Chapter 8 #3
For a long moment, River studied her, eyes trained on her face as if she could read Emma’s thoughts. Maybe she could. “Don’t try that again, you’ll go up in a blaze next time.”
“Sorry,” Emma said, chastened. “I just… what happened to Joe?”
“Joe is… okay,” the witch said in a quiet voice. “Pamela and Jack were murdered in a cult ritual.”
“Nooo,” the word left her lips in a moan. Then she was grateful for Adrian standing behind her, there to hold her upright in the brief moment her knees buckled beneath her. “Murdered? But… how?”
“Rosenhaven participated in it alongside a warlock,” River continued. “Joe mentioned his relationship with you, so we tried to get in touch.”
“You wanted to know if I had done it,” she whispered.
“Yes,” River replied, blunt and unforgiving. “Rosenhaven would only say you had left them months prior, but nothing more, and even blocked all attempts to contact you.”
“Well, I didn’t do it. I left him here to reunite with his family. I thought… I thought they could be happy together again. Leaving Rosenhaven had nothing to do with him and everything to do with my own safety. Things weren’t right there anymore.”
“I believe you. The murderers faced justice. All of them.”
Emma dipped her chin and closed her eyes.
“Thank you,” Adrian spoke up from behind her. “What Rosenhaven did was unforgivable, and I know many of my fellow masters regret we did not see what was happening in time. Emmaleigh only hoped to check in on Joe since we were traveling through the area to conduct business for the council.”
“Are you going to talk to him?” River asked.
“No,” Emma said. “I don’t know. I hadn’t planned to. I just… I only wanted to make sure he was doing all right, but the trailer where he lived belongs to someone else now.”
“He moved back into the home he shared with Pam a couple months ago.” River glanced over her shoulder to a grandfather clock behind her. “I can’t tell you whether he’s home or not since he… holds different company these days, but it won’t hurt to swing by.”
“I don’t know—”
“1407 Elm Street,” River supplied with a strangely sympathetic look on her face. “Was that all you needed?”
Elm Street. There seemed to be one in every town. “Yes. Thank you. We won’t remain long.”
After River shut the door, Adrian guided her back to the car and opened the passenger door. Wordless and numb, Emma sank into the seat.
Why hadn’t she recognized his family was in danger? She’d saved her own skin. Why not theirs? The question haunted her, leaving a bleak hollow where her heart belonged. The longer she thought about it, the more she hated her gift.
Why did her strange talent pick and choose who to save? She’d been positive Joe would be happier in the company of his family, willing to bet blood on it.
“Don’t, Emma.”
“Don’t what?”
“I can see it on your face. You’re blaming yourself, and you have no reason to.”
“What good is seeing the future if it doesn’t help anyone but me?” she raged. Her fist struck the dashboard and dented it.
In a moment of wisdom, Adrian didn’t try to argue with her.
He left her to her thoughts and followed the navigation system to the opposite side of town.
They drove through a neatly coordinated subdivision on the hilly outskirts, past brick houses and modular homes.
House number 1407 dominated the rear of an enormous lot, but the drive was peppered with empty pickup trucks and vehicles.
“Maybe I shouldn’t—”
“You’ll regret it if we leave and you miss the chance to see him.”
“He has guests.”
“Then they won’t notice one extra car, and you can peek in through the windows. Go on, lass. See how the man is doing.”
She scowled at him. “Why are you doing this, Adrian?”
“Because you need closure, and I want to grant you that.” He pulled up behind a Ford with a rusted tailgate.
“Bullshit.” She’d seen the jealousy cross his face too often to accept his reasoning.
“Emma—”
“The truth, or you can put this car in reverse right now and head to Fort Worth.”
Adrian’s eye twitched and his jaw tensed. “You’re not a coward, so don’t act like one now.”
His taunt spurred her. Grumpily climbing from the car, she wondered if pissing her off had been his intention all along. Irritation smothered the sorrow and lit a fire beneath her. Instead of peeking through a window, Emma marched boldly to the door and knocked.
The door opened to reveal a stern-faced, middle-aged man with a pocket of dip tucked between his teeth and lower lip. He glared out at her, seemed to realize she had breasts, and his expression softened instantly. “Oh hey. You need something?” He edged open the screen door and spit to the side.
“Hi. Is Joe Wiggins available?” Emma asked.
