“I know.”
I watched him blink right before relief, sweet and pure, suffused his features.
“They’re burned on the backs of my eyelids, honey,” I told him.
“Who?” he asked.
“Mom and Dad at the station. But I trained myself not to see.”
He nodded. More understanding.
God. Jacob Decker.
So fucking amazing.
“Are you good with letting someone help you erase that?” he asked carefully.
I didn’t answer. Instead I stated what I knew. What I’d been denying. What, if I allowed myself to understand it, I knew would kill me.
“Dad sees it, like me. I know he does sometimes in the way he looks at me.”
“He loves you, baby.”
Yeah. Oh yeah. My dad so, so loved me.
Tears filled my eyes. “Yeah.”
“You can’t see Harvey anymore.”
Poor Harvey.
Poor me.
I should never have gone to him. It probably wounded him every time.
But I needed him.
Now I didn’t.
But I’d miss him.
Tears slid down my cheeks. “Yeah.”
“And I’m gonna see to you.”
I knew it. I knew he would.
Jacob loved me.
Jacob had always loved me.
My breath hitched and I repeated, “Yeah.”
Then I dissolved.
Jacob pulled me closer, tucking my face in his neck.
And as I leaked everywhere, finally let it out after holding it for so long inside me, Jacob didn’t allow me to fall apart.
In his lap, on my couch, his big strong arms around me, he held me together so maybe… maybe…
I could finally find me.
And then be happy.
* * *
Deck
Twenty hours later…
Deck pulled up to the curb, shut down his truck and swung out.
Before he was halfway up the walk, the door opened.
He stopped at the bottom of the two-step stoop and took in Harvey Feldman.
Not surprisingly, the man looked old and beaten.
Surprisingly, he also looked kind.
“Emmanuelle will not be coming to see you again but if you attempt any form of contact, you’ll be seein’ me,” he stated.
Harvey Feldman closed his eyes and whispered, “Thank God.”
Deck stared.
The man opened his eyes and Deck spoke.
“I see you’re down with that.”
“No, sir. I am not down with that. I get the impression you know what it would be like to lose Emme. What I am is relieved to know that Emme finally has someone looking after her.”
The last part was a surprise.
The first part he did not like.
“I suggest you get down with it,” Deck warned.
His eyes grew intent and he asked, “I assume you’re Jacob Decker?”
This also wasn’t surprising. In the last day, when she wasn’t sleeping, Emme had shared everything including the fact she’d told Feldman everything.
So Deck didn’t answer. Instead, he jerked up his chin.
Feldman nodded. “Then, Mr. Decker, I’ll tell you that the first time Emme came to see me, I knew I had not yet endured my penance. No prison can accomplish that. Being locked away with men like the men I shared time with was not fun. But it is no penance. No.” He shook his head. “My penance was different. My penance was doing what I did because I lost all that I had lost and then God giving me the opportunity to get to know Emme knowing someday I’d lose her too.”
Christ.
He cared about her.
Genuinely.
Not expecting that, Deck had no response to it.
“I’ll ask one favor,” Feldman said, and Deck had a response to that.
“You’ll get no favors.”
“I have a feeling you’ll give this one to me.”
Deck held his eyes and ordered, “Spit it out.”
“I’ll need your contact details so I can get in touch with you should she attempt to contact me.”
“She won’t do that,” Deck returned firmly.
Feldman shook his head, a ghost of a smile on his lips. But it was no ghost, the pain lurking in his eyes.
“She hasn’t given herself completely to you. When she does, you’ll see.”
“Man, I’m not in the mood to play word games,” Deck bit out, not liking any of this shit and wanting it to be done so he could be on the road to get back to Emme.
“Sweet to the core, that’s Emme. She’ll worry about me, Mr. Decker, and eventually she’ll try to contact me.”
“I see you’ve seen the error of your ways and know what this is, so it gives me no pleasure to tell you, when she had her breakthrough, it was not pretty. She is currently under mild sedation in her bed at her home with her mother and father watching over her. It took a lot of talkin’ to stop her father from comin’ with me or comin’ on his own. You lucked out this visit is from me. Emme’s already spoken to a counselor and she’s committed to doin’ that until what’s twisted in her head gets straightened out. When that happens, she’ll know not to contact you.”
“She will.”
“She absolutely will not.”
“Do you know, Mr. Decker, the only thing that can hold back goodness and light?”
What was up with this fucking guy?
“Again, in no mood,” Deck clipped.
“Darkness,” Feldman answered his own question. “And, since Emme shared you’re highly intelligent, I know I don’t have to tell you that darkness drowns out light. But when that light is freed, when so much has been stored for so long, nothing can dim that beam.” He paused to suck in a breath before he finished, “That beam is Emme. When she was twelve, I did something that drowned that beam. If I’m assuming correctly, seeing as you’re visiting me, that beam has been freed. And because Emme is Emme and she carries that light, she’ll contact me.”
