Page 95 of Before This Ends (Before)

“She’s currently dancing around the living room.”

“So back to normal.” He laughs. “Figures.”

“You already know.” I pour Em’s wine into her glass.

“I got the information you and Tucker needed.” His tone is suddenly serious. “Can you two come up after you get Win to bed?”

“Yeah, I’ll send him a message.”

“See you then.” He hangs up, and I shoot Tucker a message and hope like fuck that Clay has something we can use against Stedman, since Tucker had zero luck in getting Sally to even agree to speak with him.

* * *

After checking on Winter,who is asleep with Dolly, I walk to the bedroom and push open the door, finding Emma in bed with her computer on her lap, hair up in a messy bun, and a pair of oversized glasses perched on the end of her nose.

Her eyes come to me, and I instantly start to harden.

“If I didn’t need to go up to talk with Tucker and Clay, I’d request that you role play as a sexy librarian.” The smile she gives me says she would be down for that role, and I hate my job a little more. I walk toward the bed and lean over the side, cupping the back of her head so I can pull her forward for a kiss.

“What are you watching?” I look down at her computer.

“A video for work. I’m helping teach a class in a couple of weeks, so I want to make sure I cover the things some of the other teachers who have taught this class missed or that a stylist felt they should have spent more time on.”

“You love your job.”

“I do.” Her smile is soft.

“Have you thought about opening your own salon? Or maybe you and Miranda doing that?”

“We talked about it before, but life happened, so maybe one day.” She shrugs then adds. “I think Miranda and I both like where we are right now. Polly is amazing and since we rent our chairs from her, we keep most of what we make without all the overhead which is nice.”

“That makes sense.” I touch my lips to hers once more, then stand. “Hopefully, I won’t be long.”

“I’ll be here either way,” she says absently, going back to her video. I turn for the door, stepping around a box she brought over filled with shoes that I haven’t put in the closet yet. I smile to myself, wondering if she realizes she’s basically moving in at this point. Almost daily, she brings clothes and whatever she thinks she might need. And it’s all been mysteriously finding its way into drawers and onto shelves or hangers in the closet.

That mystery being me.

When I get upstairs, Clay’s door is unlocked, so I walk in. Willow, lying on the couch watching TV with Skye, tips her head back with a smile on her face.

“Hey. Clay said Winter is feeling better.”

“Totally back to normal.”

“Good.” She waves her hand toward the hall. “They’re in the office.”

“Thanks.” I shoot her a smile and head in that direction.

When I step into the office, Clay is sitting behind his desk, and Tucker is standing, holding a stack of papers. I take a seat in one of the chairs, and Tucker passes the papers to me.

I shuffle through them and frown. It looks like work visas for about a dozen women. “What is this?”

“World Church has an organization called World United, which offers work visas to women to come to the US to clean, cook, and babysit,” Clay says, and I glance up at Tucker, who is now hyper-focused on Clay. “They’ve had this organization for the last five years, and since then, only about half of the women who came have gone back to their home countries.”

“What the fuck?”

“From what I’ve been able to find out, World United has put in claims that the women who go missing just bail on their contracts and run off to start lives in the US illegally. But like you’re probably already assuming, that is not the case. Those women” —he nods to the papers in my hand—“have had zero contact with their families. And even during the start of their work visas, not one of them sent a penny home, when that was the whole point of them coming here to work.”

“So, the church is legally kidnapping women from other countries.”

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