by Joanna Bell
"Emma," Michael cut in. "Slow down. Let me come pick you up. I won't call anyone – I'm still you're lawyer, remember? It was smart to call me. But you shouldn't be there. If the police aren't there now, they could be at any time. The Renner property is pretty much the central physical point of the whole investigation. And hell, if the cops aren't around that doesn't mean the 'internet investigators' aren't there."
"The what?" I asked.
"The internet investigators," he replied, as I heard the sound of him gathering his things and closing his office door behind him. "You know, crazy people. Looking for scorch marks from alien landing craft in the backyard, that kind of thing. Wait. You weren't kidnapped by aliens for real, were you?"
"No," I laughed, thankful for the brief moment of levity.
"That's good to hear. Now, I'm just leaving my office now. I'll be there in – let's say half an hour. Don't come rushing out when you see the car, I want to take a good look around the place first, OK? Make sure the coast is clear."
"OK."
"And Emma?"
"Yeah?"
"Your parents are going to be so happy to hear from you. It's wonderful to hear you sounding safe and well. I'll see you soon."
"OK," I whispered, emotional again. "Yes, see you soon."
True to his word, Michael Rappini pulled into the driveway, slowly and with his headlights off, a short time later. He spent about five minutes checking the front and back yards, checking around the house for any unwelcome visitors, and then he knocked quietly on the front door. I pulled it open right away and he came inside, looking around to make sure the drapes were all closed before finally, when he was satisfied that we couldn't be seen from outside, putting his hands on my shoulders and just staring at me, disbelieving.
"It's really you, isn't it?"
"Yeah," I replied.
My lawyer shook his head and looked away. "I didn't think I was ever going to see you again, Emma Wallis. To be perfectly honest, I don't think anyone did. And now that you're back, we need to have a very serious discussion about how this is going to be handled. Because people are going to lose it when they find out."
We sat down on the battered sofa in the Renner's living room and I told Michael that what I wanted, before anything else, was to call my family. To let them know I was alive and well.
"Sure," he agreed. "Of course. You can do that, but we – Emma, we really need to have a plan. Your parents – and your sister – are both here, in River Falls, and they're working closely with the police. Which is as it should be. But the minute the police find out you're back, the press is going to find out, and then everyone is going to find out. Also, they're going to want to debrief you, and I can tell you now that won't be a short process. They –"
"I just need to talk to my family!" I told him. "If I ask them not to say anything right away, they'll listen to me, I know they will."
Michael Rappini's instincts – unlike my own – were correct. He'd been witness to the media frenzy since I'd gone missing, he knew what I and my family were in for when it came out that I was home, and he was trying to get me to agree to formulate a plan of action regarding how to best handle everything. I, on the other hand, was solely focused on one thing to the exclusion of all else: seeing my family again, making sure they didn't spend another second worrying about me.
"Do you remember what happened to your friend?" He asked gently. "It's worse than that now, Emma. You wouldn't believe the –"
"Please," I cut in. "I just need to talk to my parents. Just for five minutes. They won't say anything if I ask them not to."
"It's not that simple, Emma. It's not as simple as will they say anything or won't they – there are police and reporters around them almost all the time, your family loves you but they have no experience in dealing with –"
Both of our heads suddenly snapped up at the sound of a loud knock on the front door. I shook my head 'no' when Michael looked at me enquiringly, to check if I was expecting anyone else.
"Shit," he whispered. "OK. Shit. That'll be the –"
"Hello?" A voice – male – came through the door. "Mr. Rappini? Michael Rappini? We saw you go into the house, we know you're in there. I'm Jim Forslund from KANB-5 News, can I ask you a few –"
"Go upstairs," Michael whispered to me. Go upstairs and don't come down until I tell you it's safe.
"But what if he comes in?" I whispered back, already feeling cornered – by a single reporter – because I was so clueless about what was coming.
"He can't come in. Let me get rid of him. It'll just take a minute."
So I went upstairs. Well, I didn't go upstairs. I hid just out of sight at the bottom of them and waited, listening, as my lawyer opened the door and politely asked the reporter to leave.
"We heard a conversation," Jim from KANB-5 News said, as the light from the camera filled the living room.
"Phone call," Michael told him. "I've got nothing to say to you, Jim. I –"
"It wasn't a phone call. We heard a female voice, too. Who else is here with you? Is it Paige Renner or Emma Willis? Is it –"
"Who were you talking to, Mr. Rappini?" a new voice cut in, female this time, and the sounds of an argument came from the direction of the front door.
"Get out of here Jeanine, you've got your microphone halfway up my ass."
"I have just as much right to be here as you do, Jim! Now, Mr. Rappini –"
The front door slammed shut and Michael appeared in front of me, a worried look on his face. That scared me, because he wasn't the type to worry.
"We have to leave," he said hurriedly, under his breath so the reporters outside wouldn't hear us. "We need to leave right now, Emma."
"But – where to?" I asked. "You said they couldn't come inside, right? So –"
My lawyer took out his phone and checked the time. Then he looked up at me. "It's ten past two. I'd say we have until about three until the entire street – not the driveway, the street – is full of media trucks and reporters and crazy people."
