One Less Bell To Answer [Part 1]
For Captain Swan AU Month and the love of my life Nini. Killian and Emma Jones used to be each other's world. College sweethearts, they've been married for ten years with two children. But their son Henry has gone missing, and it's driving them apart, and down a darker path than ever before. Can they find each other again now? Or ever?
She'd finally done it.
Become one of those moms in the supermarket standing by the corkboard at the front, rummaging through the homemade flyers for Spanish lessons and sofas for sale and rediscover your authentic self with tantric meditation, and looking to see if anyone had torn off strips from the poster, the one she'd stapled up two weeks ago and checked faithfully every day since. Have you seen this child?Her son's fifth-grade class photo, smiling at the camera. Henry David Jones, age ten. Height, 4'11. Weight, eighty pounds. Last seen May twelfth, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, getting off the bus from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, wearing plaid shirt, jeans, and school blazer, carrying a brown backpack. Anyone with information on his whereabouts was urged to contact the Cambridge Police Department straightaway. Beneath were the numbers. Theirs, hers, Killian's. Home and cell.
None of them had been taken.
Emma blew out an unsteady breath, battling her brewing frustration – frustration barely sounded like enough of a word to encompass the feelings that had been raging inside her since her son had vanished into thin air. She'd reported him missing when he was three hours late and none of his friends' parents had called, and had spent every day since savagely second-guessing herself for waiting even that long. The night spent in the police station, trying to arrange a babysitter for Milah, calling Killian at work, not being able to get hold of him (she could never get hold of him these days) being assailed with terrifying statistics about the likelihood of finding a missing child outside the first 24-hour window. Waiting as they compiled a potential witness list and took her statement and decided which detectives to assign. Emma, with a background in the criminal justice system herself, thought there was too much procedural bureaucratic bullshit slowing it down, was half tempted to call some of her old contacts, see if they could put out tendrils in the underworld. But when she mentioned it to the police, they'd firmly shut her down. No sense letting anybody know that they were onto them. Had to keep potential suspects off their guard.
Off their guard. Her son might have been kidnapped by a child sex trafficking ring, or some weirdo who had him chained up in the basement, or a bored teenager out for jollies, and the police cared about making sure the culprits were happy? If Emma had had her say, they would know that they had the wrath of Khan coming down on their asses and be running fucking terrified. She was a mama bear. The time when Milah was five and some dirty old man tried to pull the "I've got candy in the truck" trick. . . by the time Emma was done with him, he was begging her not to call the cops and crying and trying to tell her about his terrible childhood. She'd ignored him, of course. Had the blue take him away in handcuffs. You did not mess with her children. Full stop. The end.
Only now, of course, someone had. And there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.
Emma knuckled her hand across her face, doubtless leaving a black streak of eyeliner across her cheeks. She tugged at the shopping cart and then groped for her daughter's hand. She'd used to be fairly easygoing about letting Milah play outside by herself, but now she felt her throat closing up, her world shutting down, if she was out of sight for more than a minute. The eyes of the public felt like ants crawling on her skin. Did they know just by looking at her, that her child was missing? That she might become the sad person they'd see on true crime shows ten years from now, railing about the authorities had mishandled the case and refusing to believe that her son was gone?
"Mama?" Milah looked at her worriedly. "Are you okay?"
Emma swallowed. "I'm fine, baby."
Milah regarded her big brother's Missing poster hopefully. "Is Henry going to come home soon?"
"Yeah," Emma said, lying through her teeth. Milah was seven, she understood what was going on. She knew that her mother was down at the police department every night, that a detective had been by to dust their townhouse for potential fingerprints, that both Emma and Killian had had to endure hours of questioning so they could be ruled out as suspects. Like they were really the kind of people who would snuff their son for the hell of it. But just as when a wife went missing, they questioned the husband first, when a kid went missing, they had to grill the parents first. Apparently they'd satisfied the BPD that they weren't sadistic homicidal murderers masquerading as well-adjusted middle-class urban professionals. Assholes.
