Chapter four
Ijerk to a sitting position with a gasp to find myself in the back of a parked ambulance with the doors standing open. “What happened?” I breathe out. “What happened?” The answer comes in a rush of memory. Gun. Shooter. Jeremy.
“Easy,” a female paramedic urges. “You hit your head pretty good back there.”
I touch my forehead, feeling the golf ball-sized lump, remembering the moment I’d hit the pavement. Remembering Jeremy. “Jeremy,” I say, grabbing the woman’s arm. “My client. Where’s my client? Is he alive? Was he shot?”
The woman’s brow furrows. “I don’t know who Jeremy is, but outside of the one male police officer who got a bit banged up while apprehending the shooter, no one else was injured. I’m thanking God the man didn’t open fire on the crowd and that you hit the ground in time to miss the bullets.”
“Jeremy was the man he was shooting at,” I tell her, sitting up and smoothing my hand over the huge rip in my hose exposed by my hiked-up skirt. “He was the one who came down on top of me.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t here when everything took place. I was told the shooter was targeting you. If you’ll lie down, I’ll see if I can get a police officer to find this Jeremy for you.”
“I have to find him,” I say, pushing to my feet, unwilling to sit here while Jeremy escapes.
“Ms. Thorne,” the EMT chides with a steel tone. “You probably have a concussion, and the shooter is in custody. Whoever this Jeremy is, he isn’t in any further danger.”
“You don’t understand,” I murmur, pressing a hand to the wall and fighting the nausea rolling over me, which is far more about whatever happened with me and Jeremy than my head that feels fine. I have to get out of this truck.
“Ember!” Oliver exclaims, appearing at the open door, looking all James Bond-sleek in his black suit and pressed white dress shirt. He’s tall, broad, and strong, and relief washes over me at the sight of him. I so need strong right now.
I rush to the doors, and ignoring the EMT’s protests, fling myself into his arms, inhaling his earthy, familiar scent, and he drags me off the vehicle and against him, holding me with my feet dangling in the air.
“God, Ember, I was worried sick. I can’t believe this happened.
” He leans back to look at me, letting my feet settle onto the ground, still holding me close.
I don’t want him to let me go. I desperately need a friend right now, even if I don’t dare make him a confidant for fear I’ll sound insane.
“Emily is handling the press,” he says of my assistant, who’s part-time but worthy of full-time, as this moment clearly indicates. “And of course, your parents are freaking out,” he adds.
“My parents are not your parents, and you know it. They’re on their annual holiday vacation. Emily knows I don’t want them bothered.”
“I called them, Ember. They deserve to know.”
They won’t care, I think, not sure how he remains oblivious to that fact after witnessing such behavior on rewind, but Oliver is forever trying to fix things for me, my relationships, or lack thereof, with my parents included.
As my grandfather often said on many a topic, sometimes you have to accept what you cannot change and charge onward anyway.
“They’re trying to get a flight out of Europe,” he adds earnestly, and I know this is about more than an attack that’s over now.
He hates with all his being the way they leave me for the holiday, but it’s always been that way.
For most of my life, I celebrated with my grandfather.
And now that he’s gone, I celebrate with him in spirit.
I’m strong enough. He raised me that way.
I don’t burst Oliver’s bubble and tell him he’s being played.
They won’t come home. I don’t know if they’d come home if I’d actually been shot, but he’s trying to do a good thing, and I love him for it.
“Sir,” the EMT says to Oliver from behind me. “I really must insist Ms. Thorne sit down. She hit her head.”
Oliver curses under his breath. “Sorry,” he mumbles and sets me down on the ledge of the truck, his hands sliding down my hair, his winter green eyes inspecting my injury. “Your head. Ouch. Sorry.”
“I’m fine.”
As if he doesn’t believe me, he glances at the EMT. “How bad is it?”
“It’s not,” I insist before the EMT says otherwise, and I expected she would. I focus on Oliver and what’s important right now, which is not my busted-up skull. “I have to find Jeremy.” I try to get up, and Oliver catches my waist, halting my progress.
“Jeremy’s fine,” he insists. “The shooter’s in custody, and he wasn’t after Jeremy anyway. That lunatic was all about killing you. And you can bet your pretty little backside I won’t be letting him out on bail. You have nothing to worry about.”
My brow furrows. “Me?” I ask, recalling the EMT’s similar statement with an icy chill of dread that paralyzes my breathing for a sliver of a moment and makes speaking difficult.
“He…he was trying to shoot me?” I swallow hard with the realization that I was indeed being followed this morning before adding flatly, “Because I’m Jeremy’s attorney.
Because the shooter thinks that I’m to blame for setting him free. ”
“Because the guy’s a nutjob,” he grinds out. “He was screaming about you being a monster or a demon of some sort. You know the type. Like that damn fortune teller. Completely out of touch with reality.”
I think of the shooter, of the hatred in the vicious glare he’d aimed at Jeremy. Only he’d not been looking at Jeremy at all. I am the shooter’s “monster.” It feels far too accurate an assessment right about now.
The next morning, I wake to cool sheets and the realization that it isn’t morning at all.
If I’m to believe my clock, which has never lied to me before now, paired with the bright light, it’s two in the afternoon.
Obviously emotional exhaustion has taken a toll.
Images flash in my mind of all the women Jeremy murdered, and I can’t go there or I’m going to lose my mind.
I throw away the blanket and press my hand to my face.
I don’t know what is happening to me, but I feel off, different.