As he was speaking, the sound of tires squealing came from outside, lending the scene an even greater sense of urgency.
"OK," I said. "OK – but they're right out there. Should we go out the back and cross the field? You could call a taxi to pick us up on –"
"No," Michael replied, looking around, seeing a blanket and hastily throwing it over my head. "No, that won't work. Come on, Emma. Now. We have to go now."
So I let Michael guide me out the front door, keeping my gaze fixed on the ground, which I could just about see if I looked straight down from underneath the blanket. Both reporters and their camera men immediately swarmed us, shouting questions at Michael and me, asking me who I was, asking me why I was covered up, if I knew where Paige Renner or Emma Willis were – if I was Paige Renner or Emma Willis.
I kept quiet, but the walk to the car, which must have taken less than half a minute, seemed to take forever. I heard Michael opening the passenger side door and at the very last moment, just as I was lowering myself into the seat, someone grabbed the blanket and tried to pull it off me.
"HEY!" Michael shouted, and I heard a scuffle break out. "Back off. What the – what the fuck are you doing? Jim! BACK OFF!"
I grabbed at the blanket and tried to pull it back, to wrap it tighter around my head. I heard Michael's hasty footsteps as he ran back around to the driver's side of the car and opened his door. And then, at the very last second before the engine roared to life, the blanket slipped off my head. Just a little, I thought. I used my hand to block the view of my lower face but there had been a second – less than a second – where part of my cheek and neck had been visible. And Michael saw it happen.
"Keep that over your head!" He yelled, peeling out of the Renner's driveway and accelerating down the road. "Emma – just – keep it over your head! Did it fall off? Did they see you?"
"I don't know!" I replied. "I can't tell!"
He took the first left and gunned it towards the hig
hway. "It doesn't matter – this'll be all over the internet in 10 minutes. We need to get somewhere where they can't, uh – OK, we can't go to my office. Or my house. And we can't go to your parents because their hotel is a fucking media circus. Uh... let me think."
I turned and looked over my shoulder, to make sure we weren't being followed, and didn't see any cars behind us. The feeling of being pursued, of being quarry, was overwhelming and deeply frightening. All my fight-or-flight instincts had kicked in back at the Renner house – I'd almost screamed when the reporter tried to drag the blanket off me – and my body was shaking now as the adrenaline sang through my veins.
"You have no idea how bad this had gotten," Michael told me once we were on the highway. "You have no idea, Emma. It's crazy – I mean it's literally crazy, people are losing it over this case. Before we do anything we need to arrange security for you."
"I had that guy before," I told him. "The one from Grand Northeastern, and then the one my parents hired. We could call one of them – or both of them, if you think that would be –"
Michael Rappini laughed out loud. "Yeah," he said. "No. Two? No. That's not going to cut it, not anymore. You're going to need at least – I'd say 8, maybe? 10? And not ex mall cops, either. Real security, ex-military."
I laughed, too, because I thought he was joking. He didn't sound like he was joking, or look like it, but what he was saying was absurd. 10 security guards? Ex-military? What?
A few seconds later, we pulled over in a deserted rest stop, parked, and turned the engine off. Then he turned to me.
"Emma, I need to say something. And you need to listen. Alright?"
"Um – OK," I replied, frowning because at the time I felt patronized.
"I'm serious," Michael said. "This is serious."
"I know it is," I snapped. "Why do you think I, of all people, wouldn't understand that? You saw what happened on campus, right? Well I was there."
"Yeah, I saw what happened on campus. And what I'm telling you right now is that it's gotten ten times worse since you disappeared. This story is no longer just tabloid fodder, Emma. The fucking New York Times has a permanent presence in River Falls now. The FBI has a huge task force, and a spokesman who gives daily briefings – on this case alone. If the media find you, they're going to tear you apart. It's going to make what happened to your friend look like child's play, OK?"
"I'm not going to the psych ward," I said, leaning back in my seat and rubbing my eyes as what Michael was saying began to sink in. What had happened to Paige was child's play? What?!
"Of course you're not. You have a lawyer – your family actually has a whole team of lawyers, of which I am only one. But you're going to need to sit down with the FBI again, probably many times, and they're going to want answers."
I turned to look out the window at the cars passing on the highway. It was mid-January, the bleakest time of the year, and everything was gray. The FBI were going to want answers, Michael said. But, just like Paige before me, I knew I didn't have any answers for them. None that wouldn't – again, just like Paige – make me look insane. Briefly, a flicker of doubt sprang up in my heart as to whether or not I'd made the right decision coming back.
But it died away again when Michael took his phone out and told me he was going to call my parents. "Let me talk to them first, alright? I need to prepare them for the news, so they don't go telling anyone that you're back before they understand the consequences."
I nodded and pressed my lips together, willing the seconds and minutes to fly by as fast as they could until I could speak to – and see – my family again.
My mum took Michael's call. Just hearing her voice, faint and distorted through the phone, caused an instant lump in my throat. I closed my eyes, attempting to keep the tears from falling, and then put my hands over my face. Michael told her he had good news, and then asked that she get my dad and sister and find somewhere to sit down.
