It was official; he was a sucker.
“All right. Hang tight.”
Through the earpiece, Zy heard Trees clacking on the keys of his own computer. The screen of Tessa’s laptop flashed as he started a scan, minimized it, then flipped from one program to the next. Finally, he pulled up the prompt for Gmail. Trees typed in the log-in name they’d captured earlier from their deep dive into the server and his device grabbed the password from cache.
Instantly, the screen filled with a neat row of emails.
The Gmail account was Tessa’s.
Fuck.
Betrayal flashed through him. His blood froze. His heart stuttered and stopped.
Zy didn’t think then, just reacted, slamming the lid shut and yanking the USB drive from the slot.
“The display went dead. What the hell happened?” Trees barked in his ear.
“I severed the fucking connection. I need a minute.”
“To process the fact she’s guilty?”
Yeah. And that she’d been lying to and deceiving every single one of them, especially the chump who had given her his heart and wanted to put a fucking ring on her finger. And now he had to face what he’d been avoiding earlier.
What if she’d had something to do with Kimber’s kidnapping?
Until now, Zy had never known he could both love and hate someone so much at once.
Trees sighed. “It’s okay, buddy. I didn’t get to see all her emails, but I saw enough to know I’m going to need more than a five-minute dive into them. Bring the laptop here.”
Zy closed his eyes. He didn’t fucking want to, but what he wanted meant nothing now. “Yeah.”
And the woman, too. He’d drag her along. It was definitely time to make her answer a slew of questions. And he wasn’t letting her go until she finally gave him the fucking truth.
Once Zy had Tessa’s computer shoved into a pocket on the door of the driver’s side in her sedan, he opened the garage, pulled his bike into the tight space beside her vehicle, grabbed a little something Trees had shoved in his hands before he’d taken off—just in case—and stealthed his way back into the house.
He was almost done with prep for Tessa’s transport, but now he had to think of Hallie. He didn’t want to risk waking the baby in the middle of the night, and an interrogation was no place for a little girl. He couldn’t leave her here alone, but they had no way to care for her out at Trees’s place. No diapers, no playpen, no baby food… And he didn’t have time to pack half the fucking house. If Tessa knew anything about Kimber’s disappearance, he needed to pry it out of her ASAP.
“I need help,” he murmured into his microphone as he stood in the middle of the kitchen.
“Anything.”
“Call Madison for me?”
“Right now? Look, I know you’re pissed at Tessa, but this isn’t the time for a revenge fuck. And it’s disrespectful to think you can use Madison—”
“I need a babysitter,” he growled as quietly as possible.
Zy intended to wake Tessa up, but in his time. In his way. Once he was sure she had absolutely no means of escape.
“Oh. Good call. Laila could watch her, but the fewer distractions the better.”
He didn’t know how ugly this would get. “Agreed.”
“Gimme two.”
Zy agreed, then looked around to see if he needed to bring along anything else of Tessa’s in case it took him a while to break her. He had no idea what she wore under Hallie’s blanket and he didn’t really care. He’d already seen it all.
Yeah, but how good are you at resisting it?
Trees popped back on, thankfully killing Zy’s mental train of thought. “She’s on her way. She only lives about half a mile from Tessa, so expect a knock at the door shortly.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Text me when you’re on your way here. I’ll be ready.”
“Prep a place to put her just in case she gets any notions about being a runner.”
Trees scoffed. “In the middle of the night? In the middle of nowhere? In January? Then again, if she’s as guilty as we think…”
“Yep. See you shortly.”
They disconnected the call. Zy turned on Tessa’s front porch light, then slipped out to wait for Madison. Not three minutes later, she drove up, parked at the curb, then hopped out, wearing a pair of tight yoga pants, a happy pink sweatshirt, and her long hair in some knot on her head that made her neck look long and graceful.
She approached him cautiously. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
No, he was fucking falling apart, and he felt like shit for the way he’d treated Madison in the past when she’d been nothing but nice and welcoming. “Thanks for coming, especially in the middle of the night. I need to interrogate a baby’s mother.”
“I’m confused. Trees asked me to watch Hallie. I thought maybe there was a medical emergency. But you’re going to interrogate Tessa?” She looked horrified—and worried for him. “You love her.”