"I miss him," Milah said sadly. "Where do you think he is?"
"I wish I knew. Believe me. More than anything. Come on."
Milah trotting behind her,Emma shoved the cart through the glass doors and into the parking lot, out to the car. She really needed to think about shopping for a new one; she'd been driving the old yellow Bug since college, and as it was at least fifteen years older than her, its departure to the great junkyard in the sky had been imminent for some time. But her entire world had gone on pause since her son's disappearance. She couldn't just page through blue books or and casually talk about leather interiors or improved gas mileage. Sometimes she could barely even get out of bed. Milah, she reminded herself. She still had to keep it together for Milah.
As for Killian. . . it would be nice to see him for more than five minutes at breakfast before he ran out and wasn't seen for the rest of the day. She'd never envisioned being a stay-at-home mom. But his job as an acquiring editor for Harvard University Press kept them comfortably well off, and it wasn't really prudent for her to be beating holy hell out of bail-jumpers with two – one, God – young children at home. June Cleaver. She'd chafed more and more at that idea, kept wanting to be something more. Couldn't help wondering if this was a punishment. A sign.
Emma's mouth vanished into a grim white line as she drove home through the leafy streets of Cambridge, kids playing on the steps or in the backyard; almost all of them were out for the summer. Looking at her husband, you might never even know their son was missing. Looking at her husband, you might not even remember the rest of them existed.
From the moment she met Killian Jones, Emma had been afraid that she was biting off more than she could chew. It was when they were both attending Boston College, him the BMOC, a confession-blog-caliber hot and charming Irish exchange student who had everyone wrapped around his little finger within an hour of setting foot on Chestnut Hill. He was doing his junior year abroad from University College Dublin, while she was a shy and socially maladroit freshman from – well, nowhere particularly. She'd aged out of the foster care system at eighteen, and was living with her boyfriend, Neal Cassidy, in a crummy apartment in Dorchester. They were a pair of troubled kids who clung to each other, not above robbing the occasional convenience store when they didn't have money for both food and rent, and it had taken a stern talking-to from the dean of students, who caught Emma lifting something at the Eagle Café, for her to really understand that if she wanted to get ahead in life, the five-finger discount had to stop. She'd worked her ass off in an undistinguished city high school to get into BC in the first place, and she decided that no thanks, she wasn't interested in coughing it up. Both this and her meeting with Killian had hastened the death knell of her relationship with Neal.
Not that she'd taken one look at Mr. I-Have-An-Irish-Accent-Perma-Stubble-And-Perfect-B lue-Eyes-I-Can-Hear-Your-Panties-Dropping and decided it was true love. Far from it. She'd spilled her drink on him in the dining hall, which was such a clichéd way to meet cute that she determinedly avoided him for the next three weeks. But something about that, her stubborn standoffishness, when normally he had girls throwing themselves at him from every point of the compass, intrigued him. He was even more persistent than her in chasing her down, getting her name and number, no many times she tried to blow him off. As if a girl like her had a chance with a guy like him. He'd just use her and lose her. After a childhood in which she was nothing more than a state-sponsored meal ticket for a long succession of dysfunctional-at-best foster families, Emma Swan was extremely wary of anything that looked too good to be true.
Still, Killian won her over. The more they got to know each other, the more they understood each other. She reminded herself that they had no future together, that he was returning to Ireland at the end of the year, would graduate and get a job over there and meet someone else. Until he announced casually that he was going to transfer here and finish up his degree at BC. He'd do that. He'd do that for her. For once in her life, someone wasn't going to leave her behind.
That, to say the least, rocked Emma's world. From there, no matter how hard she tried to put the brakes on it, the harder and faster she'd fallen for him. And he, for some inexplicable reason, was completely crazy for her. Breaking the hearts of the entire undergraduate female population, Killian Jones became a one-woman man. He squired her to football games, to parties, to campus events, to social functions. She was afraid that they were on the verge of becoming one of those couples spoken about in the same breath, KillianandEmma, where you didn't bother inviting only one of them because you knew the other would turn up too. She told him she needed space.
