A/N: We're back. Doubt monsters have been vanquished, a couple of days off work have been mercifully acquired, and the fridge is loaded with cola. All an aspiring fanfic author needs, really.
9. Breadcrumbs - Part One
Emma wasn't exactly sure what it was that David did or did not say to Jefferson Dodgson, plausible deniability and all that. All she knew was that a check showed up in their mailbox by the following week, and it cleared by Friday. And so Jones Investigations limped on for another week, and Emma could pay her rent through until December.
She missed her apartment. She missed her super fast internet, and her bathtub, and her easy proximity to Granny's. She even missed her dead fern. It's not that she didn't appreciate Killian putting her up. She did. She really did. But there was certainly something to be said for waking up in the morning without a tiny dog lapping at your face like it was an ice cream cone.
It was the breakfasts that really kept her there. That and the fact her apartment still didn't have heat. But it was mostly the breakfasts.
Killian, by his own admission, was not exactly a master chef. Having been raised by his older brother, who was barely more than a teenager himself at the time, his culinary adventures growing up had been limited to bowls of Rice Krispies, and an ungodly amount of something called "beans on toast". Together with Emma's enduring love affair with Pop-Tarts, they made quite the pair. Dinner most nights was cold Thai takeout or a pizza dug out of the freezer. They'd sprung for delivery on Thanksgiving, in between devouring every Jimmy Stewart classic in Killian's paltry, albeit alphabetized, DVD collection. The man didn't even have Netflix, for god's sake.
But breakfast? That was a skill Killian had cultivated over time. He'd probably learned it to please Milah, when she'd moved in and he'd found her palate ever so slightly more refined than his previous roommate's, but even if that were the case, Emma was happy to reap the rewards. And boy, did she reap them. Every morning, after she awoke to her giddy canine companion lapping at every inch of her exposed skin, and after she dragged herself into the bathroom to wash up, she would emerge to a veritable feast laid out in readiness.
The man couldn't so much as peel a potato, but eggs were a whole other matter. Scrambled. Fried. Poached. Fucking frittatas. If it had eggs in it, and could be cooked over a stove in less than ten minutes, there it would be, piled high on a plate as she took a seat, a cup of steaming coffee slid towards her by a smirking Englishman.
Emma couldn't deny it. She could get used to this.
August had been the cook between the two of them, but with the unsociable hours he kept, breakfasts had always been much more on-the-go affairs. A breakfast burrito at her desk in the newsroom. A muffin scarfed down in the back of a cab in between interviews. This thing with Killian seemed a lot more, dare she say it, civilized. Though he was an early riser, and never managed to look half so bedraggled in the mornings as she did, she was glad to find he never tried to force breakfast conversation. They shared a comfortable silence as they both ate and read the latest news, him with his subscriber copy of the Globe, her browsing Twitter on her phone. There was an unspoken agreement that Emma would load the dishwasher after, and clear away the condiments. In short, it made for a scarily domestic scene, one which would have scared Emma half to death if it had been with any one else. But after near two months of living with the guy, she thought was coming around to understanding the way he operated.
He wasn't quite like her. He didn't get obsessive, or fly off half-cocked, chasing down some half-baked lead, breakfast an inconvenient afterthought. Everything he did, he approached methodically, purposefully. Plans were drawn up, considered, and executed, in that order. Who knew when he woke up, but breakfast was hot on the table every morning at 7, and he would have already walked Smee and showered before then. He'd be in the office by 9, and unless he was off on a stake-out, when 5 rolled around, he'd be out the door for his evening pint at the Rabbit Hole before the stupid old fashioned clock he kept tacked up behind his desk had even finished chiming.
One might say it was a boring way to live. Emma might have said that. But it was stable, for the most part, thieving secretaries notwithstanding. She had to give it that. Stability was not something Emma had ever known much about, but Killian had it in spades.
