I chuckled to myself. I’d had a few of those back in the day. Thankfully, because I actually followed D.O.M. rules and didn’t give in to temptation, I had never slept with Emily. So I knew it wasn’t me.
But still, this was an enormous coincidence. Of all the towns in Colorado, she’d come here? Not Vail? Not somewhere in Utah?
“It’s important for me that the family feels whole. Please, Liam, if you are able to help in any way, it would be greatly appreciated. -Emily”
She was right. I wasn’t the guy that brought adults together and said, “Congrats, you two share a child!” I was the guy that went to Costa Rica, to the heart of India, to backwater towns in Europe to risky people in extraordinarily dangerous missions. Playing the role of counselor and therapist was not in my job description.
But then again, she did say she was willing to pay whatever it took, and the job would require—hopefully—no travel. And even if the father had moved, my experience was that guys rarely made wholesale changes. They might move to a different state nearby or perhaps move to the city, but I didn’t expect someone who spent most of their life in a small town like this to suddenly move to Boston or Miami.
And then I thought more about what had happened with Emily. It was just about two years ago, shortly after my work with Scott on his run where he met his wife that I’d gotten a job to help her with some sociopath of an asshole named Sean Price. In almost all cases, Sean was the type of guy whose home you broke into at night, threatened to kill him if he didn’t lay off his ex, and then went away. But there was just one confounding factor.
Sean worked for the Department of Justice.
And that meant that he could not only pull strings, he had an entire theatre of strings he could pull to make his violent tendencies, the suspicions against him, the witnesses who might have seen his worst just vanish into thin air. Although my jobs usually involved violence, this one was a bit different—I had to dig up enough dirt on him to run a story in the press.
And it worked. Best part was I didn’t even drop the biggest bomb against Sean I could have at that time. I held that one in the tank, telling him if he ever so much as looked in Emily’s direction ever again, I would drop that, effectively throwing him in jail at worst, ruining any chance of him having employment ever again at best. It worked.
That was two years ago. And…funny enough, that was the job where, after finishing, I’d driven home—I was tired of planes by that point—gotten back to Breckenridge, settled up at the bar for some drinks, met some woman going through a dark spell in her life, and somehow had the wildest sex of my life. And that was saying something since I loved to dominate in bed.
I tried to remember that woman’s name, but I really couldn’t. At the risk of sounding crass, I had plenty of experience in that domain, and the same scenarios tended to repeat themselves. Maybe I should go for the crazy ones more often. Not like the stable ones are good for you.
I sighed.
“Never thought I’d do repeat work,” I said.
But here I was.
I grabbed a burner phone and called. Emily didn’t answer, so I just left her the shortest message possible.
“Call me back.”
She’d recognize the voice. I’d leave the burner phone active—I knew Scott liked to destroy his, but we didn’t have his greatest enemy on our trail. This was a domestic situation, not some international crisis.
Then again, these types of things had a very funny way of blowing up far beyond any expected measure.
Chapter 5: Kelly
A week had passed, and I had heard no word from Emily about anything.
Emily had warned me this could happen. The investigator she worked with didn’t do normal contact means. This meant not only would it take more time for Emily to reach him, it would take more time for him to reach her. I felt like I was watching information crawl across the screen, something akin to dial-up Internet from back in the day when I had access to 5G now.
So instead, I just calmed myself by going on long walks with my German Shepherd, Bucky, with Charlotte either bundled up in a stroller or in my arms. On days when the ice wasn’t that bad, she was in my arms; otherwise, she went into the stroller. Through it all, it was remarkable just how little that girl cried. I sometimes wondered if the guy I’d had the one-night stand with was secretly a monk or a stoic—how else to explain Charlotte’s incredible demeanor while I sat there in something of a panic?
Seeing more of Charlotte’s personality grow, the side that was not my own, was hitting me harder and harder every day. I couldn’t bear the thought of never having an answer, especially when Charlotte started asking questions. If she starts asking questions.
That was the other part of her personality. She was both oddly distant and affectionate depending on the time of day. At times, while she wouldn’t cry, she would make it very apparent that she wanted me by her side on the spot. And at other times, even when I held her or kissed her, she just didn’t have much of a reaction.
I was about halfway through my walk when I got a text from Emily.
“I’ve heard from the guy. Head home and give me a call.”
I sped through that latter half of