Still more surprisingly, he gave it to her. He backed off. But he didn't date anyone else, even though he had more than ample opportunity. He waited for her.
And she, for her part, had never loved anything or anyone in her life more than she loved him.
Eventually, she had to admit it. That she couldn't exist without him. That for a tough, strong, independent young woman who'd spent her entire life without anyone to hold her hand, who could kick ass and take names with the best of them, without him she was incomplete. They just functioned better together, a team. The world made more sense with him. Everything did.
Killian graduated, got a job in Boston, stayed around. She had been planning to study abroad herself, but ended up doing all four years at BC because she didn't want to leave him, afraid he'd have vanished into thin air if she did. He popped the question on her senior night, and they were married that summer, in a simple but elegant ceremony at the seaside. Henry was born eight months later, a fact that likely hadn't gone unnoticed. Milah, three years after.
For most of her adult life, therefore, Emma had operated as one half of a tightly coordinated duo. She and Killian hadn't had many friends; aside from the fact that she didn't trust many people, she never felt the need. They were each other's friend, rival, partner, confidante, soul mate, lover, everything. The sex with him was mind-blowing. They'd started a few months after they met, in what was supposed to be a no-strings-attached one-night stand so she could get him out of her head, and never stopped. They never went more than a few days without. They'd done it on the beach, in the car, in the movie theater, a thousand other places where the possibility of being caught was half the thrill. And just as much or more in their own bed at home, waiting to make sure the kids were asleep, happily rocking each other's world. None of the perfunctory nookie-on-a-schedule. If Emma usually had that just-got-laid glow, it was completely authentic. She and Killian adored each other, and each other's bodies, and weren't shy about expressing it however they pleased. Toys and fantasies and kink. He had a thing for handcuffs and leather. Roleplay where he was a dark and dashing pirate captain and she was his saucy blonde wench, the spoils of conquest. Or where she was a ruling princess and he was her captive. They went back and forth at domination and going on top. If you could think of it, they'd done it.
And yet, it wasn't just sex. They truly were each other's world. She had never needed anyone, would never need anyone, the way she needed him. And yet. . . and yet. . .
More and more since Henry's disappearance, and the way Killian had all but vanished from the face of the earth, Emma had begun, hauntingly, to wonder if she loved her husband too much. If she'd given up too much for him, if the way they depended on each other had become sick, unhealthy, unsustainable. She was doing everything, being everything for Milah, and she wasn't getting a damn bit of support from him. As if their life together had been charmed, until it wasn't. And when this one pillar came down, the rest of the temple came with it.
She didn't know if that was the only cause, or if she should look for another, if she wanted there to be another. The facts were inescapable. Since Henry's disappearance, she and Killian had become all but strangers, roommates who barely had a word to say to each other, or passive-aggressively baiting each other when they did. As if they could no longer even stand the sight. If he was going to leave, she just wished he'd go. Not even bother to come home. Stay at a hotel. Spare that daily agony of silence and missed opportunities and broken hearts.
Drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, Emma had to suddenly slam on the brakes as a gang of preteen boys ran out in front of the Bug, giggling. She swore under her breath, heart racing. Maybe losing her own son should have made her feel more guilty about these things, but all she could think about was how their mothers didn't have to worry about their punk-ass prepubescent offspring, because she'd stopped in time. These kids were fine. Bastards.
Stewing, she turned down their tree-lined avenue. Parking wasn't quite as much at an unobtainable premium here in Cambridge as it was in the Back Bay or Beacon Hill, but it was still pretty rare to find a spot on the street, and their driveway, seeing as they lived in a townhouse, was shared with their neighbors. And just to cap off this day, someone had taken her usual place, someone –
Wait. Killian. It was Killian's car.
