Chapter 2: A Room With No Street View
Emmett did not ask me where to go. That frightened me more than if he had demanded an address.
The Navigator moved through the evening traffic with the patience of a vehicle that expected other cars to make room. I stayed low until the driveway disappeared behind us, then sat with my back against the door. My foot throbbed beneath the handkerchief. The blood had soaked through in a small, spreading crescent.
Emmett watched the road. “There’s a first-aid kit in the compartment beside you.”
I found it and placed it on the seat between us. “You knew someone might need it?”
“I keep one in every vehicle.”
“That doesn’t answer why you were waiting at that gate.”
“No.”
His answer was so plain that I looked at him. His silver hair and charcoal coat made him seem almost ordinary in the passing streetlight. Only his stillness gave him away. Nothing in him appeared hurried, not even the choice to shelter a bleeding stranger who had climbed into his car.
I opened the kit. Inside were gauze pads, antiseptic wipes, tape, and a pair of small scissors. My hands were unsteady, so Emmett pulled into a quiet side street and parked beneath a row of bare trees.
“Let me see it.”
I kept my foot covered. “I can do it.”
“You can.”
The agreement left no room for argument. I unwound the handkerchief and peeled away a strip of fabric stuck to the cut. The wound ran across the ball of my foot, deep enough to keep bleeding but not deep enough to make me faint. A shard of gravel sat near the edge.
I took the tweezers from the kit.
“Hold still,” Emmett said.
“I am holding still.”
“You’re about to make it worse.”
I looked at him. “Are you always this helpful?”
“Only when people are bleeding in my car.”
The line was quiet, almost dry. I removed the gravel myself, then cleaned the wound until the antiseptic burned hot. Emmett handed me gauze without touching my leg. When I finished wrapping it, I put my shoe-less foot on the floor and tested the pressure.
“What happens if I leave?” I asked.
“You’ll be outside.”
“And if I stay?”
“You’ll be somewhere private for the night.”
“Your place?”
“A property I use.”
That was not reassuring. “Why help me?”
He turned off the engine. For the first time, he looked directly at me.
“Because you asked me to drive.”
“I didn’t know who you were.”
“I did.”
The words settled between us. I looked down at the phone in my hand. The unknown message remained on the screen. I tried calling the number. It rang once, then went silent.
Emmett held out his hand. “Let me see the message.”
I hesitated, then passed him the phone without unlocking anything else. He read it and returned it.
“Dean knows the vehicle,” he said.
“You know his name?”
“I know enough.”
The Navigator turned into an underground parking garage beneath a narrow brick building. Emmett used a key card, drove past two empty levels, and stopped beside a service elevator. There were no signs, no cameras that I could see, no person waiting to greet him.
The room upstairs was small and clean: a sofa, a table, a kettle, a locked cabinet, and windows covered by interior blinds. No view of the street. No pictures. No personal objects except a spare phone charging on the counter.
Emmett set the first-aid kit beside the sink.
“You can sleep here,” he said. “The door locks from the inside.”
I stepped across the room, favoring my injured foot. “And the phone?”
“You keep it.”
That surprised me.
“Why?”
“Because whatever is on it brought you to my gate.”
Before I could ask what he meant, the spare phone on the counter began to ring. Emmett looked at the screen, and the calm expression on his face changed by one nearly invisible degree.
He answered without speaking.
A moment later, he held it out to me.
The caller had left a voicemail.
I pressed play.
Dean’s voice filled the room, close and urgent.
“Jillian, listen to me. They’re going to say you ran because you were guilty.”
The message ended.
Emmett watched me as I stood barefoot on the concrete floor, the phone between us.
“Who are they?” he asked.
I looked toward the locked door.
May you like
“I don’t know.”
But I did know one thing: Dean had not called to bring me home.
