Page 78 of To Have and to Hold

Multiple calls to Knox’s cell phone went unanswered. I resisted the urge to throw my cheap-ass walkie talkie against the sidewalk and hear the pleasure of it cracking to pieces as I sprinted down the street. I’d gone to Dave’s apartment with the hopes of following a connection, not simply to Emme’s father, but to Emme herself, and by some grace, I found it. Jack’s mention of Abrams as his law school friend and murder accomplice and Dave’s observation of Abrams’s too-close attention toward Jack’s daughter was too much of a coincidence to be passed over, especially if my instincts were on target. Either Abrams knew who Emme was the instant he noticed her—and Dave’s recounting of Abrams’s intense interest spoke to that idea—or he realized who she was as soon as she informed him who her parents were. Jack Beauregard, the man who held Abrams’s fate in his hands for years—decades—and who could’ve as recently as a few nights before the gala been told his life was about to be nuked.

Crime of opportunity? Coincidence? When did Abrams figure out the perfect plan to shut Jack up?

What still stunned was why Jack ever agreed to protect Abrams all those years ago. Jack was a good man, or so I thought. Devoted to his family, besotted with his daughter and wife. He would never do anything to put them in harm’s way…

Except for this.

Could Abrams really have taken Emme? Was I sniffing down the right path in this forest of possibilities? The wrongness of it clung to my skin and the idea that I may not be correct. Maybe it was something to do with the Tabernathys and my involvement in their takedown. It made complete sense if it were the Tabernathys and all those subterranean connections they had were sent out to search and destroy the ones that harmed them. Oak was bored. His mind, usually challenged, was turning to mush in his prison—both mentally and physically. He could be lying, enjoying toying with the prosecutor that got lucky and put him away.

That theory could work, if it weren’t for Oak’s valid point. No other person involved in the Tabernathy firm takedown was being affected. No other kidnappings or notes or phone calls. And while I uncovered the first prize in his prosecution, that was small potatoes compared to the mountain of evidence the FBI had been steadfastly collecting over the years. Stone’s drug mishap was a smoking gun, but it would’ve meant nothing had the secret task force not been compiling strong evidence.

And then there was the Torro family. Was Manny Torro out to get revenge for his nephew? He was already interfering with witnesses, but that was all behind the scenes. Bribing the jury would also be on the down-low, his presence undetectable. The subtle ghost of Manny Torro, haunting the gallery and whispering in people’s ears.

Abducting Emme wouldn’t be necessary—not the way the trial was going. And taking me out of the picture would only cause another lawyer—likely Nicholas—to replace me. We prosecutors were like cockroaches.

But Nicholas was there. Manny Torro was there. Pete Irving, DA Abrams…they were all at Emme’s fundraiser.

Not a coincidence. Maybe a conspiracy. Was this all to influence the Torro trial? Pete Irving, Dex Abrams, Jack Beauregard, Manny Torro, they were all around the same age. Did they know each other decades ago?

With all that considered, Abrams being involved struck true. But I dined with him, was rumored to become his prodigy if I decided to accept it. He reached down and plucked me from obscurity and put me on a map I wasn’t meant to cross for another five to ten years. I felt his support, his keenness, and his shrewd ability to assess any situation, but I never smelled danger. A rarity. No indication of obsession or the urge to covet a younger man’s position—a place maybe Abrams yearned to experience once again. If that were the case, Abrams completely cuckolded me. It meant he searched me out from the beginning, not from talent—though Tabernathy would’ve given him a great, opportunistic excuse—but through the careful craft of keeping his enemy, Jack Beauregard, as close as he could without being noticed.

Believe me, they’re getting the message…

I was such a tenuous connection to Emme these days, unlike Dave. She’d bubble up in memory at Thanksgiving or my birthday or waking up in the mornings when I accidentally reached for her. Mind glitches that I bottled up, corked, and confessed to no one. I didn’t burble my lost feelings over a glass of bourbon to the DA of New York City and his wife.

