I hoped it didn’t come to that.
“Aha!” I cried, holding up a piece of mail with his name and address on it. I took a picture of it, placed the mail back where it belonged, and set off out of the office. Donna called after me, and I promised over my shoulder that everything was fine, I just needed to track him down. She didn’t look like she believed me, but she let me go nonetheless.
When I got back in my car outside, my phone chimed.
I yanked it out of my purse. Was it Jake? Had he overslept? Was he telling me everything was fine?
I groaned when I saw the text from Donna.
Are you sure you’re okay, Gabi? You’re making me nervous.
I tossed my phone on the passenger seat. I’d answer her later. Right then, I had to find Jake. I had this horrible, sinking, heavy feeling in my gut that something was terribly wrong. I knew he didn’t have people in his life who cared about him. At least, that was the impression he’d given me. If there was nobody else to make sure he was okay, I had to do it.
I wasn’t sure if it was for his sake or my own.
You’re losing your marbles, Gabi.
I plugged the address into my Lambo’s GPS and followed the directions through the city to an elite neighborhood I’d never driven through before. The homes were modern, with sharp edges, rooftop decks with views overlooking the city, and privacy fences. Most, if not all, had gardening crews working on their already immaculate front yards.
I pulled into the long driveway the GPS indicated was my destination. It dinged that I had arrived, and the screen went dark. Slowly, cautiously, I drove down the long winding drive until a concrete house emerged from the jungle of surrounding palm trees and fauna.
“Wow,” I breathed, soaking in the sight of the sprawling one-story house. It looked almost futuristic, with dramatically angled walls that met the roof at different heights from one point to the next. Dark tinted windows made it impossible for me to see inside, but I knew for certain that Jake could see out.
Did he know I was coming?
The yellow Lambo was hard to miss. Not only that, but a property like this probably had built-in surveillance that would notify him.
I stopped in the drive and got out. It took me a good thirty seconds to even locate the front door. It was flush with the concrete siding, and I only spotted it because of the black door handle and hinges. I moved toward it, shoes crunching on the loose gravel walkway broken up with paving stones. I climbed the three steps to a raised platform at the door and looked around. No entry mat, no planters, no flowers, no chairs, nothing.
The place felt barren. Like nobody had lived here in ages. Yet it was well kept. The gardens were kept back. The lawn was mowed. The house itself looked as though it had been recently pressure washed.
Odd.
As the knot of worry inside me continued to tighten, I knocked on the front door.
Please be here, please be here, please be here.
Once all this was said and done, I’d have to do some self-reflecting and figure out why this had given me such anxiety for him. I was usually calm and collected. Cool as a cucumber, my dad used to say.
The door unlocked.
Thank God.
It swung inward, but only halfway, and I saw nothing but darkness within until Jake stepped around the door, braced his shoulder on it for support, and shielded his eyes against the sun as he stared blurrily at me.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was thick and almost slurred.
That was when I noticed the drink in his hand.
I looked him over. Something had certainly happened, alright. He was still wearing the white shirt he’d had on in the Huffington Post article. He had more than a five o’clock shadow growing in and there were purple bags under his eyes. Either he hadn’t slept at all last night, or he was nursing the worst hangover of all time.
I forced my mouth to work. “Are you okay?”
“What are you doing here?” Either he’d forgotten he’d already asked me that, or he really wanted to know.
I bit my bottom lip. “I was worried about you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
I felt small under his stare as I opened my purse and pulled out my phone. I brought up the article, turned my screen around, and held it up to him. “I saw this on my feed this morning, and when you weren’t in the office, I started to wonder if something had happened. I wondered if you might need someone.”
His dark brown eyes slid slowly from my phone screen to me. “You came all this way to shove this fucking garbage in my face?”
The pit in my stomach doubled in size and threatened to swallow me whole.
Shit.
I’d just walked into a mess that was way over my head. I could feel it. But it was too late to back out now. Jake stumbled over the threshold of his house and out onto the top step with me, his drink sloshing over the rim of his glass.
I braced myself for his fury.