by B. B. Hamel
Dad stared at Emory, clearly surprised by his sincerity. “Well, okay then,” he grumbled and went back to his paper.
Just then, I got a whiff of something from Mason. “Uh oh,” I said. “I think Mason needs to be changed.”
“Why don’t you take Emory and show him how to change a diaper?” Mom asked.
I glanced at him. “Want to learn?”
He made a face but nodded. “Yeah. I’ve always wanted to play with baby poop.”
Dad snorted as I headed up the steps, Emory on my tail. As we got to the top of the landing, I turned toward him. “Sorry about that,” I said.
“What, your father?”
“Yeah. He can be a real ass, but he’s a big teddy bear.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’d be shocked if he weren’t skeptical.”
“Still, he doesn’t need to be a dick about it.”
“He’s just threatened; that’s all. I’m a strange man saying strange things around his family. You’d be protective too if you were him.”
I nodded. I hadn’t really thought about that. Dad didn’t seem like a protective person, but he had always been there for me. He really didn’t know Emory beyond what I’d told him, and most of that wasn’t very flattering considering Emory had disappeared after getting me pregnant.
In Dad’s mind, Emory was the enemy, not the terrorists. The idea of terrorists was way too impossible and abstract for him to comprehend. Dad wanted to protect me and Mom, but in his mind it wasn’t from the terrorists. It was from the strange man named Emory.
“Come on,” I said, and led him into the nursery. “Ready for this?”
“I’m always ready,” he said.
I felt him standing so close to me as I put Mason down on the changing table.
“First, you remove the clothes, like this. See? Easy. Slides right off.”
“He’s squirming a lot.”
“Babies like to move around. We don’t exactly sit still either, you know. Next, the diaper comes off.”
“I’ve seen some gross things in my day, and this is definitely up there.”
“Yeah. It’s not pleasant. Okay, can you put it in that little thing over there?”
He nodded and put the diaper into the disposal unit.
“Okay, now we wipe. Easy. Cleans right up.”
“He doesn’t seem to mind.”
“He’d probably prefer a clean butt to a dirty one. Right, Mason?”
Emory stood behind me as I finished wiping Mason off and then took the dirty wipe and threw it out. I finally finished by putting a fresh diaper back on Mason.
“There we go. All changed. And now we wash our hands.” I put Mason into the crib and then we both went into the bathroom.
I was very, very surprised that Emory had actually stood there and seemed to be paying attention. I’d mainly expected him to make sexual jokes the whole time, but instead he looked like he wanted to actually learn how it was done.
I didn’t know what that meant. Maybe he planned on changing diapers, or maybe he just realized that if we were going to spend a lot of time together until this whole terrorist thing was resolved, then maybe he should learn.
“You know,” he said as I cleaned my hands, “there’s nothing sexier than a woman changing an infant.”
I couldn’t help but smile. It hadn’t taken him long to revert back to the jokes. “Oh really?”
“Really,” he said, standing close behind me. “Watching you work got me fucking hard.”
“I’m sure it’s not difficult to get you hard.”
“For you it’s not. All I need to do is think about that delicious, tight fucking pussy and I’m ready to go.”
I finished washing and dried my hands, and then Emory stepped in.
“Maybe we should talk about last night,” I said.
“Unless you want to tell me how dripping wet your cunt is thinking about it, I’d rather not.”
I frowned. “I don’t know, Emory.”
Suddenly he stood up straight, his eyes narrowed. “Did you hear that?”
“No?” I cocked my head, listening, but the only thing I heard was the sound of the faucet running.
“Get into the nursery,” he said, suddenly all business.
“Uh, what’s wrong?”
“Go, Tara. Now.”
I left the bathroom and went into the nursery. Mason was safe in his crib.
“What’s happening?” I asked him.
“Stay here.” He pulled his gun from his pants. “No matter what you hear, don’t leave this room.”
“Emory?”
He disappeared.
I stared at the door, fear and terror running through me. What the hell was happening? I hadn’t heard anything, but apparently he’d heard something that set him off. One second he was a cocky asshole making jokes and the next he was something completely different.
The transformation was amazing. His whole body had gone tense and ready, like an animal about to pounce.
I waited for a few minutes, but I couldn’t just sit in there. I set up Mason’s baby monitor and took the monitor with me as I crept out of my room.
Sure, Emory told me not to, but my parents were still downstairs, and I couldn’t just hide in a nursery while they were potentially in danger. If anything happened with Mason, I’d hear it on the monitor.
But I didn’t hear a thing. There wasn’t a single sound, not even coming from downstairs. Normally my parents were talking or listening to the radio or watching TV. It was basically unheard of that the house was this quiet with this many people in it.
I moved down the steps and looked over the bannister. My parents were both sitting at the kitchen table, looks of terror on their faces.
And then I saw him. He was a man I didn’t recognize, bearded, tall. He was wearing a black T-shirt and camouflage pants, and he was holding a large gun, like a rifle or something like that.
