“This is the guy you’re dating?” Tyler fell back into a slouch as he stared at Emery. “Your father figured it out, by the way.”
She made a face and not a good one. “Why are you and Dad talking?”
“We know each other.” Tyler shrugged. “We talk.”
Emery looked less concerned and more wary by the second. “What does that mean?”
“Okay.” As much as Wren wondered about the connection between Tyler and her dad, this wasn’t getting them anywhere on the questions about Tyler. Wren put a hand on the table. “Let’s everyone take a breath.”
“I’m not really in the mood to listen to you pontificate.”
Wren glanced at Emery. “Do I pontificate?”
That wasn’t a word he heard every day. It had been well off his radar for years. He ordered and demanded but wasn’t really given to long speeches. But if Tyler wanted to hear one, Wren would oblige.
She shot him a crooked smile. “Sometimes, but it’s cute.”
“Emery, what the fuck?” Tyler’s voice didn’t rise. His affect had gone flat. “Why him?”
Medication, maybe? Wren wasn’t sure, but except for one yell the heated anger from their last meeting seemed muted. The edges were gone. Hell, Tyler could barely sit up straight. Wren waited for him to drift away and slide to the floor.
Emery’s finger tightened around her coffee cup. “Why did you take the leave of absence from your job?”
“You’re checking up on me now? Yeah, no thanks. I have parents for that.” Tyler stood up. More like stumbled to his feet.
Yeah, something wasn’t right. Wren had his bodyguards right outside, but he didn’t want to call them. Emery didn’t need a scene and this kid needed coffee. “Sit down.”
Tyler shook his head. “She might jump when you order, but I don’t.”
That was the worst description of Emery that Wren had ever heard, and that was including her father, which was pretty damn bad. “You don’t know her at all, do you?”
“Explain it to me, Tyler. What’s going on with you?” Emery asked. “You seemed fine the other night, but now you’re a mess.”
“Thanks.”
“We’ve been friends most of our lives. I’m sitting right here.” Emery’s voice didn’t change. She didn’t plead. She sounded reasonable. Caring yet firm. “I tell you I’m trying to kick-start the investigation and you just show up. You come into my building without using the front door. The behavior is weird.” She sighed. “Just talk to me.”
Tyler hesitated for a second, but something must have gotten through because he sat down again. This time he played with the cup. Spun it around a few times. Took the lid on and off. Wren was about to grab the thing and hide it when Tyler finally started talking.
“I worried he had men outside.” He glanced at Wren. “I didn’t want to be jumped again.” He leaned in and whispered as he talked to Emery. “But how did you know about me not using the front door?”
No, they were not doing it this way. Wren’s head would explode if they just sat there exchanging questions. “Answer her.”
“I did.”
Not even close, but Wren was happy to move on. The biggest question, the one he really cared because it put Tyler in town, still sat out there. “The leave of absence.”
Tyler’s fingers clenched around the cup. His eyes looked a little wild now. “It’s not your business.”
“Is it about Tiffany?” Emery reached her hand across the table and rested it on Tyler’s arm.
The touch seemed to calm him down when it looked like he was going to spin out of control. Wren didn’t like the frantic feel to the guy all of a sudden. His mood swung from one end of the spectrum to the other. He went from being out of it to looking hunted.
Wren recognized that feeling of being trapped. He’d lived with it for years. “You might feel better if you just say it, Tyler.”
“I’m not like you.” Tyler’s gaze shifted away from Emery. Bounced around the room. “You moved forward but never forgot her.”
Emery frowned. “Did you?”
“That’s the problem. No.” Tyler put his hand over Emery’s. “God, you mentioned her name and—bang—I was back there again. Panicking. I can’t sleep or eat. All I see . . . I remember the police and all those questions.”
“I understand,” she said in a soft voice.
Wren did, too. The struggle was right there on Tyler’s face. The guilt and the frustration. The feeling of not having mourned enough and of being too happy with his life.
“Everything changed that day. Who I was and what I believed. How my parents looked at me. The way friends and family whispered.” Tyler’s words trailed off, but the unspoken part about how everyone thought he did something to Tiffany lingered in the silence. “I went to that place in my mind and the bottom fell out. Again.”