"Oh, now he comes home before nine PM?" Emma growled, not quite under her breath, as she made another circuit of the block. Finally she waited as a minivan was pulling out across the street, then nipped neatly parallel into its spot and jerked the brake. She turned to Milah and took a deep breath. "Can you run into the house and get your dad to help with the groceries, please?"
Milah obediently scuttled, and Emma began hauling out the plastic sacks. She had carried the first load up and into the kitchen, dropping them with relief on the island, and was about to go out for another by the time Milah reappeared. "He says one second."
Emma shrugged, went back to the car, got another load, and carried it in. Then the third, which also happened to be the last. She was just shoving the vegetables into the crisper when Killian appeared in the doorway, running a hand through his rumpled dark hair. "Needed help, lass?"
"Nice of you to drop in," Emma said acidly. "It's all right, I've gotten it taken care of. Now."
He looked confused. Clearly, he hadn't been expecting to run into a wall of wifely aggression on first appearance. "Emma – look, I've got the rest of the afternoon off, I thought we could – "
"So if they hadn't explicitly sent you home, you'd still be there, huh?" Emma jerked the fridge open and began throwing things in the drawer. "You know what, actually. I think I've got this. How about you get back and do whatever important stuff I interrupted you from?"
"Emma." He took a step. "I think we need to talk."
"Now?" Her voice was almost a scream. She didn't want to do this, she didn't want to come apart, but it was too late. "Yes, Killian. We need to talk. In fact, we needed to talk two weeks ago. I've needed you, I have needed you so terribly, and where have you been? Hiding at work like you're a vampire and the sunlight might fucking kill you. I've been completely by myself holding this together, I don't think I'd even see you at all if the police hadn't needed to talk to both of us! And you're just going to – "
"Emma, I've been doing my damndest, all right? I've been getting in contact with old friends of mine, seeing if I can't put the bastards who took our son on their bloody – "
"Oh, you mean what the cops just told me not to do? Get a big neon sign and announce to them that we're coming?" Emma's fist clenched on the refrigerator door. "That's great, Killian. That's really great. Brownie points for you. But instead of single-mindedly hunting down the perpetrators and planning to take total vengeance, maybe you should have – "
"Really?" One dark eyebrow went up and cocked, and his accent became lower, broader, rich and lethal, a sure sign that his temper was about to go off with a bang. "Really, love? You're going to find fault with me now for fighting to find Henry the only way I know how? I've not just been sitting on my arse at work, you know. I've been making calls, meetings, I – "
"Really?" she echoed. Her own voice was getting higher and higher, strained. "And yet you never told me any of this? You just let me think you were off hiding, running away from me, our family, when instead you were, I don't know, organizing this entire black-market investigation? You probably haven't told the cops a thing about it, have you?"
"The police don't need to know, they'll do it their way and I'll do it my way – and since when have you known me to avoid what – "
"I'm not a mind-reader, Jones!" She slammed the cupboard shut so hard that it rattled and whirled to face him, cheeks blazing. "Don't you dare blame me for thinking you'd just cut and run! I'm sure the Boston police are real appreciative of all this! If we could just find the people who did it and take them down, that would be great, wouldn't it? But the law doesn't work like that, the world doesn't work like that, and now that you've gone behind my back and undermined our entire – "
"I don't think you'd be saying that if I'm the one to – "
"Yeah, you're such a hero, you're a big man, you – "
They were almost nose to nose, screaming, and it was only in the echoes that Emma heard the crying from the doorway. Milah was standing there, staring at them. Her long dark curls were in her face as she cringed against the wall, then turned and ran.
Killian and Emma stared at each other for a moment longer, then backed away as if in the presence of highly charged explosives. "All right," he said grimly. "For the welfare of us both. . . Emma. . . I think we need to take a break."
"What?" The word felt like a grenade launcher through the chest. "What?"
