Midnight Angel [Jenlisa FF]

~'~'~ Chapter 29 ~'~'~

Nearly fourteen hours after the fire at Lisa's house, Jennie was restlessly pacing on the soft, cream-colored carpet inside a downtown Los Angeles hotel suite. She couldn't seem to do anything but pace from one end of the room to the other. Considering the events of the past day, she should be exhausted, and she was tired. Sleep was just utterly impossible. There was too much going on, too much to think about.

After the fire had been dealt with the day before, Ryan had pulled every string possible to keep the situation under wraps. The FBI didn't want anyone to know about her existence until it was completely necessary. As a result, they had called in a helicopter to transfer her and Lisa to a hospital in LA. It was the best way to keep her identity secret. If she'd gone to a hospital in Cambria, someone was bound to figure out who she was. In Los Angeles, the FBI had more control.

She and Lisa hadn't had to stay long for treatment. The hospital had checked them over to make sure there weren't any serious injuries from the smoke inhalation, which there weren't, and kept them on oxygen for a little while. By mid-evening, they were released and checked into a hotel in LA under false names with orders from the FBI to stay put and not talk to anyone.

Her father had not been happy when Ryan ~asked~ him to stay in Cambria. Mr. Kim had been ready to leap into his car to be by Jennie's side as he was checked out by the doctors in LA. If he had done that, though, if he'd gone to LA and stayed there, it would have made the situation more suspicious than it already was. Mr. Kim eventually understood that. As did Jisoo and the others, but they weren't happy about it.

So it was just Jennie and Lisa staying in the rather cushy hotel suite. Oh, and the guard posing as a bellhop outside in the hall. But it was just them inside, and had been just them since they were dropped off the night before. Oddly enough, they hadn't really talked much. Lisa had insisted Jennie go straight to bed and said she was doing the same. Jennie went, but sleep never really came. She'd only stared up at the ceiling, thinking about the fire, and what it seemed to mean.

Though no one had actually said it, Jennie got a clear impression that everything was about to come down. The fire was by no means a good thing, but at the same time, it seemed to have set the ball in motion. From what Ryan had said yesterday in Cambria, the arsonist was under arrest. And she had a feeling that the FBI expected all the pieces to fall into place with that one capture.

God, what if that was true? she mumbled silently. What if all of this, all of the pain she'd lived with for the last seven years, was finally going to be over? Even if the people who had murdered her family, and tormented her for years were brought to justice, Jennie didn't lie to herself. The pain would never really go away. She would never be able to forget all that had happened in Cambria.

Her Mom. Donna. Owen. The rape. Everything after it. The four years spent in seclusion. No, she'd never be able to ever put all of that out of her mind. It would always be a part of her.

A flicker of a memory flashed before her eyes. She saw her family as they'd lain in the den of her house, blood spattered around them. The image wasn't clear. It was clouded by a surreal fog that made everything fuzzy but did nothing to hide the grotesque scene. A shiver worked through her body, making Jennie rub her arms.

"Are you cold?" Lisa asked, jostling Jennie out of the past. She'd almost forgotten she was sitting at the breakfast bar only a few feet away.

"No," she shrugged restlessly. "I was just...thinking."

Lisa said nothing. she sensed Jennie wasn't in the mood to talk at the moment. She was wound tighter the a Hollywood starlet's enhanced face. Not that she was any less tense. Everything they'd been working for the past few weeks was happening. The arms of the law were about to close in around the creeps who had ruined Jennie's life. The truth was finally about to be told.