The Girl Next Door (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 4)

by A J Rivers

  I drag myself back over to the truck and try to lift the hood. It won't move. I slam the bottom of my hands against it again, trying to force it up and out of the way, but it won’t. I trace my fingertips along the seam between the hood and the rest of the body and discover it's been welded shut. There's no way to access the engine so I can cut it off.

  I go back to the door and crouch down near the ground. I want to lie down. Even though the smooth cement floor in the garage is icy, the rest of my body is already freezing. It doesn't seem it would make much difference. I could just stretch out and close my eyes. I could just relax.

  I feel my eyelids drooping, and I snap them back awake. I can't let that happen. Ducking my head down, I get as close to the floor as I can and try to breathe in fresh air from outside. It's useless. The door is firmly flush against the ground, and no discernible fresh air comes in. I resort to kicking the bottom of the door as I continue to pound on it with my fists.

  Finally, there's no energy left in me. But I'm not just going to sit down. I will go down fighting, even if that's fighting against the very functioning of my body.

  There is only one idea left. I open the truck door, lean inside the truck, release the emergency brake, and put it in Neutral. Then I walk around to the front and brace myself with my back against the workbench. Gripping it on either side with both hands, I lift my feet and start pushing against the front of the truck. If I can get some momentum up, I might be able to guide the truck backward and hit the door with enough force to at least bend it. It might not get me out, but it will make someone notice.

  I push as hard as I can, using every bit of my slipping strength and body weight to try to move the truck. Slowly, barely, it starts rocking. It's only slight, but it's happening. I keep going, holding the rough wood harder with my cut hands and forcing my feet against it. When it feels like it's rocking enough, I get down and run to the open door, so I can try to push the truck backward.

  The truck barely budges. It’s too heavy. I use the last of my strength and put everything I can into it. Slowly, I feel the wheels going. Slowly, I feel the truck backing up.

  But it might be too late.

  My eyes close and my body sinks down to the floor just as I hear a deafening crash.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “Emma!”

  I think I can hear Sam's voice in the distance. But I can't lift my head or open my eyes to look for him. I hear it again, him calling my name, and it's the most wonderful sound I've ever heard. I'm glad it's the last one I hear. The next time I hear it, I feel strong arms scoop me up off the cold floor. Then they're carrying me, and the suffocating smell of the exhaust starts to go away. I'm bouncing, jostling around, and my face hits something hard. I realize it's Sam's shoulder. He's cradling me in his arms and running across the street to my house.

  He lays me down, and I feel something soft but still cold. He has stretched me out in the grass and now lifts my head up, shaking it back and forth as he yells my name down into my face. Sharp stings follow quick smacks on either cheek.

  “Emma, come on. Open your eyes. Come on, Emma. Open your eyes. You're fine. Take a deep breath. Open your eyes,” he pleads.

  I try to tell him I'm doing the best I can. I'm trying so hard to open my eyes. I want nothing more than to be able to see him.

  “Open your eyes, Emma. Come on, baby, look at me.”

  Finally, enough fresh air has gotten to me that I'm able to open my eyes and look at him. The world still spins around me, but I'm aware of my body in the grass and my head in his hands. I'm alive.

  “Sam,” I smile softly.

  “Emma. Oh, my god, I thought I lost you.”

  He drops his head down to rest on my chest.

  “You found me,” I say.

  “Of course I did,” he says.

  “How?” I ask, still trying to flutter my eyes open. “I didn't have my phone to call you.”

  “Your neighbors did,” he replies with a laugh. “You are very loud.”

  “Remind me to be offended by that later,” I tell him.

  He smiles at me and leans down for a kiss. An ambulance pulls up to the curb, red and yellow lights swirling around and slashing over houses trying to sleep. I recognized some of the EMTs as first responders to Pearl's Diner the day everyone was sick.

  “What happened?” one of them calls over.

  “Carbon monoxide,” Sam tells them. “She was locked inside a garage.”

  “For how long?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “I don't know. Long enough.”

  “Why couldn't you get out? Was the door jammed?” she asks.

  “It was locked,” Sam says. “From the outside.”

  I look over at him. “So, this time, you know I'm not making it up?”

  “I'm so sorry,” he says. “I'm so sorry I didn't believe you sooner.”

  The medic adjusts an oxygen mask over my face and encourages me to take deep breaths. It will take hours for me to breathe all the carbon monoxide out of my body, but the more oxygen I can force back in now, the better.

  “Let's get her loaded up and head to the hospital,” she says.

  I shake my head. “No. I'm not going to the hospital.”

  “Emma, carbon monoxide exposure can be extremely dangerous. You need to get checked out,” Sam says.

  “I will later, I promise. Right now, there are much more important things that need to be done.”

  I take a few more breaths of the oxygen, then peel away the mask and head over to the head EMT.

  “Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital? There could be significant side effects you aren't aware of right now,” he says.

  “I'll take the risk,” I say.

  There's nothing they can do, and they pack up to drive away as Sam helps me up and toward my house.

  “Why would you take such a risk?” he asks as I drop down onto the couch in front of my computer.

