Her thin body quaked in Kerri’s arms, and her heart fractured.

“He’ll never have time for me now.”

Tori cried for a while, and Kerri let her. She said nothing more. To say anything more was unnecessary. Her daughter had just learned the hard way what a dick her father could be. Kerri wished she could have protected her from this. Nick should have called her and explained the situation. He should never have just canceled on their daughter.

“I want to go home,” Tori whispered between sobs.

“Come on. We’ll stop for ice cream on the way.”

She grabbed the small suitcase, and Tori shouldered her backpack. Kerri draped an arm around her, and they exited the airport. Falco’s car sat at the curb. He was leaning against it, waiting for them.

“Hey, pretty girl.”

Tori stopped and faced her mother. “Can Falco stay with us for a while and play video games with me? We could order pizza like last time.”

Kerri laughed and looked to her partner. “I don’t know. Can he?”

“Sure thing, girlie. But I have to warn you”—he opened the rear passenger door—“I’m the best at just about any game you name, so prepare for a beatdown.”

“It’s on,” Tori said as she launched into the back seat.

As they prepared to get in, Kerri mouthed the words thank you across the top of the car to her partner. He gave her a wink and slid behind the wheel.

She wasn’t always a great mom, but Falco was wrong. He would make a good dad.

57

6:30 p.m.

Devlin Residence

Twenty-First Avenue South

Tori and Falco had just gotten settled in front of the television with their ice cream and a fierce game Kerri couldn’t name, much less understand, when the doorbell rang. She hoped it was Jen with news of a rendezvous with Thompson. Falco was right. With Jen’s help they could tie both York and Thompson to that murder scene . . . maybe.

The sooner they finished this and found Amelia, the better. If she was in hiding and her cell was dead, Kerri wasn’t sure how they would get in touch with her.

As long as she was safe, the rest would work out.

In the meantime, Kerri had decided to talk to Tori about staying the night at Diana’s so she and Falco could move forward with their plan to surveil Thompson and York tonight. Whatever was going down with this case, it was starting to move faster. They couldn’t risk following orders. Not tonight for sure. Kerri’s instincts were humming.

She walked to the door and checked the peephole. Diana and Robby.

Kerri’s heart rocketed into her throat. She almost ripped the door off its hinges getting it open. “Have you heard from Amelia?”

Diana shook her head, the weariness in the move squeezing Kerri’s chest.

“We need to talk to you, Kerri.” Robby glanced at the racket on the television, then at Tori and Falco on the sofa.

“Sure. Come on in. We can talk in the kitchen.”

Tori shouted “Hey!” to Diana and Robby but never took her eyes off the game. Falco gave one of those jerks of his head that guys used as a form of greeting.

In the kitchen, Kerri gestured to the island. “Pull up a stool, and I’ll get the beer. So not even a text from Amelia?”

“No.” This from Diana. The icy fear in the single syllable tore at Kerri’s soul.

Robby didn’t say anything; he just stood there staring at Kerri.

She grabbed two beers and walked back to the island, set both on the counter. “You guys are making me nervous. What’s going on?”

The two looked at each other before turning back to Kerri. Robby swallowed hard and seemed to struggle drawing in a breath. “We think something bad has happened to Amelia, and it’s my fault.”

“No.” Diana shook her head. “It’s our fault.”

Kerri put the brakes on the emotions that started to twist inside her. “Have you heard something from one of her friends?”

There had been nothing on Amelia’s laptop or social media. Her friends claimed not to have heard from her. Bellemont claimed Ramsey had only been watching her to see if she would lead him to Sela. Though Kerri didn’t trust the guy to be telling the whole truth, they damned sure couldn’t find Ramsey to question him.

Diana and Robby shook their heads in answer to her question about Amelia’s friends.

“Okay,” Kerri said. “Sit down. Drink the beer, and tell me what you mean.”

Robby waited for his wife to sit, then pulled out a stool for himself. He opened a beer and downed it. Kerri glanced at Diana; she shook her head, then pushed the other beer to her husband.

“Take it a little slower this time,” Kerri suggested.

Robby sipped the beer, then took a big breath. “You remember when my dad died?”

Kerri nodded. “Of course. It was rough for you guys for a while.” His father had left the books at the shop in a mess. But Robby had turned it around.

“There’s a reason I was able to turn it around so quickly.”

“You’re good at what you do.” Kerri eased up onto a stool on her side of the island.

He shook his head. “The bank was foreclosing. I had no idea what I was going to do. All I could think about was how Di and I would lose everything. Amelia was only three and . . .” He shook his head again. “I was desperate.”

“Been there, done that,” Kerri assured him. Most everyone experienced hard times at one point or another.

“No.” His gaze collided with hers. “You would never do what I did.”

“Now you’re really freaking me out. What did you do?” When he hesitated, she said, “Robby, this is just me, you, and Diana. Whatever you say, I’m not telling anyone.”

His face crumpled, and for a second she thought he would cry. “You have to, Kerri. There’s no way around it. I should have done this a long time ago and maybe . . .” He closed his eyes and shook his head.

Kerri looked to Diana, who seemed to have drifted into a coma. She shifted her attention back to Robby. “Okay. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

He downed the rest of his second beer. “I think you should probably get your partner in here for this.”

Oh hell. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

He nodded. “I’m sure.”

Kerri went into the living room. It took her a moment to convince Tori to release Falco from his promise. He swore he would make it up to her. Kerri decided her daughter sensed something was wrong when she said, “No problem. I have new clothes to hang up.”

She turned off the game and headed for the stairs.

Back in the kitchen, Kerri introduced Falco to Robby; then he took a seat on a stool at the end of the island. Kerri brought a round of beers.

“Right after my dad died,” Robby started again, “the bank had sent the loan to foreclosure. I had done all I could do.” He exhaled a big breath. “A few days later I was working late—”

“You worked late all the time,” Kerri reminded him. Poor guy. “Still do.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Well, this one night a man knocked on the door. It was maybe nine o’clock. He said he had a proposition for me. He showed me his car, where he’d had what he called a fender bender. It was a company car, he said, and he didn’t want any trouble. When I hesitated, he told me he could help with my loan problems if I could fix the car then and there. When I still hesitated—to tell you the truth, I thought the guy was nuts—he said if I made the repairs and kept my mouth shut that he’d make the whole loan problem go away. I laughed because it was a hell of a lot of money, so I knew he was pulling my leg. I was a little rattled since I wasn’t sure how he knew about my loan.”

Kerri refrained from asking questions. She didn’t want to stop his momentum. This was obviously difficult enough without her interjecting her thoughts. Questions or comments could come when he was done. Falco apparently had decided the same.

“He told me he was a lawyer at the firm who was working the foreclosure. He kept telling me he could make it go away. Finally, I said okay. He sat down in my office to wait. It took me hours because I couldn’t go for parts or paint. I had to use what I had on hand and mix colors to make it match.” He shrugged. “But I was really good at that kind of thing, so I kept at it until I got it just right.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face. Kerri had never seen him so exhausted and shaken. Diana looked lost, defeated. Kerri’s chest hurt. She hated seeing her sister suffer so. Amelia couldn’t possibly understand how she was hurting her parents, or she would come home.

Unless someone wouldn’t allow her to do so.

“Before he left,” Robby continued, “he gave me his card and said that as long as I kept my end of the bargain, he would keep his. I figured I had just been screwed, but what the hell—I had been screwed before. The next day one of those messenger guys stopped by the shop and delivered the paperwork on my loan. It was stamped ‘Paid in Full.’ I thought it was a joke, so I called the bank. But it was true. The loan was paid in full.”