Chapter 6 #2
They worked the office in parallel. Emily took the filing cabinets, pulling drawers with methodical precision.
Jake took the desk and break area, reading the space how he read every space, tracking what was there and what should have been.
No photos on the desk. No diplomas on the wall.
Nothing personal in a place where a man had worked for years.
An office that had never been intended as permanent.
Emily saw it too. He watched the realization cross her face as she straightened from a file drawer and looked at the room with fresh eyes. "He was always planning to run."
"He didn't plan to run this soon."
She turned back to the files, moving faster now. Jake liked her mind. Show her a piece and she saw where it fit.
"Found something." She held up a ledger, the old-fashioned kind. "Double-entry bookkeeping, but there's a separate column that doesn't match anything in the official records. He was tracking two sets of numbers."
"Vance's money?"
"Has to be. These amounts line up with the wire transfers we already flagged."
She set the ledger aside, kept digging. A voice from the doorway made them both turn.
"You folks the ones asking about Ryan?"
Middle-aged man in a rumpled suit, the soft look of too many business lunches. He leaned against the doorframe, curious but not concerned.
Jake stepped forward, easy and open. "We're trying to help find him. His family's worried."
"Phil Brennan, office next door." He entered without being invited. "Ryan and I grabbed lunch sometimes. Nice guy. Distracted the last few weeks, though. I asked if everything was okay and he started talking about family stuff. Old memories coming up."
Emily moved beside Jake, matching his tone. Not a prosecutor. Someone who cared.
"Did Ryan ever mention where his family was from?" she asked. "Sometimes when people are struggling, they go back to places that meant something to them."
Phil's face shifted, recognition clicking into place.
"Actually, yeah. He talked about it once.
His dad had this old hunting cabin up near the Ocala Forest. Said it was the only place he ever felt peaceful.
" His expression warmed. "He was always saying he'd fix it up someday, retire there. Get away from everything."
"Did he mention where exactly?"
"Not the address. But he said it was near some town with a funny name. Umatilla maybe”?
"Thank you for your help, Phil."
"Hope you find him. He seemed like a good guy, you know? Didn't deserve whatever trouble found him."
Phil retreated to his own office. Emily waited until his footsteps faded down the hall. When she turned to Jake, he saw it in her face. The spark. The piece fitting into place.
"I know someone at the Lake County assessor's office," she said. "If there's property in the Costa family name, she can find it."
Jake looked at her. This woman who'd pulled a location out of a conversation that lasted forty-five seconds.
Who'd read Phil's body language the instant he mentioned family, heard the opening, and stepped through it with a warmth that felt nothing like cross-examination and everything like genuine care.
Who'd done it without being asked, without being coached, because she saw the play and ran it.
"What?" she said.
"Nothing."
"You're looking at me."
"I'm always looking at you." He said it simply. No performance. "Let's go find that cabin."
They gathered the evidence. The ledger, Emily's notes, the case file. Walking back through the lobby, Jake nodded at the receptionist, who waved with the warmth of a woman who felt included in the drama.
Outside, the afternoon heat hit like a wall. Florida in summer, the air thick enough to chew. Jake had the keys in his hand and was halfway to the Range Rover when he realized Emily had stopped walking.
She was standing on the sidewalk, bag over her shoulder, looking at him with an expression he hadn't seen before.
Not the professional mask. Not the almost-smile.
Not even the unguarded warmth he'd gotten in the car yesterday.
This was different. An expression that looked, if he was reading it right, like fear.
"Em?"
"Three days." Her voice was controlled, but the control itself was the tell. The precision of someone holding everything in place by force. "I've known you for three days."
Jake pocketed the keys. Gave her his full attention.
"And in three days, I've ridden around Tampa in your car doing surveillance.
I've eaten a sandwich that changed my understanding of bread.
I've been assessed by a Greek woman who may or may not approve of me.
I've found a lead on a missing federal witness by having a friendly conversation with a man who has no idea he was interviewed.
" She was listing, building a case the way she built every case.
"And right now, I'm standing in a parking lot in Westshore, and I'm not thinking about the lead. "
"What are you thinking about?"
"The fact that yesterday, I didn't check my phone for twelve hours.
Twelve hours." Her hands were still at her sides, but Jake could see the tension in her fingers.
"I'm an AUSA. I've spent seven years building a career on discipline and judgment and never, not once, letting anything compromise my objectivity.
And you've been in my life for seventy-two hours and I'm already someone I don't recognize. "
Jake was very still. The operator's stillness, the one that came from years of knowing that the wrong movement at the wrong time could change everything.
"I'm not asking you to be someone you don't recognize," he said.
"You're not asking me anything. That's the problem.
" Her voice thinned, barely, and she sealed it back immediately.
"You show up. You lean against cars and tell Syria stories and take me to sandwich shops where a woman who loves you sits down and tells me things you didn't choose to share.
You don't push, you don't pressure, you don't do any of the things I know how to defend against. You just exist in my space and somehow that's worse, because I can't be angry at someone for being kind. "
"Do you want to be angry?"
