Cormac had to go out. Ostensibly because he was meeting his siblings at Humphrey’s Upper West Side apartment. But even if the appointment hadn’t come up later that morning, with Ciara being free to spend some time with them because of the storm, he probably would have found another reason. He needed time out of his old space, away from the woman who’d turned his life completely on its axis, to find himself.
No more letting Emily twist him up. By the time he returned to her, he’d have himself firmly in check again.
Permanently. He’d managed the emotions she’d raised in him two months before. He could do so again.
Then, it had been only to save her and himself. Now, with the baby involved, the need was ever more crucial. He and Emily had to be able to talk about tough stuff without him getting all feely inside.
With full details watching his place, outside, door, elevators, his floor, he felt mostly under control by the time he stood at the big window in Humphrey’s apartment looking out at the view. The white encasing the city hid so much...
“I thought you all would like to see this,” Ciara said, handing Sean an old photo album. Ready to be fully focused on work, Cormac joined Eva on one side of his older brother, while Liam was on the other.
“It’s all of us.” Eva sounded pleased, pointing to a photo of herself, at six, sitting alone on a motorcycle that belonged to one of their dad’s fellow PIs. As Sean turned the pages, Cormac watched how the changes came over the four of them after their father died and Humphrey stepped in with the guidance and help Sean needed to keep them all together.
They’d grown more serious. Less starry-eyed.
Even little Eva.
Every Christmas, though, Humphrey had been with them. And they’d all had smiles on their faces then.
Peering over Liam’s shoulder, Ciara said, “I felt bad last Christmas, keeping him from you all.” They’d just gotten married. It was understandable.
Things changed.
People changed.
No matter how old or young they were.
Had Humphrey changed so much that they didn’t really know him anymore?
Ever since he met Ciara...
It’s like Cormac had told Emily, age wasn’t what mattered in life. It all came down to who you were, what you’d learned and who you knew.
When Ciara turned away, Cormac thought he saw tears in her eyes. He didn’t want to put her on the spot with his siblings and him all looking on, but when she turned back around, his gut clenched.
“I have a confession to make...”
She’d killed Humphrey.
Or knew who had.
Had she hired someone to have him killed?
The young wife coming into a goodly amount of money?
All three of his siblings were staring at her. Was the woman nuts, thinking she was going to come clean with all of them there, and have them just be calm about it?
No one moved. Or seemed to breathe.
He was opening his mouth to suggest they move their little party down to the precinct, when Ciara blurted, “My marriage to Humphrey...it’s not real.”
“What do you mean it’s not real?” Wearing his most intimidating frown, Sean pinned Ciara with a stare similar to the ones the rest of them were nailing into her.
“It’s not legal?” Liam asked.
“It’s legal.” The green eyes looking back at them were filled with emotions Cormac couldn’t immediately decipher. But he didn’t see guilt there.
Worry, though, that was definitely present. “Tell us,” he urged.
What had she gotten his uncle into?
“Humphrey and I...we weren’t in love. He did me a favor by marrying me. It’s a marriage of convenience. We’ve never even slept together.”
So marriages did happen without love. Cormac’s first thought came and went. “What favor did he do for you?” Sean asked, just as Cormac had been about to.
“What trouble did you get him into?” he asked instead.
Damn the woman! She could have told them this from the beginning.
“It’s nothing to do with his disappearance,” Ciara said quickly, eyes wide now as she looked between the four of them. “Believe me, I care about Humphrey a lot. If I thought for one second that...” She shook her head.
“Why don’t you let us be the judge of that?” Liam stepped toward her. Cormac followed suit, but whether it was to restrain his twin if need be, or to help him, he wasn’t sure.
Liam had been seeing Humphrey...relying on him...needing him. He stood to lose more than just an honorary uncle.
“No!” Ciara was crying as she shook her head. “I can’t talk about it right now. It’s...about me...my life. Humphrey did me a favor is all. I’m just... I’m sorry that I took him from you at Christmastime.” She nodded toward the photo album. “You’re a family and...”
She spun around and ran. Seconds later, the living room resonated with the sound of a door closing, followed by the click of a lock.
Looking from one to another of his siblings, Cormac couldn’t find his usual detachment, his unemotional way of viewing the facts to figure out what was real and what was subterfuge.
When Liam moved to follow Humphrey’s young wife, Sean held him back with a hand to his shoulder. “Let her go. We need to look into her more. Discreetly. Which means mostly you, Cormac. Find out what possible reason a marriage to Humphrey would have helped her. Could be as simple as she had to be married to stay in the country.”
Ciara most definitely didn’t appear anything but American. Her dress, her accent, but Cormac got Sean’s take, and agreed with it. “We don’t want to cause more trouble, or draw attention to her or Humphrey, if she hasn’t done anything illegal,” he added, watching while Liam and Eva nodded.
