Chapter 5
Emily arrived at the federal building at seven-thirty, coffee in hand, ready to work.
She'd barely slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she was back on that deck, margarita in hand, watching Jake Walsh watch her like she was the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life. The bathroom. Claire's face. That man has opened a door you've had welded shut since I've known you.
She'd told herself, driving home, that it didn't mean anything. A good night. Good company. The kind of evening she should have more often but didn't, because she was busy, because the work mattered, because she'd built a life that didn't have room for complications.
Jake Walsh was a complication.
She'd told herself that too, lying in bed, staring at her ceiling.
He was a contract investigator on her case.
They would be working together for weeks, maybe months.
Getting involved would be unprofessional.
Getting involved would be exactly the kind of decision she'd spent her entire adult life learning not to make.
And yet.
Goodnight, Em.
No one called her Em. No one had ever called her Em.
The nickname had slipped out of him like it was the most natural thing in the world, and she hadn't corrected him, and now it was seven-thirty in the morning, and she was standing in her office thinking about the way his voice had sounded saying it.
She needed to focus. Costa was still missing. Vance's lawyers had filed another motion. The case wasn't going to build itself.
Her phone buzzed.
Lobby. Five minutes.
Jake's number. The one she'd saved last night, after he'd walked her to Claire's car, after she'd watched him shrink through the passenger window while Claire drove them home.
She texted back: We have a meeting scheduled for nine.
His response came immediately: Change of plans. Bring your bag.
Emily stared at the screen. She should say no. She had depositions to review, motions to answer, a witness board that needed updating. She had a job, responsibilities, a career she'd spent a decade building.
She grabbed her bag and headed for the elevator.
He was leaning against a black Range Rover when she walked out of the building, arms crossed, watching her approach with that expression she was beginning to recognize. The one that said he knew more than he was sharing.
He'd changed since yesterday. Same backwards cap, same Oakleys propped on the brim, but the t-shirt was different. Darker. It fit him in ways that made professionalism feel like a suggestion rather than a rule.
She made herself stop at a professional distance. "What happened to nine o'clock?"
"Nine o'clock was for briefings and conference rooms." Jake pushed off the car and opened the passenger door. "We're past that."
"Past it. We've known each other for one day."
"Long day." He waited, door open, patient as stone. "You coming or not?"
Emily looked at the Range Rover. At Jake. At the federal building behind her, where her desk waited with its files and its coffee and its predictable demands.
She got in the car.
Jake came around to the driver's side, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed east without a word about where they were going. Emily watched the city slide past, familiar streets becoming less so as he turned off the main roads.
"Range Rover," she said, because the silence was doing things to her nervous system she wasn't prepared to catalog. "Not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
“I don’t know, maybe a more tactical look. A truck with a lift kit and a punisher sticker."
His laugh was genuine. "That's Tommy. He's got the black F-150. But bumper stickers would require commitment to an opinion, which Tommy only does when it involves football or whiskey."
"So why this?"
"There's a story, actually." He kept his eyes on the road, but she felt his attention shift toward her the way you feel a change in temperature before you see the source.
"Syria. Few years back. Extraction went sideways.
We were supposed to pull a guy who had intel we needed, but the route got compromised. "
"Compromised how?"
"The kind of compromised where your Plan B needs a Plan C and your Plan C is a prayer.
" The corner of his mouth lifted. "We ended up borrowing a Range Rover from a compound we weren't supposed to be anywhere near.
Drove it forty miles through territory that was actively hostile, taking fire most of the way. "
"Borrowing."
"Aggressively borrowing."
"And?"
"And I remember sitting there, rounds hitting the armor plating, thinking," he shook his head, "this thing rides really well."
Emily stared at him. Then she laughed, the sound surprised out of her the same way it had been last night. Involuntary. Real.
"So you bought one."
"When I got home."
"On a contractor's salary." She said it the way she'd say it in a deposition. Not accusatory. Precise. The kind of observation that invited an answer without demanding one.
