Chapter 6: What He Did When He Smiled
I called our aunt from the hospital parking lot.
Her name is Frances.
She's seventy-one, sharp as a tack, and has never liked any man Rachel brought home.
She'd met Travis once at a birthday dinner two years ago and told me afterward, quietly, over the dishes, that there was something wrong with the way he listened.
"He doesn't listen to understand," she'd said.
"He listens to collect."
She picked up on the second ring.
"I need you to have the guest room ready by tonight," I said.
"Rachel and Mason are coming to stay.
I can't tell you everything yet but I need you to trust me."
"Is she hurt?"
"She's going to be okay."
"Emily."
"She's going to be okay, Frances.
But I need them out of the city today."
A pause.
"The room will be ready.
I'll make up Mason's bed with the blue quilt.
He liked that one last Christmas."
I closed my eyes for a second.
"Thank you."
Inside, I found Rachel already dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed with Mason beside her.
Someone had brought him a change of clothes — a nurse, I thought, from the lost-and-found box they kept on the pediatric floor.
He was wearing a sweatshirt two sizes too big and he didn't seem to mind.
"We're going to Aunt Frances's," I said.
Rachel looked up.
"Today?"
"Right now.
I'll drive you."
Mason slid off the bed immediately.
No questions.
He picked up his jacket from the chair and put it on and stood by the door like he'd been waiting for someone to say exactly those words for a very long time.
Rachel watched him and something moved across her face.
"Okay," she said.
We were twenty minutes outside the city when Mason spoke from the back seat.
"Is Travis going to come find us?"
I looked at him in the rearview mirror.
He was watching the window, his chin on his hand, his expression older than it should have been.
"No," I said.
"He's not going to find you."
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm going to make sure of it."
He thought about that.
"Is that your job?"
"It's my job and it's something else too."
"What's the something else?"
"You're my family, Mason."
He looked at me in the mirror for a moment.
Then he turned back to the window.
"Okay," he said quietly.
Rachel reached back and put her hand on his knee without saying anything.
He put his hand over hers.
I drove.
Frances met us at the door with the kind of welcome that doesn't need words — just the door open before we reached the porch, and soup already on the stove, and the blue quilt visible through the guest room door at the end of the hall.
I stayed for an hour.
Long enough to make sure Rachel had eaten.
Long enough to watch Mason fall asleep on Frances's sofa with the television low and a blanket tucked around him by hands that had done it a hundred times before.
Frances walked me to my car.
"How bad is it?" she said.
"Bad enough that I need them here for at least two weeks.
Maybe more."
She nodded.
"He won't get past my front door."
"Frances—"
"I have Harold's old shotgun in the hall closet and I know how to use it." She held up a hand before I could speak.
"I'm joking.
Mostly." She looked at me steadily.
"Go do what you need to do, Emily.
They're safe here."
I drove back to the city with the windows down and my mind working through everything Reyes had said.
Travis owned the building.
He had chosen Rachel.
Tracked her.
Built a life around her that she couldn't leave without losing her home, her stability, her son's school, everything.
And he had done it smiling.
My phone buzzed on the seat beside me.
A number I didn't recognize.
Different from Donna's.
I pulled over and answered.
"Officer Emily Hartwell?" A man's voice.
Smooth.
Unhurried.
"Who is this?"
May you like
"My name is Paul Whitfield.
I think we should talk before this situation gets out of hand."