So when she awoke one otherwise unremarkable Thursday morning, her face suspiciously free of dog saliva, and the apartment silent of the usual morning cacophony of the exhaust fan over the stove and the tell-tale clattering of cutlery, she knew something was up. Creeping out into the kitchen, still clad only in the over-sized sweatshirt she wore to bed, holding the hem down at her sides in case she encountered anyone, she saw no signs of life. Not even Smee. It wasn't until she made the inevitable trek to the coffee maker that she saw the note, stuck to the counter beside the still-warm pot.
Swan,
Took Smee to stay with a friend. Delicate case. Best if I handle it alone. Enjoy the day off.
K
And then below that, in a messier scrawl, almost as an afterthought,
P.S. There are some bear claws in the freezer. Preheat oven. 10 minutes or so at 350 degrees. Try not to set the place on fire.
That was new. Not the feeding part, that was kind of part and parcel of the whole overbearing boss/friend/roommate dynamic they had going on. But the day off? And delicate? What did that even mean? Two days ago she had literally sat by as Killian had told a woman that her husband had been conducting an affair behind her back with her own sister, and then handed her the pictures to prove it. Hell, Emma had been the one who'd had to go to the store to stock up on Kleenex again after.
And why couldn't Smee be around? She had the day off. She was perfectly capable of dog-sitting for the day.
Emma was only half way through her first pastry when she decided to do what she did best, and snoop around. Some time between 11pm the night before, when Killian had shuffled off to bed with a weary wave in her direction, and 6am that morning, something had come up. Something big.
She checked the usual places first. The answering machine. The notepad by the phone. She even hacked into the Jones Investigations voicemail with the code he didn't know she knew. Nothing of note. With only a tiny flash of guilt, she cracked open his bedroom door, unsurprised to find his room in a state of cleanliness that bordered on anal. Not too willing to uncover his secret porn collection, or whatever it was that guys kept under their mattresses, she kept her search as non-invasive as possible, keeping it to what she could find in plain sight. Never had she been so thankful for his analog ways, when she spotted the notepad by the bed. The first page was unmarked, by there were slight indentations in the paper, from when he had written the proceeding note. With some careful shading, Emma had the contents of the previous note.
Michael Tillman?
The name meant nothing to her, but the one written below it certainly rang a bell.
Dory Zimmer.
And suddenly, Killian's secret squirrel actions were beginning to make a lot more sense, in hindsight.
Emma was halfway up the stairs to Jones Investigations when the inner door to the office flew open, a well-heeled woman stepping out onto the landing, fiddling with the clasp to her designer coat. When she saw Emma ascending, she froze in her motions, eyes widening like a deer caught in the headlights.
Dory Zimmer looked thinner than she had on TV. Paler. The dark circles under her eyes were more prominent, the furrow in her forehead deeper. It was picture she formed within the space of a second, before Emma quickly averted her gaze, appearing as uninterested in the woman as possible as she passed her by, not even appearing to give her a second look.
It seemed to work, as out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman visibly relax, before making her swift escape onto the street. Emma sighed with relief. Whatever had brought her to their door, and Emma had her suspicions about that, she had no desire to compromise her wish to keep her visit on the down low. And when someone with money went with a nobody firm like Jones Investigations, they were always wanting to keep things on the down low.
Emma let herself in, the sound of the door slamming shut behind her, startling Killian from where he sat regarding his computer screen through tired eyes. "Ah, and here was I thinking you'd be halfway into a Gilmore Girls marathon by now," Killian said by way of greeting, straightening in his chair.
"No, you didn't," she countered, perching on the end of his desk, and pulling off her gloves, finger by finger. "Otherwise you wouldn't have gotten someone else to mind your dog."
"No, I didn't," he agreed with a weary sigh, rubbing his face in his hands in an attempt to seem more awake, and only succeeding in looking even more disheveled than before. "But you can't fault a man for trying."
"So," Emma began. "Who's Michael Tillman?" Nothing like just tearing off the Band-Aid.
