Chapter 4
The Anchor sat at the end of a gravel road with no sign out front, weathered wood and a deck overlooking the water and a neon beer logo that looked like it had been flickering since before Emily was born.
"This is it?" Claire pulled her car into the gravel lot. "It looks like it might fall down."
"It has character."
"It has tetanus."
Emily smoothed her dress. Blue, casual, the one Claire had insisted on after watching Emily change four times. She felt ridiculous. She felt nervous. She felt like a woman about to make a decision she couldn't take back.
"You ready?" Claire asked.
"No."
"Perfect. Let's go."
The deck was strung with lights, sunset painting the water orange and pink. Emily spotted Ray first, his bulk unmistakable at a table near the railing. A man she didn't recognize sat across from him, built like a linebacker, laughing at a joke she'd missed.
And Jake.
He was at the bar, talking to an older man with a beard and tattoos who moved like he'd seen some things.
Jake had changed since this morning. Different jeans, different t-shirt, same backwards cap.
The sunglasses were gone, hooked in his collar, and when he turned and saw her, his whole face changed.
He walked toward her like she was the only person on the deck.
"You came." He sounded pleased. Genuinely pleased. "I wasn't sure you would."
"I almost didn't. Three times."
"What changed your mind?"
Emily glanced at Claire, who was already moving toward Ray's table. "She wouldn't let me back out."
"Remind me to thank her." Jake fell into step beside her. "What are you drinking?"
"I don't know. What's good here?"
"Everything. But if you trust me, the margaritas will change your life."
"I haven't decided if I trust you yet."
"Fair." His expression warmed. "Let's work on that."
Ray stood as they approached, pulling Emily into a hug before she could object. "There she is. The woman who filed the motion that made Vance's lawyers lose their minds."
"They responded fast."
"They responded panicked." Ray's grin widened. "You rattled the right cage, Counselor."
Jake introduced her to Tommy, his friend since childhood, a detective with easy charm and a grin that said he'd never met a stranger. Then Gator, the owner, who looked at Emily with assessment before nodding once, like she'd passed some test she hadn't known she was taking.
The margaritas arrived. Emily tasted hers and understood immediately why Jake had promised they'd change her life. Tart and bright and perfectly balanced, the kind of drink you didn't realize was dangerous until it was too late.
"So." Tommy leaned back in his chair. "You're the prosecutor who's got Vance running scared."
"I've got Vance's lawyers billing overtime. That's not the same thing."
"It's a start." Tommy's smile was warm. "Jake says you're impressive. Jake doesn't say that about anyone."
"Jake's known me for eight hours."
"Jake knew his last CO for thirty seconds before he decided he'd follow the man into hell." Tommy shrugged. "He reads people fast. It's his thing."
Emily glanced at Jake, who was watching this exchange with an expression that was hard to read. Amused, maybe. Or warmer than that.
"What else did he tell you about me?" she asked.
"That you work too hard. That you don't take vacations." Tommy grinned. "That you looked at him in that conference room like you were trying to decide whether to hire him or arrest him."
"I was doing neither."
"You were doing both." Jake set his bourbon down. "I could see you calculating. The case, the timeline, whether I was going to be useful or another complication."
"And what did you decide I decided?"
"That I was definitely going to be a complication." His eyes held a knowing light. "And that you were going to work with me anyway."
Emily took a longer drink of her margarita than she'd intended. He wasn't wrong. That was the problem. He'd read her in an hour better than people she'd known for years.
"How do you do that?" she asked. "See people so clearly?"
Jake's easy charm faded, replaced by gravity.
"When I was overseas, reading people was the difference between coming home and not coming home.
You learn to watch. To notice what people don't know they're showing you.
" He looked into her eyes. "You do the same thing, by the way.
You do it with evidence instead of faces. "
"It's not the same."
"It's exactly the same. You look at numbers and see patterns. I look at people and see truth." He leaned closer, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him. "That's why we're going to work well together. We read different things."
Emily became aware that the rest of the table had gone silent. Ray and Tommy were watching. Claire was watching. Even Gator, behind the bar, had paused with a bottle in his hand.
She didn't care.
"What truth are you reading right now?" she asked.
Jake leaned back, watching her. "That you're trying to decide if I'm too good to be true.
That you want to trust me but you don't trust easily, and you're not sure what to do with someone who doesn't seem to want anything from you except your company.
" He paused. "And that you haven't laughed.
Really laughed. The kind where you forget to be careful. In a long time."
The realization he was right set in. Not exactly cracking in her walls. But rattling the frame.
"That's a lot to read from one conversation."
"You're not as hard to read as you think."
"No one's ever said that to me before."
"Then no one's been paying attention."
The evening unfolded.
Tommy told stories about Ray in high school, about the summer they'd all worked construction together and Jake had put his truck through the wall of a storage shed. Ray defended himself badly. Jake offered no defense at all, laughed and admitted to every crime Tommy accused him of.
Claire and Tommy discovered a shared obsession with a true crime podcast and disappeared into a debate that involved increasingly wild hand motions.
Gator drifted over between drink orders, asking Emily questions about the law, about what had brought her to Tampa.
She found herself answering honestly, more honestly than she usually did with strangers.