My heart skipped a beat. He was looking out the back window, and so he didn’t see me. I moved back slightly but kept my eyes on him.
Terrorist. There was a terrorist in our house. This wasn’t the Omar man, since this man was white, but he was definitely one of the terrorists Emory talked about.
Where was Emory? He’d snuck out of the room, but he wasn’t anywhere in sight. My parents were just sitting there, looks of abject terror on their faces, as the man looked out the window.
What happened next happened fast, almost too fast for me to follow. As the man straightened up to look at my mother, Emory appeared behind him.
And cut his throat open.
Blood spouted from the wound as Emory held his hand over the man’s mouth. He took the man slowly down to the floor, the blood coming out in gushes, so much blood. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing.
My parents stared, their eyes wide. They didn’t make a move or a sound, and Emory simply put his finger to his lips to silence them. He kept the man down as he slowly stropped struggling, the blood pooling around the kitchen floor.
Emory moved again out of my sight. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I felt like I couldn’t move. The world was frozen. My parents both slowly moved off their chairs and got under the table, huddling against the wall as far from the dead man’s body as possible. His blood was covering the whole floor.
“Hey! The girl!”
My head shot up. Across the hall in the formal sitting room was another bearded man, this one shorter, his skin a bit darker. He was dressed in the same clothes as the other guy, and his gun was pointed right at me.
“Moe, it’s the girl, on the steps.” The man stepped toward me.
We made eye contact, and in that moment, I believed in evil. There was no emotion there, nothing to show that he felt anything for what was happening. He walked toward me slowly, his gun pointed right at me.
“Don’t move, bitch,” he said.
Then gunshots rang out. I shrank back against the wall, terror rolling through me. I looked down at myself,
but I wasn’t shot. I looked back up as the man collapsed, red blooming along his chest.
Emory was standing there, his face grim, smoke curling from his weapon.
“Upstairs,” he ordered me.
“What’s happening?” another voice called from the other room. Emory moved fast, staying low. He moved toward the kitchen just as the man came around the corner and stumbled over the first body.
Emory knocked his gun away and cracked him in the skull. The man stumbled back and Emory went at him, punching him in the throat, the chest, and the stomach. The man toppled back and Emory was on him, disarming him with incredible speed.
The man began to struggle, pushing back against Emory, but Emory was clearly stronger. I watched as Emory took his knife and slid it across the man’s neck, killing him the same way he’d killed the first one.
Slowly, Emory rocked back up to his feet, drawing up to his full height. I stared at him, afraid but also impressed, as he looked toward me.
“I asked you to stay upstairs,” he said.
“Sorry,” I answered dumbly, barely able to think.
He looked at my parents. “Go upstairs with Tara now,” he said. “I’ll take care of this.” They hesitated, staring at him. “Go,” he said more gently. “It’s over.”
Relief washed over me. It was over. Just like that, Emory had taken out three men, two with just a knife. There had been barely any noise, except for the gunshots.
My parents moved out from under the table and quickly came upstairs. Dad grabbed me and pulled me along. The last thing I saw before we went back into the nursery was Emory looking down at the bodies, his face twisted into a mask of rage.
The three of us sat in a stunned silence in the nursery. I held Mason close against my chest. There were no noises from downstairs except for the front door opening and closing once.
Mom and Dad weren’t speaking, and I couldn’t break the heavy tension. I simply held Mason close against me, fear rolling through my skin. I couldn’t begin to come to grips with what I had seen.
I’d known what Emory had been saying was true. I’d known I was in danger. But it didn’t really seem real until I saw a bearded man with a gun standing in my kitchen. Watching Emory take the men down with seeming ease only made it all that much more intense.
He wasn’t making any of it up. I’d never really doubted it, but now there was no more room for questions.
I was in serious danger, and so was my family.
After maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, I heard the sound of feet softly moving down the hall. I felt a spike of fear as the door slowly opened.
Emory looked in at us. His face had softened a lot since I’d last seen him.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I know what you just witnessed was horrible, but the men are gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Dad said first. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
“It’s okay. I’m just glad I was here.”
I stood up. “What’s going to happen now?” I asked.
“Are we calling the police?” Mom added.
“No,” he said. “We are disposing of the bodies. I called my commanding officer already, and he’s sending a more thorough cleanup team.”
“What does that mean?” Dad asked.
“Men will be here soon to scrub your house of blood.”
We were silent for a second as that sank in.
“I know this is a lot to handle,” he said, “but there’s one last thing. Tara, we have to leave town.”
“What?”
“There’s a safe house in Indianapolis. It used to be run by the CIA. My CO tells me that we can use it.”
“I can’t leave my parents,” I said.
“They’re safe here. The Network doesn’t want or care about them. Plus, Cooper and a few others will stay here to watch over them.”
“No, Emory,” I said firmly. “They come or I stay.”
“Honey,” Dad said gently, putting his hand on my arm. “Honey, listen to me. You have to do what he says.”
