by Teresa Hill
"I don't know if I believe you, Emma," he said, a breath away. "'You let him touch you. I can't just let something like that go. You can't let anyone else ever touch you like that again."
"I won't," she said, wanting to back up, but there was nowhere else to go. She tried to look contrite and not so afraid. He was sweating and breathing hard, his face bloodred, close enough to hurt her now.
"You have to learn, Emma."
He drew back his hand and smacked her across the face. The blow propelled her backward. She fell and fell and fell. It seemed to go on forever. And then her head smashed into something and everything went black.
When she came to, she was whimpering. What a pathetic sound. She couldn't believe it was coming out of her. She lay there, frozen, and he was standing over her, the shovel still in his hand.
Hide, she thought, as she had when she was little. Just hide, Emma. Make yourself invisible. How had she done it back then?
He grabbed her and jerked her to her feet. She shrank back from his touch, still thinking that if she could somehow just make herself as small as possible it would be okay.
"Look at that." He pointed to her face. "You made me do that. Do you understand. You made me. And your face... Jesus, Emma, what are you doing? I can't take you to Chicago looking like that. How am I going to explain that?"
He blamed her for it? Her head felt like it was about to fall off it hurt so bad. What was he going to do now?
"No," Mark said. "There's no way now. We can't hide that."
She watched, seemingly in slow motion, as his hand drew back and then started swinging forward, toward her.
He was going to hit her again, and she hated him. Absolutely hated him.
And she had to stop him.
She dropped to the floor, thinking that was the fastest way out of the path of that fist, and still she braced herself for the blow.
But it never came.
Mark fell instead, his legs coming out from under him.
They both went down together.
Emma didn't understand at first. They both landed on the floor side by side. She stared at him, waiting for him to come after her, and then she looked up and saw Rye standing over them.
It happened so fast from that point, a blur of fists and harsh, angry voices. The sound of fists hitting flesh, bodies hitting the furniture and the floor.
Emma just scrambled to stay out of the way, and was too dazed at first to think about anything other than the fact that she wasn't going to die today and that Rye hadn't either. She made it behind the side of the couch, shaking and rocking back and forth, and when she found the courage to peek around the arm of the sofa, she saw Mark lying on the floor, Rye on top of him, fists flying.
Mark wasn't doing anything to even try to defend himself now, just rolling with the blows.
Emma wondered if she'd looked like that, when she'd been too scared to even move. Finally, she realized what was happening had gone long past stopping Mark from hurting anyone.
"Rye," she said, her voice hoarse and tight.
He didn't even look up.
"You bastard," Rye said to him. "Want to pick on women? Want to hurt them? How does it feel?"
"Rye?" She didn't think Mark could have made a sound now. His head was rolling back and forth. And still Rye didn't let up.
"Hey. It's over." Emma walked toward them both, got too close in fact.
She came up on Rye's blind side, and the next thing she knew, he grabbed her hard, something absolutely wild and fierce in his eyes.
"Rye," she whispered. "It's me."
"Emma?" His grip tightened on her for a minute.
She winced. "Rye, my arms. Let go. You're hurting me."
There was a sick look on his face, as he stared at her as if he just then realized who she was. He stared at his hands, still on her arms, then down to the floor to Mark. His face was a mess. Emma knew what a man's fists could do. She'd seen her mother's face when it was a mess, but this... His lips were swollen and bleeding, his eyes red and swelling, too, his nose bleeding, his jaw lying at an awkward angle, and he was moaning and making a choking sound.
"Are you okay?" Rye asked.
"Yes. Are you?"
He nodded.
"Your head... You're bleeding. We have to call someone. We have to call for help."
Rye's arms finally dropped to his side, and he sat down hard on the arm of the sofa, his eyes closing. "Did I kill him?"
"I don't think so," she said, still afraid to get any closer to Mark.
"I'm sorry, Emma," Rye said in a voice devoid of all emotion. "I'm so sorry."
"So am I." Sorry she'd gotten him into this and sorry for the way Mark looked right now, sorry for everything she feared would happen next.
She called the sheriff, talked to him herself and told him what had happened, and he said he'd radio for an ambulance. Then she sat down on the sofa, her on one end, Rye on the other.
They didn't say anything.
Mark was scaring her now with the sounds he was making, the rough, rumbling, wheezing sounds like all of his insides were broken and scrambled.
She couldn't make herself go to him. She was afraid of everything.
It seemed to take forever for help to come. She seemed to live a lifetime in those few minutes. It reminded her of when she was a child and her father beat her mother. It had been hard to know for sure when it was over, when it was safe. She'd sit huddled in a corner, and after a while, the blows would cease. Her mother might be moaning or crying, but she'd try to be quiet. Emma would, too. Her father would keep swearing and yelling. It wasn't really over until he got quiet, too. Until he passed out.
Once he did, none of them knew what to do. Mostly, they tried not to look at each other and not to talk about it.
Emma was thinking now that she needed to straighten the chair in the corner. It had gotten turned over onto its side, and the lamp on the table was in pieces on the floor.
Someone could get cut on that.
She should sweep it up.
