Page 68 of A Step You Shouldn't Take

“What about her?” Defensive. Just like he always was when I mentioned her name. “Is she back in town?”

“You know damn well she isn’t. How was Ohio?”

“Ohio? What the hell are you talking about?”

If I hadn’t seen so much evidence to the contrary, I’d have said his look of confusion was genuine.

“Your little trip to Cincinnati to impersonate my sister. What did you do to her? All that bullshit over how she’d left and you couldn’t tell me why. I know about the drugs, Wyatt. A hooker downtown saw you driving when Emma stopped to pick up her fix. And I know about the cheating too.”

Banks winced as he shifted the ice against his face. My knuckles stung too, but it was a good pain.

“Cheating? I didn’t cheat on Emma.”

“Don’t lie to me!” I took a step forward, but Kim pulled me back. “She called me once after she left. Once! And she told me you’d had a fight over a girl.”

Now he sagged against the wall.

“Fuck. It wasn’tagirl, you idiot. It was just girl. Cocaine.”

Finally, he admitted to something, even if it wasn’t quite what I’d expected. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“Because she begged me not to. Said she didn’t want to cause you any more problems.”

“And you listened to her? Even when she’d lost her mind, you listened to her?”

“I loved her!”

“Bullshit! What did you do to her?”

Something didn’t add up here.Nothingadded up. Wyatt’s caginess after Emma left, how upset she’d been, the fact that she’d run in the first place when she knew damn well I’d always support her no matter how bad things got.

The next door along the hallway cracked open, and a grey-haired lady peered out.

“Is everything all right? Should I call the police?”

I forced my fists to uncurl as Banks tried a smile.

“Everything’s fine, Susan,” he said. “And Iamthe police.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.” Then he glared at me. “You should leave.”

“I’m not leaving.”

We stared at each other, toe-to-toe until Kim pushed between us.

“Can we talk like adults now? No matter what happened between you and Reed’s sister, we think she’s in trouble and we need to find out what happened to her. The past is the past. You two need to put your differences aside and work together because we need every scrap of information we can get.”

“Emma’s in trouble?”

I nodded. “I’ve been trying to track her via her debit card payments since she left, and yesterday, we found a witness who saw a man using her card, not her.”

Yes, I neglected to mention that the witness was dead. Information on a need-to-know basis only.

Banks fell silent, considering, then stepped back and opened the door wider. “If we’re gonna continue this, we should do it inside.”

Over two years had passed since I set foot in Wyatt’s apartment. He’d redecorated. Blacks and greys had turned to creams and browns, and he’d bought a new couch.

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