"I want to be in control." The words came out raw. "I want to know what's happening to me. I want to be able to put a name on it and file it and build a case around it so I can understand the parameters. And I can't. Because the parameters keep moving."
Jake let the silence hold. He'd spent fifteen years learning when to speak and when to wait, and this was a time that required waiting.
She wasn't done. He could see it building behind her eyes, the pressure she'd been carrying since yesterday, maybe longer, maybe since she walked into Ray's office and felt the ground shift the same way he had.
"This is too fast," she said.
"It is."
"Three days, Jake."
He didn't answer that one. Didn't agree, didn't argue. Let her have the importance of it without trying to take it from her.
"And I'm already..." She stopped. Looked away. Looked back. "Claire took one look at me last night and knew. I didn't say a word and she knew. I couldn't hide it. I have never, in my entire adult life, been unable to hide what I was feeling."
Jake felt the pull of that settle into him. The woman who'd spent a decade building walls had walked out of his car radiating, and the fact that it had been visible to her best friend, to anyone and that had terrified her more than anything she'd ever faced in a courtroom.
"Okay," he said. "Then we slow down."
Emily's eyes came back to him. Wary.
"If this is too fast, we slow down. I'll keep it professional. We work the case, we find Costa, and I stop being in your space."
"You haven't been in my space."
"I've been present. For you, that might be the same thing." He met her eyes. "I'm not trying to wreck your life, Em. If you need distance, you can have it. If you need me to step back, I'll step back. I mean that."
He did mean it. He could feel the truth of it, the willingness to walk away if that's what she needed, and the cost of that willingness, which was higher than he'd expected. Gator's voice in his head: Didn't matter if you came home because you didn't have anything to come home to.
Emily stared at him. The parking lot hummed with afternoon traffic, cars moving through the lot, someone's radio playing through an open window three rows over.
The ordinary sounds of a Tuesday in Westshore that had nothing to do with what was happening between these two people standing six feet apart beside a black Range Rover.
"So, what?" she said. "You're saying give up? Walk away because I'm scared?"
"That's not what I said."
"That's what it sounded like."
"It sounded like me trying to do the right thing."
"Well, stop it."
The words hung in the air. Emily heard herself say them. Jake watched her hear herself say them.
"I'm an idiot," she said. Not to him. To herself. To the parking lot and the afternoon heat and whatever force of nature had decided to put Jake Walsh in her life and watch her precisely constructed world rearrange itself around him.
"No," Jake said. He stepped closer. Not crowding her. Just closing the distance she'd been so cautious to maintain. "You're not an idiot, Em."
He was right there now. Close enough that she could have stepped back, and they both knew she wasn't going to.
"You're absolutely beautiful when you're mad," he said.
Emily stopped breathing.
Jake had been in situations where time changed speed. Firefights where seconds stretched into minutes. Extractions where minutes compressed into heartbeats. He'd learned to operate inside those distortions, to trust his training when his senses told him the world had gone liquid.
This was like that. And nothing like that.
She crossed the final distance. Her hand found the front of his shirt, not pulling, holding, and she kissed him.
The kiss was short. Almost tentative. A question more than a statement, and Jake answered it by staying exactly where he was, letting her set the terms, letting her choose how far this went and how fast. His hand came up to the side of her face, not guiding.
Present. The way he'd been present since he'd met her.
When she pulled back, her eyes were wide. Not with fear. With the shock of someone who'd spent years guarding against exactly this and discovered, in the moment of surrender, that the thing she'd been afraid of was warmth.
Jake's forehead rested against hers. His eyes were closed. He needed a beat, and he took it, because Emily Callahan had kissed him in a parking lot in Westshore and the world was rearranging itself around the fact of that.
"I don't want you to give up." His voice was low. Answering the question she'd thrown at him. "I don't want to step back. I don't want to be professional. Not even a little."
Emily exhaled. The kind of exhale that carries everything that's been held.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay." He pulled back just far enough to look at her.
The smile that came was different from any she'd seen.
Softer. Unguarded. The version of Jake Walsh that existed underneath the charm and the confidence and the easy competence, the version that had walked into Ray's office three days ago and forgotten what he was going to say. "So. A hunting cabin near Umatilla."
"Lake County assessor's office."
"Then let's go."
He opened the passenger door for her. Not a performance. Just care.
Emily climbed in, and Jake circled to the driver's side. The Range Rover hummed to life, cool air flooding the cabin, and they pulled out of the parking lot into the afternoon sun.
Neither of them spoke for a few miles, the kiss still settling into the space between them, still needing room to land.
Somewhere around the I-275 interchange, Emily glanced over at him.
"Don't get used to charming your way out of trouble."
Jake kept his eyes on the road, but the smile was back. "Yes ma'am."
"I mean it. That's a one-time thing."
"Absolutely. Won’t happen again.”
"I hate you."
"No, you don't."
She didn't. That was the problem.