She went to the chair first, her head protesting the movement. She turned it carefully and gently onto its side and then lifted it with her trembling hands into its place by the window. There. It looked just the way it was supposed to.
The lamp was more of a problem. She stared at all the pieces, too many to ever put back together. She couldn't make that right again.
The frosted white glass of the lamp had been hand painted with dainty blue flowers to match the blue in the stained-glass windows. Rachel had done this herself. It had been so pretty. Emma loved this lamp.
She picked up some of the biggest pieces. They clinked together as she stacked them on one of her hands.
"Emma?" Rye asked. "What are you doing?"
"Picking up the pieces."
"Why?"
She frowned, her hand trembling, the glass clinking from that alone.
It made perfect sense to her. You couldn't pretend everything was okay until you swept up the mess and put everything back in its place.
"It's what I do," she told him.
Her job had been picking up the pieces and making sure her brother and sister were all right. She was ready to get the broom when she first heard the sirens and decided to sit down again.
It was odd having strangers in the house picking over the wreckage. They'd never called the police or the ambulance for her father and mother.
Joe came roaring into the house, another of his deputies behind him, and he stood there speechless for a moment. She looked up at him, thinking he could fix things. He could put all the pieces back together. But he looked dazed and kind of sick, too.
"Get the paramedics in here," he called over his shoulder, then looked back at Emma. Very, very gently, he said, "Are you okay?"
She nodded.
The paramedics came in a rush, with all sorts of equipment and a stretcher. "Jesus," one of them said. "Look at what's left of his face."
"What happened, Emma?" Joe said, t
rying to put his body between her and Mark to block her view.
"Mark came to get me," she said, then made the mistake of looking down at her hands. There was blood on her hands. She closed her eyes and remembered how Mark looked, what was left of his face.
And then everything went black.
* * *
Rye sat on the arm of the couch, wiping a trail of blood from the side of his face, looking at the end of life as he'd known it. He'd almost made it. Eight years. The magic mark. The end of his probation. When something like this would cease to have the power to send him back to prison.
He was two months and four days shy of that, and why the hell he hadn't just waited until then to come here...
And then he looked over at Emma and knew why.
She'd told him she was okay. Scared, shocked, but okay.
Of course, she'd never look at him in the same way again. He'd known that when he whirled around in a flash and grabbed her.
Rye heard the sheriff ask Emma what happened, heard her say, "Mark came to get me," and then she pitched sideways in a dead faint.
"Emma?" He caught her before she fell over and leaned her gently back against the sofa cushions. "Dammit, she said she was okay."
The sheriff was right there, looking like he didn't want Rye even touching her, not that Rye could blame him. He'd obviously found out all there was to know about Rye's past.
"Did you hurt her?" the sheriff asked.
"No," Rye lied. He could see the discolored flesh on her arms where he'd grabbed her.
"Did he?" The sheriff gestured to the man on the floor.
"I don't know."
"You don't know? Where the hell were you?"
"He bashed me over the head with something, and I blacked out. I don't know for how long." Rye felt sick just thinking about it, him lying here while that guy had Emma. "I don't know what he did to her."
The sheriff called one of the paramedics over to look at Emma. He listened to her heart and lungs quickly, checked her pupils.
"Did he have a weapon?" the sheriff asked.
"Just that shovel from the fireplace, as far as I know," Rye said. "Did she hit her head? He knocked her down the other day. Maybe he did it again."
The paramedic checked quickly. "There's a knot on her head, but I don't think it's too serious. What about you?"
"I'm fine," Rye insisted. There was hardly any blood. "What about her?"
"Give me a minute with this guy, and I'll make sure she's okay."
"Is he going to make it?" the sheriff asked.
"Who knows? We cleared the airway, but I can't see inside of him. Who knows what kind of damage might have been done."
Rye kept his gaze locked on Emma. If he never saw her again, Sam had damned well better take good care of her.
"Emma? Come on. Wake up for me. Tell me you're okay."
"You tell me what happened here," the sheriff said.
"You know what happened," Rye said. "The guy got in here—"
"How? Did he break in?"
"I don't know," Rye admitted, hating himself for that, too. He'd been rolling around on the floor with Emma when it happened. "Emma and I were here, and the next thing I know, somebody hit me over the head. I was lying on the floor when I came to, and I could hear him talking to her. He wanted her to come back to Chicago with him, and he was mad that she hadn't. He said she'd have to learn how to behave. He drew back his hand to hit her, and I stopped him."
"You stopped him all right," the sheriff said.
"I had to make sure he didn't hurt Emma anymore," Rye said. "I couldn't let him have another chance to hurt her."
"Last guy you got into a fight with didn't ever hurt anybody again, did he?"
Rye just looked away.
What was there to say?
"And you're still on probation for that, right?" the sheriff asked.
"Yeah, I am," Rye said.
He started thinking that if the sheriff had hauled him off to jail the day before... But no. He looked down at Emma, still lying on the sofa between them. She would have been here by herself, then.
She started to stir. Rye could tell when she remembered everything. She jerked upright, and he grabbed on to her. "It's all right. The sheriff's here. Mark's... He's not going to hurt you anymore, Emma."