“Emory knows what he’s doing,” Mom said.
“But I can’t just leave you here.”
“You can and you will,” Dad said. “You’re the one in danger. When the men first came inside, the only thing they wanted to know was where you were.”
“It’s true,” Mom said. “He said they wouldn’t hurt us if they could have you.”
“We didn’t tell them,” Dad added.
“You two did amazing,” Emory said. “But, Tara, we need to leave.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
I stood there, unmoving, staring at my parents.
How could I just turn away and run? After what had happened? I felt responsible for this. I had brought these terrorists into their house. It was my fault for insisting that Emory bring me back to the house to check up on them.
But if they were right, I would be doing more harm than good by staying. If we left, the terrorists would follow us.
“Okay,” I said softly. “Only because I think it would be worse if I stayed.”
“Thank you,” Dad said.
“Come on. We need to get moving.” Emory turned to leave.
“Wait. We need to get Mason’s things.”
Mom and Dad went into motion. They quickly packed what I’d need while Emory watched, his eyes intense. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he radiated a calmness that made me feel more secure.
He knew what he was doing. Even if this situation seemed absolutely insane, Emory was in control. He’d taken those men out when they broke into the house. He was going to keep us safe. I just had to trust him.
The four of us went back downstairs and packed the car. This time, I didn’t make any jokes about it.
“Are you sure they’re going to be okay?” I asked Emory as my dad finished putting Mason into his car seat.
“I promise,” he said. “Cooper or someone else will be here twenty-four seven until this is over.”
“Where was Cooper this time?”
“He was sweeping the area. He would have been here if I hadn’t been.”
I nodded. “I’m afraid, Emory.”
“I know, but you’re with me.” He grinned. “No terrorist motherfucker is going to touch you while I’m around.”
My parents finished getting us packed and turned toward us. I could feel tears pressing at my throat, so I just threw my arms around my dad and hugged him.
“I’ll see you soon, sweetie,” he said.
I nodded and moved to my mom, hugging her.
When I was finished, they moved away from the car. I could see the fear in their eyes, but I couldn’t let it get to me. I couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down.
I’d seen what could happen to us. I’d seen what Emory had had to do as he ran the knife across that man’s throat.
We got into the car, he roared the engine to life, and we sped off.
Chapter 14
Emory
As I drove back toward the hotel, my adrenaline seethed through my veins, lighting me on fire.
I kept seeing my blade running across that fucking scumbag’s throat in my mind’s eye again and again. He could have done some serious fucking damage with that rifle, but I was better, faster. The men had training—I was sure of that now—but not enough.
I wasn’t sure how they got in. But as soon as I heard the distinctive click of an ammo clip being shoved into a rifle’s body, I knew what was happening. I’d moved downstairs fast, sneaking through their sight lines, and taken them off one by one.
And the damn girl didn’t stay in the nursery like I told her to. That made me angry that she’d put herself in danger. She almost got herself killed, but fortunately I got the drop on that guy.
She saw the truth though. She saw what was really happening, and she couldn’t deny it anymore.
The Network was here, and they were fucking serious.
I headed back toward the hotel. I could see the exha
ustion rolling off Tara’s body.
“We’re going to stay at the hotel for today,” I said. “We’ll leave tonight.”
“What? Why?”
“They’ll expect us to leave soon,” I said. “We’re going to throw them off our trail. Travis is already running counter-surveillance for us, so hopefully he can trip Omar enough that we can get away cleanly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re going to hold tight and make a run for it when it gets dark out.”
“Okay,” she said softly. “You’re the expert here.”
We were silent for a few minutes as I drove fast back toward the parking lot. I pulled in and found a spot near the back of the lot, close to the emergency exit. I killed the engine and turned to her.
“I need to say something.”
“Okay.” Her mouth was slightly open, and she looked so fucking sexy.
“You need to listen to me,” I said. “From now on. If I tell you to run, you run. If I tell you to hide, you hide. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “I will.”
“Good.” I opened my door. “Come on. Bring only what you need for the next few hours.”
She got out and grabbed Mason and a single bag. I took the bag and Mason from her, and we headed back inside.
I couldn’t begin to guess what was happening inside her head. She’d just witnessed three men getting killed, which wasn’t something many people saw in their life. At least Mason wasn’t old enough to ever remember any of this.
We got inside the hotel and up to the room. I unlocked it and we went inside.
The place was just as I left it. I’d doubted that Omar would make a move on the hotel room, and I was right. I placed Mason down still in his car seat on the couch and looked at Tara.
“Come on,” I said. “You should have a drink.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m still on edge.”
“It’ll calm you down.” I went over to the bar and poured two glasses of whisky. “Drink.”
She took it and sipped and then made a face. “I’m not a fan.”
“Doesn’t matter.” I knocked mine back. “Drink.”
She drank it and shook her head, making a face. “Ugh, man, that’s gross.”
