Drake Sisters 05 - Safe Harbor

through his drawers in the hopes of finding clothes small enough for her. Tucked away in a box in his closet, he found a pair of jeans from years earlier. He thumbed through the shirts and found his favorite old plaid. As he started out of the room, he glanced at the dresser. The pictures he kept there were all facedown. He'd bumped it when he'd gotten a little wild with Hannah. Smiling, he lifted the middle one and set it upright.

    It was one of his favorites of Hannah, with the sun shining on her hair and a dreamy expression on her face. He kissed his fingertips and brushed it across the glass just as the phone rang.
    "I'm tossing the clothes in, Hannah."
    "Don't throw them in the water!" Hannah stood up to catch the jeans and shirt as they sailed into the bathroom.
    The shirt was far too big, but it covered everything, and the jeans were old and faded and snug on her. As she pulled them up over her hips, she saw Jonas on the phone. He went suddenly still, the expression on his face harsh as he reached out and snagged his jeans, putting them on one-handed.
    Something was wrong. Really wrong. "What is it?" Hannah asked, anxiety creeping into her voice as she observed his murderous expression and the uneasy glances he sent her way. "Are my sisters all right?" But she would know if one of them was in trouble. She always knew.
    Jonas put down the phone, his hand going to the nape of her neck. "Early this morning, when Jackson was heading into the office, someone tried to run him off the road. He was in my car and still using my jacket. I have his."
    "Oh no. Was he hurt?"
    "The car is totaled and he's got a few scrapes and bruises, but he's alive." He grabbed a shirt and shrugged into it. "Jackson's been with me through more nasty battles with the bullets flying and neither of us thinking we were going to get out than I care to remember. I don't like that he took another hit for me." He paced across the floor, too restless to stay still when he was puzzling it all out.
    "This doesn't make sense. They had to have thought it was me driving the car, but clearly you weren't in the car. Why would they make me a target?"
    Hannah slid down the wall to the floor, crossed her arms over her breasts and drew up her knees, making herself smaller, huddling in the corner. This was her fault.
    Someone had tried to kill Jonas and poor Jackson had gotten in the way. Anything that happened to him had been because of her. Why? She didn't understand what she could have done to make someone hate her so much. Her sisters were in danger, and so were Jackson and Jonas. She closed her eyes on the tears burning so close.
    Jonas glanced at her white, pale face and instantly knelt down beside her. "It's okay, baby. It's going to be okay. Jackson is all right."
    She shook her head, rocking back and forth. "Where can I go that I won't take the chance that someone I love is going to be hurt?" She looked up at him with sorrow and shock in her eyes. "Who could possibly hate me so much they not only want to destroy me, but everyone I love? What could I have done to cause this?"

    Jonas had seen victims of crimes, hundreds of them. He'd reassured them, soothed them, broken bad news and good news, but it had never been personal. Her emotion choked him, strangled him, made him feel helpless and racked with fury that someone could put that look on her face. "Nothing, Hannah. You didn't do anything at all.
    People who choose this kind of madness are ill. A slight can be imagined, fantasized.
    It isn't really about you. It's about them and their self-absorbed hatred, an all-consuming destructive emotion. It isn't someone you know. No one who knows you could ever do this to you."
    "I don't know what to do."
    "I do, sweetheart. This is what I do. I'm taking you back to your house…"
    She shook her head. "I don't want them going after my sisters."
    Jonas framed her face with his large hands. "Baby, you're not thinking clearly. Your house eats people for snacks. Your trees throw them into the ocean. Your balcony comes alive and your windows repair themselves. You and your sisters are damned safe in that house, which, by the way, I'm never going to look at in the same way again."
    She almost managed a smile as she allowed him to pull her up. "All right. I'll go home with them, but you'd better stay in the house as well. I mean it, Jonas. Whoever is doing this is obviously trying to kill you now."
    He looked around, found their shoes in the living room and handed