He studied her again, no longer fascinated with her chest. For the second time that day, Emma saw recognition. “Yeah… hold up a second.”
The door shut in her face.
Odd.
Emma glanced over her shoulder at Adrian. He leaned against the car with his arms crossed, an encouraging smile on his face.
The door opened again, drawing her attention away from her sexy companion to the man standing less than a foot away.
“Emma.”
“Hey, Joe…”
Weariness etched lines into a face that had already been rugged from a life of hard work and manual labor.
Joe looked the same, but different. Harder.
Aged by his ordeal. He hadn’t shaved recently, a familiar five o’clock shadow dark against his jawline and chin.
How often had she tickled her cheek against his scruff and convinced him to shave for her?
Or sometimes pampered him and done it herself, because he’d trusted her to never draw his blood unintentionally?
But there was a fervent light in his eyes now, and she was positive that trust was gone.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I heard… I thought….” She nibbled her lower lip and gazed into eyes no longer resembling the compassionate gaze of her old lover. “River Jackson told me what happened. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” His gaze hardened for a brief second before he averted his eyes.
“I really am sorry, Joe.”
His left eye twitched slightly, barely noticeable. “That what you came to say?”
Shit. She wrung her fingers together before finding her voice.
“No. I’m not good at this, but I wanted to apologize for how things ended, the way I left you.
Anyway. If you ever want to talk again or find you just need an ear,” she began, fumbling out a card with her personal mobile number. “I’ll listen. I’m really sorry.”
Joe nodded toward the space behind him. “Why don’t you come on in?” The threshold over the door lifted, the thin veil barring her from his home gone in a pop.
“I wouldn’t want to intrude on your company.”
“Nah. It ain’t nothin’ but a few friends. They won’t mind,” he assured her. “Who’s your big friend over there?”
“My boss.”
His eyes narrowed. “Kinda scary lookin’, ain’t he?”
“It’s what he’s paid to do. He’s kinda like a bodyguard until I get some business handled,” Emma explained. She glanced over a shoulder at Adrian, saw him staring them down, then stepped forward into the house.
It didn’t feel like a home. Something was amiss; a pervasive sensation of wrongness pounded at the back of her mind. His family had been killed. Murdered. That had to be it. The standard threshold had been tainted by the horrible loss.
Despite the strangeness, she trailed behind him, deeper into the unfamiliar home. When they were together, his ex-wife’s house had been off limits, all their time spent in his mobile home.
Drawing contrast between the old Joe she knew and the Joe of now, she wondered what else had changed.
He had rarely shown an interest in friends and sports beyond the occasional friendly bet over shared pitchers at the bar, but they passed four observant faces watching them from the living room while football played on the TV.
“I want you to meet someone,” he said, drawing her attention back to him.
“Oh yeah? Who’s that?” She followed Joe down a short, darkened hallway into the cluttered kitchen. Dirty dishes littered the counters, joined by empty beer bottles.
A stranger wearing an Army T-shirt stood near the refrigerator in the kitchen ahead of them. His eyes, so piercingly green, seemed to bore through her from across the room.
“My old friend. We went to school together,” Joe replied, grinning. “Ain’t that right, Josh?”
“It sure is. I gotta say, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Emma Whittaker.”
“Wait, what?”
The feeling of wrong. It came from everywhere at once, but the worst of it centered around the handsome man in front of her. Every word he spoke tugged at her memory. Familiar.
A silver chain around his throat caught the fluorescent lights and drew her gaze down to the crucifix dangling from the dented links. Josh gripped the holy symbol in his left hand and thrust it toward her.
Sunlight engulfed Emma from every direction, like a flash bulb on steroids. The radiant beams washed over the kitchen and seared her skin, eroding flesh like a sander peeling varnish from wood.
Adrian looked over the yard once Emma disappeared inside. A trash can beside the two-car garage overflowed with empty cases of Budweiser and Shiner Bock.
The phone in his pocket buzzed. He withdrew it to see a brief message from Brennan asking for an update. While he caught his friend up to speed on the recent events, he glanced at the house in time to see the shades shifting. An observer swiftly withdrew from his view.
Someone was watching him.
A niggling sense of unease crept over him, like ice-cold droplets trickling down his back.
Emma. It was Emma. Her discomfort tickled across his mind, but without sensing her fear or even anger to provoke action, he remained outside.