Jake glanced at her, and his expression shifted. Appreciation, maybe. For the fact that she'd noticed and hadn't pretended not to.
"I saved everything I made for twelve years," he said.
"When you're deployed, there's nothing to spend it on.
No rent, no mortgage, no bar tabs. It just accumulates.
Ray invested it for me while I was overseas.
He's smarter than he lets on, which is saying something because he already lets on plenty. "
"And it was enough."
"Enough that I don't have to work." He said it simply. No performance, no false modesty. "The consultant gig, the cases, finding Costa. I do this because I'm good at it and because sitting still makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Not because I need a paycheck."
Emily turned that over. A man who could walk away from all of it and chose not to. Who showed up not because he had to but because he needed to be useful. That told her more about Jake Walsh than his service record or his charm or his habit of leaning against cars like gravity was a suggestion.
"You could be anywhere," she said.
"I could."
"Doing anything."
"Yep."
"And you chose Tampa. Contract work. Finding missing witnesses for federal prosecutors."
"I chose Ray." Jake's voice was easy, but there was bedrock underneath. "He needed someone he trusted. I was available. The rest is the job."
"The rest is the job."
"The job's the frame." He looked at her from across the car. "The people are the building."
They ended up in a warehouse district she'd driven past without ever noticing. Jake pulled onto a side street with a clear view of a row of industrial buildings, killed the engine, and sat back.
"One of Vance's staging areas," he said. "His people use it to coordinate the search for Costa. DEA liaison I worked with in Afghanistan confirmed it. Three independent sources."
"Documentable?"
"Everything I bring you will be." He met her eyes. "My title says Contract Investigator. Not cowboy."
Emily studied the buildings. Corrugated metal, loading docks, unremarkable.
Three vehicles in the lot. She catalogued them without being asked.
Black Escalade, white pickup, sedan near the back.
The sedan had been there longest based on the dust on the windshield.
The other two had arrived recently, close together.
Crew leaders checking in. Reporting to someone who wanted progress they didn't have.
Jake was watching her.
"What?" she said.
"Nothing." But amusement tugged at the edge of his expression. "Three vehicles, right? What do they tell you?"
"Sedan's been here since last night at least. Dust on the glass, parked in the far corner, which means whoever drove it doesn't expect to need it in a hurry.
The other two arrived within twenty minutes of each other.
Still warm, better positioning, closer to the exits.
Crew leaders reporting in on progress they haven't made. "
"Which means?"
"They still don't know where Costa is. They're running the same dead ends we are."
Jake turned to look at her , and his attention fixed on her in a way that had nothing to do with vehicles or parking lots.
"You know most people I've worked with take an hour to see what you saw in thirty seconds."
"I'm a prosecutor. Pattern recognition is my job."
"Different kind of pattern."
"Same principle."
"Not even close." His voice dropped, just enough to change the texture of the air between them. "Courtroom patterns are fixed. Documents, testimony, evidence that's already been collected. You're reading a book someone already wrote. Out here, everything's moving. You have to read it live."
"And how do you read it live?"
"You let your attention go wide. Stop focusing. Wait for the thing that doesn't fit." He was watching the warehouse, but she had the clear impression he was talking about something else entirely. "Everyone has a tell. The thing they do when they think nobody's watching."
"What's my tell?"
The question left her before any reasonable filter could intervene.
Jake's eyes came back to her. Stayed.
"You lean forward," he said. "When you're interested. When it catches you. Your whole center of gravity shifts toward it, like you're being pulled. You probably don't notice."
Emily became aware, with excruciating precision, that she was leaning toward the center console.
She sat back. Jake's mouth curved.
"Like that," he said.
"That's not a tell. That's called paying attention."
"Paying attention is a tell. Especially when someone's trying not to."
He looked satisfied. The expression of a man who'd made his point and was content to let it settle.
Emily let him enjoy it for about three seconds.
"You hesitated," she said.
Jake's expression didn't change. But his stillness did. The quality of it shifted, the way a room shifts when someone opens a window you didn't know was there.