Not my Emma.
My ray of sunshine in the dark.
“I can’t tell you more than that. We’ll be in town tomorrow. That’s your only chance of getting to her. There’s a boutique near Coral Bay where I like to do most of my trinket shopping. Have you traced the call?”
I look at Tucker, who holds up his thumb.
“Yes.”
“Good. You have to keep her hidden until the first of November. After that, there will be no way he can come for her.” She trails off a moment. “Save her,” she says, her voice cracking. “As I tried to do.”
The line goes dead. I stare at Bradyn’s phone as though Emma’s voice will come through the speakers at any time now.
“What did she mean by that?” Riley asks. “‘Save her as I tried to do’?”
“My guess is there’s more to this adoption than a baby being abandoned. Where is she?” Bradyn asks Tucker.
“St. John. U.S. Virgin Islands.” Tucker points to his computer.
“That’s a five-hour direct flight. Can you get Jesper on the phone?” I ask Riley.
“Doing it now.” He withdraws his cell phone.
“I think I can answer the whole cryptic ‘she’s in danger’ speak.” Alice leans back from her computer, shaking her head slowly. “This is bad.”
“Tell me.” I move toward her, stopping just short of reading over her shoulder—something I did before, and she chewed me out for exactly that. Apparently, reading over her shoulder is a pet peeve of my sister-in-law’s.
“I might have figured out why you couldn’t find anything on Mattheus or Gio,” she says to Tucker. “I contacted a friend of mine who still works at Web Safe and pulled in a favor.” She shakes her head. “Giovanni Karver is the head of the Karver crime family. He’s a nasty guy. Big money. The feds have been trying to build a case on him for years but haven’t had any luck getting anywhere close to the guy. They’ve sealed all records of him. Looks like they’re trying to keep a close eye on the family.”
“Felicity said she tried to save her before. Do you think it’s possible that she abandoned her at birth to keep her away from Giovanni? A family like that uses daughters like pawns.” I picture a young mother leaving her new baby in an alleyway, abandoning her to the elements in hopes that she would be found because it was a better future than the life laid out before her.
“We won’t know until we get more answers. We’re wheels up in two hours,” Bradyn says. “Elliot and Nova won’t be back in time, but we shouldn’t need them. If we’re grabbing her from in town, we stand a chance at ensuring no bullets fly.”
It’s half past eleven, so as I step through the never-locked doors of our small town’s church sanctuary, I expect to be alone. Instead, Pastor Ford turns to look at me curiously from where he’s seated in a middle pew. “Aah, it makes sense now.”
I stop in my tracks. “What makes sense?”
“Why I felt like I needed to stick around.” He smiles and waves for me to come in farther. “I’m just sitting here absorbing the quiet. Join me.”
“I don’t want to talk,” I say quickly as I take a seat in the pew across the aisle from him.
“That works for me.” The pastor who baptized me as an infant closes his eyes and bows his head.
It’s one of the reasons why I don’t mind coming to church even as I struggle with my own faith. Pastor Ford isn’t one to press. He simply waits, biding his time until I’m ready to talk. And there are plenty of times I’ve come here and chosen not to speak at all.
My gaze drifts to the cross behind the altar. It’s lit from behind by a stained-glass representation of Jesus’ ascension to heaven. It’s an image that used to bring me such hope when I looked at it.
Then everything fell apart, and I lost the ability to believe in anything.
I’ve been seeking Him ever since. Struggling with the idea that God cares about me at all. There’s a voice in my head that tells me He doesn’t. That He chose my brothers and Lani but tossed me to the side. I mean, why would I have suffered as I did if He cared?
Grief tightens in my chest.
Why would Emma be taken from me?
Because I’m not sure what else I can do in this moment, I bow my head. I have no idea what to say—I haven’t prayed in so long that my thoughts don’t want to formulate into a prayer. Should a man like me be praying anyway? What do I have to bring to the table besides a darkened soul and a broken heart?
Those are hardly things fit for a King.
