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“IT’S BEEN TWO FUCKING DAYS, Santos!” I exclaim as I burst into the diner behind the officer.
“I know, Landon. I’m doing everything I can.”
“Obviously, it isn’t enough. Have you even found Amber? Have you found Charlie? Do we know if he was involved or not?”
“Look,” he starts as he sits in the booth by the window. “I asked you to meet me here as a courtesy. I’m doing everything I can, Landon. I know you’re scared but don’t take it out on me. Okay?”
“You’re right.” Blowing out a frustrated breath, I thread my fingers into my hair and rest my elbows against the Formica tabletop. “I’m going out of my mind, Santos.”
“I know.” He looks up and I see Ralph approach our table from the corner of my eye. “Ralph? Why don’t you join us.” He moves over in the booth and makes room for Ralph to sit, his rounded belly pressing against the side of the table in the cramped booth.
“Here’s some waters, guys.” Alicia places a glass in front of each of us. “Can I get y’all anything else while you’re here?”
“No, thank you,” Santos answers without looking up at her.
I don’t reach for my water. I know it won’t do anything to extinguish the fire raging in my blood. The pain that I’ve been dealing with since Emi was taken from me. The soul crushing guilt of knowing that I didn’t do enough to protect her.
“So,” Santos begins as he pulls a small notepad from his breast pocket. I lower my gaze to the tabletop and pull my lips between my teeth. “We talked to Amber’s mother. Apparently, Amber took her car that morning before coming in to work. She says she doesn’t usually drive to work since she lives only a few blocks away but didn’t think anything of it until she never brought it back. We got the description of the car and put out a BOLO including the tag number. No hits back on it yet.”
Moving my hands to the tabletop, I fist them together nervously as I wait for him to continue.
“We’ve had an officer watching Charlie’s house for the past two days and he hasn’t turned up either. We have no reason to believe, based on what you were able to tell me about Emilee’s past with him, that he’s not involved.”
Lifting my gaze, I watch as he calmly takes a sip of his water. It honestly grinds my gears how calm he can be right now. Ralph and I both are focused on him, waiting for something useful or some good news for once. Pain radiates through my jaw as I clench my teeth together hard enough that I’m afraid they may crack.
“We have a warrant issued for the arrest of both Charlie Tillman and Amber Dickson. But here’s where it gets more interesting.” He taps a finger against the table, and it takes all the self-restraint I can muster not to reach out and snap the digit off his hand. “We weren’t able to find a working cell number for Charlie, but we did get Amber’s from her mother. We were able to pull cell phone records. She had several calls to and from a number for a Melodee Carson on the day that Emilee was abducted.”
“What the fuck?” I gasp as he mentions the name of my assistant. My recently volatile assistant. “What does Melodee have to do with this?”
“That’s what I wanted to know,” Santos continues. “I’ve known Amber my whole life. As I’m sure you have as well since she grew up here too. But I’ve never heard of Melodee Carson. So, I went back to her house and asked her mother. Turns out,” he takes another sip of water and I hold my breath as I wait for his explanation. “Melodee is Amber’s cousin.”
“What?” My hands slap hard against the table causing the water glasses to shake dangerously. Ralph reaches out and sets a hand across his glass and mine, keeping them from tipping over.
“We had a detective in the city pick her up for us. We’re holding her as an accessory at the station right now.”
“Has she said anything? Does she know where Emi is?” I ask desperately.
“She doesn’t,” he says regretfully, his brows furrowed slightly. “She sang like a canary though when we started talking charges. Apparently, she knows that Emilee is Charlie’s stepdaughter. She says that Charlie and Amber have been seeing each other for a few weeks now and that Charlie was seeking revenge for not only Emilee leaving town but for shacking up with you. He has a vendetta against you for him losing his job.”
“God dammit!” I exclaim. I knew when I told Rob to let him go that he was going to cause trouble. But never in a million years did I think he would go to this extreme.
“That’s not all,” he interrupts my self-recrimination. “Apparently, they were on their way to her house but never made it there. She had talked to Amber at one point during the storm that came in that night. She said they were on their way, and she would call again when they got closer, but she never did.”
All I can picture is my Kitten lying in a ditch somewhere between here and Melodee’s house. She’s been gone for two whole days already, there’s no telling what shape she’ll be in if and when they find her. If she’s even alive.
No.
I can’t let myself think that way. She has to be alive. I won’t accept anything less at this point. I’ll never be able to live with myself if my negligence caused her to lose her life. I won’t be able to continue without her. There is no plane of existence where life is worth living if she isn’t in it.
“We have patrols out mapping every route between here and Melodee Carson’s house. We’ll find her, Landon. You have to believe that.”
I don’t respond, just nod my head slowly in agreement.
“She’s too stubborn to give up,” Ralph says as he places a hand across my forearm. “We have to have faith in her ability to survive. She has to know we’re looking for her.”
“Keep your phone on you, Landon.” Santos finishes his water and sets the glass down on the table. I watch him as he places his notepad back in the breast pocket of his shirt before standing. “I’ll call you as soon as I have anything else. We’ll find her.” He places a hand on Ralph’s shoulder then walks toward the door.
