Chapter Twenty-Two
Rhett
When Emily got up, I woke up with her, feeling the shifting of her weight in the bed next to me, hearing the faint noises of her moving around in her bedroom and then the living room. I didn’t know why she was sneaking around, but it was clear to me that she was getting ready to leave, and I couldn’t think of any reason she would want to leave in such secrecy at night that made any sense at all.
I had to find out what she was up to. I hated to admit it, even to myself and in the depths of my mind at the time, but there was a little voice in my head that told me that she might have been faking all along, that she might be going to make some deal with her dad, or to meet up with Jacob to tell him what was going on. Maybe she’d gotten cold feet about going against her father, the more certain it became that her father intended to cut her off if she persisted. I couldn’t entirely blame her—but I wanted to know.
I managed to follow at a distance until I was sure of where she was going, which was her dad’s office building. I pulled over into a half-abandoned street, trying to decide how to handle the situation. The fact that she’d gone to the office seemed to indicate that the suspicious voice in my head was right—why would she be there, if not to talk to her father or one of her coworkers? But just because she went there—even if it was to talk to one of them—doesn’t mean that she’s doing it to go back onto their side, I thought, contradicting myself. Otherwise, why would she have asked me to come stay with her? Nothing was making any sense.
I shut off the engine and got out of my truck. I went into the building, looking around to make sure that I wasn’t attracting any attention. In college I’d done a few pranks with friends—never anything too major—so I knew how to sneak around. I made sure the door closed behind me quietly, and then I checked the directory on the wall.
I took the elevator up and asked myself, yet again, what Emily was doing there in the office. Maybe she had just gone into her office to check on things, to see if she could find something that would help us make our case. That would make sense—but then, why wouldn’t she have at least told me about it, or offered to let me come along for company?
I didn’t know. I wanted—I needed—to find out. I got out of the elevator and looked around. A janitor worked hard at cleaning something in another corner of the office, and I tried to think of where Emily’s office would be. I kept quiet, wandering around, keeping to the darker spots of the big open-plan space, looking at the tags on the doors. I turned a corner and heard talking, which gave me my first clue that I was onto something. Of course, I realized as I kept moving toward it, that something could be a completely different situation to the one I’d come to investigate.
But after a moment or two, I started hearing better—well enough to recognize Emily’s voice, and then Jacob’s. My stomach and heart both sank as I started to suspect even more strongly that she’d flipped back over to her father’s side. I almost turned to leave, but something stopped me. I needed to know for sure, before jumping to conclusions. I needed real evidence that she was telling Jacob something that would sabotage my efforts to save my town.
I approached the office slowly, keeping my ears open, straining to hear their low voices.
Instead of hearing Emily talk about betraying me, I caught the end of a sentence that made me certain that I wanted to hear as much as possible, even as it made me more hopeful about Emily herself.
Emily said, “...even though I really should have figured you weren’t even loyal to my dad. The fact that you tried to extort a date out of me—knowing what you’d already done to try and make this happen?”
“Who was the one who brought you onto this project? It was me,” Jacob said, and I scowled at the tone in his voice. “Your dad would never have let you be part of this unless I’d told him it was a good idea. Besides, I would have thought you know better than to throw yourself at some country yokel.”
“This isn’t even about that, first of all,” Emily countered. “This is about the fact that you might have broken the law—in addition to going behind my dad’s back—to make a deal that is unethical on every level.”
“Good luck proving it,” Jacob said.
“I won’t need luck,” Emily told him, and I raised an eyebrow to myself, hovering outside of the office. “I know what I’m looking for—and Dad hasn’t fired me, so I know how to get to it.”
I smiled to myself. Emily had come to the office to look for evidence of something that could help me, not feed information to her father or Jacob to hurt me. I felt bad for doubting her in the first place, although I didn’t blame myself too much. Mostly, I was proud of her, because apparently she’d found something that would make Jacob look bad indeed.
“You need to keep your nose out of things that aren’t your business,” Jacob said, his voice a hiss.
“You need to keep your hands clean,” Emily countered.
“You don’t have anything on me yet, or you would have already called your dad,” he said, almost as if he was trying to convince himself.
“I know what I’m going to tell my Dad, and I know what I’m going to use to prove what I have to tell him,” Emily said.
I heard a movement inside the office.
“Get out of my office, and keep your hands off my stuff,” Jacob told her, and I could hear the tension in his voice. He was pissed.
It was as good a time as any to show myself.
I opened the mostly-shut door and stepped through. Jacob gripped Emily’s upper arms, looking into her face until the creaking of the door hinges made them both look in my direction. I’m not a violent guy, but at just over six feet tall and a bit shy of three hundred pounds—most of that muscle—I definitely could break Jacob in two if I wanted. And seeing him like that, trying to intimidate Emily, his hands on her like that, I definitely wanted to.
“I think you’ll be wanting to take your hands off of her right now,” I told him, keeping my voice calm.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Felt the desire for a nighttime wander,” I said. “Let her go.”
His grip must have loosened, because Emily broke free of him and stepped away, closer to me.
“You okay, Em?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said, barely glancing at me. “Your time is up, Jacob. Whether you want to accept it or not.”
“You don’t have anything,” Jacob said.
I shifted to put myself next to Emily. “If you were so confident of that, you wouldn’t be threatening her. Whatever it was that you did, I’m pretty sure she has some kind of proof, or she wouldn’t have admitted to knowing it.”
“All I need to figure out is how to take what I know Jacob here did, and apply it to our situation,” Emily told me, sounding almost amused now that the tension between her and Jacob, the threat that he’d been making against her physically, was over.
“Let’s get out of here, then,” I suggested. “Meet you back at your apartment?”
“You’re staying behind?” Emily clearly didn’t think that was a good idea.
“I want to have a private little chat with Jakey-boy,” I said with a forced smile. “Nothing too serious. Guy-to-guy stuff.”
Emily rolled her eyes, but she took my point. She left the office, looking just as confident as ever. I turned my attention onto Jacob.
“You’ve got nothing to say to me, Farmer Ted,” Jacob said.
“I do, actually,” I said. “I have something very important to tell you.”
“Fine, go on,” Jacob said.
I waited, listening to see if Emily was far enough away that she wouldn’t hear me. I didn’t think she’d approve of what I had to say to Jacob, but it needed to be said.
Satisfied she was out of earshot, I said in a calm, quiet voice, “The next time I find out you’ve put a single finger on Emily Lewis, I will break that finger into a million tiny pieces. And if you put a hand on her, I will shatter every bone in your goddamn hand. Get where I’m going with this?”
Jacob looked like he was trying to be brave, but I could see the fear in his eyes. “Whatever,” he said, shrugging. “You two just stay out of my office and out of my way and we won’t need to find out if I understand you or not, right?”
I smiled slowly. “Just so long as you understand that touching her will lose you whatever part of your body comes into contact with hers,” I said. “Good night, Jakey.”