Chapter 4: The Fact Emmett Kept Back
The library occupied the first two floors of an old municipal building with wide steps and tall windows. Morning had not yet arrived, but the entrance was already busy with people waiting for the doors to open: students with paper cups, a man carrying a folded newspaper, two women speaking quietly beside a stroller.
Emmett parked half a block away instead of pulling to the curb. He had changed nothing about his appearance. Silver hair, charcoal overcoat, broad shoulders. He looked like a man who belonged anywhere he stood, which made me more conspicuous beside him with one shoe missing and a bandage showing beneath my coat.
“We go in separately,” he said.
“You said I shouldn’t be alone.”
“I said you shouldn’t be unobserved.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
I got out first. Cold air entered through the gap around my ankle. I crossed the sidewalk slowly, pretending the pain was ordinary. At the library doors, I paused beside a display of community notices. Most were handwritten: rooms for rent, tutoring, missing pets, repair work. I scanned the names without knowing what I expected to find.
Emmett came through several seconds later and stopped near the newspaper racks.
A woman behind the information desk looked up when I approached. She was middle-aged, wearing a green cardigan and a plastic name badge that read MARA. I placed my phone on the counter.
“I received a message from this number,” I said. “I’m trying to find out who sent it.”
Mara glanced at the screen, then at me. “We don’t identify patrons by phone numbers.”
“I’m not asking about a patron. I’m asking whether you recognize it.”
She read the message. The color in her face changed so slightly I might have missed it if I had not been watching for hesitation.
“Where did you get this?”
“Can you tell me who sent it?”
Mara lowered her voice. “You should speak with the building manager.”
“Why?”
She looked past me toward the entrance. Emmett stood with his back to a pillar, appearing more interested in the newspapers than in us.
“I don’t know anything,” she said.
“That’s not what your face said.”
Her mouth tightened. “You need to leave.”
The answer was too quick. I picked up the phone. “Did Dean contact you?”
Mara’s eyes flicked toward Emmett. “I don’t know a Dean.”
It was a lie, or at least an evasion. She had not asked which Dean. She had reacted to the name before I finished saying it.
A security guard emerged from a side hallway. He was young, tired-looking, and holding a ring of keys. “Everything all right?”
Mara nodded too quickly. “She’s asking about a private number.”
The guard looked at my bare ankle, then at Emmett. “You need medical assistance?”
“No.”
Emmett approached, and the guard’s attention shifted to him. “We’re leaving,” Emmett said.
I turned on him. “We are?”
His gaze held mine. “Yes.”
Outside, he did not apologize. He led me into a narrow alley beside the building, where delivery bins blocked the wind.
“You knew she would react,” I said.
“I suspected.”
“You knew this was connected to the library.”
“I knew Dean had asked questions here.”
“Before you brought me?”
“Yes.”
The admission landed harder than it should have. “You left that out.”
“I left out many things.”
“Such as?”
He looked toward the street. “A message was sent from this building before you reached the gate.”
My grip tightened around the phone. “From the unknown number?”
“I don’t know.”
“You brought me to the one place that might have exposed the sender.”
“I brought you to the one place where the sender had already made contact.”
“That’s not a refuge. That’s bait.”
His face remained composed, but the answer came slower. “It may have been both.”
A bus passed at the end of the alley, throwing dirty water against the curb. My phone vibrated again. This time the message contained no warning.
ASK HIM WHY HE WAS WAITING.
I held the screen between us.
Emmett read it and did not look surprised.
“Why were you waiting at the gate?” I asked.
He took a breath, the first sign that the question had reached somewhere his calm could not cover.
“Because I was told you would run.”
“By whom?”
He looked back at the library doors.
“I was told you would be carrying something.”
The answer did not explain what it was, who had sent him, or why Dean had been chasing me. But it changed the shape of the refuge. Emmett had not simply found me. He had been positioned to receive me.
I put my phone away and stepped back toward the street.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To find out what I’m carrying.”
“You don’t know where to start.”
“No,” I said. “But I know not to start with you.”
May you like
He followed when I began walking. That was the part I had expected.
The part I had not expected was how quickly I realized he already knew where I meant to go.
