Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

carried some measure of her pain. “Worried. I’m worried about you. Honey, where are you?”
    Jenna fought to hold it together, but her grip on her emotions was spiderweb weak. “I’m all right,” she said, her voice breaking. “I can’t say where I am. But I’m safe. I’m fine. I told Dad to tell you that I’m okay.”
    A noise coming from the hallway cut into the conversation, and with the phone tight to her ear, Emily shut the door. “He told me, but why didn’t you call me? I am your mother”
    Jenna was crying softly into the phone. “Mom, you know how you get. Nick needed my help.”
    Hold your anger. Keep calm. Jenna’s okay.
    Emily heard a car with a bad muffler in the background; it seemed to pass near wherever Jenna was calling from. She could hear other voices, too. She wondered if Jenna was at a pay phone, maybe at a gas station or store.
    “Nick needed you?” she asked. “Nick is in a world of trouble.”
    Another car passed by. Was she outdoors?
    “I know what you’re thinking, Mom. That’s why I didn’t call you first. You are always too quick to judge. Nick didn’t do what they’re saying-what you’re saying.”
    Emily wanted to yell into the phone for her daughter to get a grip. The boy was dangerous, unbalanced, any number of adjectives zoomed through her mind, but she knew better than to use any of them. “Jenna, you don’t know what happened,” she said.
    Silence.
    “Jenna?”
    “I do, mom. Nick told me. He didn’t do this. He isn’t capable of anything like this. I know him.” Jenna’s words shattered into pieces and she stopped to compose herself. “He’s scared, Mom. I’m scared”
    Emily had never felt so helpless in her life. Jenna was her baby. She thought their bond had been stronger than anything she could imagine. From her side, it was. But there she was, about to beg her scared little girl to come back to her. The idea of such a plea would have seemed beyond inconceivable a week ago. But the world had turned over since the storm. Nothing was as it had been.
    “Come home, Jenna. Both of you. This isn’t safe. Don’t you know that the FBI is within a hairbreadth of getting involved? They’re thinking kidnapping here”
    “Kidnapping?” Jenna wasn’t crying anymore. Her mood had shifted. She was angry. “You wouldn’t let them do that. You know I went with Nick willingly. I went to help him. I care about him.”
    “I realize that,” Emily said, now lying. She hadn’t even heard Jenna mention Nick Martin’s name up until that phone call. She wondered how well she knew her only child.
    Jenna went on. “I told Shali to tell you the truth, but she didn’t think she could get through to you. That you wouldn’t listen to her.” Her voice now showed traces of exasperation. It was probably abundantly clear that Shali didn’t tell her mom anything.
    “You talked to her, too?” Emily felt foolish to feel hurt over that, but the feeling grabbed her too quickly for her to assess it and set it aside. “Dad, Shali? Finally, you call me?”
    “Mom,” she said, “Don’t be like that”
    “All right. Now tell me where you are”
    “I can’t do that. I’m okay. That’s all I’m saying right now.”
    “Jenna,” Emily again struggled to keep cool. “Do you know what you’re doing here? This is not right. His family is dead and he-“
    “He didn’t do it. I know him.”
    By then Emily was sure if she pressed the point any harder, her daughter the real love of her life-would hang up. She’d get in some car with Nick Martin and disappear for a while. Emily had to think like an investigator, just then, not like a mother.
    “Okay. Maybe I can help. I want to help. Can I talk to him?”
    Emily heard Jenna put her hand over the phone and say something, though it was too muffled to make out.
    Jenna got back on the line. “No, not now. But I can tell you what he told me”
    “All right, honey, tell me. Take your time.”
    Jenna went on to describe how Nick had come home from school because of a supposed family emergency. He had searched the living room, kitchen, the yard, everywhere, but found absolutely no sign of his parents.
    “Mom,” Jenna started to sob again, “he went upstairs and found his parents and brother … they were all dead and stuff. I mean, his dad wasn’t dead, but he was hurt real bad. He told Nick to get out. To run away. That there was someone that wanted to kill him.”
    Both ends of the line grew quiet for a