Cold Hard Truth

by Anne Greenwood Brown

  Emmie had seen people slam meth on a pretty regular basis. Her mom could shoot a half ounce over the course of a week when she was binging hard. But since they always mixed the meth with water, and because everyone did it differently, Emmie had no way of knowing exactly what Nick had put in the rig. Whatever it was, the barrel was full, and the look in Nick’s eyes said he wasn’t merely interested in getting her high.

  “Maybe you should step out for a while,” Nick said. He didn’t look at Jimmy while he spoke. “Go get Frankie a pizza. He’s going to be hungry.”

  “Sounds good,” Jimmy said, as if he was happy not to be implicated in whatever was going down next. He picked up his jacket off the floor and headed toward the door.

  Behind her, Emmie heard the sound of Jimmy turning the lock, then opening the door and closing it behind him. Angie yelled out again from the back bedroom. But after the sound faded, the apartment felt eerily quiet.

  Nick pushed up Emmie’s sleeve. “I think we’ve kept our little girl clean long enough, don’t you?”

  “Nick. No.” Emmie twisted away, but Nick held her arm like a vise. “Think, Nick. Think about what you’re doing. Why mess this up for yourself? You’re out. You don’t want to go back in.”

  “I won’t be,” Nick said. “No one’s going to talk about what went down here, sweetheart. Least of all you. I’m going to make sure of that this time.”

  “Nick. Remember that time? That time we went to the State Fair? And when the Ferris wheel stopped, we were at the very top. Do you remember that? We could see for miles, and everything was so pretty. Do you remember what you said? You said—”

  “I said I’d never felt that free, and I wished I could feel like that forever.” Nick’s voice sounded sad and very far away. For a second there was a flicker of recognition in his eyes, as if he was seeing her for the first time. Seeing her. But then his face hardened again. “And that’s exactly how I’m going to be.”

  Emmie’s temperature dropped as terror ran through her veins. She didn’t have a lot of time left. Nick pushed Emmie backward, down onto the mattress. She scrambled into the corner.

  He stood beside the bed, syringe in hand, and faced her. He didn’t look handsome. He didn’t look the same as she remembered at all. There was a darkness in his eyes that was foreign and strange. God. How had she ever felt guilty about testifying against him? What a waste of energy. He was nothing more than a thug.

  “Our perfect little princess,” Nick said with a sneer. “Takes care of her mommy. Daddy’s little angel. Thought she could take care of everything. Guess you were wrong about that.”

  Emmie didn’t reply. All she could focus on was one thought: Get out, get out, get out.

  She sensed Nick start to move, and she dove for the foot of the bed. Nick caught her by the ankle, and Emmie heard the lightweight thehwep of the syringe dropping onto the linoleum. Nick yanked her ankle, but she kicked free and found herself standing on the floor. She threw her arms out in front of her again.

  When Nick took the two quick steps around the foot of the bed, Emmie found her center of gravity. She dropped her shoulder and plowed into Nick with her hip and shoulder.

  The move caught him by surprise, but not nearly enough. He spun Emmie around and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, clasping his hands to his wrists to hold her tight.

  One second, Emmie’s feet were firmly on the ground. The next, they were circling in the air. Plan B, she heard Max say in her head. Play dirty.

  Emmie tucked her chin and bit down hard on Nick’s forearm. When he yelled, Emmie latched down harder. Harder. He let go of her, and she turned quickly. She struck the side of his knee with the sole of her boot. Nick folded, just like Max said he would.

  What she hadn’t counted on was Nick’s head hitting the corner of the table. He crumpled to the floor, and he didn’t move.

  Emmie gasped, her hand at her mouth. Nick was down, but that was all the thought she gave it. A half second later, she was sprinting for the door, leaving her coat behind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  PENDULUM

  Max didn’t know any gym, bar, restaurant, or anything called the Gold Medal, but there was no way he was going home. He would drive every street and alleyway, if that was what it took to find her. He wished himself luck without any real sense of hope. Everything he’d worked so hard to suppress was rushing back toward the surface.

