Cassidy Jones and the Seventh Attendant (Cassidy Jones Adventures, Book Three) (19 page)

Jason continued to egg him on with that smirk. I wanted to wallop him and tell him to make his dog shut up.

What is it with these males?

“I’ll see you later, Cassy.” Jared shouldered past Jason. The stupid dog ignored him and kept barking at me.

“You certainly get these young bucks in a tizzy,” Jason remarked.

Something inside me snapped. My temper had risen to dangerous levels, but hadn’t stirred the beast. It was just Cassidy who was furious.

Slowly, I lowered my chin and made eye contact with the dog. “Stop. Barking,” I commanded, and she did, much to my surprise and Jason’s.

Whimpering, Princess rolled on her back in submission to the more dominant female, her tail between her legs and pointing skyward in defeat.

“Wuss,” Jason said, mocking his dog, but when he looked at me, the blasé had been replaced with uneasiness. His dog’s reaction was odd, and though I didn’t want to admit it, for a split second there was a connection between Princess and me, much like I’d had with Roga, the tiger who had been ready to feast on Mrs. Westing before I intervened.

“See, all your dog needs is a little discipline.” I gave him a disarming smile, hoping it hid my own uneasiness. “Did Mr. Phillips leave the house today?”

Jason cast one last look at his cowering dog before meeting my gaze, his expression unusually serious. “Around eleven.”

I wished I had just let that stupid dog bark.

Jason listed the places Mr. Phillips had stopped: Shell gas station, Ace Hardware, Peet’s Coffee, and Trader Joe’s. Then he fell silent. I turned my hand in circles for him to continue.

Jason’s smirk returned. “Home,” he said, back to his normal sardonic self.

“That’s it?”

“What were you expecting him to do? Blow up Columbia Tower?” Jason delivered this in an offhanded way, but watched for my reaction. This was exhausting. I couldn’t let my guard down for a second with him.

“Oh, yeah, that’s
exactly
what I thought he’d do.” I willed my face not to reveal that Mr. Phillips blowing up Columbia Tower was a completely feasible scenario. “How long did you follow him?”

“Sweetheart, if this is in regard to what you owe me, I was on the clock the moment you left my house this morning, remember?”

I began calculating. Jason saved me the effort.

“Eight hours, rounded down, out of the goodness of my heart: a hundred and sixty dollars.”

“One sixty?” I sputtered. “For errands?”

“Disappointing, I know, but you’re paying for a service. That’s how it works in the big people world. Now, Cupcake, I’m getting a bad feeling that you’re playing me. I strongly advise against reneging.”

“I’m going to pay you. A deal’s a—” I stopped, getting a whiff of Emery this time.

No!
I shot my hand into my coat pocket. My fingertips jammed into my iPhone. Why hadn’t I thought of powering down the phone?
Darn GPS.

“You’ve got to go,
now
,” I told Jason.

Alarmed, he jerked his head around to see who was sneaking up on him. The path was clear. Emery hadn’t rounded the corner yet. Jason turned back around to me, irritated.

“No conning a con,” he advised.

“I’m not conning you,” I snapped. “And I
will
pay you. Just go!”

“I think not. Pay up now, and I’ll be on my merry way.”

“You know I don’t have the cash right now,” I hissed. Emery would be in earshot at any moment. “We agreed to a payment plan. But here’s five dollars.” I slapped the bill in his greedy mitt. “I’ll get the rest to you when I have it. Just go, that way.” I pointed in the opposite direction of Emery, but it was too late.

He came around the corner and was not the least bit surprised to see Jason.

“Now this is a fine kettle of fish,” Jason said.

I felt my face turn a shade of green. I was going to be sick.

Emery briefly regarded the dog, still curled into a submissive ball on the gravel. Princess had been so quiet, I had forgotten she was there. His gaze moved to the five-dollar bill in Jason’s hand.

“How much?” Emery asked Jason in a matter-of-fact way, as if he’d been the one who had hired him.

“A couple Bens should do,” Jason replied, smug, as if Emery
had
hired him. It made me wonder what I’d missed.