“Not until we know more about what’s going on.” Sean dropped the photo album to the coffee table. Cormac, seeing it sit there, felt another peculiar pang.
He didn’t want to leave their precious memories with Ciara.
But he had no right to take any of Humphrey’s possessions with the man still presumed to be alive.
Nothing that wasn’t pertinent to the case, at any rate.
“I...uh...have a secret to confess as well.” He heard the words. Felt them come up from his throat and out of his mouth.
He had made no conscious, well-thought-out decision to speak them. But he couldn’t seem to stop their rush to escape, either.
Not even when all three of his siblings pinned him with their implacable stares.
“Emily Hernandez’s baby...” They all three nodded, seeming more confused than anything. Not surprising when he caught a glimpse of himself from the outside looking in.
Who was this guy?
“It’s mine.”
A sharp intake of breath came at him. Both of his brothers spoke at once. A “what the hell” and a “no way.” All Cormac focused on was Eva. Eyes wide, mouth open, she stared at him.
Her eyes filled with tears. And she hugged him.
“You and Emily Hernandez?” she squealed, pulling away to look up at him.
Her shock unhinged him a bit. Because it didn’t seem to be about the baby so much as about the woman he’d made it with. Was that what Emily had been talking to him about? The way others would react to them together—the older woman with the younger man? Were people really going to make an issue out of something that mattered not at all?
“I can’t believe this! Emily Hernandez and a baby, but it’s perfect!” Eva said then. “From everything I’ve heard and now have seen in the past couple of days, she’s as much into her work as you are. And as smart and good at it, too. It makes sense that it would take someone like her, as strong as you, to...”
To what? He needed to know.
Instead, he fell forward half a step as Sean clasped his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Gotta admit, I didn’t see this coming, but wow, man, that’s going to be one lucky kid.”
No shock about Emily?
“I pity him if he even thinks about stepping out of line,” Liam said then, giving him a playful punch to the shoulder. “He’ll be the kid with the father who has bionic vision,” his twin continued. “Take it from me, trying to pull things off without you knowing about them is no easy feat.”
What in the hell was Liam talking about? “You did it.”
“Sweating bullets. And only because we were apart enough that I could manage to hide things...until I couldn’t.”
Yeah, Cormac had been instrumental in that part.
But before that? His brother had had to try to keep Cormac from catching on to his illegal missteps? He’d thought Liam had been leaving him clues all along, silently asking for help, and that he’d just missed them all.
“Shut up, you guys,” Eva said. “Cormac’s going to be a wuss as a dad. The best dad ever, but that kid will be walking all over him, you wait and see...”
It was like he’d stepped into a twilight zone. Again. Every day, the world he’d known was becoming more surreal.
No one asked if he and Emily were going to get married. Maybe they assumed it would happen. Maybe they were afraid to find out.
Either way, Cormac got the hell out of there before he could lose any more pieces of the man he knew himself to be.
Or take on any more parts of this guy his siblings saw, but he didn’t.
Eva had had it right when she’d said he was into his work.
Everyone just needed to leave it at that.
Emily had left her file of crime scene photos at the office. She had digital copies on her computer, but the originals were larger than she could print. She’d had them blown up so that she could take them home, pin them on the case board in one of her bedrooms and study them.
They’d only arrived the morning of the abduction and she hadn’t even opened them. She’d also failed to bring the original photos she had for another case—photos that the owner had asked not to be reproduced and to be returned when she was through with them. That case, an abuse case, would be going to trial the following month and she had no idea how long she was going to be cooped up, hiding from a deranged man who thought her baby was magically going to be his.
The absurdity of that thought had her thinking of Eugene Maxwell again. There was no man in her life, no one who’d have even half an idea that she’d want to go out with him, let alone have his baby, and while Maxwell didn’t know that, the man was diabolical in how he’d played his hand with her. Played with her head.
Preying on her where she was most vulnerable.
Because he believed she’d hit him in the exact same place.
So, she figured, in a twisted sense, they were having something together: mental anguish.
She’d texted Cormac to let him know she was going to the office, with police protection, and heard back from him that he was already on his way home, asking that she wait to let him go with her, saving the city a little money, but more, he wanted to talk to her.
Figuring that his conversation was work related, since he was coming from a meeting with his siblings on the Humphrey case, she waited.
She would be lying if she didn’t admit to herself that she’d rather have him protecting her than anyone else. Not so much because he was the father of her baby, but because he was Cormac. He made every job personal. Gave his life to it.
As soon as they were safely ensconced in the private car he’d hired to drive him that day, given the snow and security issues, he rolled up the window between them and the driver and told her about Ciara’s confession.
She’d been right, he’d had news on the case.
Surprising news.
