Jayce & Emma

by Barbara Winkes

  “You must believe me, I don’t know how this got here. It’s not mine.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Please. I don’t want to go to prison. I can’t.” Her voice rose with each word, in a near panic as the cuffs clicked around her wrists. “Marley. I didn’t do this.”

  “Stop it. Let her go. I put it there. I’m sorry, Emma.” The scene came to an abrupt halt. For a few heartbeats, no one spoke.

  “Come on, it’s me you want. I’ll tell you all about where it’s from, but leave her alone. She doesn’t know anything. I thought it was safe. Oh well.” Jayce held out her hands with a dramatic sigh. “Go ahead.”

  Marley turned away from the doorway, her body language clearly showing her disappointment. Emma wasn’t disappointed, she was devastated. Jayce asked herself if the truth would make her feel any better. Probably not.

  * * * *

  “It was an anonymous tip! What do you expect us to do, just ignore it?” The sergeant wasn’t happy with either her or his officers. Jayce hated to admit that he had a point, which, unfortunately, did nothing to change the facts.

  “What exactly happened there?” Chomsky asked. “I understand your frustration, but frankly, you took a big risk.” Her voice was level, but Jayce knew from experience that her calm tone didn’t mean she wasn’t mad as hell.

  “Someone set her up. Emma was one of the ones who tried really hard to keep her hands clean. She never did drugs.”

  “You didn’t trust us to figure that out?”

  Jayce bit her lip. There was no point getting into an argument with her boss, with the sergeant present. “Marley Peterson has been temporarily replaced. The new girl doesn’t know anything about what went down, so if anyone asks, she can’t tell them. No one knows! I’ll go meet the others as planned, we make the deal.”

  “No, it’s too dangerous.” Chomsky shook her head, exasperated. “They don’t even have to know you’re a cop. Emma Curtis talks to anyone at all, word goes out you were arrested and set free so soon, they’ll think you talked.”

  “About what? I have no idea where the cocaine came from. If anything, we could get an idea from tonight’s gathering about who’s behind this. I don’t think it was Megan Connelly. She’s in over her head as it is.”

  “Seems to me she’s not the only one,” the sergeant murmured.

  “Hey. If your guys hadn’t come barging in, we wouldn’t be here, so your sarcasm is inappropriate. I’ll take care of it. No one suspects anything, except they might if I stay here any longer.”

  “Okay, can I talk to my detective in private for a moment?” Chomsky’s tone put a definite end to the argument. The sergeant shrugged and got up to leave the room. Chomsky waited until he had closed the door behind him. Jayce braced herself.

  “You’ve been setting this up for months. I understand that you want the credit too, and you should have it, but I need to be sure you can handle it.”

  “I can.” Jayce was well aware that she was talking about some of the things Jayce had told Emma that hadn’t been lies. She’d been on the edge, one foot over it, and dragged herself back. She was going to see this through.

  “What about the woman?”

  “I don’t think she knows anything at all, but I’d like you to keep her a little while longer, until the deal goes down. It’ll be safer for her, and for me.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Chomsky promised.

  “Thank you.”

  Before she left the station, Jayce went to the interrogation room, watching through the glass in the observation area. Emma sat in the chair like she was expecting somebody to hit her, curled up in on herself. Jayce hated to be the reason for her to feel this way, but there were too many things going on in and around the house at the moment. Most of all, she didn’t want Emma to get caught in the crossfire.

  “Wish me luck,” she whispered before she turned to go. She’d need it.

  * * * *

  The only way Emma knew how to keep it together was to shut off every emotion, make herself cold and numb. That instant reaction hadn’t always been to her advantage, like during the trial when the lawyer told her she came off as arrogant to the jury when in reality, she was so terrified she could hardly breathe. Technically, she knew the cops were only doing their jobs, and that the package with cocaine had to have come from somewhere. Of course they’d have to investigate it. However, her experiences had caused a deep mistrust of authorities and justice. Scratch that, she’d developed a deep mistrust of people in general—that was why she kept interactions at the house at a minimum, stayed to herself…Not a good enough explanation for why she’d landed in bed with Jayce. Why she’d wanted to.

