Shaking her head, Emma sighed and turned her back on him.
“I’m tired,” she said, heading toward the stairs. “The bed in the spare room is made up. Please turn out the lights before you come up.”
He could go after her. He didn’t have much doubt that they would wind up having sex again.
“Emma?”
She paused on the third stair and looked at him over her shoulder. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to understand.”
“I have no proof that I’m pregnant, Chris. Or that I’m not. But I’m not getting worked up about it until I know. If I haven’t been able to get in with my doctor by Tuesday, I’ll take the home test again, just for you.”
Fair enough. And damn him for doubting her. But who wouldn’t, given the circumstances? Were the situation reversed he’d have taken the damned test several times a day.
But that was him. She was the one who was possibly pregnant.
“Did you lock the dead bolts?” He’d noticed the night before that all of her doors had dead-bolt locks that had to be locked and unlocked with a key, even from the inside.
She’d carried the key up to bed with her.
“Yes.”
Which meant that if he suddenly needed a beer from the store, or a walk to clear his mind, he’d have to go into her bedroom to retrieve the key.
And if he did that, he’d never make it out.
* * *
ROB CALLED AGAIN late that night. Emma pushed the end button after the first half ring.
And less than a minute later, a nude and far-too tempting Chris appeared in her bedroom doorway.
“Don’t you ever wear clothes to bed?” she asked.
“No.” He was frowning. “Who called?”
“Rob.”
“Did he leave a message?”
Just as he finished the question her phone signaled a new voice mail. “Right here,” she said, holding up the phone.
With no apparent self-consciousness, Chris came into the room and over to where Emma had been sitting up in bed with her journal.
“Let’s hear it,” he said.
Feeling far too vulnerable with her shoulders exposed and her breasts practically visible beneath the thin cotton of her nightgown, Emma concentrated on the keypad on her phone. She pushed the voice-mail button and, when prompted, typed in her pass code.
“Hi, babe. Call me, please. Don’t make me beg.”
Just Rob. No threat. No aggressiveness.
“He’s working on you. Trying to wear you down.”
“He’s not going to wear me down.” She was too busy fighting Chris, and herself, to start thinking about the five years she’d spent with Rob or wondering if this sting operation was unfair to him.
He’d refused to cooperate when Miller and Hayes had called that first time after Cal’s visit—when he’d had nothing at stake, and once she’d heard that, any influence Rob might have had on her was gone.
The Rob she’d known would have been happy to cooperate if it meant something he said might help them find Claire.
Still, she worried that she’d jumped on this sting operation as a way to legitimately spend a little more time with Chris before she said goodbye to him.
“You told Miller that he only calls once a day.” Chris was still standing beside her bed. She could smell the musky scent of his aftershave.
“That’s right, he did. Until today.”
He shifted. Her gaze dropped to the dark hair on his thighs. “How many times has he called today?”
“This is the third time.”
“When was the second?”
“Right after I came upstairs tonight.”
“Did he leave a message that time?”
She wasn’t reacting. “No, which is probably why he called back so soon.”
“I don’t like leaving you in here alone.”
She didn’t like being in there alone, either. And not because of any threat Rob might pose.
God help her, she was going to be a bad girl one more time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHRIS DIDN’T LIKE GOING out on the water on Monday. For the first time in his life, he wished he could stay ashore.
The fact made him quake. Whatever had gotten into him had best get right back out. He was no knight in shining armor. Not for anyone.
Certainly not for a woman. They weren’t to be trusted.
Standing aboard the Son Catcher, he froze on deck.
Women weren’t to be trusted? Where in the hell had that thought come from? He’d trust Sara with his life. He trusted Marta. He trusted Emma Sanderson, too. But she was messing with his thoughts and that couldn’t be tolerated.
Miller had said that in order to spur Rob into action they had to behave normally.
Emma was going to work today where there were security guards on the premises. And Miller’s off-duty guys would be watching her—both of whom were more qualified to protect her than Chris was.
It wasn’t his job.
Fishing was his job.
Squelching his urge to hunt down Rob Evert himself, Chris readied his bait, checked the boat to make certain there’d been no gas leaks or other mishaps overnight and set off to spend the day with the love of his life.
* * *
ROB CALLED EMMA on her way to work. And again halfway through first period. She always kept her phone on Mute during class, but she saw the call register on the screen. Ignoring the phone, she focused instead on her kids.
He’d called four times by lunch. And because she knew he knew she was in class, because he knew she couldn’t answer, but was calling, anyway, Emma decided to listen to the messages he’d left.