His eyes narrowed immediately, accusingly. "You and I are really overdue a conversation about boundaries, Swan."
She didn't argue that point, shrugging out of her coat and draping it over one of the chairs by his desk set aside for visitors. It was still warm to the touch when she collapsed onto it, tucking her feet underneath her. "You mean a conversation, like the one we already had about you not being an overprotective ass?"
If anything his eyes narrowed further, but Emma didn't blink. They held each others gaze for a long moment, but Emma was first to break the silence. "Okay... so why don't you start with Dory Zimmer? What does she need with Jones Investigations? Doesn't she already have an entire task force at her disposal?"
She did. Because when an eleven year old white girl from one of Boston's most exclusive enclaves disappears from her bedroom in the middle of the night without a trace, you can bet that the police are going to be on that like white on rice. That's where Emma knew Dory Zimmer from. The televised press conference with the family. Mom. Dad. Twin brother. All dressed in their most somber-looking designer outfits, delivering a tearful plea for her safe return. It had been the top news story in the nation for the past three days. Little Ava Zimmer, somehow spirited away from her cookie-cutter family in their cookie-cutter mansion, all without anyone seeing a thing. It was the kind of crime which ripped at the very heart of the American dream, was how one TV pundit had colorfully put it.
And though Emma knew Killian to be a competent enough investigator, she wasn't sure what he would bring to the table that a roomful of police detectives, with all of their resources, couldn't.
"Killian?" she prompted, when her first query went unanswered, rising to her feet to lean over his desk. "This isn't just an all-hands-on-deck situation. I saw how skittish Mrs Zimmer was just now, worried someone might see her leaving. There's more to this. And like it or not, I'm here to help. So spill."
To say that Killian looked put-upon was putting it mildly. "You're really not one for minding your own business, are you?" he said shaking his head, but Emma could see his resolve slipping.
"You're only just now figuring that out?" she teased. And when she saw the corner of his lips twitch into a smile, and she knew she had him.
He did a good job of hiding it though, schooling his features into something sterner, reminiscent of school principals in years past. "I had good reason for keeping you out of things, lass."
Emma knew that. She'd known that as soon as she had seen Dory Zimmer's name on that notepad, and recalled the school picture of Ava Zimmer that had been plastered across the Twittersphere. Little Ava Zimmer. 11 years old. Blonde haired. Green eyed. A near dead-ringer for Emma at the same age. Little Emma Swan, who'd run away from a foster home in the middle of a Cincinnati winter after one too many drunken beatings, and no one had assembled a task force to find her.
How Killian even knew about that, she knew only one man could be responsible. Fucking August.
"Remember how we agreed I don't need protecting?"
"You agreed," Killian corrected. "I just didn't argue the point. I pick my battles where you're concerned, Swan," he said with a wry smile. "And I might mention that my reticence to call you in on this didn't wholly stem from a perfectly logical protective urge." Emma raised her eyebrows at that. "There's also an economic angle. Stated plainly: There isn't going to be a payday at the end of this, and I can't ask you to work for free."
But of course. How infuriatingly noble of him, to take on a pro-bono case, when they were struggling to keep the lights on. "And..." he continued. "I really did want to get Mrs Zimmer's measure on my own, without you around. You can be a little..." he trailed off when he saw Emma spine straighten, her arms folding over her chest.
"A little... what?" She asked, the indignation radiating off her in waves.
"Prickly?" he replied with an apologetic smile.
"I'm prickly?" she repeated, dismayed, letting one arm drop down to support her weight against the desk. It wasn't the worst thing she'd even been called, but she'd always preferred tenacious, herself.
Killian merely reached over to clap a consoling hand on her shoulder. "Like a pear, love."
"You still haven't told me where we're going," Emma repeated for what felt like the hundredth time, as she watched the seemingly endless miles of derelict car yards and boarded-up convenience stores disappear past her passenger-side window.
"No, but you agreed to come anyway. Really, you've no one to blame but yourself."