It’s like that moment when Jeremy showed his true self changed me in some profound way I can’t explain.
I need to do something, change something, and I force myself to breathe deeply and bring myself back into focus.
In the process, my nostrils flare with the warm, earthy scent of Oliver’s cologne, its presence a reminder that I am not alone, and I certainly was not last night.
He was right by my side for literally hours at the hospital while I was poked and prodded, mostly at Oliver’s insistence.
He’d transported me home and slept on my couch.
There’s a shadowy memory of him telling me goodbye this morning before he’d headed to work.
I’m pretty sure he called to check on me too, and I’d answered the phone.
I reach for my cellphone now, where it sits charging on the nightstand, but abandon it when I spy a container of Excedrin with a bottle of water next to it.
Oliver has left me a note: I know how you get headaches when you sleep too long.
Yes, I do, I think, and quickly pop the pills and down several large gulps of water.
My head might not hurt now, but I don’t have any desire to allow it to get ahead of me.
I snatch my phone up and tap Oliver’s name on my contact list.
“You’re awake,” he says, answering on the second ring.
“About time, right? Any luck reaching Jeremy?”
“No. He’s not answering my calls, and I’m sure he’s hiding from the media. Who could blame the guy?” He is silent for a few beats. “Why does it feel like there’s something you aren’t telling me?”
“You asked me that very same question about a half-dozen times last night, and my answer is the same today as it was then. I have a hunch that something’s wrong.” The lie pinches at my emotions, guilt blossoming, but how do I tell him I was in Jeremy’s head? How is it even possible?
“You spent the entire time we were at the hospital on the phone trying to find that man when you should have been resting,” he reminds me.
“Why? I don’t have a concussion, and that’s per the doctors.”
“No, but they said you were likely in shock and needed to sleep it off. And considering you slept until two in the afternoon, it’s safe to assume they’re right.” He doesn’t give me a chance to counter, shifting back to, “What don’t I know? Are you in trouble or danger of some sort?”
“I thought you were making sure the shooter didn’t get out of jail?” I counter.
“I am.”
“Then no,” I say. “I’m not in trouble or in danger.” A shiver of unease slides over me with what feels like another lie. Am I in danger? Will Jeremy decide to make me his next victim? Has he already?
“Ember,” he starts and hesitates.
“Choke it out, Oliver.”
“Is there something between you and Jeremy I don’t know about?”
“Is there something between you and Jeremy? Because that’s more likely, Oliver. I don’t get involved with clients, and if you think I would do that—”
“Stop. You’re right. I’m sorry, but there’s something going on with you.”
“Someone tried to shoot me. Is that not enough?”
His voice softens. “Talk to me, Ember.”
My teeth scrape a near fretful hole in my dry lip, and I consider telling him everything, truly I do, but I don’t want to sound crazy. I know what happened. I know what I saw and felt in that vision or whatever it was, but it won’t feel real to him the way it did for me. “It’s really nothing.”
“What’s nothing?”
“I got this weird vibe off of Jeremy when he was declared innocent. I can’t explain it. I’m not sure he is innocent.”
“Don’t do that to yourself, Ember.”
“It’s making me uneasy, Oliver. I need to dig around—”
“No. I’ll dig around if you really feel strongly about this. You still have ethical confines to work under anyway. I don’t, not when I work for the office that tried to prosecute him. I will start digging today, and I’ll come by and bring you dinner tonight.”
He’s going to get himself killed. “You know what? You’re right. I’m tired and emotional. You can talk me off my ledge over dinner. Call me before you come over, though, okay?”
“Anything for you, Ember,” he says, and the line goes dead.
An hour later, Jeremy still isn’t answering his phone, and I’m climbing the walls.
I have no idea what happened to me in that courtroom, but I felt an unexplainable evil rip through me, and I swear it touched my very soul.
That evil was him. If I’m insane, it’s the really over-the-top kind of insanity, because nothing will convince me that what I saw when that monster touched me was my imagination.
He made me see them die in brutal detail.
He made it happen, and that sick bastard loved it.
I don’t know how he did it. He’s not normal in some way. Or maybe I’m not normal.
When pacing doesn’t calm my nerves, I actually have to use a technique a therapist used on one of my clients who’d been through a traumatic event.
She had my client fill her mind with the process of counting, and it created a sense of control for her.
And that’s what I do now. I count. I’m still counting when my cellphone rings with several back-to-back calls.
My father’s secretary informs me of a rush of press attempting to reach me through his firm, and I instruct her to ignore all requests.
A few minutes later, my father himself is on the phone, lecturing me about my handling of the matter, which apparently sucks.
On the bright side, my parents are sticking to their norm of promise and retreat.
They’re not coming back to see me. They’re staying in Europe and far away from Jeremy, which works out.
That’s exactly where I want them. At this point, I don’t know what to do with myself, and I’m feeling dirty from the prospect of earning money for freeing a killer.
I hit the shower, but there’s no washing away the guilt that coils in my belly and wreaks havoc. I know me. I won’t get past this until two things happen: I understand where I went wrong and do something to fix the problem that was created.
I dress for comfort and to avoid drawing attention to myself in a pair of black jeans, a black V-neck T-shirt, and matching black boots.
With my car still parked at Starbucks, I order an Uber to pick it up.
A short time later, when I’m tucked inside my own car, I decide to do something that is probably—okay, definitely—not smart: I drive to Jeremy’s apartment.
I have to stop him from killing again.