I experienced a range of emotions as I watched Emery pluck out two hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. My stomach sank. He had come prepared. He knew I had hired Jason, but did he know what for? Rubbing my forehead with a shaky hand, I wondered if anyone else knew—such as Mr. Phillips.

Jason tucked the bills into his jeans pocket, then yanked the dog to her feet by the leash. Princess let out a yelp.

“Enjoy this fine afternoon, lovebirds.” Jason winked at me. Good thing for him I was so devastated.

I watched him saunter away, dragging Princess behind him. She looked back at me, miserable. I knew how she felt.

“Would you mind explaining why you hired Jason to follow my dad?” Emery asked when Jason was out of earshot.

Unable to look at him, I lowered my face into my hands and cried. When tiny pools of hot tears had formed in my palms, Emery’s patience expired.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere.” Irritation edged his voice. “Let’s go to the park and sit until you can calm down.”

I nodded and started walking, avoiding eye contact with him.

As we emerged from the woods, Emery broke the silence. “Let’s go to the swing.” He called it
the
swing, but I referred to it as
our
swing, since it was where I had taken him into my confidence about the changes I’d experienced after knocking over beakers of Formula 10X.
Our
swing was a totally appropriate place to spill my guts once again.

“Step into the confessional.” Emery held the swing still for me, echoing my thoughts.

Stealing a glance at his stoic face, I stepped onto the slatted wood platform and collapsed onto a bench. Emery sat across from me on the other bench.

I wiped my eyes with my coat sleeve and allowed my gaze to crawl up to his face, which was calm. Why was he always so calm?

“I’m going to share what I’ve pieced together,” he said. “Stop me if I have anything wrong.”

Biting my lip, I jerked a nod.

“My dad was also in the tomb at the Denny.”

I nodded, staring at his mouth.

“My dad shot you.”

“He didn’t shoot me. He shot a mummy,” I corrected, only somewhat intelligently, since I had started crying again.

“Do you think he wouldn’t have fired his weapon if he had known it was you?”

Unsure whether he was being rhetorical, I shrugged. Emery’s dad was bad to the bone. I wouldn’t put anything past him.

Emery placed his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes on the void before him. “An honest answer, not muddied by tiptoeing around my feelings,” he observed. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Tell me everything you’ve held back. Spare no detail.”

I did as he asked with much difficulty. If it weren’t for all the tears and apologies, I would have completed the account in half the time. Throughout it, Emery urged me on with nods and waved off apologies as if they were gnats.

At one point, he interrupted my agonized apology. “Stop apologizing, Cassidy. You were between a rock and a hard place. I understand that. In your position, I would have verified my suspicions before sharing them with you, too.”

I couldn’t handle his calmness anymore. “I don’t understand how you can be so easygoing about this. You don’t even look upset.” I followed this with another horrified apology. Why couldn’t I think before speaking?

Emery waited for me to fall quiet. Then he said, “I have a skill you don’t—the ability to
compartmentalize
. Once we have the microchip, I’ll sort through my feelings, but until then, I can’t let emotion influence my decisions. Too much is at stake.”

“But he’s your dad.”

“I know. To be frank, he and I are close, but at arm’s length, if that makes sense. I’m allowed into one part of his life, but not another, which is fine, because the part I’m in is meaningful to him—”

Tears poured down my face. This was so heart-wrenching.

“I’m aware he has a dark side.” Emery paused, and a gamut of emotions flitted across his face—worry, sadness, confusion, regret, anger. He cleared his throat and added, “But I always thought he was one of the good guys.”

I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Oh, Emery!” I grabbed his hands and bent over them, smothering them with weepy kisses. I tasted his skin and the salt of my tears. When I had sufficiently slobbered all over them, I peeked up at him through wet lashes.

His face was composed again, and his expression showed he was deep in thought. He also seemed unaware of me looking at him, as if a sobbing girl weren’t kissing his hands and making a complete idiot of herself.

“However,” he said as though continuing a sentence, “we can’t forget that we only have a few data points to draw a conclusion from.”

Releasing his hands, I straightened up. Apparently his moment of vulnerability had passed.

Now that he had his hands back, Emery relaxed into the bench. “Admittedly, the data points that we do have are damning. My dad
did
help plan a heist; he
did
break into the museum; and he
did
steal Queen Kiya’s crown.”

