Before I could get out the door, it swung open, taking me by surprise—I jumped, but then saw that it was Elijah and Scott standing there. They stank of smoke, but this time Elijah had an intense look in his eyes that indicated he wasn’t going to be told to leave just like that.
“Jazz.” He strode towards the man of the house, and Jazz rolled his shoulders back and met his gaze steadily.
“What can I help you with?” he asked mildly, as though Elijah were stopping around for a bag of sugar.
“I can’t walk out of here seeing what I have,” Elijah began urgently. “We need to do something. I have contacts in the police department, I can—”
“The police don’t like helping guys like me.” Jazz shook his head. “Believe me, if I thought I could have, I already would have tried.”
“Okay,” Elijah sighed, running his hands through his hair. “But I’ve seen cases like this before, where someone gets obsessed with a family, and trust me when I say that this will not end well, especially not if you stay in this house.”
“Why, what happened the last time?” Jazz demanded. Elijah screwed up his face, and I could tell that he regretted bringing it up at all.
“It’s not important—”
“Tell me,” Jazz repeated. “I need to know what kind of person I’m dealing with here.”
“The last case I worked on like this,” Elijah began hesitantly. “It was a family of four. The mother picked up a stalker, and when he found out about her family—he decided that the best thing he could do was replace the father.”
“And?”
“He broke into the house and tried to take out the dad. When he couldn’t, he killed the kids and the woman instead.”
The words hung in the air between us, heavy and horrible. I felt my stomach churn and fought the urge to throw up on the carpet in front of me.
“So you see why I take this so seriously,” Elijah urged him. “Let me help. Please. I’m begging you. I can’t in good conscience walk out of here and leave you two to that psycho.”
“What do you want us to go?” Jazz threw his hands up in the air. “Where can we go? Who can we go to?”
“I know a safe house outside of town.” Elijah stepped towards him. “It’s not much, but it’s something.”
“What do we need to do?” Jazz finally conceded, and relief passed over Elijah’s face.
“Where’s Ella?”
“With a friend.” Jazz glanced over at me. “Mona was just about to go get her.”
“Get her here, and get her stuff packed up,” Elijah ordered, taking control. “She can ride with me to the safe house and you guys can follow behind.”
“I’m not going to let—”
“It’s safer this way,” Elijah assured him. “They won’t know my car from yours, and I can get my guys protecting us both on the way up. I just need to put in a couple of calls, okay? Then we’re going to get this thing under control.”
The next hour was a flurry of activity; Jazz picked Ella up, and I packed up a little suitcase of her clothes for her to take on her trip away. I knew this would be killing Jazz—the last thing he had ever wanted was for his little girl’s life to be disrupted by anything or anyone, but there was no arguing that this was the best course of action for the time being. Jazz would have been crazy to argue anything else. She wasn’t safe staying here—neither of them were. I tried to push the thought that this crazy guy might have laid eyes on me as well from my head as Scott and I did a sweep of the house to pick up anything we needed.
“Are you going with him?” Scott asked as we grabbed Jazz’s phone charger.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I want to, but…”
“Trust me, I think he needs it right now,” Scott remarked gently. “Even if you don’t stay, go with them tonight. For a bit of normality.”
“You’re right,” I sighed, and before I could expand on that thought, I heard the door slam downstairs. I hurried out of the room, and found myself faced with Ella and Jazz. It was such a relief to see her unharmed, even though I knew nothing could or would have happened to her while she was out. I ran down the stairs and gave her a tight hug.
“You want to go pick out one of your toys to take, sweetheart?” Jazz suggested, and she bounded up the steps two at a time towards her room. We watched her go, then convened next to the door.
I looked at Jazz. “We’re packed. Is she ready to go?”
“I told her that we were taking a trip for a couple of days.” Jazz ran his hands through his hair. “Is it all sorted?”
Elijah hung up the call he’d been on and nodded. “We’re ready to go when you are.” He patted Jazz on the arm. “The escort will meet us once we get to the outskirts of town so we don’t attract too much attention, the safe house will have a room for you when you get there.”
“Thank you,” Jazz met Elijah’s gaze and nodded thankfully. “We need this.”
“I know,” Elijah nodded briskly. Ella appeared at the top of the stairs, clutching her dinosaur plush to her chest and smiling down at us.
“You’re going to be riding with Elijah!” Jazz tilted his head towards him and Ella eyed him suspiciously for a moment. Jazz beckoned her closer, and she scurried down into his arms.
“Trust me, sweetheart, this is what’s best,” he promised her. “It’s not a long drive, and then we’ll be back together again, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. I wondered if she’d made the connection—if she’d figured out that this was to do with the man who’d been here before, the man she’d fled from. Maybe she’d been expecting this for a long time. Maybe she was ahead of all of us.
“I’ll ride with you.” I squeezed Jazz on the arm, and he glanced over at me with a small smile.
“You don’t have to come with us,” he protested, but I could tell that he was only doing it for show.
I shook my head. “I’m coming.”
Scott hugged me goodbye and made his way back down the road, and soon enough we were following Elijah’s car across the quiet suburbs and towards the safe house outside the city.
Jazz and I rode in silence most of the way there—I could tell that he was lost in his thoughts, and I didn’t want to interrupt him. I couldn’t imagine the pain he was going through at that moment, the suffering, how much he was beating himself up over not being able to stop this all going down. I knew nothing I could say would make it better, so I kept my mouth shut, eyes trained on Elijah’s car where I could see Ella’s head leaned up against the backseat. It was a comfort, having her in my eye line—and to think that only a few months ago I had hardly known this girl at all. It seemed like a ridiculous thought now, but here I was, leaving home to protect her and give her what comfort I could.