"I want to warn you, Mrs. Willis, that you must – all three of you must – keep this news to yourself for the time being. I don't just mean don't mention it to the reporters, I mean anyone. No phone calls home, no conversations with friends, nothing on the internet."
They agreed quickly and then, after a quick glance at me, Michael told them he was with me at that very moment, that I was in the car beside him. I heard the sound of my dad crying, and then a shriek from my sister, followed by my mother warning her to keep it down. I've never been so thankful for British emotional reserve as I was at that moment.
When the phone was finally passed to me, I took it with a trembling hand and held it up to my ear. And then I only managed to squeak out a single word before breaking down:
"Mum?"
"Emma! Oh, darling. Oh Emma. Is it really you?"
And then my mum was crying and I heard the phone being passed to someone else, but they were crying too. Finally my sister's voice, choked with emotion, came down the line.
"Emma? Oh my God, Em. Are you OK? Where are you? Are you hurt? Where –"
"I'm fine," I cried, wiping my eyes and taking the tissue Michael offered me. "I'm fine. I'm not hurt. I'm not – nothing bad has happened to me. Please don't worry any more. I –"
"Emma. Tell us where you are."
That was my father speaking, and when Michael heard the question he gently took the phone back from me and told my dad that he was taking me to the lake-house of a family friend, and that my parents and sister were to drive up there only after making sure they weren't being followed.
I spoke to my parents for a few more minutes but there was a sense of urgency, of needing to get somewhere where we could be pretty confident that reporters and police weren't going to pop out of the bushes. My lawyer gave directions to the lake-house and then hung up, and we got back on the road right away.
22
Emma
Just over four hours later, I watched as a silver sedan pulled into the driveway of the lake-house where Michael had taken me, and my mother, father and sister all got out, looking towards the house for some sign of me.
"Don't –"
But it was too late. I was already out the door, running to them, bursting into tears for the hundredth time that day as they threw their arms around me and hugged me so tight I could hardly breathe. We didn't speak right away, even though we tried. The emotion was too high, too strong.
"I'm OK," I blubbed, when my mum stood back to examine me. "I'm OK. I'm not hurt."
"Oh my God," Katie whispered. "Oh my God, Em. You scared the hell out of us, you really did. We were starting to think you were –"
I was pulled into another hug, then, before the word 'dead' could be spoken aloud, and the tears were so copious the collar of my jacket was damp with them.
I want to say we went inside and spent the evening together in front of a roaring fire, happy and safe. I want to say they accepted my insistence that I wasn't ready to talk about what happened – not because it was bad, but because I didn't know how to, just yet. I want to say being with my family again made everything right.
But it didn't. Because before we'd even finished being reunited, a white van came roaring up the road and turned into the driveway of the lake-house, sending a shower of gravel across the ornamental bushes planted on the verge. And before it had even come to a stop, a man was jumping out of the passenger seat. In his left hand was a microphone, and he was followed only seconds later by another man – that one with a camera.
"Inside," my dad said, as my family gathered around me, blocking the men from seeing me. "Right now. Inside!"
"Emma Willis?" One of the men shouted as we began to run to keep ahead of them. "Emma? I'm Rick Jones from the River Falls Vanishing podcast. We were just wondering if you –"
I was ushered into the lake-house and the door slammed behind us. At once, both my father and Michael Rappini were in each other's faces.
"I told you not to tell –" Michael started angrily.
"None of us said a bloody thing!" My dad ro
ared. "You called them! You got us out here so they could ambush –"
"No," I broke in. "No, dad. Michael didn't call anyone."
"Maybe they followed us?" Katie said, putting her arms around me and giving me another hug. "Maybe they – maybe they had one of those tracking things on the car?"
But it didn't matter how they'd found us, because they had.
"We should leave," my mum said. "Come on, let's leave before more of them –"
"No," Michael Rappini shook his head. "No, it's too late. It's a single road up here for the thirty miles – there'll be a pack of them headed here already. If we leave, this is going to turn into come kind of OJ Simpson style –"
And at that exact moment, we all suddenly heard the sound of a helicopter hovering overhead. I turned to my parents, afraid, and although they tried to reassure me I could see in their eyes that they were just as worried as I was.
"We're going to have to deal with this," Michael told us. "We're going to – we'll have to make a statement."
"I don't want her on camera!" My mother exclaimed, to agreement from my dad. "We'll give a statement – we're used to it by now. But not Emma. She's not ready, you can see that for yourself. Damnit, we left Jennifer back in River Falls."
"Who's Jennifer?" I asked miserably, as a searchlight – a searchlight! – from the helicopter illuminated the lake to the back of the house.
"Our media liaison," my mother replied. "She's the one who deals with these vultures for us. But Mr. Rappini said not to bring anyone, so –"
Michael didn't let her finish. "I only said that because I thought you understood how important it was not to allow anyone to follow –"
"I told you NO ONE FOLLOWED US!" My dad bellowed, and I caught my sister's eye, then, and saw that she understood as well as I did that things were well and truly beginning to fall apart.
