Page 57 of To Have and to Hold

“I love you,” she said, and put her palms on my cheeks. “That’s the worst part.”

When she bent over the couch to retrieve her jacket and purse, I reached out to her. “I’m fucked up. We both know that.”

“I can’t keep talking about this,” she said, throwing her things over her arm. “Because if I do I’ll fall under your spell again, and I’m not watching you forsake everything to find something that’s already gone.” She yanked the door open, but said over her shoulder, “It’s a hard truth, but you need to start accepting it, Spence. You may not win.”

I stared at her, hands dangling open.

“I’m saying it,” she said, though it physically tore at her in doing so. “She’s gone. Emme Beauregard was out of your life years ago. It is not your job to save her.”

I swayed my head side to side, regarding my girlfriend as if she’d morphed into an intruder. “You’re not that cold, Noe.”

“Accepting reality isn’t being cold.” She gestured to the briefcase at her feet. “You should know that better than anyone. How many crime scenes has that bag held?”

My brows ached as they tensed over bone. “This is different.”

“Just because you love her doesn’t mean she’ll be the one who lives.”

Shocked silence followed her statement.

Noelle’s hand sagged over the doorknob. “You need to understand everything you’re sacrificing, and you definitely need to ask yourself what advice you’d give to a guy who was heedless in trying to find his abducted former fiancée.” Her tone hardened. “What would you tell that grieving man as a prosecutor, Spence?”

I stepped up to the door, palming the edge. “You need to leave.”

“I’m—”

“You made your point, Noe. Go.”

She released the doorknob and backed into the hallway, but her stance remained resolved. “You’re right. You truly are fucked up.” Her lip trembled as she hesitated, thought, then surged forward with, “Maybe, if you get her back, she’ll be fucked up enough for the both of you.”

Hands curled to fists. Rage blinded, but I said, “I’ll make sure an officer is stationed at your apartment until it’s safe.” It was with the deadened tone of the prosecutor she so wanted. Her expression filled with that realization.

“Spence. God, I didn’t mean—”

“Until then, be aware of your surroundings. Call the police if you see anything suspicious—anything at all. I’ll do everything I can to make sure nothing happens to you. Including calling you an Uber. Stay in the foyer until it arrives.”

She paled with the consequences of her speech. “Spence—”

“I’ll see if Sam’s still downstairs. He’ll take you home,” I said.

She started toward me jerkily. “Don’t shut down—”

“Get home safe,” I said. And shut the door.

The sudden quiet of the apartment had no effect on emotion. As I headed to the office, my hand closed over the hard plastic of the USB in my pocket. I slid into the chair, powering up my laptop and shoving the stick into its port. Once connected to wireless, I pulled up my email and clicked on the link I sent myself before handing my phone to Knox—a copy of the kidnapper’s phone call.

The fourth time I listened to the recording, it was in the quiet of my apartment with no other distractions. I sat with a steel spine in the swivel chair, no movement, not even a tic of an expression, then did it once more. I scrolled through Knox’s files with the kidnapper as my sound system. I made notes under Emme’s soul-shredding cry of my name.

In the middle of writing a sentence: need to locate Ed from college b/c motiv—

—the pen toppled out of my grip. Paper crumpled in my hand. Black ink smeared.

The apartment, for the last hour filled with the recording of the kidnapper’s grit and Emme’s pleas, now had an added layer of a broken, echoing roar.

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