Killian's grin was damn near infuriating, and Emma let out a huff, returning to her study of the seedier side of Central Massachusetts. The snacks had run out shortly before Worcester, and Killian had refused her demands for a coffee stop. With nothing left to distract her, and her phone dead after too many rounds of Candy Crush to alleviate the tedium, cabin fever was starting to take hold. She needed out of that damn car.
"Fine!" Emma threw her hands up in defeat. "I'm sorry I went into your room without asking. It was "bad form" and I solemnly swear I won't ever do it again. Will you please tell me where we are going?"
Killian took an excruciatingly long time to turn his head back in her direction. Then he paused, considering her half-baked apology with a thoughtful frown. "No, sorry. I just don't feel the remorse."
"Killian FUCKING Jones!" Emma shouted, resisting the urge to climb over the center console and strangle him. "I will punch you in the face right now if you don't start talking!"
"While I'm driving?" he asked, a look of mock horror on his face. "You wouldn't," he said, clutching at his chest like the dramatic asshole he was. He really was going to drive her to murder if he wasn't careful.
"We'll start small," Emma began, trying to contain her seething. "Where's Smee?"
"Smee, at this very moment, is probably chewing his way through all of the custom furnishings in Tink's 12th floor corner office."
"Tink?" Emma asked, casting her mind back hoping it would catch on something. She had met a Tink before, she thought. Tinkerbell. Not exactly a common name. A tiny blonde, she remembered, from the Rabbit Hole back when Emma was still having to bluff her way in with a fake ID. She was the one before Milah. The one whose parents had been hippies. Because, really, who else calls their kid Tinkerbell? "Your college girlfriend?"
"Aye," he affirmed, with a tell-tale scratch of his ear. "That's the one. Unlike yours truly, she actually finished law school. Did rather well out of it too. Managed to defy all of her parent's hopes for her and joined one of the largest law firms in Boston. She's already made junior partner. And guess who she represents?"
"Dory Zimmer," Emma breathed.
"Aye. Now you're getting it." It certainly explained why there hadn't been a message left on the office voice mail. She'd called him direct.
"And Michael Tillman fits into all of this, how?"
"Well, Swan," he said, reaching up a hand to indicate right off the highway. "I certainly didn't drag you out into the industrial wilds of The City of Firsts because you make for such a delightful road trip companion."
Tillman's Garage was a tiny auto-mechanic's just off the interstate, a mom-and-pop operation showing all the signs of struggling to compete with the big boys, if the peeling paint and general ramshackle appearance was any indication. Killian pulled up on the cracked driveway outside the main roller doors, and killed the engine.
"You gonna fill me in, or do you expect me to just wing it again?" Emma asked, unclasping her seatbelt, and rotating her shoulders to remove any lingering stiffness.
"I'll do the talking," Killian said, as he handed her her jacket from the backseat. "I just want you to do what you do best."
"Stand around and look pretty?" Emma scowled, jamming on her beanie with more force than strictly necessary.
"Of course not," Killian grinned at the look on her face, reaching across to tuck a few strands of hair under her hat. "I want you to tell me if he is lying." She settled for poking her tongue out at him, like she was five.
She'd barely gotten two steps out of the car, when a figure emerged from the open roller door, clad in a pair of oil-stained overalls and carrying a socket-wrench. What? Emma had taken shop in high school. She knew things. And when he caught sight of Killian's Charger, in all of it's shiny, muscle-car glory, he gave a low whistle.
"Please don't break my heart and tell me you've injured this poor baby," he began, stepping out into the forecourt, reaching out a hand to caress her hood. The name patch on his overalls read Michael. They were definitely in the right place.
She didn't miss Killian's smirk, as the other man practically fawned over his car. "She's fine. Better than fine, actually. I was more hoping you could help with some directions?"
