Chapter 17
EMILY
She woke up knowing something had shifted.
Not dramatically. Not the way things shifted in books, with sudden clarity and orchestral swells. Just, differently weighted. Like a room where someone had moved the furniture slightly and everything was the same but the proportions had changed. You notice it but you might not acknowledge it.
She lay in the gray early morning light and stared at the ceiling and thought about the chair by the window and the weight of his hand playing with her hair and the single word yes delivered before she'd even finished the question.
Is that something you would—
Yes.
She pressed her palms over her face and held them there.
She was in trouble. The specific, warm, terrifying kind of trouble that had nothing to do with Marcus Delling or trafficking networks or fake Facebook profiles and everything to do with a six foot tall, muscular man who calculated twenty-foot response radii and sourced strawberries from a local farmer’s market and played with her hair and brought her to orgasms without asking for anything in return.
She got up before she could think herself into anything complicated.
He was in the kitchen. Of course he was. She was starting to think he simply materialized there every morning, fully formed, with coffee already drunk.
"Sit down," he said, without turning from the stove. "I'll tell you about Delling."
She sat.
He turned around with two mugs, set one in front of her, and sat across the table and told her about the Kansas City ping, about Dozer, about the forty-eight-hour window. Straight and clean, no softening, exactly the way she'd asked him to tell her things.
She listened. Drank her coffee.
"He's not running," she said. "He's moving up the chain."
"Yes."
"So, if your contact catches him before he delivers himself—"
"Then we have a chance at getting higher into the structure." He held her gaze. "Diaz knows. She's coordinating with the Kansas City field office."
"And Dozer—"
"Has resources and access that work faster than federal channels in some respects.
" He paused. "He's good. I trust him. He’s one of us, former special operations. He works for a company that Rider runs. A private security firm of sorts. His boss is one of my best friends, I would have called him but he’s out of the country with his girlfriend. "
She nodded. Let it settle. Looked at her coffee.
"I want him caught," she said. Not with heat. Just simple and clear and direct. "I need you to know that. Not for me. For the other women."
"We’ll catch him."
"Whatever I can do. I meant that."
"I know that too." He looked at her across the table.
"Right now what you can do is exactly what you've been doing.
Staying here, staying grounded. You're the evidence. You staying safe and intact is part of how this gets resolved. I hope to God you aren’t the only surviving witness, but if you are… your testimony is vital."
She nodded. Picked up her mug and took a long drink. He’d made it exactly like she told him she liked it the first day here.
"I slept," she said, because it felt relevant. "Actually, slept. All night."
Something changed in his face, was it relief? "Good."
"I think—" She stopped. Decided to say it. "I think that was because of last night. Because you came in."
He was quiet.
"I'm not saying it as a — I'm just telling you, because you should know that it helped. Specifically." She kept her eyes on her mug. "Playing with my hair and you just being there, helped."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Okay," he said, in the voice that wasn't just okay, that was I'm keeping this, I'm adding it to what I know about you, this matters. She’d discovered he was a man of few words but if you listened to the tone and watched his body language, he actually said a lot between the lines.
She looked up at him. He was looking at her with that direct, level attention that she'd stopped flinching from sometime in the last week, the attention that said I see exactly what's here and I'm not going anywhere.
“I’m not sure what I’ve done to earn this,” she said.
“Earn what?”
“The care you’ve shown me. In the shower, last night…”
“You don’t have to earn care, little girl. I hope you learn to accept it without feeling guilty about it. It brings me pleasure to care for you. More pleasure than I get from doing literally anything else.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Outside, Clover was in the yard, doing his morning assessment of the fence posts. The coffee maker clicked and hissed on the counter.
"This will be easier between us when you stop being afraid of wanting it," he said. “And let me be your Daddy fully. I won’t pressure you. Take all the time you need. Ask me for what you need and I will always give it to you.”
She absorbed that.
"That's very insightful," she said.
"You are worth paying attention to."
She looked at her coffee. At his hands flat on the table across from hers, close enough that the distance between them was a deliberate thing, a thing that existed because he was choosing to hold it until she didn't need him to anymore.
"I'm working on it," she said. "The afraid part."
"I know you are."
"I'm faster at some things than others."
"Emily." She looked up. "I've waited out longer things than this. I'm not going anywhere. We will find our rhythm and when we do, everything will click. A little awkwardness and adjustment isn’t going to bother me."
She nodded.
Irish appeared in the kitchen doorway with Clover and the taco toy, assessed the atmosphere, and performed a flawless reverse retreat.
"We'll come back," Emily heard him whisper to the dog.
"Irish," Rampage said, without looking up.
Irish reappeared. "Yeah."
"Get your coffee."
"On it." Irish moved to the counter with the deliberate efficiency of a man who had decided he needed to get in and get out. He poured his coffee. Did not look at either of them. Did not say anything.
He made it approximately forty-five seconds.
"So," Irish started.
"No," Rampage said.
"I was just going to ask about—"
"No."
Irish drank his coffee in noble silence with a grin on his face. She knew he loved teasing Rampage, and Emily thought, Rampage might enjoy his teasing more than he was willing to admit.
Emily pressed her lips together against a smile. Looked down at the table.
Under the table, Clover put his head on her foot.
She reached down and scratched his ear and thought about the man across the table.
A man who in such a short time had started to mean everything to her.
She couldn’t lie, he was more than a bit attractive, too.
She wondered what it would be like to have something else besides his fingers inside of her.
Shocked by the way her mind had drifted off course, she lifted her cup and took another long drink.
"Irish," she said.
"Yeah?"
"Does Clover like strawberries?"
Irish blinked. "Why?"
"Because I'm going to make breakfast and I want to know if he can have one."
"He's not supposed to have people food," Irish said.
"That's not a no."
"He absolutely loves strawberries," Irish said.
Rampage stood up to get the skillet.
Emily went to the refrigerator.
The strawberries were on the middle shelf, washed and ready in a bowl.
She stood there for a second with the refrigerator door open, looking at them.
Remembering how they came to be there. The special trip Rampage had taken to pick them up, simply because someone mentioned that she liked them.
She was going to make her Daddy breakfast this time, and show him in a small way, that she too, cared.
Then she took the bowl and closed the door and went to make breakfast, and if she was smiling ear to ear, nobody said anything about it.