“Go,” he hissed, and Ted let Robert push him through the front room and into the back of the cabin, where an expansive living room stretched to the right, with the dining room and kitchen to the left.
Emma sat in a recliner, and it took Ted a moment to see she’d been handcuffed to the nearby TV cabinet. Tears streamed down her face, and Ted’s heart wept with her.
He knew in that moment that he could easily fall in love with her. He’d been sliding that way already, and his strong desire to protect her, keep her safe, and learn everything about her only intensified.
“Let me go,” he said, ripping his arm away from Robert. He rounded the couch and went to Emma. “Hey. I got your call.”
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said, her voice so high. “I shouldn’t have called.”
“You called him?” Robert asked, his presence coming up behind Ted. All of the rage was directed at Emma, though, and Ted’s gaze flickered to the TV cabinet. He needed to get her unhooked from that thing.
He rose silently and turned toward Robert. “You need to let her go. I’ve already called the cops.”
Robert searched his face, and Ted had learned a thing or two about hiding his emotions from his time in prison. He covered everything with the stone mask that had served him well in the dormitory and cafeteria as he glared right back at Robert.
“Now,” he added.
“Are you her boyfriend?”
“That’s right,” Ted said, his voice utterly even.
“Ted,” Emma said behind him.
“Does he know?” Robert asked, leaning around Ted and shooting a dark look at Emma. He zeroed in on Ted again. “Do you know she has a ten-year-old daughter? My ten-year-old daughter? She’s been hiding her in San Antonio.”
Shock filled Ted, though he’d known something had been hidden in Emma’s past.
“Robert,” Emma said, her voice sharp.
Ted found himself turning toward Emma, and she looked back at the two men standing in front of her. Time stood still while everything streamed through Ted’s mind. So much seemed to be there, and then with a snap of his fingers, it all disappeared.
“I don’t care,” Ted said. “I didn’t know, but I don’t care.” He crouched down in front of Emma and reached up to wipe her tears. “I don’t care, Emma. It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, it matters,” Robert said, and he grabbed Ted’s arm again, this time deftly handcuffing him to the handle on the sliding glass door.
Chapter Twenty
“Tell me her name,” Robert said again, but Emma pressed her teeth together. She’d told him plenty already, and she wasn’t going to put her daughter in danger while she was handcuffed to a piece of furniture.
Robert wouldn’t leave until he knew where he could go to find Missy, and right now, he didn’t even know her name. San Antonio was a big place, and he’d never find her without more information.
“You need to let us go,” Ted said. “This is going to be bad for you, Robert.”
Robert barely flicked his eyes in Ted’s direction. All of his anger and malice stayed solely centered on Emma. She wasn’t sure what he would’ve done if Ted hadn’t rang the doorbell, but he’d been standing in the kitchen, doing something with his back turned to her as he threatened her with legal action.
He’d told her to stay quiet, but when Emma had heard Ted call her name, she hadn’t been able to comply. He’d come. She’d called him, and though they weren’t on the best of terms, he’d come.
He’d been the first name in her mind in her panicked state, though she could’ve called Ginger and not risked Ted’s freedom.
He doesn’t care, she thought, and that was as magical as it was unbelievable. She’d spent so long hiding the truth about her past, as well as the evidence of the kind of person she’d been, that she hadn’t ever stopped to consider that she could outgrow all of it.
She had become someone different. The past was the past, not a roadmap for her future.
“All right,” Robert said in a freaky-calm kind of voice. He turned and went back into the kitchen, and Ted shifted on Emma’s right. She glanced over at him to see he had his cell phone out, and her heart leapt with hope.
“I see how this is going to be played,” Robert said. “I was just telling Emma here when you showed up, Ted, that I had ways of making her tell me what she knows.”
Ted tapped out a message to Nate, and sent it. Then he called 911. He looked at her, and their eyes met. Fear streamed through her, because Robert would hear him if he spoke.
She glanced at Robert, but he still stood a dozen paces away, his back to them, as he looked down at something on the kitchen island.
“We’ve been taken captive,” Ted whispered. “Fishing Run Cabin. Twenty minutes north of Sweet Water Falls. We need help.”
“Dad?”
Emma’s attention flew to the newcomer to the room—a young man who looked almost identical to Robert. “Jason,” she said, her memory of the seven-year-old fitting together with his face. “Help us.”
“What is going on?” Jason asked, looking from Ted and Emma back to his father.
Robert had turned from the island, and Emma couldn’t tell what his expression said. He wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t sure if he was embarrassed, angry, or surprised.
“You’ve got to find the key,” Ted said. “And get us out of here.”
“Please,” Emma added. “Jason, do you remember who I am?”
The young man looked at her, confusion drawing his eyebrows down. “I feel like I do know you.”
“You don’t,” Robert said. “Go back downstairs, Jason.”
“I can’t just go back downstairs,” he said. “You have two people handcuffed in our living room.” He waved his arm toward Ted and Emma, as if Robert didn’t know they were there. “You can’t do this kind of stuff, Dad. It’s ridiculous.” He folded his arms. “Give me the key.”
“No.”
Jason’s jaw jutted out, and he took a couple of steps toward his father. He passed him and went into the kitchen. “Who are you?” he asked as he started opening drawers.
“It’s Miss Clemson,” she said. “Your second-grade teacher.”
Jason paused then, looking up. Shock ran through his expression, and he abandoned his search in the kitchen. He came toward her, recognition lighting his eyes. “It is you.” He paused near the end of the couch. “Why are you here?”
“Your father kidnapped me,” she said.
“Oh, come on,” Robert said. “Tell him the truth, Emma. Why can’t you tell the truth?”
Emma swallowed, because there were so many eyes on her. Ted’s were the heaviest, and she wasn’t sure she believed that he didn’t care about her past. For a few minutes there, she had, and what a glorious few minutes they’d been.
“He’s very angry with me,” Emma said. “Because we had a child together, and I didn’t tell him.”
Jason’s mouth opened slightly, and his eyes widened. He looked at Robert, who gestured to Emma like everything that was happening was her fault. She certainly felt like it was.