“Just leave me alone, Jacob.”
She turned and walked out of the room.
• • •
Three days later, Harper glanced up from her work and saw Ruth Dannen passing her office, purposefully avoiding Harper’s stare. She was clearly still pissed at the dressing-down Harper had given her for calling adoption services in West Virginia and pretending she was Harper. Their ensuing argument had been loud enough that Sangar had heard, and demanded they both go to his office. After he’d listened to both of them, he’d called Burt in to give his input.
Afterward, Sangar had fully backed Harper in the idea that there was no story in regard to Burt’s lead. He’d forbidden Burt and Ruth to pursue it any further. Harper and Burt had left Sangar’s office, while Ruth remained. Whatever Sangar had said to Ruth afterward had silenced Ruth, all right. It’d also turned her into a frigid, silent bitch every time Harper was around.
Harper couldn’t find any energy to care one way or another.
She’d been having difficulty concentrating for days. It’d been that way ever since she’d left the Lattice compound last Tuesday. She was a walking zombie. Her chaotic thoughts wouldn’t allow her to rest. She couldn’t eat. If it weren’t for the rote quality of some of her work, she would have been completely dysfunctional in the newsroom, as well.
When she’d stormed out of the compound Tuesday evening, Jacob had immediately tried to contact her. He’d called her cell repeatedly. When she’d refused to answer, he’d even shown up at her town house. Harper had laid huddled in her bed, sleepless and miserable, listening to him pound on her front door and once—horribly—calling her name in a wild, angry, worried tone. At the sound of his voice, Harper had finally sat up and thrown off the covers. She’d raced down the stairs and flung open the front door.
But by that time, he’d gone.
A black mood had descended on her and not left her since then.
She glanced up distractedly when she heard a knock. Burt hovered in her open doorway like he wasn’t sure he wanted to cross the threshold.
“Come on in, Burt,” she said, pushing back her keyboard. “What can I do for you?”
Things had been a little awkward between them since Sangar intervened in his story idea the other day, but nowhere near as strained as things were with Ruth.
“Look. I know Sangar has quashed the Latimer story, so I’m not trying to say we should do anything with this . . .”
She arched her eyebrows when he reluctantly faded off. “What, exactly?” Harper asked.
He inhaled slowly and stared at a piece of paper he was holding. “It might not be too pleasant for you to know, but I thought you’d want to, anyway. I wouldn’t have felt right, not telling you.”
“Know what?” Harper prodded, growing impatient with his hesitance.
He tossed the piece of paper on the desk. “I’d done some digging before Sangar shut us down, and this just came through. It’s about that girl, Gina Morrow. She goes by Regina Morrow now. She lives in Napa. And apparently . . . she lives with Jacob Latimer.”
Harper froze before she snatched up the paper. “Lives with him?”
“Maybe not lives with him,” Burt said, shifting on his feet restlessly. “But the address of her residence is right there. She lives on his property in Napa. I just thought you’d want to know.”
She glanced up, dazed. Burt looked extremely uncomfortable.
“I do want to know. Thanks, Burt.”
forty-one
Jacob stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows onto a brilliant early fall day. An unusually strong wind had made Tahoe choppy today, making the deep blue water sparkle and flash in his eyes.
He’d reached a breaking point.
He’d had enough of Harper avoiding him. Her anger at discovering that he had been Jake Tharp stunned him to the core. He’d expected shock. He’d expected disbelief and anxiety. But her fury had completely taken him off guard. What she’d said before she stormed off had altered him, somehow. Transformed him. He still could hear her voice as clearly as if she stood next to
him, three days after the fact.
“Harper McFadden thought Jake Tharp was the bravest, smartest, nicest person she’d ever met in her life.” And then, “I loved you, don’t you get that?”
His feeling of shock and amazement remained as well, as fresh as the moment she’d uttered those words. He would have questioned her veracity in saying it if he hadn’t witnessed firsthand her fierce anger.
He recalled how in awe he’d been when they were kids in that police station, huddled together on that cot, when she’d spoken out loud about their invisible connection. But his amazement on hearing her say three days ago that she’d thought Jake Tharp was the bravest person she’d ever known had been far greater. The simple reason for his shock was that while they shared so much, and felt so much in common . . . Jacob held the opposite opinion of Jake Tharp.