Already creeped way the fuck out by this guy, he was concerned about his girl. Now he was more concerned because she spent time with his whackjob. Not to mention, not wanting to be there at all, what the man said made Deck more of all of that.
So he moved to shut it down by asking, “Are we done?”
“Make her happy.”
That meant they were done, thank Christ.
“Already planned on doin’ that,” Deck muttered, turned, walked two steps then turned back. “I’ll get you my email address. She contacts you, you don’t open your door, answer the phone or reply to an email. You email me.”
Feldman nodded.
Deck walked to his truck.
Then he wasted no time getting home to Emme.
* * *
One day later…
“Okay, so, nervous breakdown… check,” Emme said, and Deck’s eyes went from his book to her at the opposite end of the couch.
She was slouched down, feet in his lap, head to the armrest. But her hand was up, palm facing herself like she was holding a notepad, other hand holding an imaginary pen and her eyes were on him.
“So, now that I’ve done that, what do you suggest I add to my bucket list?” she asked.
“You ever fucked on a beach?” he asked back.
Her eyes fired but her lips said, “Uh… no.”
“Add that.”
She turned her eyes to her palm and faked scribbling on it, mumbling. “That sounds a lot more fun than a nervous breakdown.”
Deck smiled, tossed his book on the coffee table, leaned into her and hauled her to him. Stretching out full on the couch under her, Emme instantly settled full out on him.
Buford, lying on the floor beside the couch, lifted his head.
He inspected their new position, approved and settled back down on a groan.
“Um… honey,” Emme called, and he looked from his dog to her. “As you know, my parents are in town on the s
upposed errand of picking up a bucket of chicken. As the nearest chicken joint is in Chantelle, this will take a while. But as they’re multi-tasking and using this,” she arched her back so she could lift her hands out of his chest to do air quotation marks, “errand to make clandestine phone calls to my siblings in order to give them status reports on the state of my sanity, that said sanity being in question, they’ll be back soon. So, to sum up, you can’t make love to me on my couch.”
This was a shame.
It was also true. All of it.
And last, it made it even more clear something he’d been noticing since Emme and the doctor agreed she could go off the sedative.
Harvey Feldman was right.
He’d drowned out Emme’s light.
Now it was beaming so bright, he was blinded.
“You’re right,” he replied. “So we’ll just make out.”
“Making out with you tends to lead to other things.”
He grinned and asked, “How do you know? We’ve never made out.”
“This is how I know, honey. Because it’s always led to other things.”
Deck burst out laughing.
In the middle of it, he felt Emme’s mouth touch his so it faded to a chuckle.
When he caught her eyes, they were shining.
He stopped chuckling and his blood began to burn.
“I’ve always wanted to do that while you were laughing,” she whispered. “Always.”
Fuck. He wanted to make love to her.
He hadn’t had her in over a week.
He needed her now.
“You need to stop bein’ sweet or I’m barring the door against your parents. They can have chicken. I’ll be havin’ you.”
He watched her eyes fire again as her body melted on his and her hand slid up his chest to his neck.
“I think Dad would break down the door. He’s a little…” she paused, “in my space right now, and I need to give him that.”
That was the damned truth.
“Yeah,” Deck reluctantly agreed.
“But, even though I’ve slept more in the last two days than any healthy body needs, I’m suddenly feeling really tired so I figure I’ll have to go to bed early. And I don’t think they’ll mind if you didn’t keep them company.”
“This sounds like a plan,” he murmured.
“I love you, Jacob,” she declared suddenly, and his arms around her gave a squeeze.
“I know you do, baby.”
“Thank you for not giving up on me.”
Fuck, but Feldman was right. That beam was blinding.
He rolled so he was on top and her arms adjusted so they circled him. He lifted his hand and brushed the bangs off her forehead.
Then he caught her eyes. “You up for talkin’ about something?”
“Considering I’m entering intense psychotherapy tomorrow, I hope so,” she teased.
“Baby, I’m serious.”
The light of humor faded from her eyes. He missed it but he’d work at getting it back. But now they had shit to go over.
“I’m up for talking about anything, honey,” she told him.
“Right,” he said quietly. “When shit went down, what got us there was me comin’ down on you.”
“Jacob—”
“Let me finish, Emmanuelle.”
She closed her mouth.
He kept going.
“I was pissed. Out of my mind with worry. I got the call you’d visited him and I had to wait for you to get back. That didn’t make me in a better mood. I lost it and the results were fuckin’ great but the path to those results was a little shaky.”
He’d told her, due to his concerns, he’d had Feldman’s house watched and his phones monitored. He had not, however, had his emails checked, which was how they always communicated.
Emme had not been angry. Then again, when Deck had shared this, she’d been mostly sedated.
However, she didn’t get angry at the reminder now either.
Instead, she replied, “Things happen for a reason.”
“And those things would have happened without me losin’ my mind on you. No excuse, but you deserve an explanation.”