I was forced to stop at an intersection, the speeding cars preventing me from going into a full-on swan dive into traffic. My chest heaved with darts of adrenaline. If I was right and Abrams was involved, Knox went in the wrong direction.

Tabernathy was luck. When I’d unearthed the connection of Stone’s crack to his father, it was because of a stumble. The office touted me as savant, the young kid who had a brain that could physically click every time a fact was fused with evidence. A kind of switch that turned on once a case was laid out in front of me, and in a matter of weeks—sometimes days—could be solved. What they didn’t know was that with each piece of evidence came the fear of failure. That there would come a victim I couldn’t help, because I didn’t know. Take Torro and his girlfriend, Delilah Marks. That case was kissing the rim of porcelain and about to be flushed into plumbing. It was that case I feared, the one that could strip me of a title I wasn’t sure I deserved. Who could I tell? Could I go to my direct supervisor and say, I’m sorry, I’m not the man you think I am, when so far, I was successful in every case. I was drawing those connecting lines and stealing the courtroom from my opponent in the way a cornerback intercepts a football. I was good.

Except for Torro.

Except for Emme.

No one knew of the centipede living comfortably in my brain tissue, its expanding legs a constant reminder that nobody’s success lasts forever. A burnout was imminent, an explosion of disappointment, and all that would be left of me would be that bug.

“How the fuck are they going to believe me?” I asked aloud. A woman standing next to me with a wire trolley filled with empty aluminum cans gave me the stink eye. The businessman on the other side didn’t even blink at my random utterance; instead, he checked the time on his watch.

Jack had to admit to everything. He loved Emme and would do anything to save her, including ruining his life. Jack’s time outside was over the instant he agreed to assist Abrams in covering up a murder, intentional or not, and Jack must’ve known that when he tipped the first domino a few hours ago.

The light changed and I leaped onto the road, only to stumble back when three fire trucks went by, sirens screaming. Empty Can Lady assessed me in the way that said those sirens were coming on louder than a jackhammer, idiot. I was so wrapped up in my head I didn’t hear. I waited for them to pass by before jumping onto the asphalt and forming the span of three steps in one. First stop would have to be Abrams’s home. I’d keep calling Knox, but until he picked up, I had to keep moving. Collecting, connecting. I couldn’t chance waiting for him or even to convince other cops that Abrams was a solid suspect. Linear time had not been kind, and Emme had been gone too long. Any more delays and Abrams would be banking on that. Who would believe that a district attorney kidnapped his law school buddy’s daughter in a twisted form of a hush warning?

Ed Carver was the perfect scapegoat. Maybe Abrams researched Emme’s past and found him. Abrams had all the tools at his disposal and the intelligence. He was not one to rely on spontaneity.

I pushed past a clot of tourists ogling the lights of Freedom Tower against the bleak sky, their necks craned up and paying no attention to the people that used this sidewalk to walk.

Could I be wrong? This was nonsensical in so many ways. Abrams was a stand-up man with a polished life. He did a horrible, stupid thing twenty years ago, and while he would pay for what he’d done, he could’ve changed. Maybe Ed Carver did have Emme and I was torpedoing the wrong person. Sure, Emme and Abrams were connected, but it could be unrelated. They could be holding either end of a different rope. Jack could be wrong. The Torro trial was already fucked. The facts weren’t properly parsed through yet.

My phone buzzed in my pocket and without breaking stride, I pulled it out and answered. “Knox, where the hell have you been? I’ve—”

“Spencer?”

The voice wasn’t Knox’s.

“Carol?” I said. It sounded like Knox’s secretary.

“I’m sorry to bother you. I tried looking around here but have no clue where you are.”

“I stepped out early this afternoon. What’s wrong? Are Jack and Perry all right?”

“Yes, they’re fine. I’m calling because, well. Have you been watching the news?”

That had me coming to a halt. My heart didn’t tolerate the standstill and nearly flew out of my chest, rolling a bloody path down the walkway. “Emme? Has something happened?”

“No word on Emme yet. But…I thought you should know. There’s been an explosion in Brooklyn.”

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