Throughout the drive and the ride up in the elevator to her office, they discussed possibilities. She had several to suggest, for which he thanked her, saying he’d follow up as soon as they got home. It was possible that Ciara’s family had had some means to force her, emotionally, into a marriage she didn’t want. That she’d been seeing Humphrey secretly, and that he’d chosen to marry her to stop the abuse.
That sounded exactly like something Humphrey Kelly would do, he’d said.
So he’d be doing another deep dive on social media some time that night, looking through all of Ciara’s accounts and friend lists.
Which, if she had a couple of thousand friends, which so many people did, would be a hell of a lot of profiles for him to weed through.
And that was good.
Because it meant no time for a repeat of the night before.
Emily had something to talk to him about, too.
She couldn’t have sex with him again until they’d reached a final settlement regarding their immediate future.
She wasn’t into a trying-on stage. Wasn’t sure she could afford the effort.
Or the emotional cost.
She couldn’t take on another breakup.
“I told my siblings about the baby.”
She froze, file in hand halfway pulled out of her drawer, and looked up at him.
She’d told him to do it. But she had thought she’d at least get a heads-up.
And...the look in his eye...like he was...seeking something. Not from her.
But showing her he needed it, maybe?
“Were they supportive?” she asked. What they thought of her didn’t matter to her, but they were his family, his whole life.
“Completely,” he told her, still looking somewhat outside of himself.
His answer shocked her. “They know it’s me having it?”
“Of course. They know you’re pregnant. Sean’s working your case. I told them I was the father of your baby. I didn’t have any plan to do so or I would have warned you. It just happened.”
He didn’t sound defensive. Or even as though he was explaining himself.
More like, needing to know himself why he’d done what he had.
She didn’t have that answer. She hadn’t felt so moved where her own parents were concerned so couldn’t relate.
She envied him, though. Having it done.
She wondered if age differences came up, but she didn’t ask.
Didn’t want to put him on the spot of having to hurt her feelings or worry her, since she was, apparently, the only one of the two of them who even thought the eleven years between them was an issue.
His text app sounded. The same sound he’d been using in early December. And all week long.
He read. Read again.
And glanced up at her, eyebrows raised, as he dialed his phone.
“Sean, yeah, what’s...”
In the silence, she watched expressions chase themselves across Cormac’s face as he listened to his older brother. Set her file on top of the large mailer envelope that contained the crime scene photos she’d come for.
It could be his brother was warning him about getting more involved with Emily. Looking out for his younger brother. Saving him from being trapped by a single woman whose biological clock was almost done ticking.
But more likely, Sean had news pursuant to the Humphrey Kelly meeting the siblings had just come from. Reporting on some action item that had resulted from said gathering.
Whatever news Sean was imparting, Cormac listened intently, frowned a lot. Glanced at her a time or two. After a couple of long minutes, he said, “Yeah, I will, keep me posted,” and hung up.
“Eugene Maxwell is on the loose. They made his cover, but he managed to get away from the officers who saw him. He’s armed with at least two handguns. The warrant came through to search his apartment and they found a spiral-bound notebook explaining why he was doing what he was doing.”
Unable to swallow past the dryness in her throat, looking around the room for a place to hide—or escape—and finding neither, she asked the smart question. The one she didn’t want to hear answered. “And that is?”
“He’s going to kill you, his wife and her current husband. He doesn’t care if he dies in the process. He can’t stand the thought of the three of you living and loving, being happy, while leaving him to clean other people’s trash. He’d lived an honorable, respectable life, fighting hard to get his college degree, to be a good husband, father and extended family member. It all ended when the man who killed his cousin was set free. According to his journal, the man taunted him outside the courthouse the day he walked.”
She had no words. Could see it all as though she’d laid out the case herself.
“We’re to shelter here until further notice,” he said then. The security at the DA’s office is better than anywhere we might try to take you. Court was canceled today due to the storm so there aren’t a lot of people in the area, other than the police presence that is slowly filling in downstairs.”
“He’s coming for me first?”
“That’s what the journal said, but SWAT’s been dispatched to his wife’s home as well. Chances are, he doesn’t know you’re here. But we don’t know how closely he’s been following your movements. Or how, for that matter.”
The man had seen them outside a baby store and they still didn’t know how.
“What if he’s already here? Already inside?” She couldn’t see beyond her four walls and door. No windows into the hallway.
“Then trying to leave would be extremely dangerous.” He told her what she already knew. “All floors are being searched as we speak,” Cormac said, ushering her into her bathroom, locking the door and putting her in the corner behind him. Without another word, or even looking at her, he positioned himself along the wall, to the left of the door, gun raised. If anyone shot through the door, the bullets would miss them both.
And if someone came through the door, Cormac would have a good chance of getting him before he got them.
She knew the facts. Could see them unfolding right in front of her.
And had never felt less in control, or more helpless, in her life.