Her mother had taken a key from her pocket and opened the box. From the box she took a fat wad of bills and added more to it, securing a rubber band around the whole thing and throwing it back in. Then she’d reached into the pocket of her cardigan and taken out the flash drive, tossed it in after.
The front door shut. Irene had jumped and quickly closed the box, locked it, shoved it back into the closet. Emma had crept backward, slipping inside Juliette’s room, since it was the closest, not quite shutting the door so it wouldn’t make a sound. Juliette, sitting on her bed with a magazine, stared at her. She pressed a finger to her lips, and Juliette nodded.
For all that they’d fought, that rule was never broken. You didn’t tell. You kept each other’s secrets.
No matter what.
Emma set another page aside. The next paper was a phone bill. There was a handwritten note at the bottom, slantwise and sloppy, as if it had been written idly on the nearest piece of paper without regard for what it was. Have to do something about Emma, it said, a half-finished thought.
She walked with precise steps to the spot just behind where the chair would have sat. Like JJ had done before, she raised her hand, fingers extended like a gun barrel. Brought her thumb down. Bang.
The idea of him being murdered because of money or drugs was so bloodless against the raw hatred that still burned in her gut when she thought of him. But she couldn’t discount the possibility. Whatever was on that flash drive, it was something her mother wanted hidden. The evidence she claimed to have, Emma could only assume. But the flash drive was long gone. She’d lost it that night.
The night they died.
27
EMMA
Then
She shows up on Gabriel’s doorstep after dark with her eye already swelling and red, her nose snotty from crying.
“What happened?” he asks, and she tries to tell him, but fresh tears well up and she finds herself sobbing and trying to force words out as he draws her inside and pushes her firmly and gently down onto the couch. “Wait here.”
He returns moments later with a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a kitchen towel. He sets it to her eye and guides her hand up to it, because she can’t seem to remember what to do by herself. His jaw is tense and his eyes sorrowful as he sits on the coffee table, his knees knocking against hers. They have never been this close, she thinks, and of course it’s now when she’s the furthest thing from lovely, with the peas against her swelling eye and her face red and puffy.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asks. She shakes her head; it’s all she can manage. “Who did this? Your father?”
“They ruined it all. They took everything,” she says.
“Who?” he asks, confusion written on his features. “What happened, Emma?”
“I can’t go back,” she manages. “I can’t go back. They’ll kill me. Please, Gabriel, I can’t—you have to—”
He hushes her. He shifts to the couch and gathers her in his arms and she sobs against his chest as he murmurs meaningless things and strokes her back. She can hear his heartbeat, steady and strong within the cage of his ribs.
“Nana’s still in the hospital, but you can stay here as long as you need to,” he says. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
When she is done crying, he takes her to his bed. It’s a bed in Lorelei Mahoney’s house, and so it is firm and has fresh sheets and smells of fabric softener, and he draws a blanket up over her. He sits on the end of the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. She shuts her eyes. Eventually, she drifts into a sleep unencumbered by dreams.
She doesn’t know how much later his weight shifting on the bed wakes her. She keeps her eyes closed and her breathing even, letting him think she is asleep as he draws near.
“It’s going to be okay,” he tells her. She wonders if he knows he’s lying. “You’re safe here.” He bends over her and brushes a kiss lightly at her temple.
He leaves. She holds still, fearing he’ll know she’s awake, that it will somehow ruin this moment. The front door opens, closes. Outside, a car starts. She pulls the blanket aside and pads out to the front room in time to watch his headlights disappearing. She stands alone in the house, shivering despite the warm night.
Gabriel is wrong. He is kind, but he is wrong—nothing will be okay. Nowhere is safe. Not unless she does something.
She slips on her shoes and heads out.
She leaves Lorelei’s house with half a plan wrapped in fierce conviction. She can’t go back home. She has to get away. And so she has to go back home, because she ran out of the door with nothing and she has nowhere to go. She needs clothes, needs supplies. Most of all, she needs money.