  Why was he still so surprised that he could not control life? The world was going to do what the world was going to do, and there was nothing he could do to stop bad things from happening to the people he loved. It all felt like a cruel joke, but in this moment of helplessness, he let go.

  What happened to Jade might not be his fault. What was happening to Emmie might not be his fault. He could let go of any imagined part that he might have in the world’s cruel twists. But he’d be damned if he was going to stand by and watch it happen. This pendulum was going to swing, goddammit.

  Max searched the streets for the rusted-out sedan. He rolled down his windows and listened for the roar of its engine. His head turned left and right as he coasted through intersections, not bothering to slow when lights turned from green to gold.

  Max wished he could call Dan. Dan was familiar with that Jimmy guy. He might know where to find this Nick Peters. All Max had to go on was a vague reference Emmie had made to a convenience store on Hiawatha Avenue, near where Nick lived. Near where Nick lived. It was something at least, but Hiawatha stretched for at least five miles.

  Max left the downtown and followed the long avenue to its end, then checked his rearview mirror. When he saw that the road was clear, he cranked the wheel into a U-turn that left his tires skidding sideways toward a snowbank. He drove the whole length of Hiawatha again, crossing Washington, then Park.

  He was going fast. Too fast, given the number of cars out on the streets now that people were getting out of work. Max took a right-hand turn and sped down an empty street past a construction site. The blur of a chain-link fence was crossing his periphery when suddenly a small shape hurled itself out from behind a dumpster and into the road.

  Max cursed, and his body lurched backward against the seat. He cranked the wheel to miss the figure and skidded sideways. Max shielded his face with his arm as his car crashed into the chain-link fence. He fumbled with his seat belt, then flung open his door to find himself standing in a dream. Or rather, a nightmare.

  Emmie lay in the snow, alongside a shovel caked with dirt. Her face was turned up toward the sky, but her eyes were closed. She was completely still, with her dark curls spread out against the snow. Max’s heart stuttered. Not again. Not again.

  Max dropped to his knees. “Emmie! Oh my God, Emmie!”

  Her eyes opened, and she blinked twice. Max exhaled, but his relief was short-lived. There was a welt on her cheekbone with the distinct shape of two fingers.

  “What happened?” he asked, gingerly touching her face. “Who hit you?” It was taking everything in him not to go nuclear.

  “Max? Oh my God, Max. I can’t believe it’s you.” She was already starting to get to her feet.

  “Careful. Don’t move too fast,” Max said as he worried about her neck. Her back. He checked for blood. Finding none, he lifted her shoulders out of the slush. Where was her coat? “I could have killed you! Let me get you into the car.” He glanced up to check for cars, but it wasn’t a main street and there was only cross-traffic.

  “You didn’t hit me. I slipped. I’m f-fine.”

  She didn’t look fine to Max. How could this be happening? Again? He wrapped an arm around her back as if she wasn’t capable of standing on her own. “What happened? How did you get here?”

  Emmie pushed at his chest and glanced over her shoulder at the two-story building. “We have to get Angie out of there.”

  Max followed her line of sight, then redirected her away from the building and back toward his car. “No way. We’re leaving.” She must have hit her head on the groun
d. She wasn’t thinking clearly. He was going to have to take better control. He needed to get her somewhere safe.

  “Max,” she said, stopping him. “I need your help.”

  Max hesitated. For Emmie to suggest she couldn’t do something on her own said more than those four words ever could. And for her to ask him to help her…It was something he could not refuse. Against his better judgment, he would help her. He would help her, and he would hope for the best.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  THERE YOU ARE

  Emmie picked up the dirty shovel and led Max across the street toward a storefront, which was when he finally saw the Gold Pedal logo that he’d been looking for before. She pulled him down a driveway that cut between the bike shop and a grocery store.

  Max followed behind her, scraping the back of his hand along the brick wall as they trailed it. She was alive, and he’d go anywhere she led him. He cringed at all the horrible places his imagination had taken him. To be standing now in the snow—so white in the sunlight that he was nearly blinded—was like a miracle.

