His heartbeat rippled, and he turned toward the hall where he knew the bathroom was. “Emma?”
“Yes,” she said to his left “I’m right here.” She appeared in a doorway, a gray and white cat at her feet. She bent and picked it up. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw the guy in the blue truck,” Ted said, striding toward her. “I got the license plate. Let’s look him up.” He grinned at her as he approached.
She looked at him with shock in her eyes. “Wait. What?” She fell back into the doorway as he pressed past her.
“You have a computer, right?” He entered the office before she could answer. Sure enough, she had a computer on the large desk in front of the window. “Yes, you sure do.” He tossed her another grin as he continued into her office.
He took a seat in front of her computer, well-aware of what he’d just done. He slowed down a little bit and looked back to where she still stood in the doorway, that cat in her arms.
“Can I use this?” he asked.
“What are you going to do?”
“Look up the license plate number,” he said.
“How do you do that?” She finally took a few steps into the office, but she sure didn’t seem to want to. She used the feline as a shield between them, but the cat meowed, and she put him down. He came toward Ted as if they’d be best friends.
“What’s his name?”
“Frisco,” she said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. The air conditioning sure did work well in the West Wing, and Ted envied her. She wasn’t wearing shoes either, and he liked her hair in a high ponytail and the vulnerability in her face. She still had makeup on, and Ted was starting to realize she wore it every day, even if she didn’t leave the West Wing.
The cat rubbed against Ted’s ankles, and he didn’t hate it.
“You have a way with critters,” Emma said, giving him a smile. She didn’t come any closer though, and Ted suddenly felt her nerves.
“Yeah.” Ted looked at the computer screen. “I won’t close any of this. I just need the Internet.”
“How do you look up a license plate?” she asked.
“In another life,” Ted said. “I was a lawyer.” He glanced at her. “And we learn all kinds of tricks to get information.” He didn’t want to get too deep into what he’d done as a lawyer, because he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to keep his questions to himself.
He clicked and started typing. “There are a lot of things that are public,” he said. “If you know where to look.”
“What kind of lawyer were you?” Emma asked.
Ted heard the trepidation in her voice, and he forced himself not to look at her. Instead, he kept his focus on the computer screen as the State of Texas website came up. “I worked as an assistant prosecutor,” he said. “In the Southern District Federal Court System.”
“Wow,” she said. “That sounds so fancy.”
Ted chuckled as he typed in the license plate division. “It was a massive organization,” he said. “We spanned a couple dozen counties, and there were almost two hundred prosecutors in the office.”
“Hmm,” she said, and Ted sensed she had other questions she wanted to ask.
He swiped and tapped to get to the note he’d taken for the license plate, and he typed it into the system.
“Kind of funny how a lawyer ended up in prison,” she said, trying to be oh-so-nonchalant.
“Oh, you want to know why I went to prison.” Ted leaned away from the computer, because the information was right there on the screen. He didn’t have the same skills with names as he did faces, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
He looked at her, his eyebrows raised.
“I could just look in your file,” she said. “But I thought I’d ask right from the horse’s mouth.”
Ted nodded. “I don’t mind telling you, but I have something I want to ask you too.” He couldn’t have planned his opportunity to find out about her connection to Robert Knight better than this.
“All right,” she said.
“For real?” Ted asked. “I’m not going to tell you, and then you won’t like my question, so you won’t answer?”
“Maybe you better tell me the question first.” Emma reached up as if she’d tuck her hair, but it was all up in that ponytail.
Ted kept his gaze on hers, hoping and praying that she wouldn’t stalk away from him once he revealed the question. “I have seen you before,” he said slowly, trying to find the right words. “And I know where now.”
Her eyes rounded and widened and stayed that way. She clenched her arms across her middle, and Ted paused for a moment.
“You were in one of my case files when I was a lawyer,” he said. “You were a known associate of a man named Robert Knight, and I want to know what that association was, and if you’re in any trouble now because of it.”
Emma’s eyes filled with tears, and Ted got at least one of his questions answered with that. She was in trouble now, and it most likely had something to do with Robert Knight.
“I can—” he started, but she spun on her heel and beelined for the door.
“Help you,” Ted said to himself and the empty office. Sighing, he returned his attention to the computer screen and copied down the name tied to that license plate. After all, he didn’t have access to a computer in the Annex, and he wasn’t giving up on solving this mystery, even if he couldn’t get the information straight from Emma.
He stood up, sighing, and he’d taken two steps toward the doorway when Emma filled it again.
Chapter Eight
Emma had just needed a moment. A moment to wonder how, out of the millions of people in Texas, she’d come face to face with the one who’d seen her face in a case file. She wondered what that photo looked like, and she guessed not great.
She certainly wouldn’t have the perfectly pointed and slanted wings of her eyeliner. Her hair had probably been the mousy brown variety, not the nearly black hair she had now. Emma hadn’t gone to great lengths to change her appearance, but she wasn’t the same woman she’d been a decade ago.
“I can answer your question,” she said, though her stomach rioted against her. He hadn’t asked about Missy, and she wouldn’t have to go that far to tell him that yes, she’d once been Robert Knight’s girlfriend.
She’d never heard the words “known associate.” It sounded so lawyerly, and she was keenly interested to know how a prosecutor had pivoted completely to become a prisoner. Ted suddenly possessed more power, because now Emma knew he was smart. Smart enough to go to law school, and smart enough to work in a huge office with other prosecutors.
“Okay,” Ted said. “I went to a low-security facility with camp capability for aggravated assault of a police officer.”
Emma absorbed what he’d said. “You beat up a police officer…and went to a jail…camp?”
Ted burst out laughing, but he had to know she didn’t understand anything he’d just said.
“I was at an office party,” he said, perching on the edge of her desk. With the warm afternoon light coming in behind him, he was absolute perfection, right in front of her. “It was Wells Brown’s birthday. Kellie had brought in a cake. I was cutting the cake when some clients came in, shouting and causing a big thing.”