Chapter Twenty-Four
“Emma Jean, I’m gonna need you to breathe for me.”
Hank Tremont’s voice sounded funny. Actually, everything sounded funny, like she was underwater. Everything was muffled and slightly garbled.
“Emma Jean, can you hear me, darlin’?”
Of course, she could hear him, why was he asking her that? Her vision was becoming questionable though. She could barely make out the word ‘Coroner’ on the black van that sat about a hundred feet away. What was it he had said to do? Breathe?
“Fuck,” he clipped.
She heard that loud and clear. He finally moved out of her space, talking to someone else, but she wasn’t paying attention. She let the EMT continue to poke and prod at her and managed to shake her head in the negative when the EMT suggested she let them transport her to the hospital.
She didn’t want to go to the hospital, and she didn’t want to be touched anymore. “STOP!” she screamed.
Everyone went still. Hank. The EMT. Sheriff Jenkins, who had been making his way toward her, stopped dead in his tracks. She could have even sworn that the air froze at her command. A woman’s grief had that power.
“Emma-” Hank spoke slowly, looking at her like a feral animal that might attack at any moment.
“No! Enough!” She swung her head around looking for an escape route.
“Emma Jean-” Hank tried again.
“I want to go home. Have to get home,” she was muttering. She decided on a direction and started walking.
She thought she heard somebody say something about ‘shock,’ but she didn’t pay any attention, just kept walking. She barely registered the footsteps dogging her until Hank somehow stood in front of her.
“Emma Jean, please stop.”
“Home,” she pleaded, her voice barely above a whisper.
“We’ll get you home, sweetheart, I promise, but I can’t let you walk. It’s still another twenty miles to Medicine Wheel.”
“You’ll take me home?”
“Yes, I’ll take you home.”
“Now.” It was meant to be a demand but came across as a request. She felt numb all over, so there was no heat behind the word.
Hank nodded hesitantly. He didn’t want to take her home just then, but she didn’t know why. She wasn’t hurt physically, other than the bruise she was already developing across her chest from her seatbelt. Maybe it was her emotional reaction he was taking issue with.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re gonna be,” he said under his breath, slowly raising a hand to her elbow and steering her back the way she came. “If you’re still insisting on not going to the hospital, can I talk you into coming back to the station with me?”
“Home,” she repeated her earlier request.
He sighed. “Okay. Home it is.”
Back at Deputy Tremont’s Gallatin County Sheriff’s Department cruiser, Emma Jean thanked the deputy who retrieved her purse from Tally’s truck and moved to the passenger door just as the sound of squealing brakes followed by a slamming door brought her head around.
“Emma Jean!”
Noah. He’d screamed her name from the westbound lane just before hurdling the median and racing toward her.
Something cracked through the numbness that had enveloped her. She blinked rapidly, sending the moisture that had gathered in her eyes careening down her face. Oh, God, what was that ache in her chest? Noah’s arms came around her and the dam burst. Tears and gibberish spilled from her unabated. Noah’s embrace tightened as all rigidity left her body, and her legs gave out.
She felt herself being lifted and knew she was safe. That was when she gave up and the darkness set in.
***
She was warm. Too warm. She groaned and tried to shift, weakly reaching out to shove the blankets off. Belatedly, she became aware of Noah’s arm around her like a vice crossing over her torso and reaching between her breasts so that his hand landed near her heart. He was the reason she was too warm. She tried unsuccessfully to move away from him but his arm clamped down on her.
“Noah,” she croaked, twisting her head and seeing that he was still asleep.
She tried again to get out from under him, but he grunted, pulling her back in.
She was starting to feel claustrophobic and she had to pee. The big lug had to move. “Noah!”
He jerked awake. “What? What’s wrong?” he demanded, finally loosening his grip and sitting up, wild-eyed and glancing around for any sign of danger.
“I have to pee.”
He frowned. “Okay?”
“You wouldn’t let me go.”
His eyes dipped to the bed. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
Emma Jean said nothing else as she got up and padded to the bathroom. After relieving herself, she moved, almost without thought, downstairs to the kitchen. She helped herself to one of Noah’s beers and curled up in an overstuffed chair overlooking Perry Street below. Taking a healthy swig, she let her head fall back into the soft leather and sighed with fatigue. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do now. What was the protocol? How was one supposed to act after what she’d experienced? How as she supposed to feel about the fact that her husband had seemingly tried to run her off the road before flipping his car and dying in the process?
It didn’t matter that he’d been abusive. It didn’t matter that he’d been threatening her since she left him. All Emma Jean could see was that the man she’d spent years loving and then fearing in equal turn had maybe tried to kill her but most definitely tried to scare her and then died in front of her. If she was honest with herself, in there amongst the grief was a modicum of relief, and that made her sick with guilt. She tried to dilute it with the beer in her hand.
“You want to talk about it?” Noah asked from somewhere behind her.
“Cody’s dead,” she said, her voice flat.
“I know.”
She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t think there was anything to say, really. She just wanted to sink farther down into her chair and further into her head, which was probably the last place she should be, but it was where all her memories lived. She slugged back more of her beer and closed her eyes. They fluttered back open a few minutes later when she felt Noah remove the nearly empty bottle from her hand and tuck a blanket around her. He pressed a kiss to her forehead before leaving her there to wallow.