She looked up at him, still half out of it, and he could tell when she remembered what he'd done, because she looked scared of him then.
He eased her back against the sofa cushion once more and let her go, probably for the last time, then got up and walked to the other side of the room, waiting for the sheriff to haul him off to jail.
* * *
Sam got the call that evening, but couldn't make sense of it at first.
Emma was at the hospital? So was her ex-boyfriend, who'd broken into the house, and his brother was in jail?
It wasn't the first time, either. The last time, his brother had killed a man.
Sam covered the mouthpiece of the phone and yelled, "Rachel," in much the same way he had the day before when he found out his brother had come to find him. His brother who was in jail, not for the first time.
"Sam, I'm sorry," said his friend Joe Mitchell. "I feel terrible. I just didn't see it coming. And Emma—"
"She's okay?"
"She has a concussion, a few bruises, but other than that, I think she's just shaken up. She claims the guy hit her once, and that was it. I had one of my guys call Rachel's Aunt Miriam. I thought Emma might want someone with her, until you and Rachel can get here."
"Thanks, Joe," he said, then just stood there, a thousand conflicting emotions rushing through him. Finally, one came to the forefront. "What's going to happen to my brother?"
"I don't know, Sam."
* * *
Rye sat in one of the county's four jail cells, which was actually nothing more than a holding area. They normally took people right away to the regional jail thirty minutes away, but so far, he was still in Baxter. It wasn't anything more than two cells on either side of the room, a narrow hallway between them. He didn't know how long he'd been here, and he really didn't care.
The door to the cell block opened. The sheriff walked in, unlocking the door to Rye's cell and holding out a cordless phone to him.
"I don't think we got around to offering you your one phone call."
"You call Sam?" He wanted to make sure Sam was on his way to Emma.
"Yeah."
"There's nobody else to call."
"You sure?"
"You could call the hospital and check on Emma," he said. That was really the only other thing he needed that could come from a phone.
"I did that already. Mild concussion. That's it, except for... Well, she's pretty upset. When they finish checking her over, if they think it's safe, they're going to give her a sedative to help her relax. Sounds like when Sam gets there, they'll let her go home."
Rye nodded, the invisible band gripping his chest easing a bit. He could almost breathe again, then found the courage to ask, "The ex-boyfriend still alive?"
The sheriff nodded. "You broke about every bone in his face, compromised his airway, broke a couple of ribs."
Rye shrugged. "Yeah, well, the guy pissed me off."
"Me, too," the sheriff said.
That surprised Rye. He hadn't expected any kind of understanding.
"But you didn't nearly kill him," Rye said, wondering if the fact that the guy wasn't dead would be of any great help to him. Not that he was expecting any miracles. He was going back to prison.
"Look, I should have done more," the sheriff said. "I thought the guy was annoying as hell, but not really dangerous. I wish I'd done more."
That surprised Rye even more. A cop who really cared? One who could admit to making a mistake? Not that he thought it would do him any good.
"Am I going back to Georgia? Or do we settle this mess here first?" he asked. To this point, he'd confined his crime spree to one state. He wasn't sure what the process would be like f
rom here. "I just want to be sure Emma's okay, and if I go back to Georgia right away—"
"You're not going anywhere fast," the sheriff said. "Except maybe to get that cut on your head looked at. I didn't think it was that bad, but... Maybe you and I should take a ride over to the hospital."
Rye looked up, surprised once again. They'd offered to take him to the hospital earlier, and he'd refused. Emma had been so upset, and he'd thought it would be better for her if he just got the hell away from her. So he'd turned down their offer of further medical attention.
But if the sheriff was saying what Rye thought he was saying... Emma was there. He'd cut off his right arm for the chance to see her one more time.
"Hurts, huh?" the sheriff asked, nodding toward Rye's head.
"Yeah, it hurts," he agreed.
Fifteen minutes later, Rye was in the emergency room of the small-town hospital, which was actually not much more than a clinic. He was in handcuffs. The sheriff had caught hell about that from at least a half-dozen people who knew Emma and knew that no matter what else Rye had done, he'd saved her. He guessed they hadn't seen what was left of Emma's ex-boyfriend's face yet.
Ten stitches later, he and the sheriff were out in the hall. The sheriff said, "I'm thinking I should check on Emma. Guess you'll have to come with me."
Rye shook his head as they headed down the hall. "I've never met a cop like you."
"Yeah, well... Me and Sam go way back. Doesn't seem like that long ago I was hauling him off to jail."
"Sam? The way Emma talks, the man's a saint."
"Not when he was fifteen or sixteen. He's straightened out pretty well since then," the sheriff said. "You got locked up when you were sixteen?"
"Yeah." He and a buddy of his had stolen a car, just for the hell of it, just to piss off their parents. It had worked really well.
Rye and the sheriff walked down the corridor to room 104. The sheriff pushed open the door. "They said she'd probably be sleeping, that it's what she needs now. Other than a bump on the head, she's fine."
Rye walked over to the bed. She didn't stir, just lay there so still and so pale against the stark white sheets, her hair falling across her face. He wanted to push it back out of her eyes. But the thought of touching her with hands bound together by handcuffs was enough to make him feel sick.
