When I Say Yes (Necklace Trilogy 3)

CHAPTER THIRTY

My attention returns to the journal and Allison.

I read the entry I’ve just read again and decide that it’s possible she ran from her problems. I let that simmer a moment, but reject this possibility and do so out of logic, not emotion. I don’t feel it’s likely that she’d leave the man she loved without talking to him. Of course, that theory assumes she didn’t talk to Tyler. Maybe she did and he shut her out. I scan the passage again and turn to two sentences: If I don’t tell, someone else is certainly going to be hurt. Like I was hurt.

Unease burns in my belly with the words, like I was hurt.

I grab my phone and dial Dash. He answers on the first ring. “Miss me already?”

“No, I mean yes, of course, but—it’s been a weird morning.”

“Already?”

“I had a conversation with Tyler that kind of ties into why I called.” I don’t give him time to ask questions or comment adding, “I still have that journal I found. And before you say anything, the talk with Tyler just triggered my worries about Allison again therefore I grabbed it from my purse—”

“You’re carrying it around?”

“Yes, well, I guess I am. The point is the final entry—it’s—I don’t know what it is. I’m going to take a photo and send it to you and just let you read it. Hold on a minute.” I shoot the photo and text it to Dash. “You should get it any second.”

“I got it. Give me a minute to read.” He’s silent for a good thirty seconds before he says, “I’m not sure if this makes me feel like she ran or got herself in trouble by talking to the wrong person.”

“I know, right? I felt the same. Should I talk to Tyler about it and ask what he knows?”

“He’ll want to see the journal. Are you prepared to show it to him?”

“It’s bad enough that I’m reading it and showing part of it to you. No. Not now. I don’t think so. There has to be another way for me to bring it up. I could say I heard a rumor, maybe?”

“Maybe,” he says, “but before you do anything we need to pause. Neil texted me this morning anyway. He wants us to meet at lunch. Can you still make that happen?”

“Yes, I’ll make it happen. Does he have news?”

“He wants to update us on what he’s discovered, but he was matter-of-fact about it.”

“How very FBI agent of him. Does he have news?” I repeat.

“I’d tell you if I knew, baby, but bring the journal.”

“I don’t want Neil to have it,” I say, appalled at the idea.

“I get that, but if we had chosen to file a missing person’s report, they’d want it. Better Neil than an entire police department.”

“I need this journal, Dash,” I say, the word “need” clawing at me. “I feel a bit like I’m her only advocate and maybe one of the only people who could understand some of what is inside.”

He’s silent a moment, disapproval ticking through the line before he says, “Make copies if you can. If not, I’ll have him make them and bring the journal back.”

“Tell me I’m worrying for nothing.”

“I’ll wait until after I hear what Neil has to say. You tell me what happened with Tyler.”

“Only if you promise me you’ll let me handle Tyler.”

“That depends,” he says, his voice hard as stone. “Did he put his hands on you or hit on you?”

“No.” I hesitate, thinking about that one moment with Tyler when he’d said, “there’s a lot of things I want to do with you.”

“Not really,” I add.

“Not really?” Dash snaps. “What the hell, Allie?”

“He didn’t. It’s not that simple. He told me I had to be in or out with you because you’ll fuck up again and basically, paraphrasing, of course, I don’t get to cut and run from my job, if we break-up. Again, not exactly what he said, but that was how I read his message. It’s very confusing because why does he care? I mean, in one breath he warns me away from you, and in the next, he’s telling me to commit. I think. He’s very confusing.”

“What else?” he asks tightly.

“He told me I can only work for Hawk directly. He won’t let me have one foot in the door and one out with Riptide and New York versus Hawk Legal and Nashville.”

He’s silent two beats before he asks, “And you said what to all of this?” his tone unreadable, cautiously controlled, no doubt.

“Not much. As little as possible. We are not his business and besides that conversation wasn’t about me or you. It was about him and Allison, and on that, I did speak. I told him I knew that. I told him to call her. He told me she hates him. Maybe she went to him about whatever happened and he reacted poorly and she just had enough. She left. You have no idea how much I want to believe that or how much I can’t seem to actually believe it. I don’t know why this is nagging at me. But since I found the journal, hearing her words in my head, knowing how alone she is, just really makes me feel like she needs us.”