Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

a tire, Emily thought it best to back her car out of the long driveway. She looked back at the ambulance and the cruiser as their spinning lights duked it out in the night sky. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. The lights pulsed like a heartbeat. What had happened back there? Who shot Mrs. Martin? Where was the rest of her family? A shiver ran down Emily’s spine and she turned up the heat. Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe the injury was the result of the tornado and the gunshot residue she thought she had seen was something else. Dirt. A burn. Anything. She was so tired her eyes blurred; the streetlights passed by like a wand of a light.
    It was almost one in the morning; she’d get a couple of hours’ sleep and get back to the scene. She probably wouldn’t even see Jenna. All she knew was that with the light of day, answers would come. Maybe some hope, too. Hope was so very, very needed.
    Weeks before, exact time unknown
    A cache of letters was tucked into the back of the scrapbook, a kind of secret meeting place where, whenever the need for arousal or remembering was needed, they’d be there. They were flat as if they’d been ironed under steam and pressure. Though they had once been damp from the heat of fingers, even the wetness of tears, they were stiff now. Crisp. Treasured. Charged.
    One missive began:
    If only we had a song, Id sing it in your ear, my hot breath, moist and gentle. If only we could touch, Id play my fingers all over your body. Only you know me. Only you know how I feel. Break down the walls. Break down the barriers. Feel me take off your clothes, one button at time … lingering as they fall to the floor. Your hunger for my touch, insatiable … but I try. I try …
    The memories were a torrent and the reader’s breath accelerated to near gasping as the forbidden feelings of desire washed over head to toe.
    … Naked we stand, our arms around each other, our mouths searching for the hotness and wetness of our passion. I look you in the eyes. You stare back, longing for us to become one. Your hands slip between my legs …

Chapter Three
    Tuesday, 1:46 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington
    Dead tired. Emily thought that would make the perfect title for a book of her life. So exhausted, but still aware. Frogs that had taken up residence in her neighbor’s Home Center terracotta fountain caused a little commotion there, but everything else on Orchard Avenue was calm and benign. The air barely stirred the scent of the old white lilac bush. Jenna had left the porch light on for her mother and a swarm of gray and white moths swirled around without pausing to land. Emily bent down to keep them from her hair and inserted her key. The dead bolt slid. Inside, she dropped her overstuffed handbag on the console and when the contents spilled for the second time that day, she just left everything where it fell. Once down the hall, she peeked in on her sleeping daughter. Jenna was curled in a ball, pink-cheeked and dreaming-her mother hoped-happy dreams. We could use some happiness wherever we can get it in this life, Emily thought.
    She shifted the Indonesian batik spread and Jenna moved. Her blue eyes were narrow slits. She half-smiled at her mother, but said nothing.
    Good, she’s alive. Emily knew the thought was absurd. But nearly every mother experiences that feeling of deep worry whenever they leave their children alone-six or sixteen-a few minutes to get the mail, or a couple of hours to check a crime scene. When they sleep in too long. When they don’t come down to dinner right away. The worst always seems possible, even plausible, when love is so strong. All mothers know that.
    Emily picked up a small dish and spoon, the apparent remains of a late-night snack. Chocolate ice cream, it seemed. Probably Brownie Batter, Jenna’s favorite. For a second the coagulating ice cream made her mind flash to Peg Martin and the dried blood on her chest, but she swallowed hard and tried to pass it out of her memory. She crept across the room, shut the door with her hip, and walked to the kitchen. The red light on the answering machine atop the antique butcher block beckoned once more and though she could barely stand, she pushed the play button.
    “I don’t like being disregarded, Emily.”
    It was Cary McConnell. The jerk of a lawyer who made other lawyers seem like marriage material.
    “I’ve called you three times since the storm,” he went on. “I want to make sure you and Jenna are all right. I mean, I know