction, and it was taking away from the real issue: Tessa was missing, and what the fuck were they doing to try to find her?

He’d failed. He couldn’t protect her. Instead, he was rotting in a jail cell for a murder he didn’t commit, while someone was probably hurting his wife. Where