Page 33 of To Have and to Hold

She shook her head and placed her coffee on the table. “Only her state of mind. She was happy. We’d just had drinks a few nights ago, and she was her usual self. Telling me about this birthday she was planning, how the budget was tight but that she could really do something with it.” She swiped under her eyes, the memory seeming too much. “We were having a good time.”

“You’re still close with her.”

“Very.” Becca said it without hesitation.

“No problems? Nothing she was worrying about? No one who was giving her the creeps?”

Becca folded her arms as she regarded me. “Are you on Emme’s case with Knox?”

“Not officially.” I passed the question off by leaning forward and grabbing my drink.

Becca wasn’t buying it. “Spence, why are you here?”

A fair question, but also a warning. I decided to be straight with her. Somewhat. “I want answers just like you.”

“I’ve been following your career, you know. Online articles, that sort of thing. You’re doing good.”

“Thank you.”

“Really good. Except for the current state of your face, I mean. Trial wins, dinners with the district attorney, a pretty, wholesome girlfriend. You’re on the fast track to success, exactly like you wanted.”

My gaze narrowed over the rim as I drank.

“So, I ask again. Why are you here? It’s been over two years since you dumped Emme. You’ve both been living fabulous, separate lives”—Becca choked on her last point, probably remembering where Emme was right now. “And have completely moved on from each other.”

“You’re right. We decided to get out of each other’s lives for good. Except something happened.”

Becca bent forward, honestly curious. “What?”

“Emme was kidnapped.”

Becca acknowledged the match point by pairing the angling of her head with a glare. “Look, of course something like this would get your full attention. And I want everything—literally every resource—possible to figure out what happened and who has her and where she could be.”

“I feel the exact same way.”

“But how can you help?” Becca asked. “You haven’t seen her in so long, and unlike you, she’s not making the news or on New York’s hot thirty under thirty list. Emme doesn’t have any bombshells or enemies. She has—” Becca paused, but pushed forward after a flicker of determination. “She has a new fiancé. A new life.”

“I know,” I said. “Which is why I’m here.”

Becca slumped into the couch. Emotional exhaustion. “I’m still not sure how you can—”

“Can you deny that I loved her?”

The question caught her off guard. After a brief hesitation, she answered. “No, I can’t.”

“It might’ve been years ago, but Emme was special to me. I was going to marry her. The second I was told she’d gone missing, I didn’t care that this new and improved Emme might not be the college girl I fell in love with anymore; I wanted to find her. And I will utilize everything in my arsenal to do it. I will dredge up the past, I will bother her neighbors, I’ll fucking comb through her trash. She deserves to come home.”

Becca smiled faintly. “There. I was hoping you still had some semblance of, you know, human in you.” She rose from the couch. “Refill? I’ll answer any questions you have.”

I quelled the eye twitch that wanted to follow her out of the room.

When Becca sat back down with two fresh cups of coffee, I had her go through the last two years of Emme’s life. I steered her in other directions when she became too choked up, most often when talking about Emme herself and her character. From what I gathered, this was still the same girl who took subways over the Manhattan Bridge for no other reason than to see the backlit horizon, who hated city-wide trends like Cronuts and cookie dough shoved in ice cream cones, and who much preferred a night in with pajamas and popcorn than heading out to clubs in the Meatpacking District. She might be older now, and wiser, with a rising career and in love with someone new, but she kept her old friends near. Becca said Jade and Emme FaceTimed at least once every two weeks. She still talked to her parents regularly.

When we got to Emme’s fiancé, Dave Hamid, Becca couldn’t stifle the nose wrinkle in time. It gave me unexpected satisfaction. She described him as dark and handsome. He’d grown up in Jersey but his parents had emigrated from Persia. He was a Wall Street guy, in oil and finance, which meant he spent most of his time in a high rise in the financial district in front of a computer crunching numbers.

“So, he works near where Emme was last seen,” I said.

“Yeah, but to think he had anything to do with what happened, is ridiculous.”

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