Steele’s Redemption

Chapter 16

Jake

"Say that again," I said.

"Plate partial matches a delivery van that's badged into our lot four times in the last two months," Nash said. "Same driver ID code each time. Guy's got legitimate reason to be here—or he did, until his company tells me they never sent him tonight."

I looked at Emma. She'd gone pale in the low light, arms wrapped around herself, but she wasn't shrinking. She was listening, cataloging, the way she'd started doing with everything since the tool bag.

"He's here now?" I asked.

"Signed in at the shop ten minutes ago," Nash said. "Told the front desk he's checking a work order on the compressor unit. I'm walking over."

"I'm coming."

Emma stood. "So am I."

I almost said no. Then I looked at her face and didn't.

---

The shop floor smelled like oil and cold metal. A man in a gray uniform shirt stood near the compressor, clipboard in hand, unbothered, like a man who belonged exactly where he was standing. Middle-aged, unremarkable, the kind of face you'd forget in a parking lot.

"Help you find something?" I said.

He turned, easy smile already in place. "Just following up on a service call. Compressor's been flagged for a pressure issue."

"What company?"

He gave the name. Real company. Same one whose after-hours line had told Nash, an hour ago, that nobody was dispatched.

"Funny," Nash said, stepping up beside me. "I talked to your dispatch tonight. No job on the books."

The man's smile didn't move, but something behind his eyes recalculated. "Might've been a scheduling mix-up. Happens."

"Show me your work order."

He patted his jacket like a man checking for keys, buying half a second. "Left it in the van."

"We'll walk you out," I said.

Emma hadn't said anything yet. She was standing off to the side, watching him the way she'd learned to watch Derek—reading hands, not words. Then she said, quiet but clear:

"You were at the clinic. Three weeks ago. You held the door for me."

The man's jaw ticked. Just barely. But it ticked.

"Lot of people hold doors, sweetheart."

"I remember your bag," Emma said. "Red patch on the strap. Crooked stitching."

Nash's eyes cut to me. Mine didn't leave the man's face.

"You've got good memory," he said, and there was nothing friendly left in it now.

"She's got good instincts," I said. "Which is more useful."

He shifted his weight, calculating exits. There were three men behind him inside of two seconds—not because I signaled, but because that's what my shop is. Men who notice when the air changes.

"I'm gonna need you to sit down," I said, "and we're gonna have a real conversation. Or you can keep pretending you don't know why a pregnant woman recognizing your face makes you sweat."

The word landed in the room like a dropped wrench.

He hadn't reacted to *r**e*, or *Derek*, or *clinic*. He reacted to *pregnant*—a flicker, gone fast, but there.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"Then why'd your face just tell me you already knew," I said.

Nash had his phone out before I finished the sentence, already scrolling. "Got his van registration. Company logo's real, but the decal's peeling at the corner—like it was slapped on this week." He looked up. "You're not an employee. You're using their name."

The man's hand twitched toward his jacket pocket. I was on him before it finished moving, hand closing over his wrist, not hard enough to break anything, hard enough that he understood the difference between me choosing not to and me being unable to.

"Phone," I said. "Slow."

He handed it over.

Nash unlocked it in under a minute—four-digit code, lazy man's habit. He scrolled, jaw tightening with every second.

"Text thread," Nash said. "No name saved. Just a number." He read it out loud, voice flat. *"Confirm she's still showing. Client wants proof before he moves on the room."*

The floor went quiet except for the compressor humming behind us, oblivious.

"Client," I said.

"Client," Nash confirmed. "And there's a photo attached. Taken from across the street. Emma walking into the clinic three days ago."

I didn't look at Emma right away. I made myself finish this first—cuffed the man's wrists with a zip tie from the bench, called it in to the two off-duty cops who owed the club favors instead of the ones who didn't. He didn't fight it. Men like him rarely do; the fighting isn't the job, the watching is.

Only once he was sitting, secured, silent, did I turn to Emma.

She was steadier than I expected. Angry, mostly. Underneath the anger, something that looked like relief—proof, finally, that she hadn't imagined any of it.

"He knows," she said. "Derek knows."

"He knows you're pregnant," I said. There was no soft way to say it, so I didn't try. "We don't know if he knows anything past that yet."

"That's enough," she said. "That's everything."

I wanted to reach for her. I didn't, not yet—not with a stranger sitting six feet away listening, not until she reached first.

"You need to eat something," I said instead, because it was true and because it was the only thing I could offer her that wasn't a promise I couldn't fully back yet. "You've been on your feet an hour and you went white before he even opened his mouth."

"I'm fine."

"You're not, and that's allowed." I kept my voice even. "When's the follow-up with Dr. Chen?"

"Thursday." She pressed a hand briefly against her stomach, an unconscious motion I didn't think she noticed herself making. "I still haven't decided anything, Jake. Him knowing doesn't change that. It doesn't get to change that."

"It shouldn't," I said. "And it won't. Not from me."

"This isn't just about Derek," she said, quieter now, like she needed to hear herself say it as much as she needed me to. "It's my body. My future. Whatever I decide, I need it to be mine."

"It is," I said. "Every bit of it."

She looked past me, at the man zip-tied to the bench, at Nash already dialing someone about tracing the unknown number, at the shop full of men who'd go to war before they let a stranger walk her building's hallway again.

"Take me home," she said. Not the penthouse's address—just *home*, like the word had started meaning something specific to her without either of us deciding when.

I got her coat. Nash caught my eye once, phone still in his hand, screen lit with the message we hadn't finished reading.

*Client wants proof before he moves on the room.*

The room wasn't hers anymore. Whoever this client was, he didn't know that yet.

I intended to make sure he found out the hard way.