  “Remember how you said I calmed you down?” Emmie asked, still walking ahead of him.

  “Yeah,” Max said, though he wasn’t so sure her magic was working on him right now. The welt on her left cheekbone still had his muscles tight and bunchy in his arms.

  “Well, forget that,” she said. “I don’t want to see it. I want to see you in all your badass glory.”

  Max stopped in his tracks and yanked back on her arm. “We need to get help.”

  “Then call someone.” She glanced up and over her shoulder at the second floor of the bike shop as if she expected someone to be coming down the stairs.

  Max groaned. “My phone’s dead.”

  Emmie barely reacted. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “But I did talk to your dad.”

  “Good,” she said, surprising him. He thought she’d be mad that he’d told her dad anything. If she was coming around on him, then maybe Max could convince her to go back to his car. They could wait there for help. But one look at her face told Max that they weren’t going to wait.

  “My dad’ll have an idea about where we are, but please, Max. We can’t wait for him. We have to get Angie out of there.” She glanced up at the fire escape.

  “How many people are up there?” Max asked.

  “Two, not counting Angie. Frankie and Nick. Jimmy left, but he’ll be back if he isn’t already.”

  “I don’t like those numbers.” Max needed Chris. Jordy too. He probably wouldn’t stand a chance three-on-one. And if he was looking out for Emmie, too, it would never work.

  “I’m not sure…Nick may be unconscious,” Emmie said. “And Frankie’s about a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet.”

  Max clenched his teeth at the sound of his name. Nick. The bastard who’d dragged Emmie into this in the first place. “Why is he maybe unconscious?” He braced himself, in anticipation of her answer.

  “Remember plan B?”

  Max clenched his teeth. He hated the idea of Emmie having to fight her way out of trouble. He didn’t like the thought of this Nick putting his hands on her again.

  “I think Nick hit his head.”

  Max felt the anger stirring again inside him. Still, Max did everything he could to keep calm. He needed a cool head if he was going to get them out of here. Mentally, he started John’s counting exercises. One…two…three…

  “How’d you get out here, Emmie?” a guy’s voice said behind Max, and Emmie’s face paled. Max spun around, his body naturally falling into a hockey stance. It was the guy he’d seen before when they were shoveling, same flat-billed cap. Same puffy jacket. But this time he was standing on the sidewalk, holding a pizza box.

  Emmie stepped in front of Max, like she was going to defend him or something. She could be an idiot, but God, he loved her for it.

  “We’re getting Angie,” she said. She stood with her feet wide, her shoulders squared. Though Max was behind her, he could picture her face set with determination.

  “Like hell you are,” Jimmy said, dropping the pizza box.

  Emmie took a half step toward him, with the shovel half-cocked like a batter getting ready to bunt. When Max realized that Emmie had planned to bust into the apartment—alone—armed with only a shovel, the turmoil inside him started to rumble. Still, he held back. If they could talk their way out of this, they would.

  But then the guy made one critical mistake. He grabbed the front of Emmie’s coat. Max’s face went red-hot, but his vision didn’t go to black.

  And then Max leveled him. Emmie looked down at Jimmy, who lay prone in the snow.

  “There you are,” she said with a sigh of relief. “I was wondering when the real Max Shepherd was going to show up.” She grabbed Max’s hand and started running again.

  “Emmie—” Max glanced behind him. Jimmy was out cold.

  “Our odds just got better. Let’s get Ang out of there.”

  Max followed her up the fire escape, looking down occasionally to judge their distance from the ground. When she whipped open the door, the smell of sweat and stale beer flooded over Max’s face. The room was dark, and it took his eyes a while to adjust.

  The first thing he noticed was a metal trunk covered in crushed beer cans and a half-empty bottle of brown-colored liquor. The second thing he noticed was a dingy blue mattress in the back right corner and, on the floor beside it, a man lying facedown on the cracked linoleum.

  Emmie didn’t pay the guy on the floor any mind, instead turning toward the closed door to their left. Behind it, a girl moaned in pain. The sound shot through Max’s chest as cleanly as a bullet. Emmie reached the door and shook the locked doorknob in her hand. “Angie!” she screamed.

