Page 49 of Riptide
"He said okay. Said he'd drive home in the morning."
The silence stretched, thick with grief.
"But he didn't. Obviously."
Cara pressed her hand over her mouth, trying to hold back a sob.
"So that's what Blaire Mitchell does," Jessica said. "That's what she's GOOD at. She finds desperate people and she destroys them."
"Jessica, I'm so sorry." The words came out broken. "I can't imagine?—"
"No. You can't. Nobody can unless they've lived it." Jessica paused. "But here's what you CAN imagine: that's YOUR future if you try to fight her. That's what happens when you don't pay."
"There has to be another way?—"
"There ISN'T." Jessica's voice rose again. "We couldn't survive it. And neither will you."
Cara felt the hope she'd been holding onto start to fade. "So what do I do?"
"You pay her. Whatever she wants. Empty your accounts, max out your credit cards, beg everyone you know for money."
"And then PRAY she leaves you alone. Because that's the only way out that doesn't end with you dead or broken beyond repair."
"But—" Cara started.
"No buts. No plans. No clever ideas." Jessica's voice turned harsh. "You called me for advice? Here it is: Pay her and disappear. That's it. That's the ONLY answer."
Cara wiped a hand over her face. All her con artist calculation had dissolved into genuine grief for a man she'd never met. For a family destroyed by the same woman hunting her now.
She tried one more time. "Jessica, I need to ask you something. About how Blaire found Shawn. You said no one hired her. So how did she even know to look for him?"
Jessica was quiet for a long moment. "We never figured it out. That's what made it so sick. So CALCULATED."
"Shawn wasn't on social media. He always used cash. Different name on his work documents—his boss was paying him under the table. No paper trail. But she found him anyway. It's like she has some kind of radar for desperate people."
Jessica's voice turned bitter. "That's your enemy, Cara. Not just a blackmailer. Not just someone who's good at finding people. But someone with the tools and resources to hunt the most vulnerable people and destroy them for profit."
A heavy, tear-laden sigh came over the line. "I'm done. Don't call me again. Don't show up at my home. Don't contact my work." Jessica's voice turned cold. "And if you're smart—if you want to survive this—you'll pay Blaire Mitchell whatever she wants and disappear."
Another pause. "For what it's worth, I hope you survive this. I really do."
The line went dead.
Cara sat in the silence of her apartment, phone still pressed to her ear, tears streaming down her face.
Shawn Forsythe's photo stared up at her from the table. Kind eyes. Loving father. Good man.
Dead because Blaire Mitchell had found him and squeezed until there was nothing left.
She set the phone down with trembling hands and looked at his picture—really looked at it. At his daughters' faces, so happy in their father's arms. They'd lost him. Lost him because someone had turned human suffering into profit.
The tears came harder now. For Shawn. For his daughters. For Jessica, whose voice was so dead, so hollow. For all of Blaire's victims, broken and scattered and too afraid to fight back.
"God," she whispered into the empty room. Her voice cracked. "God, I don't even know what to ask for anymore."
She pulled Shawn's photo closer, touched it gently.
"Please heal Jessica. Please give her peace. She's so broken, and I can't—" Her voice failed completely. "I can't fix what Blaire did to her family. But You can. Please."