An ugly sneer lifted his lip, turning him into someone she had never seen before. "I think we need separate spaces. That's what you want, isn't it? Me to butt out and stop fucking up whatever it is you're doing, though I'm not quite sure, to get Henry back and – "
"No!" she screamed. "You son of a bitch! How dare you imply that I'm not doing everything I can to find him and bring him home! I wanted you with me, I wanted us together, I wanted us facing this as a team – but you know what. If that's what you want, feel fucking free. Get out. Get out right now."
He remained staring at her, that sneer still locked in place, a dark and violent and dangerous man, a stranger, until she wondered in that mad instant just who she had married, who she was sharing her life with, who she had just lost. Then, with the maximum of icy courtesy, he gave her a stiff little bow, like an old-fashioned gentleman. He left the kitchen, and she heard him going upstairs, pausing to say something in a deep reassuring rumble to Milah. Footsteps thumping around their bedroom. He came back down a few minutes later with a packed suitcase and his computer bag slung across his shoulder. "Well," he growled. "If you're going to beg me on your knees not to leave, lass, now's the time."
"I'm not getting on my knees for you ever again." She couldn't decide whether to put as much space between them as possible, or close the distance and slap him. She had never wanted to hurt someone as much as she wanted to hurt him. Never wanted to hold him so hard. To just fly apart and shatter. "In fact, I don't think I want to see you ever again."
He jerked as if she had in fact stabbed him. Then he wheeled around. "I'll get a hotel room downtown," he informed the ceiling, in a cold, dead voice. "If that's what you want, lass, no point getting in the way. I'm sure I can find the name of a good lawyer for you."
And with that, he pulled the front door open, stepped through it, and jerked it shut behind him so hard that the glass pane broke into a thousand pieces.
Emma slid down the wall to the kitchen floor and started to cry.
It was exactly how she didn't want to deal with the situation, the last she would have expected or tolerated of herself. What she should have done was to run out after him and slash his tires. No. No, she shouldn't. She should have tried to call him back for a civil and rational adult discussion. No. Fuck the bastard. Oh God, she didn't mean it. She needed him, her other half, her soulmate and partner. She was nothing without him. But no. She was a grown-ass independent woman who was not going to fly to pieces over a man. Even if it was her husband and the father of her children and the love of her life who'd just walked out that door and –
Her spinning thoughts wouldn't stop. Her shoulders shook as she silently wept. She buried her face in her hands, trying to compose herself, and went completely and beyond all get-out to pieces, until she heard a patter of footsteps in the doorway. "Mama?" Milah said tremulously. "Mama, please, please don't cry. Please don't. You're making me sad."
Emma choked down another gulping gasp and wiped her eyes, hating herself for making her daughter even more upset. "I'm sorry," she croaked. "I'm sorry, baby. I just. . . I just. . ."
Milah eyed her worriedly. "Daddy's coming back, isn't he? He's not vanishing like Henry, is he? I heard you yelling and you were really angry."
Emma's throat closed. "I. . . sometimes. . . sometimes adults say bad things and they don't always mean all of them, okay? He loves you and he'd never leave you. We just both really want to find your brother and things got a little. . . overheated."
Milah, reassured, sat down next to Emma and put her head on her mother's shoulder. Emma put an arm around her and inhaled a jagged breath, one and then another, as somehow, even now, the world kept turning. They sat like that for some time. Then, out in the foyer, the front door opened and footsteps crossed the hall.
Emma's pulse began to speed up, and she scrambled upright, not wanting Killian to find her like this, not looking as wrecked as she felt – she'd meet him on her own terms, not huddling in the corner. He could damn well apologize, but she'd forgive him, fess up herself, and then they'd –
"Oh my God," said Ruby Lucas, viewing the scene with some concern. "Is everything okay?"
