Strong Enough (Tall, Dark, and Dangerous #1)(16)

But death isn’t the only concern, isn’t the only horrific circumstance. If he was just wounded or captured, no one would know to contact me. And he could be either . . . or both.

I stop myself before I can go down that road. Instead, I take some comfort in the reassurance that he’s not dead. I hold on to that thought as tightly as my torn mind will allow.

Involuntarily, I shiver.

“Are you cold?” Jasper asks in his raspy voice. “I can turn on the heat.”

“The heat?” I feel dazed. Confused. Addled by my chaotic thoughts.

I glance around me, taking in the stretch of bland highway illuminated by the headlights. They cut through the darkness in a surgical kind of way. I make note of a sign that reads Gamble with your money, never your time. Visit the most entertaining casino in Shreveport.

Shreveport? It’s not cold in Louisiana.

“Why would I need heat?”

“You shivered.”

I turn to look at Jasper. Immediately I wish I hadn’t. No matter how many times I take in his angular face, his mesmerizing eyes, his delectable mouth, I never get used to the fluttery feeling in my stomach that I get from looking at him. It’s like I’m awestruck each and every time.

Right now, his face is ethereal in the reddish glow of the dashboard lights. He looks like some fearsome avenging angel, come to take what’s his.

Maybe come to take me.

I shiver again.

“I’m not cold.”

Far from it.

He takes his eyes off the road just long enough to meet mine, to draw me into the honey of his gaze, to nearly drown me in it. “Then why are you shivering?”

“I’m not. I was just . . . I just had a bad thought. That’s all.”

He makes no comment, so I turn to stare out the side window, like I’ve done for a large part of the last fifteen hours when I haven’t been covertly watching Jasper. Jasper, the world’s most guarded, least talkative car partner.

“Tell me,” I hear several minutes later.

I turn back to him, his meaning lost on my boggled mind. “Pardon?”

“Tell me your bad thought.”

He tells me this in an almost grudging way, like he wants to know, but then again he doesn’t.

Much like I want to tell him, but then again I don’t.

A conundrum.

More conflict.

I think about my previous reluctance to tell him much about my father, about anything really. But I also think about how hungry I’ve been for some kind, any kind of communication from him. Even more than that, though, I find that I want Jasper to know something about me, something important. Just enough that he might understand my fear. I desperately want someone to understand, to sympathize. Maybe even to reassure.

So I decide to tell him. Not everything, of course. Not even close. But more than I ever intended to.

“My father was . . . privy to some information that was sensitive. He was working with a guy I was dating. I had no idea it went beyond the obvious casual coworker thing, of course, but . . . it did. I overheard something I wasn’t supposed to. I had to leave in order to make sure my father was safe.” I pause and sigh. With an explanation like that, Jasper’s just likely to think I’m crazy. Or crazily dramatic. “It’s a long story. But the main thing is that, every month since I left, we would keep in touch through this one method, this very same method. Every month. Like clockwork. Until Friday.”

“So you think something has happened to him?”

“I can’t see how something hasn’t happened to him. I mean, there’s no way he would miss that call. There’s just no way. Not if he was able to get there. He would know I’d worry. He would know I’d worry and he would know that I’d risk everything to find him.”

“Did you think that maybe he’s not missing? That he’s—”

Jasper’s abrupt stop tells me exactly how he was going to finish that sentence.

“What? That he’s dead?”

His lips thin and he nods once. Considering how basically inconsiderate and blunt to the point of being rude Jasper seems sometimes, I take it as a compliment that he looks uncomfortable right now. I think this might be his way of being thoughtful and delicate.

“It’s okay. You can ask that. And the answer is that I can’t be absolutely positive, I don’t suppose, but he’s put some things in place to where if something happened to him, I’d be notified. So at least I know for sure that his body hasn’t turned up somewhere.” I swallow the lump that swells in my throat.

Jasper’s silence carries with it all the insecurities and appalling thoughts that I’ve purposely held at bay, things like the fact that people disappear all the time and their bodies are never found. But he at least has the good grace not to say them.

“Maybe he’s sick,” Jasper finally says. “I mean, if he has . . . pneumonia or something, would he call from the hospital?”

I smile at his choice of illnesses. I guess he didn’t want to make matters worse by suggesting a terrible car accident that has left him in a coma, or a brain tumor that has robbed him of his memory, something along those lines. Not that any of those possibilities would be a surprise to me. I think I’ve gone through every worst-case scenario on the planet.

“No, he wouldn’t do that, but . . .”