Tiffany was Emery’s cousin. Wren happened to know exactly what happened when a relative disappeared. How everything changed. How you never felt settled again.
He hated that Emery lived with that sensation every day.
He had Garrett throw together as much intel as he could find. Wren depended on his unauthorized back door access into the police department’s computer system to help with the rest. In this case he planned to search systems for both the Metropolitan Police Department, DC’s police force, and the police in Montgomery County, Maryland, where Tiffany lived. Sometimes his MPD contacts could provide an assist, but he didn’t know enough to ask the right questions yet.
Tomorrow he would gather more intel and keep gathering until he found whatever piece would make the entire case click together in his head. That’s how it worked for him. He studied and assessed, blocked out everything else and focused on the details.
Not that he or his office handled cold criminal cases on a regular basis, because he made sure that did not happen. He stayed away from work that hit on such a personal level. The FBI and police could handle those matters.
But it was more than that. The facts and emotions involved in missing-persons cases struck too close to the life that almost killed him years before. He could still hear the sirens and remember the police detectives’ questions. All that confusion. The betrayal.
That mixed-up kid was a long way from his current life. Even now he sat in his four-story town house on Embassy Row, on the stretch of Massachusetts Avenue in DC known as Millionaires Row. The property next door used to be the Georgian Embassy.
The existence of so many international powerbrokers and politicians meant the neighborhood remained under constant guard. The security presence never eased. He appreciated the safety, but he did crave more quiet, less street congestion.
But he could relax on this side of the house, away from the fray. He leaned back in his chair and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out into the small garden behind his house. An elaborate gate and strategically planted trees afforded him some privacy, but from this position on the second floor he could look straight across and see lights on in windows on other properties. He kind of hated that.
He shuffled the folders and brought one in particular back to the stack. The one not about Tiffany. This one contained the surveillance reports on Emery. He opened the cover and flipped through the pages. Saw photo after photo, all culled from public records and Garrett’s surveillance. They spelled out part of her history even as they failed to capture the life that burst into the room whenever she stepped inside.
“What really happened that night? What has you so obsessed all these years later?” He asked the questions in his quiet house, not expecting any real answers. The police had failed to find any for more than a decade. While he believed in the concept of fresh eyes and all that, he didn’t expect to solve anything.
What he really needed to know was how his name got bound up in this tragedy. He had enough of a troubled past to handle on his own and didn’t need to take on someone else’s.
The report blurred into a black ink streak on the page. Rubbing his eyes didn’t help. He flipped back to the photos—Emery then and now.
He’d gotten sucked in. None of that would have happened if he’d ignored her attempts to contact him and stayed the hell out of that coffee shop. Now he was exposed. Now he had to do something.
He could tolerate being thought of as dangerous and domineering, even lethal. He couldn’t tolerate the idea of being viewed as someone who would kidnap and hurt a woman. He refused to let anyone, whether they knew about his past or not, saddle him with “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” tag.
One thing was clear. His dealings with Emery Finn were far from over.
CHAPTER 8
“Dad?” Emery entered the front door of the brick split-level house she grew up in. Despite living there for eighteen years, she always felt like she should knock. It wasn’t as if she considered this her home. She hadn’t for years. If she were being honest she’d have to admit she never really felt welcome.
Before she took one step out of the entry, she took off her shoes. That qualified as the household’s number one rule. There were others. So many others. No eating in the bedrooms. No being in the kitchen after dinner was over, except to get water. No fumbling with the curtains to the big picture window in the living room at the front of the house. As soon as she’d conquered what she thought was the entire list, he’d come up with new ones. The man did like order.