Authors: S. Y. Robins
“
H
ello
? Yes! This is Rob Tillman, I’m calling to report a break in at 128 Main Street.” Rob was pulling the cold air into his lungs with great effort, pounding after Emma in his dress shoes. “One person. We’re following them. Yes. We’re turning up James Street.”
“Tell them he had a key!” Emma called over her shoulder.
“He had a—sorry, I’m running—he had a key. Right.” He took the phone down. “Emma! Emma. They say they’ll get him.”
“He’s going to get away!” Emma skidded around the corner, one hand out to steady herself. She could see the person running ahead of them, clothes so bulky that she still couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Could it be Gina? Would she
ever
wear something like that?
“Come on, Em! We shouldn’t, it’s dangerous.”
“We have to keep going!” Emma sprinted onwards, pushing herself as fast as she could. The light was fading, and she had to keep her eyes fixed on the figure ahead.
“This is crazy, we don’t know anything about this person, they could kill us!”
“Or they could get away and kill other people!” Emma called back. She reached for Rob’s hand and clutched onto it when he reached out. “Rob, don’t you see? This is bigger than us.”
“Yeah, but you’re the one who might get hurt! I’ve had training, Em, and even I don’t want to see if this guy is dangerous. The police have guns. They’re trained to work as a team.”
“But there are tons of places he could go.” Emma tracked the figure as it ducked down an alleyway. “There, come on. Listen, Rob, maybe this is all just a coincidence, right? Maybe it is. But maybe it’s not. And it’s really beginning to feel like that, like it’s more than just a coincidence.” She could hardly breathe for the cold air. “And I’m scared, but I’m angrier than I am scared. I’m
angry
that he’s doing this to people and I want to know it—”
And then they came around the corner and the man was waiting for them, sinking into a crouch, hands outstretched.
Emma didn’t pause to think. If she had, she was sure later, she would have done something quite different. As it was, she had no time to think about anything. She just did what her brothers had taught her to do, and she dropped her shoulder and sprinted, knocking into the man’s thighs and bowling him over. She went over onto the pavement with him and rolled, fetching up against the wall of a nearby garage. Nowhere to run.
“Hey!” Rob’s roar filled the space, and their attacker looked around just in time to get a fist to the face.
Emma scrambled away as the two men grappled, dialing her phone with shaking fingers.
“911 emergency response.”
“Hello, yes, I’m in the alley between Point Street and Western Ave, just off of James Street. We caught the intruder we told you about,
please
come qui—”
A shape hit her from behind and the man tackled her, snarling. Rob hauled him away and Emma stumbled back. She wanted to help. She didn’t want Rob taking the blows that were meant for her. But she didn’t know how to get into the fray without hurting Rob as well as this unknown person.
“Emma, run!”
Like hell. Emma looked around for her phone, and could not spot it in the gathering gloom. With a curse, she tried to find something to serve as a makeshift weapon. She didn’t have time. The man drew a knife and as Rob ducked into a crouch, Emma swung her purse as hard as she could. The man went down like a sack of bricks and Emma kicked the knife away from him.
“Here!” She unwound her scarf hastily and Rob set about tying the man’s hands behind his back.
“What did you
have
in there?”
“About twenty bottles of nail polish, what else?”
And then he was laughing and she was laughing, too, because this was just too ridiculous, them chasing down an assailant and her hitting him with her purse. They doubled over, clutching their stomachs, and only stopped laughing when the man stirred and lifted his head to glare at them.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you.” Rob had picked up his knife.
Sirens sounded in the distance and the man flinched.
“Who are you?” Emma demanded. “Why were you breaking in?”
The man turned his head away.
“Oh, come on.”
Silence. Emma considered her options.
“Look, I have to know, all right? You murdered that woman, right? And Matt. And tried to burn my shop down. But I don’t
know
you. So what is it? Why do you hate me?”
Nothing.
“Fine, I’ll call them off if you tell me.”
“Emma!” Rob seemed horrified.
“I have to know,” Emma told him. She crouched down. “You did it all, didn’t you? Why?”
The man stared at her, narrowing his eyes. Finally he shrugged.
“We needed the insurance money from the building. No one was going to buy it. Matt owed too much. I had to show the rest of them I’d do what I needed to do.”
“So you
killed
him? Wait…” Emma frowned. “Owed too much for what.”
“Matt was part of our ring.” He rolled his eyes when she didn’t understand. “Coke, all right? He got in over his head and he was pulling me down, too. We needed the money, but he kept insisting you had to get out of the building before we burned it down.”
“
That’s
why he kept asking me to leave?” That was oddly chivalrous of him.
“Remember why he was in too deep,” Rob advised Emma. “And I wouldn’t take anything this guy says at face value.”
