by Cara Putman
“Sounds good.”
The walk was quiet, and he wondered if Emilie was lost in her memories of Kaylene.
He felt the weight of his sister’s words and her trust in this woman. They reached the door to the coffee shop at the same time and she hesitated. What was the right thing to do? Did she want him to open the door for her, or did she expect to handle that herself? “May I get the door for you?”
“Thanks.” She gave him a small smile, then entered. “Looks pretty busy. I’ll snag that table over there so we have a quiet corner to talk.”
He placed a hand on her arm to stall her as he glanced at the menu board and then back at her. “Would you like a coffee?”
“Extra-large white chocolate mocha iced, and ask if they can add peppermint.” She lifted her gaze with a quirked smile. “Thank you.”
He chuckled when he saw it was the most expensive coffee on the menu.
A few minutes later he returned with her froufrou drink and a good black coffee for himself. He set hers in front of her.
“Thanks. I usually get tea at coffee shops, but this one has the best mochas in town.”
“Glad to get it.” He settled at the table and sipped his coffee while trying to free his thoughts. He set his cup down and pulled the letter from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table to her. “I didn’t find this until Saturday right before we ran into each other at the restaurant. Now I don’t know what to do. As you can read, she asked me to fight for her girls if anything happened.”
“She knew.” A bleak expression settled on Emilie’s face. “We tried so hard, but she knew.” She paused as if rereading the card. “Wait, she brought this to you in July? She stopped coming into the Haven around that time.”
“I guess so.” Reid took another sip, then set down his coffee, trying to hide his unsteady hands.
Her jaw tightened. “What did he do to her? We were making such progress, then she disappeared for about a month. She called the Saturday before she died asking me to get everything ready for a protective order Monday. That’s where I was when she was killed. At court waiting for her. We were that close to getting her out.”
Reid felt the connection of their shared loss. “Now I have to do this for her. I don’t know how to prove it, but Kaylene did not do what everyone thinks.” He knew it no matter how much evidence the police said they had. They were wrong.
Emilie seemed to consider him. “Did she tell you anything when she brought you the letter?”
“No. It was in one of a couple boxes she asked me to store. She made a joke out of asking me to keep the boxes without peeking. I frankly forgot they were in my closet. And she had taped them so thoroughly I couldn’t have checked the contents without her knowing.”
“What was in the boxes?”
“A few files and some photo albums. I haven’t dug through them yet.”
“You should. Who knows what she decided needed to be safe with you.” She sipped her mocha. “I wish she’d gone to live with you.”
“Me too. Anything special about July that you know of?”
“No, other than she stopped coming to the Haven. As a team we’d made real progress with her. To the point she was ready to get out right then. Something changed, and she stopped coming. I can’t think of anything unusual that would cause her to bring you the files.” Emilie held her tall cup as if warming her hands, but she sat hunched as if she couldn’t get warm. “I know this isn’t the only reason you tracked me down. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to help me fight for custody of Kinley.”
CHAPTER 12
The words echoed in Emilie’s mind. Surely she hadn’t heard him correctly. “You want me to do what?”
“I want to fight for Kinley.” He took a sip of coffee, and Emilie noted his hands trembling.
“I don’t know that you can do that.”
“I want to try.” He set the cup down and then slipped his hands out of view. “I don’t know how well you knew Kaylene.”
“I thought very well.”
“Then you must wonder what really happened.”
“All week. The woman I knew wouldn’t have done everything they say no matter what some crazy phone video shows.”
“And they didn’t know her.” He put air quotes around they. “I didn’t either, not like I should have. Maybe you knew her better.” He sighed, a sound so deep and broken she wanted to weep for him. “I need someone who will help me fight for Kinley, help me do what Kaylene asked.”
The words sounded like something Don Quixote would state with the same level of conviction. Was this a fight she could join? Was this a way to fix her failure?
Why was she even asking the question? It was her job to fight for those who were likely to lose. She relished the battles, so why did the thought cause her to duck beneath an intense wave of weariness and I-don’t-want-to?
It was almost as though Reid read her thoughts as he continued. “I need someone who knew her outside the media firestorm. Someone who knew her heart. Is that you?” There was a challenge in his eyes that made something rise inside her.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Then tell me.”
She took a deep breath and quickly evaluated him. Could he handle the truth or would it scare him? While he looked shaky around the edges, if he was anything like the brother Kaylene had described, there was a core there that could see this through to completion.
“Not here.” She glanced around the busy coffee shop. “If you’re serious about doing this, we need to make sure our conversations are protected by attorney-client privilege. That means having them in private.” Where should they go? Nowhere anyone would connect them to Kaylene. “We’ll start at my house.” She’d figure out where they could meet next after she knew he was committed.
He eyed her skeptically. “Why not your office?”
There was no way she could risk Rhoda seeing her with him until she had decided what she would do.
“If we’re going to do this, you have to trust me. Even when it doesn’t make sense.”
