“I think we can do that,” she said.
Why did she sound excited?
And why was I feeling something as well?
“For now, I want you to lay low,” I said. “I’m going to look around the area and do some investigating of my own.”
I actually didn’t have any specific, concrete plans. I just wanted to give Kelly an extra couple days to see if she could recall anything.
And, also, so that I’d get a better grip on myself. The last thing I wanted to do was follow in Scott’s footsteps. Yes, we weren’t even flirting, but danger often started innocuously enough.
“OK, well, I look forward to meeting you, Liam.”
“It will be a professional meeting,” I said.
I hated those words as soon as I said them. Why would I need to utter them if I had no plans on doing anything that wasn’t professional?
“Well, it can be a bit personal too,” she said, “since you sound like the guy as well.”
Oh, Christ.
“I’ll wait for your phone call. And Liam, thank you. This means a lot to me.”
“Thank me when we find the guy,” I said.
I didn’t give Kelly a chance to respond. I hung up the phone as soon as I’d said those words, for I had nothing more to say. Everything that needed to be said had been said.
Well, at least as far as professional purposes went. I had a feeling—and this was one that, more than the previous one, I feared would come true—that Kelly was not going to be as professional as I wanted her to be. And if that happened…well, it had been a while for me.
I pulled back on the voice modulator when I realized something.
It had never been active at all. Kelly had heard my normal, natural voice. So if she said I sounded like the guy…
No, too wild a coincidence. Impossible.
There was no way.
But just as there’s never a guarantee, there’s also never “no way.”
Goddamnit.
Chapter 7: Kelly
As soon as I hung up the phone, there was a part of me that felt almost too certain that Liam’s search would start and end with…himself.
I knew how absurd that sounded. What were the odds that the man I’d slept with and who was Charlotte’s father was also the man who was tasked with finding him? Well, if I was being realistic, almost zero. For one, the father’s name was Trent, not Liam—it wasn’t like Trent and Terry or Trent and Brent.
Second, although his voice sounded familiar, it wasn’t like I had a lifetime of hearing Trent talk. I’d had one night. And with Liam, I’d had even less time.
But all the same…fuck, his voice sounded so familiar. It was admittedly an ephemeral type of thing, something I couldn’t put my finger on, but at least I was getting the chance to meet Liam later. I just hoped that that would go well.
I looked down at Charlotte in her playpen. She was blissfully unaware of anything going on, consumed by some rubber toys that I’d given her, fearing LEGOs would be too dangerous. I wondered how different she would be if her father were in the picture with more regularity. Was her reticence just her personality? Or would she be more outgoing with her father present?
These were absurd questions to ask of a one-year-old. But between not working, being single, and not having many friends in the area, I had an awful lot of free time to ask ridiculous questions like this one.
One that wasn’t absurd, though, was wondering what I would do when I finally met Trent again. Actually, no, I’d thought through that one plenty. But one I hadn’t?
How would he react when he saw Charlotte?
I didn’t much care for how he felt about me, though I didn’t want to be hated. I was doing this for Charlotte, so that she’d meet her father and have a chance to know him. She probably wouldn’t remember much of anything, but what if…what if the memory somehow stuck?
I couldn’t worry about that. I could only focus on meeting Liam and hoping that he found—
My phone rang. I pulled it out in a hurry, thinking Liam was calling back. Nope. Just Emily.
“Hey girl, how—”
“Kelly?”
I hadn’t heard Emily sound like this in nearly two years. Flustered, scared, and in a panic. I gulped.
“Yeah, it’s me. What’s going on?”
“I needed to talk to someone. I think I’m being followed by him.”
Oh, shit. Two years ago, Emily had had one of the scariest moments of her life when an ex of hers, Sean, started stalking her. I’d warned her about Sean from before, especially since his spot in the government made it a lot harder to get him in trouble, but thankfully, she eventually got smart and dumped him.
Now, though…
“I think he’s back and after me.”
“Are you sure?” I said. I didn’t want to disparage her remarks, but as best I could tell, Sean had been shunned into hiding and warned he’d be in much bigger trouble if he ever so much as came closer to her. “I thought that he was—”
“I thought so too, but Sean’s much more dangerous than that, Kelly.”
I bit my lip. I always did my best to support Emily, but this was a spot where there wasn’t much I could do but be a listening ear and a welcome home.
“Come here if you’re worried,” I said. “I’m serious. You can ride it out some, and—”
“I can’t,” Emily said. She wasn’t on the verge of tears by any
