Kaleidoscope (Colorado Mountain #6)(58)

Deck didn’t have a good feeling about this.

Too perfect.

And it fit something Emme said in a way he didn’t like.

“There more?” he asked when Lee stopped talking.

“Yeah. Hector said Harvey Feldman is the most boring assignment I’ve given him and he says you now owe him too.”

Deck didn’t smile.

Instead, he noted, “Squeaky clean. Hector get eyes on this guy?”

“Yeah,” Lee answered.

“What’s the vibe? He report that?”

“Outside of the job being boring, no. And if Hector got a vibe, he’d report it. Regular Joe outside of out of the blue once kidnapping a twelve-year-old-girl. Got no priors to that, no problems after. Not even a parking ticket.”

“I don’t like this,” Deck muttered, unable to put his finger on why he didn’t.

“You wanna clue me in on who Emmanuelle Holmes is to you?” Lee fished.

“She’s in my bed,” Deck gave it to him.

“This guy make an approach to her?” Lee asked, his tone, usually alert, was now more so.

Then again, Lee was married, he loved his wife, didn’t mind people knowing it, so he’d get a man looking into the kidnapper of the woman in his bed.

“Not that I know of.”

Her words came to him.

And Harvey took it because he thought he deserved it. He had a daughter. If someone did that to her, he would have done the same.

She called him Harvey like she knew him.

He’d asked how she knew that about the man, she hadn’t answered. Something was not right, and it wasn’t just how Emme had twisted all that to okay in her head.

She’d laid it out, surprisingly honestly.

But this evasiveness was why he didn’t ask her straight up if she had some current connection with Harvey.

She was figuring things out, untwisting what she had twisted in her head, emerging from behind the veil, letting him in. He didn’t want to trip a trigger when she was working on all that, a trigger that might drive her away.

Especially if there wasn’t something to worry about.

But he had a sick pit in his gut telling him there was something to worry about and, until he knew what it was, to avoid tripping that trigger and in order to form a plan on how to deal with it before he approached her about it, he couldn’t broach it with Emme.

“I’m goin’ to Denver, tomorrow or next day. I’m settin’ up eyes on his house,” Deck told Lee. “You got another marker, you let me send those feeds to your control room and your boys keep an eye on that house.”

“No marker, men in that room 24/7, Deck. We can do that, not a problem. I just gotta know what you’re lookin’ for.”

“I also want ears on his phone. Don’t give a f**k about anything he does, says or who he talks to, except Emme phonin’ him or goin’ for a visit.”

“She’s visiting him?” Lee asked.

“Don’t know. Got sour in my gut, though, so I just gotta go with it until I can work it out.”

Lee Nightingale understood that sour in your gut.

This was why he said, “Let us know when you’re in Denver. I’ll ask Vance to go out and help you with the feeds.”

“Obliged.”

“In the meantime, we’ll get into his phones.”

“Thanks, Lee.”

“Again, not a problem. Later, Deck.”

“Later.”

They disconnected but Deck didn’t turn on the ignition or throw his phone aside.

He tapped it on the steering wheel and looked straight ahead, unseeing.

It was coming to her, what that whackjob wrought when he took her, how she’d slipped behind that particular veil, breathing but not living, not connecting. Twenty-two years later, it was coming to her.

But she seemed entirely calm and unaffected when she talked about the kidnapping, only concerned that what she was learning it did to her cost her time with him.

She showed no fear whatsoever when it came to Harvey Feldman.

Deck had taken two contracts where he’d tracked, and rescued, kidnapped kids.

He’d also worked a situation with Chace that led to two kidnapped kids.

They were not calm and unaffected in the slightest.

That sour feeling in his gut, he pulled his thoughts out of that shit, tossed his cell aside, turned on his truck and guided it into traffic.

He drove three blocks.

Then he positioned.

* * *

Forty-five minutes later…

Deck stood, ass and shoulders to his truck, feet out in front of him, ankles crossed, arms crossed, shades on, eyes to the door.

The crew came out one by one.

McFarland was the fourth one out.

Deck had no interest in the rest but McFarland felt his gaze from twenty yards away and looked immediately to him.

Deck didn’t move. Not his shades. Not a muscle.

McFarland looked to the ground, jaw tight, pissed off and hustled to a black SUV that was idling outside the jail.

He got in and took off.

Deck watched him go.

Only then did he get back in his truck and drive away.

* * *

Late that night…

Deck’s eyes opened.

Emme was sprawled half on him, dead weight, where he’d put her when he was done with her and where she’d stayed.