“She’s the strongest person I know,” I say. “But I can’t get over the fact that this never should have happened. I never should have brought her back here. I should have had her press charges when she first told me about the abuse that Charlie inflicted on her. There are so many things that I’ve done wrong in this scenario, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.”
“You’re going to have to,” he says harshly, and I lift my gaze to look into his bloodshot eyes, my brows lifting toward my hairline. “She doesn’t need your guilt right now and it won’t help her to heal from any of this. She’s going to need your strength. As much as you’re able to give her.”
“You’re right.”
“Now,” he starts as he slips from the booth. “Get out of here. You look like shit.”
“That happens when you don’t sleep for two days.”
He places a hand on my shoulder as I stand facing him. “That needs to change. You need to be at full strength when they find her.”
“I’ll try.”
He nods before walking back to the kitchen. Efficiently dismissed, I walk out of the diner and toward my car. I haven’t been able to sleep. I haven’t been able to eat. Fatigue is washing over me even as I stand here on the hot sidewalk outside of the diner. But I refuse to give up when I know Emi is out there waiting for me to find her and bring her home.
SITTING ON THE EDGE of the bed in the guest room, where Emi has her mini office set up, my stomach growls angrily. I haven’t been able to eat anything since she was taken from me – I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to keep anything down. I know Ralph says I need to keep my strength up for when she’s found, but I can’t bring myself to live if she isn’t here living with me. It’s not that I couldn’t live without her – it’s that I’m not willing to try.
I’ve never felt as lost and helpless as I do now. Just knowing that she’s out there somewhere, possibly suffering, is enough to bring me to my knees. My entire life has flipped upside down in the course of the past forty-eight hours. Just knowing that Melodee – a woman that I’ve trusted for the past four years – was involved in Emi’s disappearance fills my mind with fury. My skin is practically crawling with the massive amount of anger, and pure unadulterated rage that I have scratching to break free. There isn’t a part of this city that would survive the absolute wrath that I’m itching to release on it. I’d burn the entire world down to find her, to keep her safe. To never let her out of my sight again.
I know I need to get some sleep. I can’t sleep in my bed though – it still smells like her. Stepping out into the hallway, I shuffle my bare feet along the hard wood floor to the living room. My eyes catch on to the pictures hanging on the walls as I wander through my apartment. There isn’t an inch of space that Emi hasn’t touched. Her photographs are hanging on every wall.
Sitting on the center cushion on the sofa, I plant my feet on the coffee table and stare at the three pictures hanging over the mantel. The pictures that my grandmother bought at the Independence library. More reminders of the fucking town that nearly destroyed Emi before I whisked her away from it. The town that took her from me again, knowing that I shouldn’t have ever taken her back there.
My ties to Independence were cut the day I got the call from Rachel that my grandmother’s house had been sold. There was no reason for Emi to ever go back to that town, even for a measly paycheck from the diner. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Charlie was seeking revenge for me having him fired. He would have still found a way to get to Emi, even without me going back to that town. Especially since Melodee was keeping her cousin informed.
Fuck!
It never mattered what I did. I couldn’t have kept her safe. How could I have been so blind and stupid?
Laying my head back, I close my eyes. I’ll just rest here for a few minutes, regain a little bit of my strength. It doesn’t take long for me to slip into a fitful sleep filled with dreams of my Kitten.
In my dream, I see Emi standing in the middle of a field. The closer I get to her, the more I can see how battered and bruised she is, her hair matted to the side of her head as if covered in blood. Her arms hang limply to her sides, her face angled to the ground and her shoulder slumped in defeat as if she’s lost the will to continue. I walk toward her slowly so as not to frighten her despite how my body vibrates with the need to rush to her and pull her against my chest. She lifts her head as I get closer and reaches out to me with one shaky hand. A single tear slides down her cheek, glistening in the soft morning light.
I begin to move faster, desperate to get to her and know that she’s okay but the faster my feet crunch through the grass, the further away she gets from me. She holds her arm out toward me, begging me to reach out and take her hand, but I can’t reach it. “Hurry, Landon,” she begs as her image begins to fade against the sun rising higher and higher behind her. “I need you to find me before it’s too late.” Finally, I reach the middle of the field where she was standing not two seconds prior just as she fades completely. My arms reach out to circle around her waist just as she disappears, leaving my arms and my heart empty and aching.
I jolt awake suddenly, gasping for breath. Morning light is shining through the floor to ceiling windows in the living room, illuminating the room with a blinding light reflecting off the three pictures hanging over the mantel. Wiping my hands beneath my eyes, I’m surprised to find the moisture collecting on my cheeks. It’s a new day and I’m angry with myself for sleeping as long as I did.
It's the beginning of the third day since Emi was taken from me. I know the statistics in missing persons cases enough to know what this means. I’ve read enough true crime in my life to know the chances of her still being alive after the first twenty-four hours are slim. Forty-eight is pushing it.
“Where are you, Kitten?” I whisper into the empty room, my eyes focusing on those three photographs again. “I need you to be okay.”