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JJ jumped when the phone rang, immediately triggering self-recriminations.
How the hell do you fall asleep when your daughter’s been kidnapped?
Exhaustion, obviously. She shoved Trooper out of the way, hurrying to get from the bed to the phone in the living room. Lurching down the hallway, she was too late—the ringing stopped. Arm against the wall to steady herself, JJ realized the phone had stopped because someone had answered it. A man. But a man Trooper trusted, calmly loping down the hall ahead of her. So she followed.
“I know,” Harlan said. Darkness still pressed against the windows, and he stood in the small pool of warm light cast by a lamp on an end table. “We’re on our way,” he added, and hung up.
He hardly spared a glance for her now-cold bare legs, visible beneath an ove