Oh. Emma tried to control the sensation as if the bottom of her stomach was crashing out. She'd almost forgotten. Ruby, her neighbor from down the street and one female friend, came over every day around this time to babysit Milah while Emma went to the police precinct headquarters and got updated on the Henry situation. Ruby was a bit flighty and tended to teach Milah about things she was much too young for, like Sex and the City and Friends and makeup and boys, but she had a heart of gold, and had rearranged her entire schedule at the diner where she waited tables in order to be available in the evenings. At the moment, she was looking worried, platform heels clicking on the parquet as she knelt down. "Emma? What's wrong?"
Emma gently urged Milah to her feet and told her to run upstairs and find some toys to play with for tonight. When she was sure that her daughter was gone, she turned back to Ruby and said shakily, "I don't know if Killian and I just split up."
"Oh my God!" Ruby said again. Both hands flew to her mouth. "What happened?"
"It was. . . I don't even know. It was some little thing and then it just blew up in our faces, everything we've been avoiding, everything we. . ." Emma could feel tears pricking her eyes again. "We said some pretty horrible things to each other and then he said we needed to take a break, just out of the blue, and I screamed at him that if he thought that, to get out and he. . . did. I don't even know what just happened. I feel like. . . I don't even. . . I don't. . ."
Ruby put a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed. "Oh no. You and Killian didn't break up. Really. I mean, you're the couple that if you can't make it, what hope is there for the rest of us? People don't get divorced just because of a fight! He'll come around."
Emma flinched. Divorced. It lay there like a live grenade, heavy and horrible in the air, something she hadn't wanted to think about, much less acknowledge. But what if that was what he meant, what he wanted, when he said they needed a break, that he'd try to think of a good lawyer? "I just. . . with Henry gone, now him. . . I can't do this, Ruby. I cannot lose my family!"
"Shhh. It's okay." Ruby, looking alarmed, crouched down next to her. "You know, I read a study about this. How parents of missing children often become estranged and have problems in their relationship because they're having trouble dealing with the guilt and the feelings of betrayal and things like that. So I think you just have to deal with it and try to make the best of it and maybe let him spend tonight at the hotel to cool down and call him tomorrow? He'll probably feel as horrible about it as you. I know you both want what's best for Henry. I know it's really hard all around. But it'll be all right. I promise."
At that, Emma's eyes welled with tears again, but for a different reason. "Thanks, Ruby. I'm so sorry. I just. . . I didn't expect. . ."
"Of course not," Ruby said comfortingly. "Nobody wants to deal with their son vanishing and their husband leaving them in the same two weeks. I mean come on! Throw a girl a bone! But you just go down to the station and maybe get a drink on the way home if you need to, and then call Killian tomorrow. Okay?"
"Sure." Emma rubbed her eyes and got to her feet, grabbing her purse and keys, just as Milah came trotting back downstairs. Emma gave her daughter a brief kiss on the head and a brave smile, then headed outside, into the almost-summer evening.
It smelled so luscious. So green. So hopeful.
She had never felt so utterly hopeless.
As usual, the precinct captain had nothing new to report. No leads had turned up, the school bus driver hadn't changed his story once and definitely was above suspicion, nobody associated with the case seemed to have a tip or a sudden return of memory, and there hadn't been any sudden activity in some of the child-trafficking rings they had undercover plants in. They were of course continuing to review all potential avenues, and felt certain there'd soon be a break. They continued to caution her against doing anything reckless.
Reckless. As Emma walked out of the station, that was in fact the only thing she felt like doing. Wanted more than ever to damn the torpedoes. Maybe she should call Killian now, see if he'd forgiven her yet, if she'd forgiven him, they could hunt Henry together. . . but if he hadn't walked out on her for daring to ask that he be with her, he'd have known about this himself. She owed him jackshit. If he really cared about their children, if he really cared about her, he had a funny God damn way of showing it. Milah was already terrified that her father wouldn't return, that their family would be broken apart for good. . .