  “Because something else is going to happen. The only reason I went across the street without my phone is because I saw Pamela's car sitting in the driveway. No one had heard from her today, and I left her a message. Yesterday I warned her to stay away because I knew something was going to happen, and I figured she just wasn't listening to me. So, I went over to talk to her and tell her what I'd uncovered. But it wasn't her. But it was definitely her car. Which means she's somewhere, and we have to figure out what's going to happen next in order to save her.”

  I start going through my files again, waiting for something to jump out at me, waiting for the little bit of inspiration I need, so I know what comes next.

  “Explain it to me again,” Sam says. “Tell me what's going on.”

  “It's based on my cases,” I tell him, speaking at rapid speed as my mind still struggles to put words in the correct order. “The dark-haired woman, the one I was calling Ruby, she's the one who locked me in that garage. She's behind all this, and it involves other people, too. We just need to figure out how and why.”

  “Alright, then start at the beginning,” he says.

  “I think it’s the ending actually. The cases are working backwards. They're building up on each other, getting worse and worse as they go. She is trying to make me look insane, and she might have succeeded in actually making it happen. It started with the noose at the fairgrounds. That represented Everly. Then the hotel. It was abandoned and crumbling, and I got trapped, just like Jake's house in Feathered Nest,” I say.

  “You were right about your phone, by the way. The tech finally got into it, and he did find a program controlling it. The app is able to completely take control of your phone, turn it on and off at a whim, stop phone calls or texts from going out or coming in, it's pretty extensive. I explained to them what you said about the text messages, and they said it would be very easy to use a masking app to make it look like a text came from someone else's phone come even if they didn't have access to that phone.”

  “Exactly,” I nod. “So, they were ab
le to make it seem like you were trying to get me into the hotel. Then I got trapped, and I ended up having to climb out and basically fall to escape, just like I did there. After the hotel was everybody getting sick at Pearl's. It sank in when I heard Pearl refer to Nicole as Nikki. I was part of a case with a girl named Nikki, who was kidnapped. The kidnappers inadvertently killed her by feeding her a meal that had a food she was allergic to, mixed in with the rest. They didn't know about the allergy, so they couldn't help her.”

  "So, you believe she was targeted."

  "Yes. But the hazelnuts weren't in the gravy. Other people would notice the difference in flavor. I bet if someone had thought to check her utensils, they would have found powdered hazelnuts on the fork in her biscuits and gravy."

  "And everyone else getting sick was just a distraction," he muses. "Meant to confuse everybody."

  "Not everybody," I point out. "Me. Then after that was the swatting. All through there, all along, there was the constant thread of Ruby Baker. Tonight, the carbon monoxide was in reference to a case I had where a man died in his office at home. Nobody could figure out what happened to him. There was no sign of trauma, no evident wounds or illness. Nothing. Then they discovered a business rival had hooked up a generator to a small tube and was feeding carbon monoxide into his office at a slow but steady rate. Because the effect is cumulative and can last for hours, it eventually put him to sleep, and he died. There are only a few cases before that one that we can consider. But that truck means something. It didn't have anything to do with the carbon monoxide case. They used Pamela's car to get me across the street without being wary of anything, but that truck wasn't an accident. They didn't just randomly choose it.”

  Suddenly, it occurs to me. Bits and pieces fall into place, and I search frantically through my files until I get to the right one.

  “What did you figure out?” Sam asks.

  “Pearl's grandson Kevin is married, yes?”

  “Yes. But I've never met her. She's apparently not very social. There have been some rumors that their relationship isn't the best,” he says.

  “Which is why Pamela always seems to be coming out of the bathroom when the rest of the office arrives for lunch,” I say, finally getting confirmation of what I've suspected since I saw that door.

  “What?” Sam asks.

  “What's the date?” I ask. “The date of today. What is it?”

  “November 29th.”

  My skin prickles.

  I pull up a picture of a courtroom from my very first case as an agent. I look over it carefully and see exactly what I was looking for. I grab my phone and pull up the same image. I rush to my bedroom and come back, hooking my harness into place.

  “We need to move fast,” I tell him. “I know what's going to happen next.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  I wrench off my seatbelt before the engine is off. Throwing myself out of the car, I run across the damp, uneven ground. My ankle twinges where the injury hasn't fully healed, but I ignore it. The light from the flashlight on my phone isn't much, but I don't want it to be. I don't want to make our arrival known too soon. The steady thud of Sam's boots behind me catch up, and he looks down at me.

  "I have officers positioned around the perimeter. She won't be able to get out if she runs," he says softly.

  I nod in acknowledgement, and we hurry on. The cemetery is difficult to navigate in the darkness, but it's not much further. I take only a few more steps when I start to hear voices. Following them, I finally see a figure in the moonlight. We get closer, and I can see red hair.

  “It's Kevin.”

  He's leaning forward, speaking in a desperate tone. We get closer, remaining concealed behind a thick old tree.

  "You promised no one was going to get hurt," he’s saying. "You said this was just about making a fool out of Emma."

  "Sometimes plans change," a woman's voice responds. "It seems Emma Griffin is more resilient than I thought. She didn't care what people thought about her and wouldn't back down, so we had to work harder. It was fun at first. I waited a long time to see her squirm. But then it got tiresome. I had to do something else, something that would make more of an impact.”

