CHERISH (6 page)

“Ma’am, there’s nothing legally I can do, no. I’m sorry.” He shakes his head. “Even if Mrs. Henderson’s—your
mother’s
—allegations are true, the statute of limitations has run out. However.” He stops to lick his teeth and look up at the ceiling, making me want to scream at his dramatic delay. “If he did, in fact, falsify the evidence against Mr. Rendell, then that is a crime.”

“So then you will be able to go get him?” My heart beats faster for a moment. My head swivels to look at Beckett, but he lets out a defeated sigh.

“No, babe. They won’t extradite him for that.”

Northrup nods toward us before continuing. “Mr. Spicer is a dual citizen. He still maintains his Egyptian citizenship so we’re hamstringed even if we do bring charges.”

He clears his throat and I realize how much I despise the brown and gold plaid tie he’s wearing. I hate it more than is appropriate, but I hate it nonetheless.

“The good news,” Northrup clears his throat, “is we can’t find any criminal activity in Mr. Spicer’s past.” He continues flipping open one of the files and settling it on the desk. “His business is completely legit. His home is owned outright. He doesn’t even have a late payment on a credit card. And he has no family we can find.”

“He was an orphan.” Beckett nods at me then the detective. “That’s what he insinuated anyway. He never wanted to talk about his past. All I know is that he grew up on the streets in Cairo, then he came to America. Maybe in his late teens? From the little bits he shared, his childhood was ugly.”

Northrup grunts and nods. Then pulls a toothpick from his shirt pocket and starts to pick at something between his bottom teeth. My uneasy stomach churns.

“What about my mother? What does she have to do with all this?”

Northrup shakes his head. “We're still talking to her. Trying to, anyway.”

Beckett

As we left, we caught a glimpse of Holly–Promise's mom–screaming her way through the precinct.

Northrup left us sitting for a half hour, so I cut our little meeting short, and there she was, making a ridiculous show of herself before I could get Promise out of there.

When she saw us through the glass window, Holly had gone ape shit again, screaming that Promise was her baby and I was an asshole. I don't fault her on the second count, but hearing her call Promise her baby . . . I almost broke my cardinal rule about never, ever hitting a woman.

Now we're back at the loft and Promise is being stubborn.

“Babe, you have to eat.”

She rests her chin on my shoulder as I hold the fork to her lips, laden with just a bite of my famous scrambled eggs.

“I’m not hungry,” she says, pushing at my forearm. “In fact, I’m the opposite of hungry. I’m
anti-hungry.
And if you don’t take that fork away from my lips right now I might throw up all over your
world famous
gourmet eggs.” The sarcasm in her voice isn't all that playful.

And I know what she wants, but it can't happen. Not yet. We have to know what's going on before we start taking action.

I sent a few texts to my SEAL brothers while we were at the cop shop. Northrup said the cops are doing what they can to gather intel on where Louis may be headed, but since he hasn’t broken any law by taking Jordan out of the country, there is not much they can do.

I'm keeping the possibilities of what
we
will do to bring Jordan back to myself for the moment. There's no way that Promise can deal with that kind of information.

With my connections, finding Louis is doable, but just how deep do we want to go to make it happen?

I fight the urge to rationalize why he may have gone rogue. He’s wrong in about a thousand ways, but something deep down tells me there’s a reason. A reason for all of this. I'm just not seeing it. To my mind there's no sane reason why he would have even wanted to take Jordan to Egypt. Certainly not without telling us beforehand. And the guy I knew as Louis was as sane as anyone I'd ever met.

There’s also no logical reason that he would have falsified evidence.

Even if it was against a piece of shit like Rendell.

Jeremy Rendell, who kept hundreds of pictures of Promise from when he was young until a few months ago on his computer. Jeremy Rendell, who led her down a path for his own pleasure without any regard for what was best for her. Jeremy Rendell, who taught a broken little girl how to set fires.

Fires that killed people.

Destroyed other people.

He may not have set the fire in the loft that killed my father. That's looking increasingly unlikely. But he is still culpable for coercing a little girl into another arson where people died. We have had no contact with him. Unfortunately, in order to figure out everything possible about Louis and this entire shit storm, it was becoming painfully obvious that I was going to have to have a little sit down with that little fuck. Regardless of the instructions from Northrup to stay far away from him.

Defeated, I push the plate of eggs and toast across the table. We're sitting on the bench alongside one of the long metal tables. It's still covered with the stacks of letters and my notebooks. For a second I forget about Louis and Jeremy and remember I’ve got a conference call tomorrow with Icon Publishing.

A phone meeting that Louis and I were supposed to take together. I’d set it up before we’d organized our trips. Both of us decided we could be on the phone from anywhere, so we’d keep the appointment. It was only to finalize the cover and some minor details about distribution channels or some shit anyway.

But what the fuck do I know about business and distribution channels? That was Louis’s end of the deal. I created and he dealt with the bullshit business. Our arrangement was that Louis was acting on my behalf as my representative. For that I insisted he would get the standard 10 percent. I wanted to split it with him fifty-fifty, but it was a battle to get him to accept even 10 percent.

Ten percent of what though?

Who the hell knows what sales, if any, we were going to see from my little project. I don’t give a shit about that; I don’t care about the money. It’s never been a motivator for me.

I need to give these kids a voice. A loud-as-fuck voice. Because they were silenced for too damn long. That’s what matters to me. Not money.

“So what’s next?” Promise leans her cheek on my shoulder as she asks the question that is almost too big for an answer.

I steel myself for the backlash against what I have to say. “We’re staying here. I’m waiting for some information from some friends of mine that may help us find Jordan.”

“Staying here?” She lifts her head and scoots away from me on the bench. Turns and faces me. I am consumed by the fear and panic in her opal eyes. The strain in her voice grabs my heart and twists it within icy fingers.

