24. Emery
TWENTY-FOUR
EMERY
Darkness reigned.
Confounding.
Confusing.
Terrifying.
Her breaths were harsh and shallow.
Her blood iced over from the fear, though her skin was drenched in a sticky sweat.
She tore at the ropes that bound her wrists and ankles, pain biting into her flesh as she struggled to break free.
But there was nothing she could do.
Nothing she could do for any of them.
Suddenly tires squealed and the van they were in careened, their bodies rolling and bashing against the back wall when it came to a jarring stop.
No way to stop themselves from the violent crash.
Fear thundered through her veins when gunshots rang out, and it felt like razors dragging up her throat as she begged for help.
Begged for it because she felt the fight slipping away.
The terror took hold and seeped all the way down to take her spirit captive.
Metal clanked and moaned, and there was a shifting of air.
Then her sister was screaming.
Screaming and screaming.
“She’s gone. She’s gone.”
With a cleaving of pain, my eyes bolted open, a rasp raking from my lungs as I was jerked awake.
Disoriented, my legs flailed as I scrambled upright, and my hands flew out to grip onto anything that would keep me from disappearing into the nothingness. To keep me from falling away with those who had been lost.
Then my hands clamped onto plumes of softness, and I gasped out again as I brought the plush blanket to my chest when I realized where I was.
The room I’d been given to stay in at Kane Asher’s house.
Darkness hung heavy within its walls, the only light the gentle glow from the moon that seeped in through the drapes.
The house was so quiet, I could almost hear its old bones moan.
Trying to draw a cleansing breath into my aching lungs, I pressed my palm against the hemorrhaging behind my ribs as if it might stand the chance of holding my heart inside.
Like it might keep the tattered, shorn pieces from completely sundering apart.
For years, I hadn’t suffered the dreams, but now that Emmalee was gone, they had returned in full force. It was as if the absence of her presence had ripped off the flimsy bandage that had covered the mangled, butchered wound from the trauma we’d sustained.
I’d believed I’d healed.
But no.
There it was. The hole gaping and amplified by the loss of my sister.
A quiet hitch of caustic laughter climbed my thickened throat as I tossed my legs over the side of the bed and scrubbed both hands over my face.
Healed?
As if the way I reacted to men wasn’t a direct consequence of that night ?
The anger that I’d worn as a shield to protect myself from the things I couldn’t control?
It had always felt so much easier than being vulnerable.
So much easier than putting myself in a position where I could be hurt.
It was easier to be alone.
To hole up in my little house and hide myself away.
It was something I’d been working on for a long, long time. First accepting it rather than pretending as if it hadn’t happened, then slowly trying to find myself on the other side of it.
Who I wanted to be and how I wanted to handle my life. To discover my needs and joys. Chase after experiences that had dwindled into the faint pictures of fantasies in the back of my mind.
My chest squeezed and my stomach tightened.
Nerves scattering with the thought of the way I’d let go with Kane. The way it had felt. I almost wanted to wish it’d only been a dream, almost as desperately as a part inside wanted to cling to it as proof that one day I would stand in that light.
Find me in the darkness, bring me to the light.
The small words that I’d had tattooed to remind me of the hope that remained burned on the inner part of my wrist.
How could he be the one with the power to do it? How could he be the one to touch me and I could actually feel it rather than giving into the numbness I normally felt? How could he be the one to elicit goosebumps on my flesh? The one who’d sent the charge of ecstasy spinning through my body?
A swell of anger swooped in right behind it, and I exhaled a shattered breath.
How badly I wanted to blame him for all of this.
But what would I do if I were in his position?
God, Emmalee. If I could only talk to you one more time. If you could just make me understand.
Yearning for insight, for a connection to my sister, for a way to calm the storm that raged inside me, I slipped off the high bed and tiptoed over to the desk on the opposite side of the room. I pulled out the chair, sat, then switched on the small lamp.
A swath of muted light filtered into the room, and I leaned over and dug into my laptop case. I brought my laptop so I’d be able to do some of my freelance work while I was away, but what I was after were the few things that I’d brought of Emmalee’s.
Her tablet and one of the memory books that I’d found with all the things she’d hidden at the back of her closet.
I pulled out the memory book and opened it on the desk.
