Page 91 of To Have and to Hold

“A few years, I think, but don’t get excited. They sold it soon after.” Knox glanced up, genuine sorrow in his expression. “It’s what I thought at first, too, but Abrams no longer owns this property.”

To feel a leap of hope only to have it peeled away like an entire layer of skin burned like you wouldn’t believe.

“You okay?” Knox asked.

“Fine.” I rubbed at my jaw. “Just waiting to wake up.”

“You’re pushing yourself too damn hard.”

“Who owns the house now?”

“Why?”

I jerked a thumb to his phone, still held in his palm. “Call Levi. Ask him to figure it out.”

“Fine.” Knox exhaled and regarded me a little like a mental patient. But he got on the phone with Levi and communicated the request. At the same time, a cab finally responded to my arm.

We rode in silence, Knox not bothering to poke the bear and me deciding not to bite his face off. I wasn’t about to go anywhere, I would sit in the precinct and spend all night questioning Jack or bothering Abrams’s secretary for a list of addresses or basically being a pain in everyone’s collective asses. Tough shit, and I think Knox knew that.

The vibrations of Knox’s phone passed over our shared leather seat, and he answered. “What do you got? Uh-huh. Yep, I’ll tell him—”

I yanked the phone from Knox. “What the fu—”

“Levi?” I said into the phone, ignoring Knox’s cursing. “You find out who owns the place?”

“Yeah, hey,” Levi said. “So, from what I gather—and it’s late, so I can’t make the calls I want—but with a little digging online the next deed to that house, after the Beauregards and after the Abrams, is to an LLC corporation.”

“What’s it called?”

“Uh…” I heard typing coming from his side. “DKI Rentals, LLC. They still own it and rent it out. Stands for Deacon Knight Investment Rentals.”

“Okay.” I rubbed at my eyes. Another hope dashed. I wasn’t sure why I thought Levi would say something like Oh my God, it’s Kidnapper Central that owns it, but I guessed this was what desperation looked like. “One last thing—what’s the actual address of this place?”

“We’ve been so focused on tracing ownership. Let’s see…wait a minute. Let me just…I need to double check something, because this…I’m looking at a list of…damn it. This corporation is a sub corporation and it’s a mess. If I could…wait. Wait one sec while I pull this list up.” Levi typed, clicked, and then said, “there’s a bunch of places listed. Sub corbs and other properties—fuck. I’m just gonna send you this, okay?”

I growled. Not at Levi, but at my fucking flip phone. “Send it to Knox’s cell. I’ll take a look at it there.”

“You got it. There, sent.”

“Thanks, Levi,” I said and clicked off.

Knox held his hand out for his phone, which promptly turned into a fist when he figured out I was going to scroll through it instead.

“What are you doing, man?”

“One sec,” I said, squinting at the glare of the screen.

The ding came through and I tapped into Levi’s text. I enlarged the image he sent and was soon combing through the list of entities that DKI Rentals was involved with.

“Spence?”

My voice was barely audible over the car’s engine. “Shit.”

I pushed off the back of the seat.

“What?” Knox asked.

“Arabella Delacourt. Fucking Arabella Delacourt.”

I blacked out the phone looked to Knox, unable to contain the utter bafflement in my expression.

“What?” Knox asked again.

“I know where Emme is.”

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