  “But why did I have to be involved?” Kevin asks.

  Holding my gun poised, I can't just stand there any longer. I rush out toward them. Kevin gasps and stumbles back a few steps. Ahead of me, I see the dark-haired woman I knew as Ruby. She's crouched down on the ground and is holding a terrified Pamela against her. The blade of a knife presses against her throat.

  “You had to be involved because you were having an affair with Pamela,” I say. “Isn't that right, Kevin?”

  He looks at me, his eyes widened.

  “How did you find out?” he asks. “The only reason she knew is because she saw us.”

  “No she didn't,” I tell him. “She's not from Sherwood. She's not from anywhere around here. She's from New York. At least, that's where the trial was. She didn't know you were having an affair. She could tell by looking at you, and she pounced on your vulnerability. I watched Pamela's movements. I knew when she was supposed to be at the office and then she wasn't. I noticed when she would have arrived at different places and when you would arrive. But what really got me was the day you poisoned everyone at Pearl's Diner. Your grandmother trusted you, and you betrayed her.”

  “Kevin?” Pamela murmurs. The woman holds her tighter and presses the knife deeper against her throat, so Pamela gasps and closes her eyes briefly.

  “I'm sorry,” Kevin says. “It wasn't meant to be that way. No one was supposed to die. Did you know? How did you know if I had anything to do with it?”

  “Sam and I were sitting close to the front of the restaurant. We could see every person who walked in. We watched the rest of the people from Lionheart come in but didn't see Pamela. Then everyone got sick, and later at the hospital, Derrick asked where she was. He said she was there. But we never saw her come in. Which means she came in later. The only way she could have done that without anyone noticing is to go through the kitchen. Only she wouldn’t want anybody to see her coming through the kitchen doors. So, she used the door beside your dishwashing station, so if anybody looked, it was just as if she was coming out of the bathroom and not into the restaurant.”

  “But what did that tell you about the poisoning?” he asks.

  “You wouldn't want to make her sick but were hoping to get to me. Later, when I asked you if you were feeling better, I said I saw you driving down Miller’s Road to the hospital. I never saw that, but you agreed. You were trying to convince me you had gotten sick by tasting the food you supposedly didn't know was tainted. But of course, you knew not to eat it so you wouldn't get sick. You were surprised to find out Sam and I hadn't gotten sick, but it's the question you asked me that clinched it. You asked if Sam and I usually go to lunch at 12:30. Why would you ask that?”

  “Curiosity,” Kevin says.

  “No,” I say. “You timed it. You knew what time you thought we were coming in. So, you made the gravy, then waited until you figured we would be there to add in the ipecac. But we were already there. We had been there and ordered. So, we got the gravy that hadn't been tampered with. The one thing you did time correctly was giving Nicole the hazelnuts.”

  “I didn't know she was that allergic to them,” he says. “She and my grandmother were close, but I didn't know her very well. I just thought it would make her uncomfortable.”

  “And you never asked why?” I ask.

  “No,” he says.

  “Why, Kevin?” Pamela whispers. “Why would you do any of this?”

  “To protect you,” Kevin says. “Sarah told me if I went along with her plans, she would keep our secret safe. But if I didn't, she would tell my wife about us. She would tell my grandmother. Everyone would find out.”

  “And I wasn't worth people finding out about?” Pamela asks.

  Ruby—or more properly, Sarah—gives another yank on her head. I see a small
trickle of blood starting to form on Pamela's neck.

  "You need to let her go now," I say. “Put the knife down, and let Pamela go.”

  “No,” Sarah says. The face I had once thought of as a potential friend is now twisted in rage. “She doesn't understand. He so desperately doesn't want anybody to know about his relationship with her, he would do anything. He would do anything to stop his precious wifey from knowing he's been sleeping with her for two years because he never has any intention of not being married. But that meant I could dangle it over his head for as long as I wanted to.”

  “So, this is about me having an affair?” Kevin asks. “This whole time, you weren’t just using that as leverage, it was your motivation?”

  “No,” I say. “That's not what it is. Is it, Sarah? This is about Travis, isn't it?”

  Sarah makes a sobbing sound, and the knife slips slightly against Pamela's throat. I aim my gun, but I don't have a clear shot. The two women are too entangled for me to be sure I would hit Sarah and not Pamela.

  “You don't get to talk about him,” she says through gritted teeth.

  I take a step closer.

  “Why not? Isn't that why we're here? Shouldn't everybody know about him?” I ask. “You did all this and came this far so that today we could be standing here. Because it's not any random day. You chose today. It's been your intention all along.”

  “Yes,” she says.

  Sam inches up closer behind me and Sarah tightens her grip again. I take one hand off my gun to wave him back.

  "Let her go," Sam calls. "Lower your weapon."

  "Lower yours," Sarah replies with a sneer.

  "Sam, back up. She wants me. Don't put anyone else at risk."

  "Why you?" Kevin asks.

  "She never told you?"

  "Blackmail isn't a friendly transaction," Sarah sneers. "We didn't take much time to get to know each other."