That’s the real kicker, isn’t it?
Because as much as I want to hold on to control, I’ve let it slip with Dallas. I’d surrendered every ounce of control that I’d held so tightly to for years. Now I’m at loose ends, and don’t know what to do, because I don’t know how to fight, much less how to help.
I glance at my phone, toying with the idea of calling him like the needy, insecure woman I am.
But then I realize that as much as I need to hear his voice, what I really need is to feel in control again. For the last seventeen years I’ve religiously studied everything from kickboxing to various martial arts to police certified self-defense classes. I’ve even hired an ex-cop to teach me how to shoot and got my dad to pull strings so that I could get a New York City license to carry a handgun.
But it’s been forever since I’ve taken one of my self-defense classes or gone to the range. I’ve let my training slide. It’s as if in surrendering to my need for Dallas, I let go of my grip on everything else. And now I have to get it back.
I glance at the clock on the mantel. I’m pretty sure the studio on Eighty-Fourth has a class at four today, and if I go change right now, I can easily make it.
I’m about to do just that when my gaze catches my phone, and I hesitate. Because the one thing that will make me feel even more in control is if I can help Dallas. And seeing the phone makes me remember how I can.
I snatch it up, ecstatic to be doing rather than waiting.
And what I’m doing is calling Henry Darcy.
It takes me a few minutes to track down Darcy’s number, but he’s done business with my father on and off for years, so I end up calling Dallas’s assistant.
“Ms. Martin,” she says. “How lovely to hear from you.”
“Sorry to interrupt your day. I’m sure you’re swamped what with Dallas back in the office after a week’s vacation, but I need a favor.”
“No interruption. Dallas took today off, too, so I’m catching up on filing.”
“Oh.” I frown, because he’d told me he was coming into the city and to his office.
“I’m sorry, what did you say you needed?”
“What?” It takes a moment for her words to penetrate my numb brain, then I rattle off my plan to interview Henry Darcy for my book and ask her to text me his number.
I’m frowning when we end the call, and still frowning when the number comes across my phone’s screen. Did Dallas think that he had to pretend that he was going to the office in order to get rid of me? Did he want me gone so badly that he had to make up excuses?
I clutch my phone tighter and tell myself not to think about it. I have a plan, after all, and worrying about Dallas’s machinations isn’t part of it. Instead, I need to call Henry Darcy. That’s the next step, and that’s what I do.
And even though I’m tempted to hang up after the first ring because I’m just feeling so damn shaky, I force myself to hold on, then ask the woman who answers if I can speak to him. And then I hear myself saying, “Mr. Darcy, this is Jane Martin, Eli Sykes’s daughter and Dallas’s sister. I was hoping you had a moment to chat?”
He’s surprised to hear from me, of course, but when I tell him that I want to talk about his daughters’ kidnapping, he says that he probably should have expected my call. After all, the press has been covering my books lately, and gossip about the casting for the movie of The Price of Ransom has been all over social media.
“I’ve heard about the title of your upcoming book,” he says. “I saw you on Evening Edge last Saturday.”
“Code Name: Deliverance,” I say. “I guess I should start by saying thank you. It’s a great title, and it pretty much came from you.”
Darcy had told Bill about the vigilante group that had orchestrated his daughters’ rescue. And in the telling, he’d also mentioned that he’d heard something he probably shouldn’t—the internal name that the group used. Deliverance.
“That’s actually why I’m calling,” I say. “I was hoping to interview you for the book. Get a few details about how it worked. My thesis is all about the aftereffects of vigilante involvement, of course, but I think that providing the reader with an overview of the process, contact protocols, that sort of thing would really help the book as a whole. Do you think we could meet?”
Thankfully, he agrees. Unfortunately, he can’t do it today. But I get him on my calendar for a lunch in just a few days and consider myself lucky.
I’m basking in the pleasure of a mission accomplished as I grab my phone and start toward the stairs to change for my class. I’m halfway up when it rings, and I pause to look at caller ID.
Dallas.
I consider not answering—after all, if Dallas needed a break to get his shit together, I ought to help him stick to that.