Michael Tillman barely managed to tear his gaze away from the Charger's sleek lines, to take in Killian's words. "You're a limey?" Emma resisted the urge to laugh at how fast Killian's smile vanished. She wasn't the only one who noticed, the man hurrying to make amends. "Knew you couldn't be a local. Not with that rig. It's all minivans and pick-ups around this way," he said, indicating the industrial park they'd found themselves in. "Where you headed?"
"We're headed up to Amherst, actually. I think I took a strange turn off the 1-90..."
Tillman chuckled. "Yeah, must have been some strange turn if you're headed up that-a-way. You zigged when you should have zagged, my friend." He cast a glance across at Emma, who was busy trying to appear distracted by her phone. "Then again," he said, drawing Killian in with a conspiratorial stage whisper, "When a man has such a lovely driving companion, he might find himself easily distracted." Emma almost bit a hole straight through her lip in her effort to keep quiet, as the two played out their little macho bonding ritual.
"Thought we'd get out of the city for a bit," she heard Killian say, as the two plotted the best way back to the interstate over a faded map of Massachusetts Tillman had brought out from his office, and laid over the hood. "Seems to be getting worse every year. I went to school in Amherst for a while. Thought it might be a nice place to settle down. White picket fence. 2.5 kids. Golden retriever. You know, all that bullshit. I've got an interview with a firm up there. Thought I might give it a shot." His hand nudged hers in an experimental kind of way, and Emma, swallowing back her exasperation, twined her hand in his like any good fake girlfriend would do, shooting him what she hoped looked like a wistful smile about their Stepford Wives future together.
Tillman chuckled again, taking a pencil out from behind his ear to mark the best route North. "You kids look too young to be settling down. Never did find that special someone, myself. Thought I did, for a while. But..." He gave a self-deprecating shrug. "That's life, right?" She felt Killian's grip on her hand tighten, and she looked up at him to find his gaze fixed firmly in the middle distance, avoiding eye contact, and she knew then he was thinking about Milah. She returned what she hoped he would consider a consolatory hand squeeze, turning back to Tillman before he could detect the mood shift.
"No kids?" Emma jumped in, giving Killian a moment.
"No," he said, almost regretfully. "My sister's got herself a couple of rugrats, though. Little girls. It's all tea parties and horses with them right now." Emma found herself smiling at the thought of this man, with his stained overalls and jocular manner sitting down to drink imaginary tea with his nieces.
"Sounds fun," she replied.
"Can be," he agreed, "though I don't quite understand why the cake has to be imaginary too."
With a little more polite chit-chat, and a few last minute recommendations of the best coffee stops on the way, Emma and Killian were back in the car again, headed back to the interstate, making a turn contrary to Tillman's well-meaning advice.
"So, was he lying, Swan?" Killian said at last, after a few miles of less than comfortable silence.
"About what? If Darcy's Coffee does actually serve the best donuts in all of Central Massachusetts? Or if he really does think your car is the sexiest automobile on four wheels?"
"About any of it," he barked, with maybe a little more bite than she would have expected. Chalking it up to Milah-related weirdness, Emma let it slide, turning her attention back to the uninspiring scenery.
"He seemed... genuine," she shrugged.
"You're sure?" She heard the creak of leather as he shifted in his seat, and she looked back to find him regarding her carefully.
"Well, I mean, you know it isn't an exact science. But yeah, I didn't get any blips on the ol' lie detector," she said, tapping her temple with her finger.
"Not even when you asked him about having kids?" he persisted.
He was being oddly intense about this, and Emma wasn't sure she liked it. "Killian, what the hell did we come out here for?"
"You're sure?" he repeated.
"Yes!" she shouted back, the force of her answer practically reverberating in the space between them.
"Well," he said at last, letting out a long sigh. "I guess he isn't our guy."
"Wait a minute," said Emma, holding up a hand, mind scrambling to keep up. "You thought that that guy took Ava Zimmer? What the hell? Why would he?"
"Why indeed, Swan," he said, catching her eye. "He's Ava and Nicholas Zimmer's biological father."