All of them were exactly the same.
“Call me, babe. I need to speak with you.”
The same words spoken with the same intonation. Every single time. It was weird. Unsettling. Was Rob losing his mind?
Or deliberately playing with hers?
Looking over her shoulder as she walked through a hallway swarming with teenagers on their way to class or to second lunch period, she wished she could speak with Chris. Let him know what was going on. She wanted to hear his voice.
But Chris was unavailable. He was out on the ocean, inaccessible.
As he would always be—no matter what the emergency.
Forgoing lunch, Emma slipped into her principal’s empty office and dialed Detective Miller.
“Did you save the messages?” His no-nonsense tone didn’t make her feel any more comforted.
“Yes.”
“Forward them to me, as soon as we hang up.”
Students were milling about in the foyer outside the office. Things were normal. Safe. “Okay.”
“And don’t go anywhere alone.”
“I live alone.”
“You’ll be at work for several hours yet, correct?”
“Yeah. I’m done at four.”
“Don’t leave there until I get back to you.”
“You’re scaring me, Detective.”
“Good. Until we have a better understanding of what’s going on with this guy, I want you scared. I want you alert and watching out for yourself. I want to make certain you don’t underestimate this guy just because you used to be in a relationship with him.”
“Point taken, Detective,” she said.
“You’ll be hearing from me.”
What she heard was a click in he
r ear as the man hung up.
* * *
ALTHOUGH SHE WANTED to bury her cell phone in the bottom of her purse for the rest of the day and focus on teaching, Emma kept the phone on her desk.
She saw the flash when Rob called during fifth period. And again between sixth and seventh periods. She saw the notification that she had two new voice mails.
And toward the end of her last period, she saw Lucy Hayes’s number flash on her screen.
“Everyone take the last few minutes to get started on your journal entry for the week,” she told her class. “Remember, this week, you’re Abe Lincoln. Tell me what you’re thinking. I’ll be just outside the door, so don’t get any wise ideas.” She never left her students in class alone. Ever.
“Ms. Sanderson?” Jamaal Wayley called out.
“Yes, Jamaal?” She faced the tall, starpoint guard on the school’s basketball team who was an even better writer than he was an athlete.
“We can write about anything, right? Doesn’t have to be about politics or things that really happened while he was president?”
Which meant she might get an imagined trip to a strip club.
“Keep it clean, Jamaal. You know the rules. Nothing X-rated. You have to be Honest Abe.”
He was baiting her. She knew it. And he knew she knew it. She also knew his entry would be the best one she’d get that week. The kid had talent.
By the time she made it to the hall, she’d missed Lucy’s call, but luckily the detective picked right up when she called her back.
“Detective Miller said you were done at four,” Lucy said. “Are you someplace you can talk?”
“Class actually ends at five after four.” Emma’s heart started to pound. If they were calling her on the dot of four, then this was serious. “I’ll have the classroom to myself in about fifteen minutes. Detective Miller asked me to stay put until I heard from him.”
“I told him I’d call you,” Lucy said. “Fifteen minutes, you said? I’ll sit right here by my phone until I hear back from you.”
Walking slowly back into her classroom, Emma barely noticed the twenty-two restless teenagers who were shoving things into backpacks and chattering to one another as the bell rang, setting them free.
She wanted them out of there. She wanted them safe.
She needed to talk to Chris.
* * *
“FIRST, RAMSEY SPOKE with your friend Chris. He agreed to continue with the relationship plan for another day or two, at least,” Lucy said as soon as she picked up Emma’s ring. “He said he’d meet you at your place at six, if that’s okay with you.”
Chris was back onshore, then? Accessible?
“That’s fine.” It wasn’t. At all. The good mood that had suddenly settled on her was the final straw. She had to get Chris Talbot out of her life. Her problems were not his. She wouldn’t have his life in danger. She intended to tell him so just as soon as she saw him that evening.
“Until then, Ramsey wants you to keep up your daily routine as much as possible without making yourself a target.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“Don’t go anywhere alone where you’re easily accessible.”
“The school’s going to be deserted, except for the nighttime cleaning crew, in about an hour,” she said aloud. “I can go to my mother’s. That’s something Rob would find completely normal.”
“Fine. Chris said he’d call you when he’s on his way over. The two of you can arrange to meet at your place. In the meantime, Detective Miller got the okay to keep our guys on you for another couple of days.”
“Seems like an awful lot of bother and expense because a guy refuses to take no for an answer. This kind of stuff happens all the time, and I’ve never heard of a woman getting police protection over it. The most I’ve ever heard of is someone getting a restraining order.”