  There was scraping sound on the other side of the door, and a loud thud that shook the wall. A male voice from inside the room exploded in a string of epithets.

  Fear spiked Max’s gut as Emmie dropped the shovel and pulled up her knee, punching the heel of her foot to the door, right under the doorknob. It was only a hollow-core door, but she couldn’t weigh a buck twenty. Did she seriously think she was going to kick it down?

  Max lurched forward, his hand on her shoulder, and pulled her back. He slammed his shoulder into the door, as if facing an opponent on the ice. The door bent inward, but not enough. He reared back and rammed his foot under the doorknob where Emmie had tried it. The lock snapped, and the splintered door swung open.

  Inside, a picture of a mountain landscape and a small lamp lay shattered on the floor. Among the broken glass, Angie struggled with a guy who held her by her hair.

  “Frankie!” Emmie cried. “Let go of her.”

  A swollen lump bulged under Angie’s eye. That could have been Emmie, Max thought. Or worse—because Frankie was holding a knife in his other hand.

  Rage shot through Max. It was a familiar feeling—one that he felt on the ice when someone took a cheap shot—and it was one that he would not suppress. Not this time. His response was quick. He shot forward, grabbing Frankie’s shoulder and checking him against the wall. Frankie spun but still managed to lift the knife, his hand swinging backward over his head. Before he could bring it down, all of Max’s athletic instincts kicked in. He bowed at the waist, avoiding Frankie’s sweeping stab toward his shoulder.

  While both of them were at their most vulnerable position, Emmie kicked the back of Frankie’s knee and brought him down just like Chris had gone down on the ice. Max couldn’t believe how well she executed it, and it made his chest overflow with pride.

  The knife dropped to the floor and spun like the dial of a compass as it skittered across the floor. Max snatched it with one swipe of his hand, then raised it high in the air so there was no chance of Frankie getting it again. Not that it looked like he was getting up anytime soon.

  Emmie grabbed Angie by the arm, yanking her off the floor. “Let’s go!” she yelled. But just then, the door that led to the fire escape burst open, sending a wide path of
light across the main room.

  “Jimmy!” Emmie gasped, and Max spun around, brandishing the knife at chest level. But it wasn’t Jimmy.

  “Police!” a voice yelled. Then another, “Drop the knife. Hands on the wall.”

  And that’s when Max saw his whole life get checked against the boards.

  He had no history with the police. No reason to think the worst, except that that’s what he expected from life. And he knew how this scene must look. He was standing there with a knife slipping from his fingers. It clattered against the floor. He was going to be arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. Associating with drug dealers. He’d be off the team. Out of school. No tournament. No scholarship.

  He hadn’t planned for this day to turn out like this. Hell, they were supposed to be going out for dinner. He was supposed to be wolfing down pad thai.

  Emmie looked at Max with the same calm she always showed. Max had no more inkling of what was going on in her head than he’d had the first time he met her, but one look at her told him that everything was going to be all right.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  NOT GOING ANYWHERE

  THREE DAYS LATER

  Nick, Frankie, and Jimmy were still in custody and would be for a long time. Nick Peters had been scheduled for the new trial he wanted, but now with added charges for kidnapping, drug manufacturing, drug possession, assault, and attempted murder—though Emmie knew that last one would never stick.

  Jordy, Lindsey, Chris, and Marissa were in Jordy’s basement, playing Call of Duty and sitting on the two couches that were huddled around the TV. Max and Emmie sat together on a third couch in the back corner of the room.

  Outside, the wind howled and sprayed an icy sleet against the walk-out patio door. Inside, Marissa shrieked every time she dodged a bullet, and Chris was laughing his ass off, calling her a “newb.”

  Emmie couldn’t believe she and Max were both here. Together. Unhurt. Hopeful. “You’re still here,” she said. She tried to fix his hair with her fingers, but then decided she liked it messy and rumpled it up again. “I keep waiting for you to come to your senses.”