After he said that, she said nothing so he kept going.
“I had no idea where your head was at. You kept disconnecting and I also had no idea how to stop you from doin’ that. I had six days of not bein’ with you except for maybe twenty minutes, that whole twenty minutes we were up in each other’s shit. I knew something was wrong. I knew it was dark. I knew it had to have something to do with what happened to you when you were a kid. But I had no clue how to guide you where you could share, and I knew when you did, I was powerless to right what was wrong with you. I didn’t have those skills. I didn’t like that. Any of it. So I lost it.”
“Jacob, honey, stop it.”
“Emme, baby, that shit was not right.”
“You know,” she started, cocking her head on the seat of the couch, “when all that went down, I was coming home from Harvey, ready to face you, ready to try to work it out, whatever was wrong with me. And you know something else? It so totally was going to fail.”
He felt his brows draw together. “What?”
“I was so deep, so beyond reach, my parents after years didn’t reach me. My brothers. My sister. Friends. And even you, the first time I met you. The only thing that could break through was something breaking through. And that something had to be powerful enough to accomplish that. And that something powerful was your anger.” She gave him a squeeze. “You were angry at me but you were angry for a reason. I was doing something crazy. And you tried other ways but you weren’t getting through to me. It’s understandable you lost it, and bottom line, things happen for a reason.”
“I’m glad you think that way, baby, but—”
She cut him off. “And I was kidnapped for a reason.”
Fuck.
“Babe,” he said low.
“No. It’s true. If I wasn’t, I would never understand in the way I do now how much I love you. How important your love is to me. How precious. How I don’t ever want to lose it. And, belatedly, how I should work not to do that.”
That he’d accept because he fucking loved it.
And he did that by dropping his forehead to hers and murmuring, “Honey.”
“Same with Mom and Dad. Same with everybody. It took me a while to learn the lesson. But one could say I’ve learned it.” He watched her eyes smile. “Definitely.”
“It is not okay what he did to you,” Deck said gently.
“No. It absolutely isn’t. But it’s also not okay for me to live through that and not learn. He did wrong. He hurt me, my parents, you, anyone who loved me. Life has a lot of lessons, some of which I was too scared for too long to learn. Now what I have to learn is not to let that happen anymore.”
When she was done speaking, she tipped up her chin to touch her mouth to his.
When she settled back he lifted his head and she spoke.
“Please don’t be upset you got that angry with me. I can see why you would be but what I want you to see is why I needed you to be.”
All right. It was safe to say he was done.
“You’re bein’ sweet,” he warned, and she grinned.
Then her grin faded and remorse filled her eyes.
“So are you, honey. But then, you always were to me.” She took in a ragged breath and finished, “Always.”
Deck suddenly didn’t give a fuck about her parents maybe coming home soon so he dropped his head and took her mouth.
He got one sweet stroke of her tongue, her strawberry scent all around, when they heard Barry shout, “We got chicken!”
He felt Emme giggle against his tongue.
It sucked that he couldn’t do what he wanted to do.
But that didn’t mean the taste of her laughter on his tongue wasn’t all kinds of sweet.
Chapter Eighteen
More Bedrooms
Three weeks later�
��
Deck, working at his computer at home, stared at his monitor.
He was close to something on the robbery case. He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
Their mystery man who met with McFarland months ago, a man named Jon Prosky, had not come back from seeing to his mom who was sick with MS. Now he’d lost his job because of it, but he was current with all payments on mortgage, credit cards and utilities.
The red flag was that he was paying from accounts in his mother’s name. Accounts that held hefty amounts, made that way by cash deposits made relatively recently.
If that cash could be connected to robberies in the county, they’d nail him. But when local cops in Denver paid him a visit, he’d provided a trail from “friends and family” who gave cash gifts to help out with his mother’s care.
Dead end.
And there was another red flag. When asked by the Denver police, Prosky stated he had no recollection of meeting with McFarland that night. When shown the surveillance photos Chace took that were dark but clearly showed his truck was there, even if the photos of him were indistinct, he’d said he’d loaned his truck to a guy from work.
That had been followed up, the man who supposedly borrowed the truck said this was untrue but he had no one to corroborate that he hadn’t met with McFarland. Possibly substantiating Prosky’s story, his coworker was getting rides to work at the time because his ride was in the shop.
One man’s word against another.
Another dead end.
Deck further could not find any connections, outside of Prosky’s now-alleged meet with McFarland. He had not worked with any of the crew who’d been tagged. He didn’t go to school with any of them. He had no record so he didn’t share a cell with the dealer. He had not been seen anywhere in the company of any of them. And he had no phone records that connected him with any of that crew. He also had no wife or relative who were associated with any of them.
Another dead end.
But Deck had gone to Denver on a variety of business, and some of that business was to spend time watching him.
McFarland was no boss. The dealer they hooked to that crew was a maybe.
This guy had what it took.
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