This case wasn’t that simple. She knew that. But…
“It’s understandable if you’re getting cold feet, Emma. You have the right to end this at any time. We can pull Chris out of there, too.”
“And then what?”
“Then we figure out another way to go at this. I have to be honest with you, though. There’s something going on here and Detective Miller feels—and I agree with him—that we’d be remiss to drop this.”
“Then I’m in. One hundred percent.” She paused. “How often is Detective Miller right about his hunches?”
“Often enough that his captain pretty much gives him the green light any time he has one.”
Fear had been her constant companion for twenty-five years. Emma was beginning to doubt that she’d ever be free. She’d taken some crazy chances lately and was more afraid than ever.
“Okay, tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”
“Just continue what you’re doing,” Lucy told her. “Go about your business as normally as possible. And stay in touch with us. Based on the escalating number of calls you’ve been receiving, we think the plan is working. Evert’s getting more nervous. Chances are he’ll show his hand soon.”
“Maybe I should talk to him.”
“We may get to that, but Ramsey doesn’t think it’s time yet.”
“Did you find a connection between Rob and my sister’s case?”
“No. So far we’ve all come up blank. I’m not at liberty to disclose exactly what we’re doing but if there was a connection we’d find it.”
“And you still think Claire was in Aurora?”
“Her DNA was on a couple of items removed from the nursery in that house. But it’s always possible that those items came from somewhere else.”
She nodded.
“We might not ever know when or why. One thing is for sure, we’re talking about DNA that was left there more than eight years ago because the place was cordoned off as a crime scene, and then torn down after that.”
“Do you think she could still be in Aurora?”
“Anything’s possible, but not one other baby that passed through that home stayed in Aurora. Very few were even in the state of Indiana for any length of time. That was part of the reason the business ran so successfully for so long. In most cases, the woman didn’t hold on to the children for more than twenty-four hours. She had a prescreened database of potential parents who were all willing and prepared to collect their new baby with only a few hours’ notice. They were also only interested in newborns. None of them wanted to deal with children who might have memories that could get them caught, or who would miss the parents left behind.”
Emma understood. And struggled to accept what she was hearing. “But she was there—or at least associated with someone else who was.”
“Our theory is that whoever took Claire knew about the Aurora operation. As we’ve told you, the woman did business all over the East Coast and Midwest. She had more than one Massachusetts baby. Claire’s kidnapper most likely knew about the Aurora business and tried to sell her to this woman but was turned down because of Claire’s age.”
And the detective had already evaded Emma’s earlier attempt to find out what Lucy thought would have happened to Claire at that point.
“Let’s concentrate on what we’ve got,” Lucy said. “On finding out what Rob wants and whether or not there’s a connection between him and the missing evidence. There’s always a way in to the answers, Emma, we just have to find it.”
“But what if the clues are buried so deep that they’ve been lost forever?”
“W
e have patience. And we keep looking.”
“And sometimes you die before finding the answers, right?”
“There are unsolved cold cases in our vault that date back more than seventy years.”
“Rob’s a perfectionist. If he makes a mistake, it won’t be an obvious one.”
“No one’s infallible. We haven’t been able to link him to Claire yet, but we did come up with something. Do you know someone named Cheryl Diamond?”
“No. Why?”
“You’re sure? You’ve never heard the name? Seen it anywhere? Heard it mentioned?”
“I’m sure. Who is she?”
“Someone who works as a clerk in the Comfort Cove traffic division.”
“Would she have access to evidence rooms?”
“Not generally, but with a badge that lets her into the station house, she’d have a better chance of getting into the evidence vault than someone off the streets.”
“You think Rob knows her?”
“She hangs out in online chat rooms where men go to have internet sex. We think Rob met her there. We have reason to believe that they’ve been…familiar…for several years. I can’t say a lot, but there’s some webcam evidence that our computer specialist uncovered. Ramsey’s talked to Cheryl, but at this point she’s denying even knowing about the existence of the chat room. Rob denies knowing her. We don’t have enough yet to bring either of them in. At this point, you’re still our only real way to get your ex-fiancé.”
“Okay. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“It could get dangerous. You need to understand that.”
“I understand. I’ll do anything to help solve the mystery of my sister’s disappearance. I don’t like involving Chris, though.”
“Ramsey was pretty straight with him. He gave him every chance to duck out. The guy’s insisting on following this through.”
Because he thought she was pregnant with his child?
If she’d just start her damned period this could all end.
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