“I know,” she sighs, letting her head fall back against the armrest of the couch. She puts the pillow over her eyes and sighs. “They found the house where Porscha was hiding with Alastair.”
“Were they in that house the whole time?” Emeric asks.
“They don’t know,” Jo replies, and I adjust my hold on the phone so she can hear better. “They asked me about the house but I have no idea about any of it. It’s not somewhere I knew about, that’s for sure. I don’t even know where it is. It was owned by a couple… the Nuns?”
“Nunes,” I say, skimming my fingers along her arm. “James and Diana, right?”
“Diana?” Emeric echoes, sounding confused. “Nunes you said?”
Jo sits up straight again, letting the pillow fall into her lap. “Do those names sound familiar?”
“Not exactly.” It sounds like he’s moving around, and I have to remind myself he’s supposedly at the club right now. “I mean, I remember my stepmom Jen complaining about a Diana from time to time. They used to hire her to do work around the house and one day she stopped responding to calls. Just disappeared if I remember right. That’s how they ended up eventually hiring Porscha to do some work around the house. They couldn’t reach Diana.”
“Did you meet her?” Jo asks, biting her lip.
“Diana? Na, she never came around once I lived there. Jen said they only used her from time to time, and she was hard to reach. Porscha replaced her eventually for all the house projects the Franks needed done. I don’t think I’d even remember the name if Jen didn’t end up complaining about her so much. She seemed to think Diana ghosted them and owed them work for being good clients. It was weird.”
I bite my tongue. Emeric’s foster parents were good to him, but I found both Rob and Jen Franks to be weird andhonestly, judgmental little pricks. They acted like good enough people to adopt Emeric senior year and go as far away from Florida as they possibly could. But in the middle of all that good, they left Alastair behind because they thought he was problematic. And that wasbeforeall the convictions. He became a ward of the state while Emeric moved to a new city and eventually got adopted before his eighteenth birthday.
I don’t hold it against Emeric at all, but I think it says a lot about the type of people the Franks. “Your foster parents were always a little weird, Em.”
He laughs good naturally about it, because he knows I’m just not going to warm up to the Franks at this point. They are far away on the other side of the country and I sure hope they stay there.
Jo switches topics, her eyes wandering around the room when she speaks like she’s talking out loud. “I wish Sterling would call us like this. We could know so much more.”
“He’s doing what he can,” I reply, rubbing her legs. “He hasn’t said anything about the cabin at least, so neither will we. If he wants to pretend we’re on professional terms only, we’ll keep doing that.”
“Listen to the two of you,” Emeric says sarcastically, “supporting the FBI agent.”
Jo rolls her eyes, shaking her head as she smiles. “MyFBI agent, Emeric. We wouldn’t bother protecting him if we didn’t care.”
“We’re just really good liars,” I agree. “We had a story somewhat planned before the officers arrived at the cabin. The club taught us how to gloss over things that need to be dealt with later.”
Like asking Sterling what the fuck he thinks will happen now.But if Sterling showed back up in the middle of things and Jo wanted him, I wouldn’t deny her.
I’m just not sure where this ends.
There’s noise in the background on Emeric’s side of the call, and he groans. “Let me know what Gideon says when you chat again, will you? Serenity’s telling me all about the crowds downstairs.”
“Crowds are good,” Jo says, brightening.
“They think there’s a Fourth of July party,” he says with a scoff. “I didn’t plan that.”
Jo smiles and it does my heart good. By the time we disconnect the call, she looks slightly less stressed out than she did before.
I set aside my phone and return to massaging her calves. “Your agent, huh?”
She blushes, and I can’t help but smirk. “He is my agent… he’s covered us.”
“We’re covering each other,” I remind her. “He could’ve turned things around and tried to blame us for working with Alastair.”
“Sterling’s not like that,” she defends, and I let her work it out in her head. A little crease appears between her brows as she does so. “Not after what the four of us shared.”
“Sex doesn’t equal loyalty,” I say with a frown. “He’s still an FBI agent. Alastair’s still a felon. We’re still married. What we are hasn’t changed because fate let all four of us find our way to the cabin at the same time. It was a stroke of luck, and it’s over now. With Alastair back in prison and Sterling still on the case…”
I let my voice trail off and she sighs. “It probably won’t happen again.”
“I’m sorry darling,” I say, squeezing her legs. My fingers trace along the scars as I do so. “I don’t see how we would get that to happen a second time. Not with law enforcement watching Alastair so closely. We don’t even know if he’ll have appointments outside the hospital, or if the follow upappointments we heard about have to be done there. We can’t even go in and visit since he’s gone no-contact thanks to the warden.”
