Jamie
Was it normal to be proud of someone for this? Jamie wasn’t even sure what you’d call it, exactly, because telling the truth didn’t entirely cover it. Jo waited for everyone to gather at Ricky and Chase’s, where even Ricky was subdued, and laid it out: researcher for Not Forgotten. First to bring up Davis’s name. How she knew Davis’s name.
Trevor got up, went into the kitchen, and brought back a plate full of mini quiches. Chase had been good as his word.
Jo looked at the plate, then up at Trevor, and dissolved into giggles. There were some tears with the giggles, but she leaned into Jamie when he offered, and she made short work of the quiches. Considering the only other thing she’d eaten today was a breakfast burrito, Jamie figured that was a good idea.
Dune suggested Jenga, since that didn’t take mental concentration, but Jo shot them down with “Yeah, because I need more stress!” They ended up with a triple deck of Uno all shuffled together, some of them on the couch and others on the floor around the Walkers’s enormous coffee table. The others seemed to be doing their best to take their cue from Jo, the same as Jamie was, and once she got the information out she was looking for a distraction. It wasn’t the usual game night energy, but it was helping Jo relax.
At least, it was until Trevor pulled out his phone, frowned, and handed it to Jamie.
Jo carefully set her cards face down on the table and put her hands in her lap, clearly waiting for him to see what Trevor found. Jamie tried to get something from Trevor’s expression, but he was obviously guarded. This wasn’t going to be good.
He checked the headline and scrolled down for the first paragraph. “He’s still alive,” he reported, because maybe that wasn’t the worst-case scenario, but it was certainly top on her mind. Then Jamie scrolled further, and frowned, and realized maybe he shouldn’t be frowning, except he couldn’t undo the frown. The silence stretched on, and he felt like he had to both read faster and corral his face, but neither one was happening. It was a lot to take in, and when he finally looked up, Ricky was letting Jo hold onto one of his hands with a death grip. “Just tell me,” she whispered.
“Uh, there’s a …” Shit, this wasn’t the way to do any of this. Jamie looked down at Trevor’s phone again and scrolled to the proper paragraph. “Davis is conscious and gave a written statement. It’s signed and dated today and says …” Jamie cleared his throat in case she wanted to jump in and tell him she’d changed her mind. “I would like to set the record straight. I am responsible for the deaths of Chelsea Cunningham, Sophia Brunet, and Akira Koenig. I have never met, and I did not murder, Julie Juntunen, Anjelina Truesdell, Lauren Lachen, Tara Kurtycz, Brooklyn Dompier, Aiden Gransell, or Cassie Kujansuu. I am willing to accept a plea deal for the crimes I have done, but not for the women whose lives I did not end.” That was the end of the statement, so he looked up even though he was sure his question was clear in his eyes.
Jo nodded once. “Cece. They all called her Cece.”
Trevor and Mitch exchanged a confused look, but Dune said “Oh, honey,” in a tortured voice and moved off the couch to the floor to wrap their arms around Jo and Ricky combined.
“Her mom,” Chase mouthed across the coffee table, grabbing the Kleenex from the end table and moving it—and himself—closer.
They piled on her, which meant Jamie didn’t really have access to his own girlfriend, but she freed a hand and held it out to him. Jamie took it, but he felt his hoodie pocket buzzing a bit more angrily than usual. He fumbled out both their cell phones, and each of them was lit up with the word Mom.
Jo sighed. “You answer yours,” she told Jamie. “Anyone want to take mine?”
Chase shrugged and plucked it off the table without giving anyone else a chance. “Jo Lewis’ phone. Chase Waker speaking.”
Jamie waited for Jo to squeeze his hand and let go before he swiped on his own and got up, heading for the kitchen. “Hey, Mom.”
“Well, you’ve been gone all day,” she scolded him cheerfully. “There’s an update on Davis. He—”
Holding the phone away from his ear seemed like the best option here. He could tell she was still speaking, but he didn’t have to listen to every word, and he knew Mom’s cadence well enough to put it back up in time.
“—that something?” she concluded breathlessly.
It was, but Jamie had first heard it almost a month ago. “Mom, Jo was one of the first researchers on Not Forgotten. She told me Davis only did two of them the first day we met.”
There was a long pause. He could picture Mom sorting through her various responses. Jamie hadn’t told Mom that the day he’d met Jo, so clearly he was just making it up. If Jo knew how much Mom liked the show, why hadn’t she shared? And of course, since Jamie took off right after he heard about Davis and hadn’t been home all day … “Is she Jake Cooper’s ex-wife?”
Of course she’d go for that description. “Yes.”
“And she knew all this about Davis?” Mom pressed.
Jamie wanted to know what was happening in the living room, but he didn’t want to take Mom’s conversation in there. “When her contract ended, she told Kara and Tess that there was more to the story and they needed to keep digging.”
Mom clucked her tongue. “My, my. Are you with her right now?”
“Yes.” Where else would he be?
“Well then don’t let me keep you!” she admonished, and she was only passing off his attention because it could be coupled with a correction. “The poor thing needs a strong shoulder.”
Jamie blinked, because he wasn’t sure that Jo really was a poor thing, but she was gone. His phone screen changed to show the call was over, and when he looked up, Jo was leaning against the doorframe. “I’m thinking of hiring Chase as my personal assistant,” she announced, “and Dune’s calling their other partner.”
Dune was a lawyer. Their other partner was also a lawyer. Wait, “Dune thinks you need a lawyer?”
She shrugged. “Better to need one than not have one.”
Jamie tried to consider everything she wasn’t saying. She’d extracted herself from the group hug, but she hadn’t come to ask him for one. “You’re not getting rid of me,” he blurted, and he could feel himself start blushing by the third syllable. It was awkward, and clingy, and really he should’ve tried to tell her how he felt about her, even though what he felt like was not leaving her.
Jo tilted her head as she slowly came into the kitchen, looking up at him. “I think you’re going to have to prove that one day at a time,” she finally told him with a helpless little shrug.
He held out a hand like he wanted to shake, and waited out her frown for her to take it. “Bet,” Jamie declared, pulling her in for a hug that showed, even if he was awkward and clingy, he wasn’t alone.
End of Part Two (June)
Chapter Twenty-Nine – coming October 29
