The One I Trust (32 page)

“Good.”

I reached my hand up to her face and stroked her cheek.

“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” I asked.

She covered my hand with hers and nodded.

I lowered my head and covered her lips with mine. We kissed like it was summer again.

Actually it was better than summer because it was the first time since I’d known Emily that there was no sadness inside of me at all.

“It’s been so long since we’ve made love,” I told her between kisses.

“I know,” she whispered back against my mouth.

I pulled her closer and we kissed deeper, but then I stopped and added, “Of course if he calls me, I’m going right back in there.”

“I know,” she said again, and I could feel her smile even in the dark.

Noah didn’t wake up all night.

ON MONDAY, STU met us at Emily’s school and asked for a meeting with her principal. When a sheriff is sitting in your office explaining everything, you tend to be rather agreeable.

The principal said that of course he understood Emily’s computer had been compromised, which was why she had missed meetings and why her lesson plans had not been turned in on time. Of course he understood that most if not all of the complaints he’d received about Emily had been fabricated. Of course Noah could be enrolled in Emily’s class.

We were on such a roll that I ventured to ask him if he could have a talk with Emily’s assistant.

“I understand that Julie has a lot of experience,” I said, “but if Emily decides that something needs to be done in a certain way, it would probably be best if that’s the way it happens. After everything he’s been through, Noah really doesn’t need to be exposed to any kind of conflict right now.”

We got another “Of course,” and Emily gave me a look of surprise and appreciation.

I spent that afternoon with Emily’s private investigator, Wyatt, searching the house for bugs. He showed me exactly what we were looking for, and every time we found one he marveled at what advanced technology Tori had used and the cleverness with which she had concealed each one.

“They cost her a pretty penny,” Wyatt commented. “Where’d she get her money?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted. It was one of several questions to which I had no answers.

Wyatt and I talked at length about what it was going to take for me to become a private eye, and by the time we finished our discussion, I’d solidified my decision that it was something I was definitely going to pursue.

“You’re welcome to work under me,” Wyatt said. “I can’t promise you anything full-time right now, but you could at least start getting some of your hours in. Maybe keep your day job and work nights and weekends for a while till we see how it goes?”

It sounded like a great plan.

As time went on, we settled into a new normal—a glorious, wonderful new normal—but the nagging thought was always in the back of my mind that Tori had not worked entirely alone. I had been thinking about it ever since Emily first mentioned it, and the more I thought, the more it made sense that she probably would not have been able to pull everything off that she did without some kind of help. The idea that some minion of Tori’s might be out there never left me.

I let Charlotte help us pay for a top-of-the-line security system and—after Emily got her conceal and carry permit—a new pistol. We took it down to the range and practiced, and I called Stu again to remind him that Tori was a huge escape risk. He promised me yet another time that he had passed that word along, and he assured me once more that she was
not
going to escape.

Emily and I went to the range to practice again.

Near the end of October, Hale, Anneka, and Molly took Noah to visit a corn maze—without me and without Emily. It was the first time Noah had been anywhere without one of us by his side. That was actually the main reason we didn’t go with him . . . because at some point I was going to have to let go, at least a little bit.

Shortly before I was expecting their return, I ran the vacuum cleaner over our new living room carpet while Emily dusted the furniture. Hale and Anneka were staying for dinner after they brought Noah home and we wanted everything to look nice, but mostly I was willing to do almost anything to keep my mind occupied instead of worrying about him. After I’d reached everything that I could without unplugging, I turned the vacuum off and checked my phone.

No messages.

I listened for sounds from the front of the house.

There were none.

“He’s fine,” Emily said, stopping her dusting to glance at me. “They’re probably going to be home any minute now.”

“I know.”

“Call Hale,” she suggested.

“No.” A huge part of this was that I needed to be able to let Noah out of my sight without checking in on him every five minutes. I tried to push away images of Tori suddenly materializing in a sea of brown corn stalks.

“How did she get in?” I asked Emily.

It was the thousandth time I’d wondered aloud how Tori had gotten into our house even after Emily had changed the locks.

“I don’t know,” she said—also for the thousandth time—“but it doesn’t matter. She’s in jail and she can’t get out.
It doesn’t matter
.”

I resisted the impulse to call Sheriff Stuart yet again and make sure that Tori was still in custody.

“It
does
matter,” I said. “If someone was helping her, then they can get in, too.”

“I know,” she said, “but we’ve got an alarm system now and we got rid of all the bugs and both of us are carrying now. You need to relax.”

“I’m never going to be able to relax until I figure out how she was getting in.”

Emily sighed. I was sure she was tired of having this conversation.

“Plus,” I said, “what kind of a private eye am I going to be if I can’t even figure out how someone was getting into and out of a house that was completely locked?”

“You’re going to be a
great
private eye . . .”

I think she was getting tired of that conversation, too.

“No, I’m not,” I said. “A great private eye would be able to figure this out.”

“No,” she said with a little smile. “A great private eye would be able to figure out that he and his wife have an entire house all to themselves. A great private eye would be taking advantage of that fact—he wouldn’t be wasting all his time vacuuming.”

I looked at her for a minute as her smile widened.

“Are you sure that’s what a great private eye would do?”

“Oh, I’m positive,” she said.

“They could be back any minute,” I reminded her.

“Why don’t you find out?”

I finally allowed myself to call Hale.

“Well, well,” he answered. “Good job. You held out a whole lot longer than I thought you would.”

“Everything going good?”

“Yep. We’re on our way home right now.”

“Where are you at?”

“Just passed South Hills,” he said. South Hills was a mall about fifteen minutes away.

I looked at Emily, who was still giving me a seductive smile.