He studied her for a minute as if testing her, then slowly nodded. “All right.”
“Good. Here’s the address. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”
Reid watched as Emilie got to her feet and reached into her attaché case. She pulled out her keys, but a piece of paper came out with them. He hadn’t thought her porcelain skin could get whiter, but the color leached from her cheeks. He reached out to steady her. “Okay?”
She looked from him to the paper, then quickly dropped it back into her bag. “Fine. I’ll see you at my house in fifteen minutes.”
Her reaction bothered him as he followed a map app’s instructions to her home. Traffic should have demanded his attention as he wound through Old Town, but he wanted to know why she’d been so rattled.
Parking was nonexistent in front of the red brick town house, so he pulled around the corner and walked back. The town house fit the style of the area: old, carefully restored, and surrounded by influential neighbors. Mere blocks from Old Town, it sat in a small section of the overgrown Virginia suburbs that still felt historic—like George Washington might exit an establishment on King Street at any moment. Being an attorney paid better than he thought if she could afford this.
He opened the gate and paused when he spotted Emilie sitting at a round wrought iron table set on a pad of red brick that matched the townhome. She nodded toward the vacant chair. “That didn’t take long.”
Reid closed the gate behind him and took a seat. “Nope. It’s easy to find.”
“Would you like a drink?” There was something hesitant, almost uncertain about her demeanor. Something very different from the controlled woman he’d seen in the courtroom. Yet she’d regained some of the color she’d lost in the coffee shop.
“I’m good. Are you all right?”
Her spine stiffened ever so slightly, and she watched him with a guarded expression
. She slipped the sunglasses that had been perched on her hair back down onto her nose, effectively hiding in plain sight. “Tell me about Kaylene.”
“From where I sit, you knew her better.”
“How did she and Robert meet?”
Reid frowned, discomfort slithering up his back. “She was always a little oblique. Like they met, but she wasn’t necessarily proud of how.” This wasn’t the first time he’d wondered why.
“She told me she was Miss Iowa and met him at a Miss USA event.”
“Sounds about right. I never understood the pageant world or its appeal.” That remark earned him a slight smile, and he wanted to figure out how to get it to return. “She enjoyed it, but I was the kid brother dragged to a couple excruciating evenings before my mom agreed I could stay home.”
Her smile grew broader, so he pushed the image further. “You should have seen me in a blazer with a bow tie. I looked ridiculous and knew it.” He swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat. “You should have known Kaylene then. She was radiant. The other contestants were beautiful, but she was special. It wasn’t a surprise when she won; the surprise was she didn’t win it all.”
“I could see hints of that.” Sympathy shone from Emilie’s eyes as she leaned toward him. “By the time I met her, though, most of that radiance had disappeared.”
He nodded. “Sometime between the arrivals of Kaydence and Kinley, she changed. By then I was in college and pretty absorbed in landing the best internships that led to the best jobs.” His early career days had demanded all his time, and when he’d resurfaced Kaylene had changed. “I guess I missed something important.”
Emilie settled back against the chair. “She felt she should have been smarter. By the time she realized something was wrong, she was trapped. She had a toddler, an infant, and no job. She also had no access to their finances.”
“Surely Grandma and Grandpa would have helped.” He knew they would have, but wait . . .
“It was during your grandfather’s illness.”
He put the timeline together. “She wouldn’t burden Grandma.”
Emilie nodded. “She couldn’t reach out to them and insisted she wouldn’t burden you.”
“She should have.” His words were harsh, punched into the air.
“Yes.”
The fact that Emilie didn’t argue with him, but instead agreed with one quiet word, shook him. “Why didn’t she come to me?”
“Because you were young and launching your career.”
She didn’t say self-absorbed, but he could feel the impact of the word as though she had shouted it. “I was focused completely on me.”
Starting his career in the high-powered, high-octane world of finance hadn’t left space for time with Kaylene and her family. He’d been in New York City, she’d been here, and it had been easy to let time stretch between calls and visits.
He slumped lower in the harsh iron chair. “She needed me, and I wasn’t there beyond an occasional family event.”
Emilie let the words hang in the air for a moment, then shook her head. “It’s more complicated than that. It always is.” She looked beyond him as if he weren’t even there, sharing space with her. “By the time women come to me, they’re often so lost they’re not even sure who they are anymore. Some of them are so accomplished and composed in their careers, it’s hard to reconcile that person with the one they become around their abusers. Our counselors work with them to help them work through the way they feel trapped, yet still love their partners deeply. Our social workers try to help them see what’s possible. Kaylene knew if she could break free you would help her.”
“Then why not ask me to do something?”
The pain flashing across Reid’s face moved Emilie to reach out and touch his arm, anchoring him to the moment. She could sense his guilt and heaviness. “Because she needed to do this on her own. She had to know she was strong enough.” Emilie bit back the words about how Kaylene had ended up being too weak to stay away. About how Robert’s threats to take the girls had torn Kaylene’s resolve to shreds. She couldn’t withstand the threats and pressure.
