Rescuing Jenna - Anna Blakely Page 0,37
interest me.” When he started to shake his head, she laid it all out. “If this”—she motioned between them—“has any chance of working, you’re going to have to trust me.”
Adrian stared deep into her eyes. “I do trust you.”
Jenna picked up a piece of bacon and took a bite. “If that were true, you’d give me something. Even just a tiny piece of who you are. Who you used to be.”
After a few seconds of silence, his voice softened. “Ellena didn’t share any of this with you?”
Her friend knew the answers to those questions and didn’t tell her? Jenna made a mental note to find out why the next time she talked to Elle.
“No.” She shook her head. “Elle didn’t tell me anything about your life before the military. She and Gabe just said you were working undercover for the government for the past several years. That Gabe and his team all thought you were a traitor…that the world thought that of you. But that it wasn’t true.”
He took a minute to process this and then he finally, finally started sharing.
“I grew up here.”
“In Gulfside Harbor?” Jenna felt her eyes widen.
“Haven’t been back in several years.”
“How come?”
“My childhood was less than ideal.” He paused. “My mom split when I was twelve and my sister was nine. Dad, and I use that term very loosely, was a worthless drunk and a junkie.”
“You have a sister?” For some reason that bit of news was shocking.
“Had.” A soul-deep sadness filled his eyes. “Bree died a few years ago.”
Her chest ached for him. “You started to say you lost someone. You were talking about your sister.”
Adrian nodded. “I basically raised her from the time our mom took off until I left for the military.”
He seemed to become lost in his memories for a moment but blinked them away. Clearing his throat, Adrian continued with the heartbreaking story.
“So, my dad…he’d do pretty much anything for alcohol or drugs. Asshole couldn’t hold a job to save his miserable life. Instead, he spent his time looking for ways to scam people out of money for alcohol. Drugs. Sex.”
“God, Adrian.” Jenna reached across the table and put a hand over his. “That must have been awful. How did you and your sister get by?”
Glancing down, he pulled his hand free. Jenna started to move hers back, but he surprised her by linking their fingers together.
He needs comfort. He needs you.
“I dropped out of high school after my sophomore year. Schoolwork always came easy to me, so I got my GED and started working two jobs to pay the bills.”
“You were what, sixteen?”
“Barely.”
Just a baby.
“I waited until Bree graduated high school to enlist. She was smart.” He gave her a ghost of a smile. “So fucking smart. Got a full ride to the University of Texas in Austin. She wanted to be a teacher.”
“What happened?”
Adrian drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Jenna could tell this part was especially hard for him to talk about, but if he was willing to share, she wasn’t going to stop him.
“It was her junior year. She’d just turned twenty-one and she’d come home for the weekend to celebrate with some of her old friends from here. My dad, uh…he heard she was coming back, and like always, he saw an opportunity to help himself, so he took it.”
Though she was afraid to, Jenna asked, “What does that mean?”
“My dad knew somebody who knew this group of guys. They’d been taking prostitutes and runaways from the area and selling them to another group across the border.”
Jesus. “You’re talking about sex trafficking.”
Adrian nodded. “Dad gave his buddy a picture of Bree. He showed the men her picture and they agreed to pay top dollar for her.”
Horrified, Jenna squeezed his hand tighter. “Oh, Adrian.”
What kind of father sells his own daughter?
“Bree grew up here, you know?” He looked over at her. “Knew the neighborhoods. The people. So she wouldn’t have been scared to walk the few blocks from the bar back to the house.”
“That’s when they took her? While she was on her way home?”
Another sad nod.
“That was the last night anyone saw or heard from her.”
“How did you…” Jenna swallowed the growing knot in her throat. “How did you find out what happened?”
“When Homeland and the CIA first approached me about taking the deep cover job, they knew my sister was missing. They also knew of a trafficking ring based out of Colombia. From some of the evidence they’d found, they