Protector - Laurel Dewey [189]
“What are you gonna do?” Emily asked.
Between learning that Chris was the murderer and having a gun pointed in her face, Jane was still partially spinning in an altered reality. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Emily replied, both surprised and angry.
“This is all hitting me at once. I’ve got to figure out a way to alert Weyler without making him think I’m crazy.”
“But I know Chris was the man in my bedroom!” Emily yelled.
“I believe you!”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Oh, Emily, it’s egos and politics—”
“What?”
“Just give me a second.” Jane grabbed a cigarette from the bedside table, lit up and began pacing around the room.
“What if you don’t figure it out in time? What’s gonna happen when he shows up and finds me?”
“Chris doesn’t know where we are! I didn’t let anything slip when I called him.”
Emily’s eyes widened in fear. “You talked to him while we’ve lived here?”
“I wasn’t calling him! I was calling another guy. Chris just happened to—”
“I can’t believe you did that!”
“He doesn’t know where we are!”
Emily began to shake. “Yes, he does!”
“How does he know?”
“I don’t know. But he does!” Emily began to get hysterical. She tore out of the bedroom and started down the hallway toward the front door.
“Emily! Where are you going?” Jane ran after her.
“I’ve got to get out of here! He’s gonna find me!” Emily was half out of her mind. She started into her bedroom. “No, I can’t go in there! He can see me through the window!” Emily shot back up the hallway.
“Emily! Nobody’s watching you! Calm down!” Jane tried to grab on to Emily, but she moved too fast.
“He’s watching me!” Emily screamed hysterically as her eyes fearfully scanned Main Street before she retreated back into the hallway.
“Emily!” Jane yelled back, trying to verbally knock the child out of her growing frenzy. “Chris is not here!”
“Stop lying to me!” Emily yelled in a state of panic.
“I’m not lying!” Jane shouted back in full voice.
“If you’re not lying, then tell me where A.J. is right now!” Jane was taken aback by the sudden subject shift. “Where is she?” Emily yelled, tears welling in her eyes.
Jane looked at Emily. “She’s dead. So are her parents.”
For several seconds, Emily looked completely calm. “He killed them, too?” Emily whispered. She looked up at Jane, her eyes wild with terror. “He killed them, too!”
Emily beat her fists against the hallway wall with such force that she cut open the skin on the side of her hands. “No!” she screamed hysterically, losing control.
Jane clenched her cigarette between her lips. She tried pulling Emily away from the wall in an effort to protect the child from harming herself. But Emily’s primal fear was impossible to restrain. “Emily! Stop it! You’re bleeding!”
Emily kicked the walls while still beating them with her fists. Bloody imprints from her skin covered the wall. She shook her head violently, screaming at the top of her lungs. “No! No!”
Jane grabbed Emily and turned her around so she couldn’t injure herself. The child continued to flail her body in a deranged motion. Jane took one look at Emily and did the first thing that came to her mind. She laid a swift, open-handed slap across Emily’s cheek. Emily fell to the floor in stunned silence. Gradually, the child touched her left cheek and looked up at Jane in disbelief. Jane felt sick. “Emily . . . You gave me no choice.”
Emily started to cry. “You hit me.”
Jane leaned toward the child, “Emily, I—”
Emily slapped Jane’s arm as she struggled to her feet. “Get away from me!” She smacked Jane’s arm again, this time with more force. “I hate you! I hate you!” She ran down the hall into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
Jane stood paralyzed in the shadows of the hallway. Every nightmare she ever had was coming true. She took a long drag on her cigarette. As alone as she felt at that moment,