“Then why were they at the house? If she wanted to leave, she should have left.”
“I’ve had to accept that I won’t always understand. It’s the only way I can keep helping women like your sister.” She glanced at her hands and took a steadying breath. Did she want to help him? No. Did she feel an obligation? Yes. And that was what she would have to live with if she walked away. “Let’s head inside. I need something to drink, and we need to be intentional if we’re taking this next step.”
As he followed her inside, it felt like the town house shrank. While no one would ever call it large, she’d always thought it cozy and perfect. Now she understood why Andrew laughed over her “dinky” kitchen. There was no way the space would comfortably hold her and Reid. “I have iced tea or water.”
“Tea’s fine.” He leaned against the doorway, and she tried not to notice how he towered over her, or how his muscles were chiseled beneath his dress shirt.
She filled a glass with ice and poured the tea over the top before handing it to him and making another for herself. She picked up a couple mint leaves from her stash, crushed them, and dropped them into the tea. “We can sit over there.”
The black-and-white chair was perfect for her small frame, but the gray love seat looked undersized when he sat. “Were you a football player?” The words blurted out before she could stop them.
He looked at her, startled. Then a slow grin cracked his face, probably the first genuine one she’d seen. “No, my grandma said she fed me well.”
“With a little Miracle-Gro.” She muttered the words, but he still must have caught them, because his smile became even bigger.
“The question is, can you work a miracle and help me save Kinley?”
CHAPTER 13
Reid Billings didn’t pull any punches, Emilie would give him that. She sketched on a legal pad as she walked him through what incredibly little he knew about his niece’s status, even as she reeled internally from his blunt challenge. She forced herself to ignore the note, the one that had to have been placed either while she was in court or at the coffeehouse. Neither was a great option, because it meant whoever stalked her could blend in close enough to get right next to her and she’d never notice.
Reid’s challenge rang through her. She had no options. If she didn’t help him, she’d know she was a coward and always wonder if she could have done something that mattered for Kinley. If she did help him, she’d know she was a fool.
But wasting time on Reid’s windmill-tilting agenda didn’t solve the matter of who was stalking her and leaving little messages.
Reid cleared his throat, and she startled.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Why? I need your help because you knew Kaylene. Without us Kinley goes to her dad, and I have a bad feeling about that.”
The problem was Emilie did too. What she lacked were facts to support that feeling, and she’d learned long ago that feelings didn’t lead to success in a courtroom. Logic and facts would rule the day, though a little emotion and passion could be helpful. But only a little.
“What you’re asking is very complicated. It will also require me to work on it in my off time.”
“You can do it through the Haven.”
“No.” Rhoda would have a fit if she got the agency mixed up in something as messy and likely to fail as this scheme.
“What if Kinley recovers quickly and the doctors send her home tomorrow?”
“Then I can’t help you.” She would not let Reid make his emergency her crisis. “If we’re going to do this, we have to do it deliberately.”
“Let me know in the next day or two. If you won’t help, I’ll have to look for someone else, and they won’t be as good.”
Emilie knew no one else would care like she did. Someone new wouldn’t know Kaylene and be vested in the outcome. Instead, they’d be
swayed by everything that had happened last Monday.
Even as the two of them sat there in her living room, Emilie couldn’t stop glancing out the window toward the street, watching for someone, anyone who looked out of place. Was someone watching her house even now? Should she reach out to the police again? Detective Gaines hadn’t returned her call, but maybe if she called again he’d at least connect her with someone. She doubted any other police officer would even listen to her concerns, and she couldn’t stomach the thought of the condescension she’d receive if she ran to them with two anonymous notes.
Way back in March she’d first had the sense someone was watching her. It had been creepy, but something she could brush aside. After all, she lived in a major city and spent a lot of time in places filled with people. Why should a glance from a stranger as she walked down King Street bother her?
The feeling had returned with growing regularity until her car accident along Rock Creek Parkway in April. But she accepted what others said: the accident was exactly that. And the weird feeling, she told herself, was also just that . . . a feeling. Her enforced “vacation” following the accident while her shoulder healed from the accident was what she needed.
That lasted four weeks.
Then in May the sensation of being watched started again.
The first time it happened was in a crowded Metro subway. Easy to explain away. Then it occurred in Old Town at Il Porto, but no one except those she celebrated with looked familiar.
She started cataloging people everywhere she went. Seeing shadows where there weren’t any. She’d called the police, and she could almost hear the officer’s eyes rolling over the phone.
Was her preoccupation with the shadows the reasons she had missed signs with Kaylene?
She came back to the present and sighed. “I’ll consider this, Reid. You have to find out Kinley’s status. How long will she be in the hospital? What’s her diagnosis? Does she remember anything?” She paused, almost afraid to say the next words. “She’s the lone eye witness other than Robert.”