“What happened?” To her surprise, the question came from her.
“Emily, you should go home now.”
She shook her head, climbed those steps, and went toe-to-toe with him. “I want to know what’s going on here.” She had a right to know. Well, maybe she didn’t, but she was taking the right. She needed answers.
Ray dragged off his hat and exhaled a heavy breath. “Somebody vandalized the house. It’s chaos in there.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
Ray glanced around as if he didn’t want anyone to hear what he had to say next. “Look, Clint’s out back; you can come in for a second and see for yourself. I wouldn’t even let you go in except that I need you to understand his side of this.”
Before she could question his motives or argue with the idea that she could ever understand anything about Austin, Ray took her by thearm and led her inside as if she were a child and couldn’t be trusted not to break something or run away.
New emotions crowded in on Emily. Curiosity. Apprehension. Then regret, followed by sadness. The house looked as if it had been tossed in an effort to find valuables.
“They broke a lot of things. Tore photographs into bits. Basically, made a hell of a mess.”
Ray kept talking, but Emily stopped listening. Her full attention narrowed to the damaged items scattered about the living room. Broken picture frames, the photos once protected there ripped apart. It was easy to mentally piece together the strewn parts. Clint Austin and his mother. Broken shards of something porcelain, pink and white. The shattered face of a woman with long red hair.
The screen on the small box-style television had been smashed. Furniture overturned.
“. . . see anything?”
Emily pulled her attention back to Ray. “Did you say something?”
“Clint thought maybe you might have seen someone leaving his house when you arrived.”
Surely he didn’t think she had anything to do with this. He did ... oh, God. He’d asked her why she did this.
“There wasn’t anyone here when I arrived,” she said. “I’d been here maybe twenty minutes before Austin showed up, but I didn’t get out of my car until he came outside and crossed the road.”
“You didn’t meet anyone on the road that you recall?”
“No.” She mentally replayed the drive from town. She’d been distracted, but 18 was always deserted. To have met another vehicle would have been unusual. “I don’t think so.” She abruptly felt exactly like Principal Call must have that night. She couldn’t answer the question with any real accuracy. Did that mean that someone other than Austin might have been in her neighborhood that night? In her house? Her pulse skipped, then hammered hard.Stop it,she ordered. She didn’t need to play guessing games.Shehad been in the room that night.
Ray rested his hands on his hips, his hat still clutched in one. “Emily, I know how hard this has been for you.”
God, she was so sick of hearing that. Before she could tell him as much, he went on. “I want you to know that I really do understand how you feel. Heather was your best friend. She died in your arms. To you, Clint must represent all that’s wrong in the world. But the legal system has concluded that he was wrongly convicted. Now he deserves the chance to get on with his life.” Ray sighed. “And so do you.”
The merging of anger and frustration and shock had her reeling. Shock at the idea that he would believe her capable of this kind of ugliness. Frustration at the whole world thinking she could simply get on with her life. And anger, dammit, at the suggestion that Clint Austin deserved anything. Anger at herself for waffling on the whole damned subject.
Clint Austin was guilty. He didn’t deserve to breathe the same air she did. But this—she surveyed the devastation in his living room—was a disgrace, an offense against his mother and all she’d worked so hard to hang on to.
“I didn’t have anything to do with this, Chief Hale,” Emily said with a pointed look at the man who should know her better than that. “I can’t imagine who would be low enough to do such a thing.” She planted her hands on her hips just as he had. “But mainly I’m disappointed that you or anyone else in this damned town would believe for one second that Clint Austin deserves anything but a return trip to that rock he slithered out from under day before yesterday.”
Her emotions got the better of her then. The confusion, the anger and frustration ... the self-loathing. She had to pause a moment to compose herself. When Ray would have spoken, she held up a hand. “I’m not finished.” He kept his mouth shut. “He’s a killer; as far as I’m concerned he won’t have paid for what he did until he’s dead and rotting in hell. Is that plain enough for you?”
The sound of glass crunching beneath a heavy foot jerked her gaze beyond Ray’s right shoulder.
Clint Austin stood in a doorway that probably led to the kitchen. He made no effort to avert his gaze when hers collided with his. She didn’t know how long he’d been listening, but she had a feeling he’d heard all she had to say.
She didn’t care. She meant every word. For the first time in more than a decade, denial crashed hard into her. She shook with the force of it.
“Emily, maybe—”
She didn’t wait for Ray to finish whatever he’d started; she left. She had to get out of there. Stupidly, she cried all the way home. It made absolutely no sense. She hadn’t said a damned thing that wasn’t the God’s truth and still the tears refused to stop.
Maybe because of what some fool had done to the memory of Austin’s mother.Shedeserved better than this. That had been her home, her things. Austin ended up with her property by genetic default.