“She said she wanted to know. You think the police are going to let me go? No. So yeah, I’m going to tell her.”
“Then why did you kill the woman outside my apartment?” Emma asked quietly.
For a moment, she thought he was going to deny it. She saw the idea go across his face. If he didn’t admit to it, if she told the police the same story he told… He might get away with one murder charge instead of two. And at that, seeing him not even care about the life he had taken, Emma felt a wave of fury so fierce that she thought she might throw up.
“You tell me the truth,” she said fiercely. The sirens were getting closer. “Or I’ll turn you in, I swear I will.”
“I knew some stuff about you from Matt, that’s all!” The guy was trying to stand. “I thought I’d get you out of the way since
he
wasn’t going to do it. That’s all, lady. It was just a mistake. I didn’t even know I’d made a mistake until a couple of days later.”
“
And
?” Emma demanded.
“And what?”
“Aren’t you sorry? Aren’t you at all upset that you killed an innocent woman?” Blood was beating in her ears and she wanted to reach out and shake the man until his teeth rattled. It was cold and her boots were soaking wet, every sensation in eerie clarity, and something like guilt was making her want to cry. “It wouldn’t even have made sense to kill
me
. If you were so determined to get the insurance money, why wait for me to get out? Why go straight to murder?”
“Because you were going to want to rebuild, weren’t you?” he demanded. “I have to go. You said you’d let me go.”
Emma stood slowly. She looked down at him, there in the mud, and she shook her head.
“No.”
“
No
? Listen, you—”
His words died when Rob laid a foot on his back, pressing him back into the road.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“She lied to me!”
“You tried to kill me,” Emma said, her voice shaking. “You killed two people rather than help out your business partner, who was just trying to do some version of the right thing. I wasn’t ever going to let you go.”
“Bitch.” His face twisted.
“Right, sure, call me a bitch! You’re the one who murdered some innocent woman. You’re
still
not upset about that! D’you know who she was?”
“No.” His voice was sulky, and she could see him looking away. He didn’t want to know, she realized. He didn’t want someone to tell him about the life he’d taken, and she would be damned if she would let him get away with that.
“I read about her in the paper. Her name was Katharine. She was here to visit family, but she was going to school to become a nurse. Her sister just had a baby and she was the godmother. That’s who you killed. That’s the life you took.”
“Are you done?” he asked sulkily.
“No. You had no right to do that! None. You just went ahead and hurt her because she was standing in the way of you committing another crime. You hurt her because she was near me, because she looked kind of like me. I want you to say that you know that was wrong!”
I want you to feel as furious and helpless and angry about it as I do.
But as the sirens grew deafening and cars peeled around the corner, Emma realized he might never feel that way. He was trying to run away again, Rob holding him back as the police ran over to them, and if the man felt one bit as bad as Emma did about this, he would know that running away wouldn’t help. She watched numbly as they handcuffed him and put him in the back of a squad car. She watched Rob talking urgently to them. And she shied away when Rob came back with her scarf.
“It’s over,” he said quietly. “They know what he did. He’s not going to get away with it.”
“But he is.” Emma felt tears in her eyes. “Because that woman’s still going to be dead when this is all over. No matter what they do to him, it won’t bring her back.”
“Hey.” Rob folded her up in his arms. “Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but just…just say it out loud.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
Emma paused. “If I’d just moved the salon, she wouldn’t have died. It’s my fault.” She sighed. “It sounds crazy when I say it out loud.
“It’s natural to feel like it’s all connected,” Rob told her. “But no one could have done more to prevent this. And if every time someone acted weird, I went along with what they said because otherwise their friend might murder someone…? That’d be a weird life.”
Emma managed a laugh and let him lead her away. “Oof. I hope life calms down soon.”
E
mma got
out of her car, slammed the door, and promptly dropped her keys in a puddle. Swearing, she picked them up and shook them out, searching for the key to the nail salon. It was late, it was cold, and she should be back at the apartment in a nice, cozy bath.
She paused. Actually, she
should
be here. But she should be here with the salon open, customers laughing and talking, there should be comforting music playing in the background, a few people lazing around with eye masks on their face, and the salon in good working order.
Instead, she had yet
another
delay on the repairs, and she was about ready to scream. Even having Gina helping out didn’t really make up for it. Emma was glad to have her friend back, and even more glad to be co-owning the salon, but one repair snafu after another had sapped her will to do anything but lie in bed and wishing she’d never picked this place. This last call had nearly made her cry. The fire had gotten one of the pipes, apparently, and…
And she didn’t care. She just wanted to hear the repair people tell her how much it would cost to fix, and then go home and cry softly into her pillow until Rob got home from work. She took a deep breath to steady herself, and then opened the door to the salon.