  Emma sighed to herself. She wasn’t sure whether to be worried about Jayce, or worried about herself. This could still go down the same way, someone she’d let her guard down with, turning against her. Not Jayce, right? She didn’t know anymore. She jumped when the door opened.

  “Ms. Curtis,” the man in the grey suit said. “I’m Detective Walker. I just need to ask you a few questions, and then you can go home.”

  Home, she scoffed in her mind. I don’t have a home.

  “Okay,” Emma said. Her strategies didn’t work so well anymore, her voice sounding like that of a frightened child.

  * * * *

  There was an eerie silence in the house when Emma returned. Marley wasn’t at her desk. The woman who was sitting in her place looked up quickly, gave her a brief smile and went back to the file she was reading. No one in the group rooms or the kitchen. Emma’s quick tour had only one reason—to delay the inevitable meltdown. No one had been telling her anything about Jayce, not that she’d expected them to. They might never meet again. It occurred to Emma that Jayce had protected her from the day she came to the house, from Meg, from the unknown threat. Maybe they were the same? Had Meg planted the drugs because she was jealous? She and Jayce had been so careful. In her room, Emma sat on her bed, trying to clear her thoughts. She had vowed to stay away from any kind of confrontation, but she couldn’t let Jayce take the blame for something neither of them had done, could she? She had to find Meg. Emma winced at the memory of Meg choking her in the hallway. That undertaking wasn’t without risk. She had to do something. Sitting around here, with the book still on her nightstand, thinking of last night, and the night before...

  With new determination, Emma got up. For a moment, she stood in the hallway, more than a bit frightened of what she was going to do, and what the consequences would be. Then she walked to the end of the corridor where Meg’s room was, and knocked.

  When the door was yanked open, Emma was startled to see not Meg, but Alison on the other side. Before she could say anything, Alison pulled her inside and locked the door. “What the hell are you doing here?” she hissed, as if it was perfectly natural for her to be in the room that wasn’t hers.

  “They let me go. I wanted to talk to Meg. Where is she?”

  Alison’s eyes narrowed. “First of all, I think Queen B is up to no good. Who let you go? What happened here?”

  “The police. They found drugs, in my room, I have no idea who put them there. Jayce said they were hers, but I don’t believe it. They arrested her and made me go too. God, what a horrible day.”

  Alison regarded her long enough for Emma to become uncomfortable under her scrutiny.

  “Maybe they let you go because they thought you could be helpful to them?”

  “How?” Emma asked, confused. This had been her state of mind for too long. Life had become confusing from the moment she’d met Maxine. She didn’t like the tone of Alison’s voice though.

  “Okay, whatever. Look, I’m going to come back later. I’m tired.”

  She turned to unlock the door, freezing when the felt the pressure in the center of her back, the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked, tumbling her back into an ongoing nightmare.

  “You wanted to talk to Meg, huh? Why don’t we go find her?”

  “What is this?” Emma felt herself tremble.
She hoped Alison had better control with her finger on the trigger. This couldn’t be happening. Alison couldn’t shoot her. Emma was supposed to find a job and be out of the house by Christmas, start a new life.

  “This is me staying on the safe side.” Alison laughed, but it was Maxine’s contemptuous, sarcastic tone that Emma heard. “Open the door, slowly. It’s important that you don’t make any mistake now, you hear me, Emma? If we meet anyone, you smile and say we’ll go for a walk. Otherwise, I’ll shoot them.”

  Emma nodded, after several moments in which she felt paralyzed, unable to move, unable to stop history from repeating itself. Her fault. Someone was going to spin the story, and if she didn’t end up dead today, she’d be going back to prison. She couldn’t hold back the tears.

  “Get yourself together, damn it,” Alison seethed.

  All this time, Meg had been an obvious enemy, but by far not the worst. Emma thought that her instincts left a lot to be desired. She wiped her face, straightening. No one else was going to get harmed because of her.

