She hadn’t been in contact with anyone on the team since the previous morning when she’d notified Dallas of her planned rendezvous at the Tipsy Bird following Natalie’s memorial.
The rule was to check in before making contact with the informant, and again following the encounter. She’d done neither.
He’d checked all of the secret forums they used for messages and found nothing.
Unfortunately, there was no point in reporting her missing to the police. Until there was evidence of foul play—and not just a woman who might be out running errands—all the cops would do is enter her in their database. Better to keep her off of law enforcement’s radar unless absolutely necessary. Gretchen’s team operated outside legal boundaries, partly relying on the men they exposed to keep their mouths shut about their suddenly empty offshore accounts and all the taxes they’d failed to pay. If the police started poking around, it put everything Gretchen had built at risk.
Right now there didn’t seem to be anything to gain.
Dallas grabbed his cell phone and tapped Gretchen’s contact, putting the phone on speaker. “Her car’s not here,” he said when she answered. “No one here remembers seeing her.”
His boss sighed. “Okay. Reese finished contacting her family members on file, as well as checking all the hospitals and accident reports in SoCal. No sign of her.”
He wanted to believe that meant Emma was alive and unhurt—maybe Nat’s memorial had put her off her game—but it wasn’t like her to eschew the rules. This time when Nolan put a hand on his arm, Dallas didn’t shake it off. “What’s next?”
“I…don’t know.” Gretchen sounded uncharacteristically hesitant.
It had been a hell of a week for all of them, but their boss had the added guilt of being in charge of the op that had gotten Natalie killed.
Her uncertainty shook him. Through everything they’d faced together, she’d always been the strong one. The rock. She’d lost more than anyone on the team—her smart, beautiful daughter Parker—but she’d turned her grief and anger into the Parker Foundation and the Night Herons, never wavering in her focus, always armed with a plan. She’d become their leader, their mother figure, their refuge. Having met her more than a year after Parker’s death, Dallas had never seen Gretchen be anything other than granite.
“We’ll come back to the bookstore,” Nolan said, filling the awkward gap. “I think someone should alert Jason Chin that Emma’s missing. Let me know if you want me to do it.”
Dallas wanted to hug him for stepping in.
“Do you think there’s any chance she’s hiding from him?” Gretchen asked, her voice strong again.
“Anything’s possible,” Nolan said, “but if that were the case, why hide from us?”
“That’s my take too,” she said. “I don’t want to violate her privacy, but if we don’t learn something soon, I’ll call him.”
“See you in about an hour.” Nolan tapped the screen to end the call and looked at Dallas. “You want me to drive?”
Dallas shook his head and stared at a small chip in the windshield, unwilling to show the other man how emotional he’d become. This team was his whole world. The Night Herons had given him a second chance at life and work, but more than that, his teammates were his family. Losing Nat had been devastating enough, and he’d only just begun to process what it would mean to never see her again. His insides twisted at the reminder. If something happened to Emma, he might not recover.
“Hey,” Nolan said softly, placing his warm hand on the nape of Dallas’s neck. “We’ll find her.”
Dallas swallowed hard and forced back the tears that pricked his eyes.
Nolan’s thumb traced his jaw, eliciting a shiver. “D, look at me.”
Feeling numb everywhere except the growing warmth where Nolan touched him, Dallas finally turned to look at the man whose beauty and—well, everything about him—shone so brightly it almost hurt.
“We. Will. Find. Her. I’ll do everything in my power to make it happen.” Nolan’s dark brown eyes were both warm and determined. “Okay?”
Dallas nodded, heat finally seeping back into his bones.
Nolan leaned in held his gaze. “And I’ll be right here with you. No matter what. I swear.”
Done fighting himself, Dallas closed the gap and kissed him.
Emma woke with a start, pain shooting through her neck as she lifted her head from the thin, lumpy mattress. Damn, that hurt. Her head throbbed and her mouth was dry, and dread pooled in her stomach like acid. She’d felt this way before, the morning after being drugged.
Pushing to her knees, she glanced around the ten-by-ten room, her heart taking off at a sprint. Where was this white-walled nightmare? She was still fully clothed in her stretchy black dress—thank God—but her feet were bare, her ballet flats nowhere in sight, and she had no watch, jewelry, or phone. The only other item in the room was a red plastic bucket and a roll of toilet paper.
Bile rose in her throat.
Sliding off the mattress, which was mercifully stain- and scent-free, she walked on wobbly legs to the room’s grimy window. It revealed that she was on the second floor, inside another, larger building that appeared to be an empty warehouse. There were no visible guards. The floor below was bare concrete, and the structure was corrugated metal, maybe three stories tall with massive overhead lamps that were currently turned off. Dirt-caked skylights provided feeble light.