Emma's lips set. She had started on her way back to the car, but instead she veered around and started to walk. It didn't take her more than two blocks to find a good bar; Cambridge, a college town to the core, never fell down on the job when it came to supplying booze. It was still fairly early, and the stools were mostly empty. She slid into one and ordered the first stiff drink that came to mind. To fight her feelings of guilt, she reminded herself that Ruby had encouraged her to do this if she needed a little liquid therapy, that she'd only have one and then go home.
It grew darker. The bar slowly began to fill up as Emma continued to sit there, staring into her glass, nursing it down a few sips at a time. She dug out her phone and thumbed a quick text to Ruby, letting her know she might be late, and then hesitated, wondering if calling Killian here, now, was a good idea. She desperately wanted to hear his voice, she craved it, but –
"Well, well, dearie. That's quite a long face. Something the matter?"
Emma's hackles raised, her spine stiffened. She didn't recognize the voice, thought it was some lame attempt to flirt with her – she hadn't gone for the losers in bars in, well, forever – and angrily held up her left hand, with its wedding band and the diamond engagement ring, even as she currently wanted to punch the man who had given it to her. "Married. Buzz off."
"Oh no. I think you misunderstand my intentions." This guy – weirdo – slid onto the stool next to hers. He was short and slight, with shaggy brown-grey hair and a soft Scottish accent. "My name's Robert Gold. I'm the sort of man who deals with difficult problems. And you're having quite a problem, aren't you, Mrs. Jones? Missing lad and all?"
Emma jerked upright and stared at him, wondering if she might have to whip some of her old bail-bondswoman skills out of the bag if he got any creepier. "How the hell do you know my name?"
"I've seen your boy's face on the news, you know. It's been quite a case. And I have a soft spot for parents missing their children. My own son ran away from home, you know, a long time past. I still miss him." Gold laid both hands flat on the bar. "I'd like to help you, Mrs. Jones."
Emma stared at him narrowly. "Why?"
He tipped one shoulder in the masterpiece of a dismissive shrug. "I understand that some years ago, you may have known a man by the name of Neal Cassidy?"
Hearing her ex-boyfriend's name was even more of a shock that Emma had anticipated. How much digging has he done into my past? Again, hoping very much that her discomposure didn't show on her face, she repeated, "Why?"
Gold shrugged again. "I want to find him. You want to find your boy. I think we can both work for each other. Don't you agree it might be possible?"
"I literally met you five seconds ago and you're asking me if you can snap your fingers and succeed where the entire city of Boston police force is drawing a blank? Here's the thing, I don't make a habit of going around taking life advice from sketchy men I meet in bars. I don't know anything about you. Who you are or what you – "
With a brief, economical motion, Gold palmed a plain white business card into her hand. "You may have heard of me. By day, I'm a family practice attorney. Tax plans, business succession, inheritance disputes, divorce. My rates are very reasonable and – yes, Mrs. Jones? All of a sudden you look rather troubled."
"Of course I'm fucking troubled, you asshat," Emma said through her teeth. "My son is missing."
Gold made a reproachful = noise. "That's not at all the way to speak to someone who's interested in making a deal with you. Here all by yourself, drowning your sorrows. . . you wouldn't be if the search was going well, would you? And you're here without your husband. My keen sense of things – strictly professional, of course – is that you're sailing bumpy waters, so to speak. Are you quite sure that you're not at all interested in my services?"
Emma hesitated. She wanted to throw her drink in his face and tell him he was nuts and should never contact her again, but she was at her wit's end. The police had no idea where Henry was, Killian had walked out on her, Milah was terrified, and so was Emma. Of losing their family. Of losing everything. She was staring down a very long and dark and deep rabbit hole, and she had no idea how deep it went. She'd probably heartily regret this in the morning, but that was later. Tonight, alone and abandoned and angry and heartbroken, she had to take matters into her own hands.
She blew out a breath. Then picked up her drink and polished off the dregs in one long, burning slug.
"All right," she said, low and rasping. "I'm listening."