“Yes, babe. We are not jumping on a plane to Egypt if that is what you are asking.”

I know damn well that is exactly what she is asking because she’s asked about a hundred times since we found out that Louis hadn’t taken Jordan to Animal Kingdom in Disney World after all.

“Why not?” The angry desperation in her voice tugs on every soft part of me.

There’s a thread of her hair dangling over her squinted left eye and her lashes catch it when she blinks. From the intensity of her glare, I’d guess she might be considering shanking me right now.

“Because the better part of any mission is planning and we’re still planning.”

I drag my fingers over the softness of her forehead. Push the renegade hair back into the family of blonde that hangs nearly to the middle of her back in ringlets and waves.

“So we just sit here?” she asks in a frustrated sigh. Her body is whipcord tense and ready to snap like a rubber band stretched too far. “I feel like my whole life, I’ve let things just happen. Been the victim and I’m
tired.
How much worse could it be to just get on a plane and go there and find them? I mean, you know how to do that, right? Find people that don’t want to be found?”

I shake my head and turn my body to face her, lifting one leg up and over to the other side of the bench so I'm straddling it. I lean in close.

“Babe, Egypt is very different than here. It’s dangerous in ways you haven’t ever seen. Ways you've never even thought of. Look, I’ve got some things started; there are some people that are doing some digging for me. Louis's plane hasn’t even landed yet, so for now we sit tight. I know it fucking sucks, babe.”

She leans forward and puts her forehead on my chest. I hate Louis right now, in a way that cuts me as deep as the helpless look in her eyes.

“How different can it be though? I mean, we’ve seen a lot of bad stuff between us. You’re like,
trained
for this. I’ve lived so many places, I can adapt to almost anywhere.” She looks up at me, so sure that somehow we can take care of this if we just get on a plane and follow them. She wants to feel like she’s doing
something
, and I get it. I do. The hardest part of any mission is waiting for the green light.

But she needs to realize that it's not that simple. It's never that simple.

“I remember this one time.” I clear my throat, gliding a hand along the back of her head and scooting closer to her. Her hands wrap around my waist and I pull her into me, lifting her legs to drape over mine as she faces the table and turns her head to the side against my shoulder. “I was in this foster home. Like, the third one I’d been in. The Perish’s house on Rolland Street, in the beautiful gated community of Bloomfield Estates.” I say it like it's an advertisement.

From our place on the bench I stare across the loft at the bolted door of the apartment, and an image of my dad and mom cuddled together like we are now crosses my mind. I shake it away.

“Anyway, so I’m in this house. There are two other kids there. Not fosters. Their own kids. I was their first system kid. They were decent folks, trying to do something nice, you know?” I chuckle. “Only, they weren’t ready for me. I was so fucking angry. They would cook breakfast and I'd refuse to eat. Their other two kids were about my age, wanted to be my friends. I refused to speak to them. Literally, I did not say a single word to them in the three weeks I was there. Ignored them like they didn't exist.”

“Wow. I guess I never pictured you being so . . . rude.”

“Yeah, well I was a lot of things. And rude was one of the better ones.” I laugh. “I lost twenty pounds in three weeks. I’d never refused to eat before, but they just put so much damn effort into the food thing. It was like they were doing me this huge favor by cooking all the fucking time and it pissed me off.”

“You can be very stubborn.” Promise shifts her weight against me and one of her hands comes up over my chest and stays there, flat over my heart.

“Well, they were in no way prepared for me. So, after three weeks, I was back at Boystown, just waiting for another family to take me for the eight-hundred and thirty-nine-dollar check that came with me every month.”

“And? So that’s it? You didn’t eat and you wouldn’t talk. That’s the story?”

I laugh and slide my hands along her cheeks, turning her head so she’d look up at me. She’s annoyed, her brow pinching together but she’s still the most beautiful creature I’ve ever encountered.

“Yes, that’s the story.” I lean down and steal a kiss, feeling the satin softness of her cheeks under my rough fingers. “But the point of the story is, they weren’t
prepared
for me. They walked into that situation wide-eyed and without enough planning.”

Promise’s cheeks flush and I feel them warm under my hands. “They had two kids already; I’m sure they thought they were prepared.”

“Exactly my point. They thought they had the skills. They assumed. They thought all kids must be the same. But they’re not. I was Cairo and they were Bloomfield. If we’re not prepared, we can’t help Jordan.”

She blinks and pulls her plump, pink lips to the side, and even in the midst of the storm we’re swirling in, I can’t stop my desire for her. It bubbles up from a place inside of me that only she can touch.

My phone makes a
ting-ting
alarm sound from atop the table where I’d set it down when we came back from the precinct.

I set the alarm yesterday, right after we’d said our vows. “We’ve been married exactly twenty-four hours. It’s our one-day anniversary, babe.”

“Not exactly what we expected. Not what I hoped for.”

I hate the sadness in her voice. I fucking hate it.

My job in this world is to make her smile and the world is not helping me fulfill that commitment right now.

“No, but we’re not going to stop living. My gut tells me Jordan is safe. I know Louis is off the rails but I honestly don’t think he would ever hurt Jordan.” I shake my head. “He doesn't have that in him. Something is wrong, but we’ve both seen him with Jordan over the last couple of months. You know what I'm talking about. He loves Jordan. I have a feeling, you know, I get those
feelings
, my spidey sense. Jordan's safe.”

She shakes her head and for the first time in the last three hours, I see the slightest upturn in the corners of those magical lips.

“You and your superpowers. You know, if you have so many superpowers, why don’t you have a cape? I’d maybe believe you more if you had a nice, long black cape. And tights. You’d look good in tights.” The lightness in her voice is beautiful.