Anxiety pulsed through my being as I flipped through the pages.
I should have known looking at it wouldn’t calm anything. It only stoked the confusion that bound as I looked at the chaos she’d kept inside.
We’d both been devastated.
Traumatized.
Reshapen.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised to find a book full of a lifetime of pictures that we’d shared with our best friend, Jana. I had a million of them, too.
But it was the jumble of news articles that she had clipped that had left me unsettled. Some printed from online, others cut from actual newspapers and magazines. Every mention of her disappearance from when she’d been stolen away from us. All the speculations and hypotheses.
Maybe the hardest part was knowing we’d been intended on being stolen away, too.
We’d made it out.
We were safe.
But Jana…she was gone.
The thing I hadn’t known was that Emmalee had clearly become obsessed. The unintelligible notes she had scrawled in a frantic hand. As if she’d thought she could sift through the debris and bring her back to us.
My chest squeezed in a fit of pain.
Except that was impossible .
We’d all known it.
I kept flipping through the disorder, the pictures of predators that she’d printed and glued into the book, the notes she’d written around them.
I flipped the book shut, then hesitated as I glanced down at my bag, not sure if I even wanted to delve into whatever Emmalee had been involved in. But I pulled out her tablet, anyway, sliding my thumb across the screen and bringing it to life.
I inputted the passcode that we had always used for everything and easily gained access.
Her files mostly contained things for her boutique, Ivy Threads. Vendor receipts and financial information.
But it was the one file that was buried and locked that had left me itching. What had given me that strange sense that Emmalee might have been hiding something. That she might have been in trouble.
It was only labeled with a date.
The date we’d been saved. The same date as we’d lost Jana.
And no matter how many hundreds of different passwords I’d tried, I couldn’t get inside.
“What were you doing, Emmalee?” I whispered into the nothingness.
Pain gripped me when I had to accept that she would never answer back.
Blowing out the strain, I slammed the lid shut and stuffed it back into the bag. When I did, my fingertips brushed over the velvet bag that I’d also stuffed at the bottom. The velvet bag that I’d found in her things. The velvet bag that had been stolen from my drawer in my bedroom.
Why had she taken it? Maybe in her obsession she’d needed the single, tangible thing that remained of that night.
I just wished she would have told me rather than me thinking I’d been going crazy when I found it missing.
I would have happily given it to her, but I guessed she thought she needed to sneak it since I’d never admitted to her that I had it.
Fighting off the anxiety, I stood from the chair .
There was no chance I’d be able to go back to sleep any time soon, so I crept across the room and slipped through the door I’d left open a crack in case Maci needed me, then I tiptoed to hers that rested halfway open.
I stopped at the threshold and peered inside.
A nightlight that cast a million stars onto the ceiling and walls gently lit it, and my sweet niece was tucked beneath the covers, her face turned toward me where she was lost to the abyss of sleep.
Her facial features lax, her lips parted with her soft, steady breaths.
Completely at peace.
Love sped through my being. A tidal wave that nearly knocked me from my feet.
Devotion pumped and pushed. My arms aching because the only thing I wanted to do was to wrap her up and keep her safe forever.
Is that what she would be here?
Safe?
Spirit clutching, I forced myself back toward my room. Only I stalled when I noticed one side of the double doors that led to the primary suite on the opposite end of the hall was wide open, a large wedge of light pouring out into the hall.
I stilled, my ear tuned and my pulse speeding.
I was ninety-nine percent sure Kane wasn’t in there.
I knew it with the way I was drawn. A fool unable to stop myself from seeking him out. A hook he’d somehow managed to impale in my soul dragging me downstairs.
It was dark on the first floor. The long corridor was only lit by the moon that seeped through the windows since the drapes were open wide.
I began to inch down the passageway, feet silently moving across the floor.
I didn’t know why, but I stilled at the first big window that overlooked the front.
A chill crawled across my flesh as I stood beneath the silvery rays .
Unease slithered through my senses. That sticky awareness that kept clawing at my perceptions.
The weight of evil eyes penetrating my skin.
Ugh. I was freaking myself out for no reason. I was so far outside my normal comfort zone that my imagination had gotten out of control. Letting every fear I’d ever harbored sink into my being.