  * * * *

  The attendants of the meeting were, so far, the same Jayce had seen before in the kitchen of the house, plus a couple of friends of the “cousins”. The nervous tension in the room spoke clearly of the guest they were still waiting for, a man named Hammer, which, of course, wasn’t his real name, but went with his reputation.

  Jayce’s undercover assignment had started months ago with getting herself arrested in a neighborhood on Hammer’s turf, some jail time, and uncovering all the threads to the house, Meg Connolly’s alleged cousins and a yet unnamed party. All of this was supposed to lead them to Hammer whose dealing in prescription drugs was only the tiny tip of an enormous iceberg. The way they could casually write off the amount of cocaine found in Emma’s room spoke volumes. Jayce shuddered, glad to know that Emma was safe at the department. It made concentrating on the task at hand a lot easier.

  Almost comical, the silence that settled over the room once the car pulled up behind the house. Hammer was a man you wouldn’t recognize on the street, rather unspectacular. The men who joined him made this more of a spectacle with their black clothes and stance that made concealed weapons very obvious.

  Jayce stayed in the corner, hands in the pockets of her coat. She didn’t have to pretend hard—she was freezing and wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. Impatiently, she waited for the inspection of the money and the merchandise. As soon as the deal was done, she could give the sign…

  The scene came to a halt when rapid footsteps were to be heard, and Alison came running in.

  With relief, Jayce noticed that all eyes were on the new arrival, so no one had caught her surprise. She sent a questioning look to Meg, who shrugged, just as much in the dark.

  “We have a situation,” Alison said.

  One of Hammer’s bodyguards came in after her. When Jayce saw whom he had with him, everything changed in a heartbeat.

  Emma looked frightened, and there was a bruise on the side of her face. She hadn’t lost her courage though.

  “It’s a trap,” she yelled. “Jayce, they know!”

  Furious, Alison slapped her, while Jayce only had a split-second to alert her colleagues and duck behind some old crates before the place erupted in gunfire.

  * * * *

  It was somewhat of a miracle that she didn’t get shot, Emma thought as she sat in the back of the ambulance, unable to stop shaking. It was a testimony to the quick and efficient work of Jayce and her colleagues.

  She pulled the edges of the blanket around her even tighter, feeling cold and lost. Her aching head from when Alison had hit her—twice—wasn’t even the worst of her concerns. Alison, and possibly Terri as well, had pretended to be her friend, when in reality, they were probably the most dangerous people in the house. Jayce had pretended to be someone in Emma’s life as well. She was a cop. Getting close to the women in the house and figuring out how much they knew about the drug deal was part of her job.

  Stubbornly, Emma blinked back tears. She should have known. Even prison hadn’t taught her. She was still too gullible, too trusting, the easiest prey. How lucky that this time, she’d only been fooled by one of the good guys—well, girl, in this case. Emma didn’t feel lucky. She was feeling sick.

  “Hey, are you okay? Thanks for saving me in there.”

  “No problem,” she murmured.

  Jayce lingered, fidgeting as she was probably searching for words. Emma didn’t need an explanation. She was afraid that words would only make things worse.

  “I’m sorry,” Jayce said eventually.

  “I feel stupid for telling you to be careful all the time.” It went without saying that this wasn’t the only thing Emma felt stupid for. “You were good. I believed everything you said.”

  “Emma…” Jayce sounded wistful and a bit hurt. “Not everything was about the job. What happened between us…”

  “Oh, spare me. I get it. It can get lonely when you have to hide all the time. You take what you can get. I’m not complaining.”

  “Those were some dangerous people,” Jayce said, as if Emma needed a reminder. The gunshots were still ringing in her ears. She wasn’t even sure how she’d made it into the shelter of a nook in the wall, covering until one of the cops found her and got her out of the danger zone.

  “What about Meg?”

  “She was my informant pretty much from the start.”

  “Oh, great. She fooled me too. You all did—but don’t make too much of it. I’m just easy to fool.”

