“I’m sorry to hear that,” Aaron said, shaking his head. She noticed a little gray at his temples and a few more lines on his face than he’d had the last time they’d been together. But he still had that boyish charm about him she’d always loved.
“I was hoping when I came into town I would get to see her, you know? Actually, I was hoping we could have a cup of coffee. I don’t know. See what happens? Our lives just went two different directions, but she’s always been in the back of my mind. Stupid. I guess you always think there’s time.”
Connor raised anI told you sobrow at Emma. She had to agree with Aaron about that much.
Jacob nodded. “Timing. I’m sorry it worked out that way. But keep the faith. We’re not giving up. You shouldn’t, either. I know Aubrey said Emma talked about you often. Anything’s possible.”
Connor let loose of her hand just as another figure hurried out of the hospital doors. It took Emma a minute to recognize her. It was Kinsey. She seemed…upset—something in the way she marched across the parking lot.
The two men also noticed her, too. They turned to watch as she reached her SUV parked ten or more cars down from them and furiously beat the front fender with the bouquet in her hand. She hit the car until there was nothing but stumps left of the flowers before finally climbing in and gunning it out of the parking lot.
“Whoa,” Aaron said.
Jacob blinked in shock. “What the hell? That was Kinsey.”
“Who?”
“She works for Emma. Wonder what got her all bent?”
“‘Bent’ is one word for it,” Aaron said.
Their gazes both followed Kinsey’s car as it pulled out onto the main road, squealing its tires.
“Hey, I don’t want to play devil’s advocate here,” Aaron said, “but didn’t Aubrey say that the car that hit Emma was a dark SUV?”
Jacob swiveled a look at him. “Yeah?”
“Did you happen to notice that front fender she was whacking with the flowers?”
“No. I was just kind of waiting for her to morph into the Hulk or something. But now that you mention it, it was banged up. You don’t think…”
“I don’t know what to think after that.”
“Yeah. Well. I think it’s worth looking into,” Jacob said, pulling his phone from his back pocket. “And worth a phone call to the detective.”
Emma stared after Kinsey’s car, too, cold trickling through her. Kinsey? No, it couldn’t have been her. She would never—And what about Emma’s house getting trashed? Looking like someone had…rage-stormed through it?
Rage-stormed.
Kinsey demolishing those flowers came to mind.
And then she remembered—Kinsey had a key to her house. Of course she did. Emma had given it to her once years ago so she could feed Winston while Emma had been traveling to visit Aubrey at college. Kinsey had done that for her several times over the years. And one time, she remembered returning from her bedroom retrieving papers only to find Kinsey staring at the photos on her shelf of her and Aubrey. Of Lizzy and Daniel. Of the loving family Kinsey had never really had.
A thousand jagged emotions swam through her. Disbelief, first. Anger. Followed quickly by the love she’d always had for Kinsey. For everything Kinsey had done for her company, for her personally.
Beside her, Connor, too, watched her car disappear down the road. He watched Jacob and Aaron head into the hospital.
“We need to follow her,” Emma said. “I’m…afraid for her.”
He gave her a sideways look. “Aye. So am I. But I didna expect that to be yer lead feelin’ here.”
“Am I angry? Yes,” she said, tugging him along beside her toward the road. “But I must have missed something. Something important.”
“Ye think it’s all your fault she ran ye off the road?”
“I…I think it’s my fault I wasn’t paying attention to what she must have been going through. Connor. Please. Let’s follow her.”
He nodded. “I ken where she’s goin’.”