I considered sharing Mr. Phillips’s joke about killing the security guard if he double-crossed Moreau, but dismissed it. Why rub salt in the wound? Emery had his dad’s number now.

“So we will keep priorities straight and emotions at bay,” he continued, “and take whatever measures are necessary to recover the microchip before damage can be done.”

“Should we tell your mom about this?”

“Absolutely not. She is too emotionally driven and would be compelled to confront my dad.”

I stared at him skeptically.
Serena driven by emotions?
I just didn’t see it.

“Don’t let her fool you,” Emery said, answering my thoughts in his eerie way. “She isn’t as rational as she puts on—like someone else I know.” He grinned.

“You’re
teasing
me?” I slapped his thigh, which made him grin more. “At a time like this? And when have I
ever
pretended to be rational?”

“I stand corrected. You have
never
pretended to be rational. What did Jason report?”

“Nothing. Your dad ran errands. That’s it. By the way, how did you know I hired Jason?”

“My dad told me.”

I just about had a heart attack. Judging by Emery’s laughter, my expression was hysterical.

“Apparently some clarification is needed,” Emery said between laughs.

I didn’t hold this amusement against him. He probably needed it to cope.

“My dad casually mentioned when I came home that ‘the blond kid from across the street’ seemed to ‘be about Seattle quite a bit today.’” He shook his head with a look of distaste. “Honestly, it was humiliating for him to think I was such an amateur that I’d hire Jason to follow him.”

“I deserve that,” I agreed, taking my lumps. “I am an amateur. What did you tell him?”

“Tell him? He made a general comment to which I cleverly replied, ‘Huh.’”

“But obviously he knows Jason was following him. Doesn’t he want to know why?”

“Of course he does, but he isn’t going to ask me, since I’m a prime suspect.”

“I’m going to be sick,” I groaned, gripping my stomach. I had really made a mess of things. “How did he even see him? Jason’s good at this stuff.”

“My dad is better,” Emery said. “We’ll have to take extra precautions, since his suspicion is aroused.”

“Are you okay with this?”

“I have no choice but to be okay. We should get back. We have to run surveillance on my dad.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“None of that,” Emery reminded me. “The story isn’t over yet. But we’ll err on the side of caution and assume my dad belongs behind bars.”

I started to say
sorry
again, but Emery covered my mouth.

“And
you
are never to keep me in the dark again. We’re a team. We need to be straight with one another. Otherwise we’re at a disadvantage.”

“Sor—” I began to say into his hand.

He shook his head. “Nod yes.”

I nodded.

“Glad we’re in agreement.” He released my mouth.

“So what do we do now?”

“I’ll poke around my house for clues, probably to no avail. My dad won’t leave any behind.”

“You say that like you’ve looked before.”

“I’ve looked for clues my entire life.”

Hearing that Emery had been searching for the truth about his father had surprised me a little. He’d always acted indifferent about his dad’s mysterious ways.

“I’m a known factor. You’re not,” he continued. “My dad won’t anticipate what you’re capable of. I’ll run surveillance during the day, and you will at night. If we’re lucky, he’ll slip up, and we’ll have the microchip well before Sunday.”

Sadness filled me. Emery talking so impassively about his dad, as if we were discussing a complete stranger, bothered me. Could he really turn his feelings off like a faucet?

Instead of annoying him with another apology, I took his hand again. “Are we okay now?” I asked.

“We were always okay. Just be completely honest with me from here on out.”

I nodded miserably, turning my face away so he wouldn’t see that there were things I still hid, such as his dad being a paid killer, suspicions that he had something to do with Junior’s prison break—and that he might be on the senior King’s payroll.

Fifteen

Chad The Cad

As Emery had predicted, he didn’t turn up any evidence of his father’s activities, business associates, or possible locations of the microchip. I didn’t have any luck that evening, either. Mr. Phillips never left his house. Around 2:00 a.m., I once again gave up waiting for him to sneak out and got some exercise. Although I was dying to make sure that Joe was off the streets for the night, I decided to not venture farther than the woods, just in case Mr. Phillips pulled a fast one. From the woods, I could hear a car engine start on our street and catch up with him in under a minute.