My Contract Husband

Chapter 16: 6 hours

They ended up in a motel that charged by the hour and judged by the minute.

"This is romantic," Emma said, dropping onto a bedspread that had clearly survived several decades and at least one small fire. "Very 'on the run from my husband's murderous family' chic."

"I said safe, not stylish." Alexander was pacing, phone in hand, checking the peeling curtains for the fourth time like they might suddenly develop opinions about their safety.

"You're going to wear a groove in the carpet."

"The carpet's already ruined. I'm doing it a favor."

Five hours and forty minutes left.

Emma made herself breathe. Panicking wouldn't get Hope back any faster, and somewhere underneath the terror was a colder, sharper part of her — the part that had clawed her way to CEO, that had survived a fake marriage and a real kidnapping attempt and Daniel Carter's smug little smile in a courtroom. That part of her was thinking.

"Okay," she said. "Talk me through it. Who actually has the resources to pull this off? Not just muscle — planning. Tracking Marissa. Timing it to the exact night we found out about the safe."

Alexander stopped pacing. "Someone with money, patience, and inside knowledge of my family."

"That's still half the city."

"It's not half the city who also knows the code to my father's old safe." He rubbed his jaw. "I need to make a call."

"To who?"

"Someone I haven't spoken to in six years."

Emma sat up. "Alexander."

"His name is Victor. He used to run security for my father, before Daniel had him fired for asking too many questions about the 'accident.'" Alexander said the word like it tasted bad. "He knows things about my family nobody else does. If anyone can tell us who's really pulling strings, it's him."

"And you're just now mentioning this six-year-old contact."

"I'm mentioning him now because now is when it matters."

"That's a very smooth non-answer for a man standing in a motel room with his shoes still untied."

Alexander looked down. His shoes were, in fact, still untied. "I've had a full night."

"We've all had a full night. Some of us managed our laces."

He almost laughed — the sound came out more like air escaping a tire — and dialed.

The call didn't go well.

Emma could only hear Alexander's half of it, but his half told her enough. His voice went low and careful, the tone he used in board meetings he was quietly losing. At one point he said, "I know how that sounded," and then, thirty seconds later, "No, I'm not asking you to forgive ten years, I'm asking you to help me find a baby," and Emma's stomach dropped straight through the motel floor.

He hung up. His hand was shaking.

"He'll help," Alexander said. "He's sending coordinates. A property outside the city Daniel used to use for — for things he didn't want traced back to Carter Industries."

"Good," Emma said slowly. "That's good news. Why do you look like you swallowed glass?"

"Because Victor said something else." Alexander sat down hard on the edge of the bed, all the pacing finally drained out of him. "He said he already got a call tonight. Two hours ago. From someone asking the exact same questions I just asked him."

The room went very quiet.

"Someone beat us to him," Emma said.

"Someone who knew to call Victor before *I* even remembered he existed." Alexander scrubbed both hands over his face. "Emma, I haven't said that man's name out loud in six years. I didn't put it in an email, a text, anything digital. The only way someone else knew to call him first is if they know things about my life that I don't share with anyone."

"Or," Emma said, and her voice had gone flat and careful in a way Alexander clearly recognized, because he looked up fast, "someone you *do* share things with told them."

The silence that followed had teeth.

"Say what you mean," Alexander said.

"I mean I watched you decide, in real time, to keep a contact a secret from me for six hours during the worst night of our lives," Emma said, standing up now, pacing herself, adrenaline finally finding a target that wasn't a locked door. "And you're surprised I'm wondering what else you've decided to keep to yourself, on a night when your brother's people knew our daughter's *name*."

"That is not fair."

"Nothing about tonight is fair, Alexander!" Her voice cracked, and she hated it, hated that fear kept turning into anger because anger was easier to hold. "I trusted you with the last secret. It nearly got us both shot off a fire escape."

"I have spent this entire year trying to protect you from exactly this."

"By hiding things from me! That is not protection, that is just — " she threw her hands up, out of words, out of air, " — that is just a nicer way of lying!"

Silence. Real silence, the kind that has its own weight.

Then, from the nightstand, Emma's phone buzzed, and for one horrible second neither of them moved to answer it, both too raw to want more bad news.

It wasn't "A Friend."

It was Marissa's number.

Emma answered so fast she nearly dropped the phone. "Marissa?! Are you okay, is Hope—"

"I'm fine, I'm — Emma, listen to me, I only have a minute." Marissa's voice was hoarse, whispering. "They didn't take her far. There's a service elevator in the building, I heard them say a floor number before they took my phone, I memorized it before I got mine back from the floor when the guy dropped it like an i***t—"

"You have your phone back? How—"

"I bit him," Marissa said, with the flat, exhausted dignity of a woman who had made a decision and did not regret it. "Floor four. I have to go. I love that baby like she's mine, Emma, get her back."

The line cut out.

Emma stood frozen for half a second, phone still pressed to her ear, and then she started to laugh — the wrong kind again, half sob, half real — because of everything happening tonight, "the nanny bit a kidnapper and stole his phone" was somehow the least surprising part.

"She bit him," Emma said, turning to Alexander. "She *bit* him and got her phone back like this is a Tuesday."

"I am giving that woman a raise," Alexander said, already grabbing his jacket, "and then I am firing her, exactly like you said, out of pure respect."

"Floor four," Emma said, snapping back into focus, fear and fury both narrowing into something usable. "Same building as Victor's coordinates?"

Alexander checked his phone. His face went pale and then, strangely, almost relieved — like a puzzle piece clicking into a shape he didn't want but could finally see.

"Same building," he said. "Emma. It's not a coincidence anymore."

"No," Emma said, already pulling her shoes on, adrenaline burning clean through the argument they hadn't finished. "It's not."

They didn't talk about the fight again — not yet, there wasn't time, and some part of Emma knew they were about to walk into the kind of night where you either survived together or you didn't survive the trust issues at all.

"For the record," Alexander said at the door, voice low, "I'm sorry. About Victor. I should've told you the second I thought of him."

"For the record," Emma said, hand already on the doorknob, "you're still buying me new shoes after this."

"Deal."

"And you're tying your laces. You look unhinged."

Alexander looked down, and — four hours and fifty minutes into the worst night of his life — actually bent down and tied them.

"Better?"

"Marginally," Emma said. "Let's go get our daughter."