  “That’s not true. Listen…” Jayce cast a glance over to where a cluster of uniformed cops stood. “We need to wrap this up, okay? I was hoping—”

  “No!” Emma interrupted her sharply. “I don’t like the sound of that. Hoping is for losers. Whenever I tried that, it blew up in my face and…I don’t want that anymore. I need to be by myself. I need to think about what happened.”

  “Okay. I understand.” Jayce laid a hand on her shoulder, keeping it there for a moment. “I want you to have time to think. Maybe if you give it some time, you’ll let me explain.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked away. Emma’s vision blurred.

  * * * *

  Kitty, Daniel’s wife, looked thoughtful. “If you say she can do the job, I’m sure it’s true…”

  “It is,” Jayce insisted. “She caught a bad break, got screwed over. From what I learned, she could easily sue the city. Her lawyer was a joke.”

  “I didn’t think you were hiring anyone fulltime yet,” Daniel, who had walked in with large coffees for all of them, said. “You’re going to get her a new lawyer too?” he addressed Jayce.

  “I might,” she said, trying not to sound defensive. “It’s all in the serve and protect package. They system did her wrong. We can do something right.”

  “Well, I’m in.” Kitty put a generous amount of sugar into her coffee, making Jayce wince. “Not just because I’m feeling generous, which I am, but I could really use the help. The time before the holidays is crazy.”

  “You’re going to give her a call? I love you, Kitty.” Jayce gave her partner’s wife a heartfelt embrace, until Daniel said, “Okay, that’s enough. That’s my wife.”

  Kitty laughed. “I don’t think it’s me Jayce has set her eyes on.”

  “I want to make sure she has some support and can get back on her feet. She didn’t deserve to get mixed up with all of this—and she warned me.”

  “Yes, and we’re grateful for that,” Daniel said, all bantering forgotten for the moment. “I can ask around, but maybe you’ll make sure first she really wants to go to court. One step at a time. You don’t want to overwhelm her.”

  Jayce leaned back in her chair, guiltily wondering if the steps she was taking already reached too far. She had something to make up for, no doubt. She remembered watching Emma walk the aisles in the bookstore, her longing so obvious. She needed someone to give her a chance. Jayce wasn’t fooling herself. She was hoping Emma might giv
e her another chance too, but that might not happen. They both needed to move on from the past. Jayce didn’t yet want to give up on the idea that they could do it together.

  * * * *

  Emma let herself into her apartment with a sigh of relief. She loved the normalcy of coming home from her work, having said work in the first place. Kitty was a pleasant person to work for, though not a day went by without a reminder that her husband Daniel was Jayce’s partner, now that she was back to the regular job.

  Jayce didn’t come by the store, leaving Emma the space she’d asked for. Having some time to herself, room to breathe did her some good. She didn’t have to worry about anyone in the next room, or the next cell. The small studio was all hers, and she had even decorated it for the holidays with a small tree. She had a pile of books from the library, food in the fridge…she should be grateful. She had everything she’d dreamed of in those long days in prison, and later, in the house. A paycheck, a roof over her head, and people leaving her alone. That was what she had wanted all along, wasn’t it?

  After a shower and changing into more comfortable clothes, she sat on the couch and opened the small envelope Kitty had given her, containing a little holiday bonus and…Emma sighed. She wanted to call that number, but she hadn’t even thanked Jayce for getting her the job. Truth be told, she was a bit scared of talking to her, of having foolish hopes. Emma was sure that Jayce had long moved on. She wasn’t dealing with all that baggage for real, it had been part of her undercover persona just like…At times, she’d like to curse Jayce for drawing her into that place, for making her think she could be with someone again and not end up getting hurt. Well, she was hurt and lonely now. Emma would have never thought she’d feel like that, once out of the halfway house. Marley had even sent her a card, congratulating her.

  The doorbell jolted Emma out of her dire thoughts. She contemplated not opening, but maybe the person on the other side of the door was feeling just like her? A couple of hours ago, she’d been glad to escape the rush at Kitty’s paper store. Now she wanted to hear someone’s voice, even if that someone was trying to sell something, or asking for money for their charity. She opened the door to…no one.