Chapter 5: The Man Who Sent Her
I showed Emma the message that same evening.
She read it twice.
Then she set the phone on the kitchen table and pushed it back toward me with one finger, the way you'd push away something you didn't want to touch but couldn't ignore.
"He thinks I've been reporting to him this whole time," she said.
"He thinks you've been too scared not to."
"What do I say back?"
"Nothing yet.
We need the device first." I nodded at Luke, who set a small black case on the table and opened it.
Inside was something that looked like an ordinary shirt button.
"It transmits to a receiver within three hundred feet.
My people will be in a vehicle outside wherever he asks you to meet."
Emma looked at the button.
"I've never done anything like this."
"I know."
"You're very calm about asking me to."
"Would it help if I weren't?"
She almost smiled.
Almost.
"No.
Probably not." She picked up the button and turned it over in her fingers.
"What if he asks me what I found?
I need to have something real to tell him.
Something that sounds like I've been doing my job."
"Tell him you found a safe in my study.
Tell him it requires a six-digit code and you've seen me use it twice but couldn't see the full sequence.
Tell him you think you can get it on your next shift."
"Is there actually a safe?"
"Yes."
"Is there anything in it?"
"Nothing that concerns Hale." I paused.
"It'll buy us time and make him feel like the operation is still working.
He'll want to meet in person to manage you directly.
That's when he'll talk."
Emma set the button down.
"Why does Reyes work for Hale?
What does he get out of it?"
"Reyes was a licensed private investigator until four years ago.
Hale hired him to locate suitable targets — elderly patients with private funds, families too stretched thin to monitor accounts closely.
Reyes gets a percentage of whatever Hale extracts."
"He gets paid to find people like my mother."
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment.
Her hands were flat on the table.
"He came into the diner where I work," she said.
"He sat in my section.
He tipped well.
He came back three times before he said anything about my mother's account.
By then I thought he was just a regular customer." She looked up.
"I thought he was being kind."
There was nothing I could say to that that would help, so I said nothing.
Her phone buzzed on the table.
A new number.
A text: *Coffee.
Tomorrow.
9am.
The place on Halsted you like.
Don't be late.*
She stared at it.
"He's been watching me," she said.
"He knows which coffee shop I go to."
"Yes."
"He's been watching me this whole time."
"Emma."
She looked up.
"He made a mistake," I said.
"He sent you somewhere he couldn't fully control, to a man he thought was too broken to notice.
He was wrong on both counts."
She picked up her phone.
Typed back: *I'll be there.*
Then she set it down and looked at me.
"If something goes wrong tomorrow—"
"It won't."
"You said that's not an answer."
I looked at her.
"My best two people will be twenty feet away.
The moment anything feels wrong, you say the word 'actually' and they'll be through the door in under thirty seconds."
"'Actually.'"
"It's a word you can drop naturally into any sentence."
She nodded slowly.
Then: "Why are you doing this?
Not the Hale case.
I understand that.
But my mother's money.
You didn't have to connect those two things."
I didn't answer right away.
"You gave me one pill," I finally said.
"When you could have given me two and made your night easier."
She frowned slightly.
"That's not a reason."
"It's the only one I have right now."
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she picked up the button, closed her hand around it, and stood.
"I'll be back before eight tomorrow," she said.
"I want to go over everything again before I go."
"I'll be here."
She walked out.
Luke appeared from the hallway where he'd been standing out of sight.
"She's going to be fine," he said.
"I know."
"You don't look like you know."
I didn't answer him.
I looked at the kitchen table where her phone had been, and the small ring of condensation left by her glass of water.
Then my own phone rang.
The caller ID read: *V.
HALE.*
Hale didn't call me.
In two years of building this case, he had never once called me directly.
I picked up.
"Mr.
May you like
Caruso," said a smooth, unhurried voice.
"I think we should talk about the young woman currently living in your house."