My thoughts were stopped short as I glanced over at Jazz and noticed a furrow in his brow. Oh no. That wasn’t a good sign.
“What’s up?” I asked softly, breaking the silence between us. He was peering in the rear view mirror, his eyes flicking between the car behind us and Elijah’s car ahead.
“That car,” he began slowly. “I think it’s following us.”
“What the hell?” I craned my neck and peered out of the window in the back of the car. The vehicle behind us was dark blue, and looked vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t put my finger on why.
“How long has it been following us?” I turned back to him.
“No idea,” he admitted. “But at least the last five miles.”
“Maybe he’s just heading in the same direction?” I squinted into the mirror, trying to make out the guy behind the wheel and failing. “Or she?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t like this,” he murmured. “It’s a strange route out of town unless you’re going where we are.”
“What do we do?” I shot him a look. I had no idea how to handle all of this. I had signed on as a babysitter, not as some partner-in-fleeing-crime.
“We give it a few more miles, then we pull over and see if they pass.” He glanced into the rear view mirror again.
“How will we let Elijah know that we’re stopping?”
“Looks like he already figured it out.” Jazz nodded ahead, and I glanced forward to find Elijah’s car pulling over and off the road. We did the same, and Jazz hopped out of the car.
“You saw it too?” he asked, and Elijah nodded.
“I got in touch with the guys who are waiting to meet us,” he went on. “And they ran the plate for me.”
“Oh yeah?” Jazz leaned forward, glancing into the car to make sure that Ella was okay. She was out cold, dead to the world. I felt a little pang of relief seeing her like that—at least she didn’t have to worry. At least she was safe from the panic the rest of us were lost in.
“Yeah.” Elijah nodded ominously. “I’m pretty sure that it was a woman driving, but the car’s registered to an Ian.”
“Ian?” I blurted out. “As in…?”
“Yeah, an Ian who used to live next door to you,” Elijah filled us in grimly. “I’m sorry, but I think you’re in serious trouble here. I would get used to the idea of staying out of your place for a long time yet.”
Jazz bowed his head, and I could see that he was shaking—with anger or fear or both I wasn’t sure. I took his hand without thinking and squeezed it; he squeezed back, apparently grateful for the comfort.
The car had vanished by that point—maybe out of fear that we were going to cotton on and call the cops on them. We climbed back into our vehicles and took off once again, this time faster. There was no time to waste.
We met the escort just outside of town, as promised, as we made the rest of the short journey to the safe house. I kept on sneaking looks at Jazz, glad that I had agreed to come and relieved that I could be here with him. Yeah, it wasn’t exactly our best method to keep each other at arm’s length, but I didn’t care. He needed an adult with him, someone else who could understand the weight of the situation. Someone he could talk to honestly without fear.
The safe house was small and discreet, a three-story place that had a single light blazing away in the hall when we arrived. I saw Jazz visibly relax, and he jumped out of the car as soon as we were parked up and went to scoop Ella out of the backseat. The way he touched her and picked her up, it was even more gentle than before, as though he was concerned about breaking her. As though all of this had served as a reminder of just how delicate and precious she was.
He carried her inside of the house, and I grabbed her bags and followed the two of them in. As the light in the hallway filtered through her eyelids, Ella came back to consciousness. Jazz smoothed her hair back from her head comfortingly, and turned to find Elijah following us in. I had no idea what to do next, and was glad Elijah was with us to let us know the protocol.
A few seconds after we walked in, a woman emerged from upstairs—she approached Elijah and shook his hand warmly, then turned to us.
“You must be the family Elijah called us about.” She frowned sympathetically. “We’re so sorry to hear what you’re going through. We can get your forms and everything filled out tomorrow, but just now, let’s get you to bed so you can catch some sleep, okay?”
“Sounds good.” Jazz smiled thankfully. The woman bustled off to get things sorted for us, and Elijah rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes and then spoke once more.
“You guys’ll be fine here,” he promised. “I’ll be back in forty-eight hours. I’ll give you some time to settle in and let the heat die down a bit, and then we can figure out what we’re going to do from there.”
“Elijah—” I began, stepping towards him. I was exhausted, but I still wanted him to know just how much this meant to all of us. He held his hand up.
“No, it’s fine, really,” he assured me. “This is the least I could do. And don’t worry—I’m going to get to the bottom of this no matter what.”
“Thank you, Elijah.” Jazz nodded at him seriously. “I think I owe you more than I can ever repay.”
“Maybe when I catch this guy. Meantime, get some sleep. I’ll be back as soon as I can to get everything under control, okay?”
We watched as Elijah made his way outside. The woman returned, and gestured in the direction of the stairs. She handed me a key.
“Third room on the right on the second floor.” She smiled kindly. “Sleep well.”
“Thank you,” I sighed at her, and helped carry the meagre bags we’d packed up the steps and towards their new home. Our new home? I still wasn’t sure if I’d be invited to stay after all of this. I prayed I would, because I was on the point of passing out as it was and didn’t think I could manage the drive home.
As soon as we were through the door, I dropped the bags, flopped down on to the couch, and watched as Jazz carried Ella through to one of the bedrooms and tucked her carefully into the covers. Despite everything, I couldn’t help but smile at how sweet and tender he was with her. He made his way back through to the living area and glanced down at me.