And through all of it, Jake.
He didn't dominate the conversation. Didn't try to impress her with war stories. He listened. Asked questions. Remembered the answers and built on them, circling back to things she'd mentioned an hour earlier like they mattered.
When she made a joke about a judge she'd clerked for, he laughed. A real laugh, surprised out of him, and she felt it like victory.
When she admitted she hadn't been to a bar for fun in longer than she could remember, he nodded, like he understood without her having to explain.
When she realized she was on her fourth margarita and hadn't checked her phone once, she didn't know what to do with that information.
She excused herself for the bathroom and found Claire waiting in the narrow hallway.
"Hi." Claire was beaming. Absolutely beaming, like someone had told her a secret she'd been waiting years to hear. "Having fun?"
"I'm having drinks with colleagues."
"You're having your fourth margarita with a man who hasn't looked away from you all night." Claire leaned against the wall, blocking her path. "Emily. I need you to hear this.”
"Can it wait?"
"No." Claire's smile softened, intensity underneath. "That man has opened a door you've had welded shut since I've known you. In one night. Three hours." She reached out, touched Emily's arm. "Don't screw this up."
Emily stared at her best friend. The woman who'd seen her through law school, through the clerkship, through the move to Tampa and every triumph and failure along the way.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're laughing. You're on your fourth drink and you haven't checked your phone.
You made a joke about Judge Harrison that I've never heard before, which means you thought of it on the spot, which means you're not running your usual script.
" Claire's eyes were bright. "You're having fun.
Real fun. When's the last time that happened? "
Emily didn't have an answer.
"That man sees you," Claire said. "The real you. Not the prosecutor, not the walls. And you're scared because you don't know what to do with someone who likes what he sees."
"I'm not scared."
"You're terrified. And that's okay." Claire stepped aside. "Don't run. Not from this one."
Emily went into the bathroom. Closed the door. Stood at the sink and looked at herself in the mirror.
Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were bright. She looked like someone she barely recognized.
She looked happy.
When she got back to the table, Jake had ordered her water alongside another margarita. She sat down beside him, closer than before, and didn't move away.
"You good?" he asked.
"I'm good."
"You don't look good. You look like someone told you what you didn't want to hear."
"Someone told me what I needed to hear. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
Emily picked up the water first. "In my experience? Not really."
Jake laughed, and she felt it again. That door rattling. That sense of feeling she'd kept locked away for years straining against hinges she'd thought were rusted shut.
She stayed until midnight.
She didn't remember deciding to.
Walking Emily to her car, Jake replayed the evening in his head.
She'd laughed. Actually laughed, more than once, the sound startled out of her like she'd forgotten she was capable of it.
He'd watched her walls come down in increments.
Watched the prosecutor give way to someone softer, someone who told jokes and listened to Tommy's stories and looked at Jake like he was a puzzle she was strategically deciding to solve.
He'd noticed when she stopped checking her phone. When she leaned in instead of back. When she went from evaluating to enjoying.
"I had a good time," she said now, stopping by Claire's car. Claire was inside, giving them privacy. "I wasn't expecting to."
"The skepticism is noted."
"I'm a prosecutor. Skepticism is professional."
"Then I'll take the good time as a win." Jake kept his distance, giving her space. "Thank you for coming. And for not letting hesitation win."
The deck lights caught her face, softening the angles, and Jake had to stop himself from reaching out.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"Anything."
"Why me? You don't know me. You read my file and watched me walk into a room and decided to invite me into your life. That's not normal."
Jake considered the question. The easy answer was because you're beautiful, but that wasn't the truth. The truth was harder.
"Because when I saw you walk into Ray's office this morning, I forgot what I was supposed to say." He failed to look away. "That hasn't happened to me in a long time. Maybe ever."
Emily's breath caught.
"That's a lot of honesty for someone I've known one day."
"I don't know how to be anything else." Jake let himself smile. "Get some sleep, Counselor. We've got a witness to find."
He stepped back. Emily looked at him, a decision forming behind her eyes.
"Goodnight, Jake."
"Goodnight, Em."
She blinked at the nickname. He hadn't planned it. The word came out natural as breathing, like he'd been calling her that for years.
She didn't correct him.
He watched her get into Claire's car. Watched the taillights disappear down the gravel road. Stood in the lot with the sound of water behind him and the image of her face when he'd said her name.
He thought about the photo frame on Maria's desk. Emily stopping to look at it on her way in this morning, her expression unguarded for half a second before she locked it down. He hadn't mentioned it. Hadn't let her know he'd seen. Some things you filed away and waited for the right time.
Jake walked back toward The Anchor. Gator was at the door, watching with the expression of a man who'd seen everything and was rarely surprised.
"That one's different," Gator said.
"Yeah."
"You sure about this?"
Jake thought about Emily Callahan. The way she'd challenged him in Ray's office. The way she'd opened up over four hours and four margaritas. The way she'd looked at him at the end like she was making a decision.
"No," he said. "Not sure at all."
Gator nodded. "Good. The ones worth having never come easy."
He went back inside. Jake stood on the deck a second longer, looking at the water where the moon was climbing.
He had no idea what he was going to do about Emily Callahan.
He was looking forward to finding out.