“I’ll give you ten bucks if you give me an extra half hour,” I said.

“Only ten bucks?” Hale asked at the same time I heard Emily say, “Only half an hour?”

“Twenty bucks,” I said into the phone. “And make it an hour.”

“That sounds better,” both of them said.

After dinner that evening we started a movie for Noah and Molly to watch. They settled down on the couch together with popcorn and ice cream while we adults gathered around the kitchen table to play spades.

I had my back to the sliding glass door that led out to the deck (the most dangerous of all positions when playing cards because you must be ever mindful of the fact that, if you’re not careful, your opponents might see the reflection of your cards in the glass).

Emily and I were winning soundly when I dropped—of all things—my ace of spades. It hit the floor near the sliding glass door. Fortunately it landed face down, but I still glanced at Hale accusingly.

“I didn’t see a thing,” he said, holding up his hands innocently.

“Liar.”

He grinned at me and I glared back before pushing my chair away from the table. I bent down to pick up the fallen card . . .

And then I froze.

I squatted down and looked carefully at the base of the doorframe—specifically at the runner that the sliding glass door moved along. I slowly reached my hand out and used my finger to touch a small, plastic disc. It was a disc about the size of the head of a large nail.

It was a disc that I had never noticed before.

I used my fingernail to pry it loose and then looked at the small, seemingly inconsequential hole that it had been plugging. I touched the hole too.

I stood up and further examined the disc, and then I looked back at the hole.

“Are we going to play or not?” Anneka wanted to know, clearly annoyed.

“What do you have?” Emily asked.

I set the plastic plug down on the table for all of them to see.

Hale picked it up. “What’s that?”

I ignored him and went into the bedroom to grab an empty wire hanger from the closet. Then I went back out to the kitchen, opened the laundry closet, and lifted my toolbox from the shelf.

“What are you doing?” Emily asked.

I ignored her, too, and riffled around until I found a pair of pliers with wire cutters. I snipped the hanger in two places and took a long, straight piece of wire back with me to my newly discovered hole.

With Emily, Hale, and Anneka all looking on in confusion, I inserted the straight piece of wire into the hole and watched in amazement as it came out on the other side . . .
outside
.

I turned around and looked at Emily excitedly.

“What?” she asked.

I still didn’t answer but opened the screen and stepped out onto the deck.

“Lock me out,” I said as I pulled the heavy glass door shut behind me.

Emily got up and locked the door, looking at me curiously through the glass.

“No,” I said loudly, pointing at the base of the doorframe. “Put the bar in.”

She grabbed the wooden bar and laid it along the runner between the sliding door and the frame. Then she watched as I squatted down and reinserted the wire—this time from the outside in. The stiff wire easily pushed the wooden bar up and out of its resting place. It rolled gently onto the floor.

“That’s how she did it!” I heard Emily cry through the glass. “You figured it out!”

I smiled as she unlocked the door and slid it open, throwing her arms around me in a happy hug.

“But how did she get it unlocked?” Anneka asked.

“I didn’t change that lock,” Emily explained breathlessly. “I figured with the bar in there I didn’t need to worry about it.”

“How did she get back out?” Hale wanted to know.

We all thought about that for a moment. I picked the bar up off the floor and placed it at a diagonal between the sliding door and the frame. I stepped back out onto the deck and slowly pulled the door closed. We all watched as the bar lowered and finally dropped into place.

Emily lifted the bar out and grinned as I let myself back in.

“See?” she asked, wrapping her arms around me once more. “I told you. You’re going to be a
great
private eye. When are you going to start trusting me?”

I gave her another hug. Over her shoulder I saw my son sitting on the couch, happily eating ice cream while he watched a movie with his best friend.

I pulled back and smiled widely at Emily.

“Right now,” I replied.

While Reid throws around terms such as “insane,” “crazy,” and “mentally ill” in his efforts to describe what he experiences, I feel the need to point out that no character in this book ever received a diagnosis of any mental health illness, nor had they seen any type of mental health professional. Another term used in the story was “psychotic”. Being psychotic or having psychosis means a person has lost contact with reality but not necessarily that they are violent. This word is quite often attached to people who commit acts of violence even when there is no history of the individual having a mental illness.

People who have been diagnosed with a mental health issues are statistically no more likely to kill dogs or burn down houses than those without such a diagnosis, and—in reality—people with mental health concerns are much more likely to be
victims
of violence than they are to be perpetrators. Bad behavior and evil behavior are not mental illness. Unfortunately, in this fallen world, there will always be evil.

The use of these terms in this novel were meant to be descriptive but they are not appropriate when discussing real life mental health concerns. For anyone struggling with a mental health concern such as depression, anxiety, grief and stress, please know that appropriate professional mental health care is available and can be quite effective.

Additionally I’d like to mention that it can be very difficult for couples to adopt when one parent is recognized as carrying a gene that predisposes them to a seriously disabling disease such as Huntington’s. It is not out of the realm of possibilities that Charlotte and Jordan could have adopted children, but I wanted to address the fact that—at the very least—the process would have been much more difficult and involved than is hinted at in this story.

Thank you for reading
The One I Trust
. Please consider leaving a
spoiler free
review, and also be sure to look for Book 2:
The One I Follow
, and keep up with all my latest releases on
L.N. Cronk’s Amazon Author page.

Readers of my
Chop, Chop
series
surely recognized a few familiar faces in the pages of
The One I Trust
. If you haven’t yet read the series, you can try the first novel by
clicking here
.
Just like Reid’s story,
Chop, Chop
is contemporary Christian fiction that stands alone. Naturally I hope you’ll love the characters and want to follow the series further, but I promise that—even though it’s the first in a series—it won’t leave you hanging!