“Surprise!”
Emma shrieked and dropped her purse. She clapped her hands over her mouth and gazed around herself, stepping into the salon as if she were not quite sure it was real. In fact, she
wasn’t
sure. She’d been here a few days ago, while the place was still coated in plastic sheeting and workers were carefully trying to get the smell of smoke out of everything. And while Gina had said she would clean it all up as soon as the workers were gone…
“There wasn’t any repair problem,” she said, half-accusing and half-hopeful.
“No repair problem.” Gina grinned, holding up two flutes of champagne. Behind her, the salon was lit up, all of the manicurists and about a dozen of Emma’s favorite clients smiling at her, delighted to see her so surprised by their opening party.
“We just thought…it got pushed back so far, we’d try to make it a surprise.” Gina came forward with the champagne and gave Emma a long hug. When she drew back, there were tears in her eyes. She held up the champagne flute and clinked with Emma. “I can’t say what it means to me that you want to keep working together.”
“I can’t say what it means to me that you’d want to work with
me
,” Emma protested.
“For you,” Gina reminded her, grinning.
“Eh, you know I’m going to need your advice for everything, right?”
Gina grinned. “I know, I know. Speaking of which, there are a whole bunch of employment contracts on your desk. You should go do them.”
“In a second.”
“People need to start working tomorrow…”
“In a second!” Emma laughed and went to go hug some of her customers. “Thank you so much for coming.”
“And you, my dear.” One of them, an old woman who always got the most extravagantly colored nails Emma did, smiled up at her from a leather chair. “We’re so glad all of that ugly business is cleared up.”
“Thanks, Edna. Me, too.” Emma drifted away to hug another customer, laughing and joking about next appointments and celebration nails until Gina drew her firmly away.
“Oh, come on…”
“It’ll only take you a few minutes,” Gina said firmly. “And then there’ll be ice cream…” she said temptingly.
“Fine. But just because I know you won’t give me any ice cream until I do. And I get more champagne, right?”
“Of course,” Gina promised.
Emma slipped into the back, sighing. A stack of paperwork was hardly the thing to set off a surprise party. She would have thought Gina would know that. She supposed this was what it was like to be the boss, though. Shaking her head, she opened the door to her office…and stopped dead, absolutely speechless for the second time in one night.
The place glittered with candles, white lilies strewn across the windowsills and in a vase on her desk, and the little radio on her desk was playing the song they’d heard in the bar on that first night, two years ago. Rob knelt beside the desk, his eyes very warm, and a ring box in one hand.
“Oh my God,” Emma whispered.
“Emma.” He blinked away something that looked suspiciously like a tear.
“Oh my God,” she said again. She put her hands up over her mouth, sure that there were tears in her eyes.
“I haven’t told you this.” Rob took a deep breath to steady himself. “But since the first night I met you, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. These two years have been the happiest of my life. I love every minute that I’m with you, and it’s taken me forever to work up the courage to ask you if you feel the same.”
Emma nodded. She couldn’t speak.
“Before I ask, I just want to say…” He shook his head, laughing. “Thank you. Thank you for putting up with my terrible jokes. Thank you for eating pancakes I cook. I know they’re terrible. I’m getting better.”
Emma gave a laugh.
“Thank you for being in my life, Em. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“So. Emma Thomas. Will you marry me?”
“Yes.” She barely got the word out around her tears, and then he was hugging her and she was crying against his shoulder.
“Do you want to see the ring?”
“Uh…my face is all gross.”
“I don’t care.” He bent to kiss her. “You’re even beautiful when you cry.”
“You’re a terrible liar. My nose is the size of a mountain.”
“Well, I still think you’re cute.” He held out the box. “What do you think? Rubies for your birthday, and a pearl for mine. I know it’s not a diamond, but—”
“I love it.” Emma stopped his lips with a kiss. “I love it.”
“Come on, let’s go tell them the good news.”
“I think I have paperwork.” Emma looked around distractedly, and then titled her head back and groaned. “There was no paperwork, was there? I
just
got that.”
Rob laughed and hugged her close, kissing her deeply. When he led her out, it was with a sheepish thumbs up to everyone. “She said yes!”
The salon erupted into cheers and Emma buried her face in Rob’s shirt, blushing and crying and laughing.
“You okay?”
“I’m perfect.” Emma looked up at him, hardly noticing as Gina slipped a glass of champagne into her hand. “Absolutely perfect. I can’t believe you did this.”
“I can’t believe you said yes.” He enfolded her in his arms, squeezing her so hard she squeaked, and then drew back. “Now. Ice cream, and champagne.”
“Cheers,” Emma said, smiling.
The End