The rest of that crew, they found out about the ring, if they didn’t already know, were going to be pretty f**king angry.
He needed McFarland’s focus off Emme and he needed to be certain no other focus turned to her.
Shit like this went warped in a blink of an eye, and people like Emme got caught up in it in ways no one would imagine if someone didn’t pay attention.
He stopped at his door of his truck, hand on the handle but turned his sole attention on her.
“I get you don’t want to think bad things about anybody, about bad shit that may be comin’ your way or about a guy you spent time with, baby,” he said quietly. “But I’m asking you if we can end this go-round we got goin’ about this guy, and to do that, I’m askin’ you to trust me. Be safe and be safe by lettin’ me keep you safe however I gotta do that. Now, do you trust me?”
There was a moment’s hesitation before she said, “I’m sorry, honey. I’m being obstinate about this and I don’t know why. Maybe denial.”
“How about you don’t think about it, let me think about it, and you just go about your day. Yeah?”
“It’s… it’s… this is really cool of you, Jacob,” she said, her voice now soft. “We just started. We should be about fun stuff, not you having Dane always in your face. This is a pain and—”
“Babe, just starting or not, this isn’t a pain. You’re in my life, when it comes to you, this is my job. You get a good man, he’ll think of it that way. And he won’t give a f**k it’s a pain.”
To that he got nothing.
So he called, “Emme?”
“I really like you,” she whispered, and he closed his eyes as her words made his blood heat.
He opened them and yanked open his door.
“I really like you too,” he replied.
“I’m glad.” She was still whispering.
“Go talk to your dad,” he ordered.
“Okay, honey. When are you coming ’round and are you bringing Buford or going back for him after dinner?”
“Your dad know I’m spending the night?”
“Yes, and please don’t worry about that. I’m thirty-four. He’s not stupid. He’s got three other kids older than me and has been through this before prior to them being seriously dressed up in a church. Not to mention, he thinks you can draw up the plans in your mind for a spaceship that can get us to Mars in four hours not four years at the same time go three rounds with Mike Tyson and best him. He’s not got a problem with you spending the night.”
As she was speaking, he’d angled in his truck and closed the door.
Well before she was done, he was smiling at his steering wheel.
“Good to know,” he murmured then said, “Don’t want Buford ambling around your house alone first time he’s there. Also don’t want him to sit in a cold truck while we’re eatin’. I’ll swing back by my house after dinner and get him.”
“All right.”
“Gonna let you go.”
“Okay, honey. Talk to you later.”
“I’ll be at your house around four thirty.”
“Works for me.”
“Good, baby. See you then.”
“Okay, Jacob. ’Bye.”
“Later, honey.”
He disconnected with a smile still on his lips and he was about to toss his cell on the seat beside him when it rang.
The display said “Lee Nightingale calling.”
He put the phone to his ear. “Lee.”
“Yo, Deck. You got time to talk?” Lee replied.
“Yeah,” Deck answered, settling back, eyes scanning the area outside his windshield, attention on the phone.
“Did what you asked, set Hector on it, got a verbal report this morning,” Lee told him.
“Give it to me,” Deck invited.
“Harvey Feldman. Sixty-one years of age. Did a nickel for kidnapping, refused to be considered for parole. Did the whole run, his decision. Got out, did his stint in a halfway house. Got a job. Got a house. House paid in full now. Car paid in full. Bills paid on time. Taxes filed on time. Goes to work on time. No sick days. Stellar performance evaluations. Well liked at work. Not a loner. Goes out for drinks with the boys. Looks after his neighbor’s cat when she’s on vacation. Mows his other neighbor’s yard ’cause she’s eighty-nine and refuses to go into a nursing home. Described as kind of quiet, but friendly, and kind. Although not a loner, never remarried. No one’s ever seen him even datin’. Puts money in a 401K that’ll mean his retirement will be comfortable but he won’t be in the lap of luxury.”
Deck didn’t have a good feeling about this.
Too perfect.
And it fit something Emme said in a way he didn’t like.
“There more?” he asked when Lee stopped talking.
“Yeah. Hector said Harvey Feldman is the most boring assignment I’ve given him and he says you now owe him too.”
Deck didn’t smile.
Instead, he noted, “Squeaky clean. Hector get eyes on this guy?”
“Yeah,” Lee answered.
“What’s the vibe? He report that?”
“Outside of the job being boring, no. And if Hector got a vibe, he’d report it. Regular Joe outside of out of the blue once kidnapping a twelve-year-old-girl. Got no priors to that, no problems after. Not even a parking ticket.”
“I don’t like this,” Deck muttered, unable to put his finger on why he didn’t.
“You wanna clue me in on who Emmanuelle Holmes is to you?” Lee fished.
“She’s in my bed,” Deck gave it to him.
“This guy make an approach to her?” Lee asked, his tone, usually alert, was now more so.
Then again, Lee was married, he loved his wife, didn’t mind people knowing it, so he’d get a man looking into the kidnapper of the woman in his bed.
“Not that I know of.”
Her words came to him.
And Harvey took it because he thought he deserved it. He had a daughter. If someone did that to her, he would have done the same.
She called him Harvey like she knew him.
He’d asked how she knew that about the man, she hadn’t answered. Something was not right, and it wasn’t just how Emme had twisted all that to okay in her head.
She’d laid it out, surprisingly honestly.
But this evasiveness was why he didn’t ask her straight up if she had some current connection with Harvey.
She was figuring things out, untwisting what she had twisted in her head, emerging from behind the veil, letting him in. He didn’t want to trip a trigger when she was working on all that, a trigger that might drive her away.
Especially if there wasn’t something to worry about.
But he had a sick pit in his gut telling him there was something to worry about and, until he knew what it was, to avoid tripping that trigger and in order to form a plan on how to deal with it before he approached her about it, he couldn’t broach it with Emme.
“I’m goin’ to Denver, tomorrow or next day. I’m settin’ up eyes on his house,” Deck told Lee. “You got another marker, you let me send those feeds to your control room and your boys keep an eye on that house.”
“No marker, men in that room 24/7, Deck. We can do that, not a problem. I just gotta know what you’re lookin’ for.”
“I also want ears on his phone. Don’t give a f**k about anything he does, says or who he talks to, except Emme phonin’ him or goin’ for a visit.”
“She’s visiting him?” Lee asked.
“Don’t know. Got sour in my gut, though, so I just gotta go with it until I can work it out.”
Lee Nightingale understood that sour in your gut.
This was why he said, “Let us know when you’re in Denver. I’ll ask Vance to go out and help you with the feeds.”
“Obliged.”
“In the meantime, we’ll get into his phones.”
“Thanks, Lee.”
“Again, not a problem. Later, Deck.”
“Later.”
They disconnected but Deck didn’t turn on the ignition or throw his phone aside.
He tapped it on the steering wheel and looked straight ahead, unseeing.
It was coming to her, what that whackjob wrought when he took her, how she’d slipped behind that particular veil, breathing but not living, not connecting. Twenty-two years later, it was coming to her.
But she seemed entirely calm and unaffected when she talked about the kidnapping, only concerned that what she was learning it did to her cost her time with him.
She showed no fear whatsoever when it came to Harvey Feldman.
Deck had taken two contracts where he’d tracked, and rescued, kidnapped kids.
He’d also worked a situation with Chace that led to two kidnapped kids.
They were not calm and unaffected in the slightest.
That sour feeling in his gut, he pulled his thoughts out of that shit, tossed his cell aside, turned on his truck and guided it into traffic.