Page 145 of The Secrets We Hide
Jude swallowed so hard that she could hear the gulp. The noxious smell of bourbon roiled her stomach. She screwed the cap back on the flask.
“Fall off the horse?”
Jude startled.
Emmy was standing in the doorway. She was wearing her duty vest. Her hand was resting above the gun on her hip. Judehadn’t heard her cruiser in the driveway. She had been too entranced by the thought of drinking. Emmy was nothing if not perceptive. Her mouth had a judgmental twist. Her eyes were trained on the flask.
“You’re thinking of wagons.” Jude felt the familiar, painful pull of the tether. “Alcoholics fall off the wagon.”
“Who falls off horses?”
“Most people. Horses are dangerous.”
Emmy nodded, eyes still on the flask. “Shane Russell robbed a gas station forty minutes ago. He knows we’re looking for him. It’s only a matter of time.”
The information skipped through Jude’s consciousness. Russell would be captured eventually. She had other things that were more pressing.
She put the flask back in her father’s desk drawer. She looked down at her mother’s last message. The woman who had never apologized had managed in her own circuitous, maddening way to ask for forgiveness from her grave. Whether the request was for Emmy or for Jude was immaterial. Myrna had expected the truth to be told, so Jude was going to tell the truth.
She stood up. She wanted to finish this where it had started forty-two years ago: at her mother’s kitchen table.
She told Emmy, “I need to tell you some things. Let’s go inside the house.”
For once, Emmy didn’t argue. She waited for Jude outside the office, then turned off the lights and locked the door.
Emmy loosened the straps on her vest as she walked across the driveway. Jude kept her gaze on the house. She didn’t need to find particular items: the trellis, the windows, the screen door. She anchored herself with plans.
The first thing she needed to do was wash the bourbon off her hand. The stickiness, the smell, the reminder of her momentary weakness, was making her feel queasy. Then, she would sit in Myrna’s chair across from Emmy at the table.
Jude would own her sins. She would answer every question. She would absorb all the blame and the rage. Then she would give Emmy the choice that she’d been robbed of over four decades ago. She would reframe the ultimatum that Myrna and Geraldhad laid out: Jude could stay here with her daughter and work things out, or she could leave.
Emmy walked up the porch stairs. She used her key to unlock the door. The bare light bulb made her features sharp and angular. Her jaw was clenched. She was bracing herself. So was Jude.
The door opened. The lights came on. They both stopped at the threshold. For the second time that night, a man surprised them.
This one had a gun.
Jude’s eyes zeroed in on the weapon first. Matte black Taurus G3X. Three hundred dollars new. Fifty on the street. The polymer-framed nine-millimeter pistol held fifteen rounds in the magazine, another in the chamber. There was no manual safety. You pressed the trigger and somebody could die.
Shane Russell already had his finger resting on the trigger. He was covered in sweat, just as nasty as he’d looked on Mitch Bellingham’s tape. Jude felt his danger in every part of her being. She should have been terrified, but she was furious. The pistol was pointed directly at Emmy’s chest.
He said, “Get in the house.”
Emmy kept her body square to Russell as she slowly walked in. She knew the ballistic panels in her vest would slow down a bullet. Jude could almost feel her silently screaming at Jude to run, but Jude had already made the calculation: If she ran, Russell would fire the pistol. The vest was bullet resistant, not bullet-proof. Jude would not take the risk.
“Russell.” Jude raised her hands in the air. “Take your finger off the trigger. You don’t want to make a mistake.”
“I said get in the fucking house.” He motioned with the pistol, his finger tight on the trigger. “Move.”
Jude tried to put herself in front of Emmy, but Emmy blocked her. She told Russell, “We know you didn’t murder Allison.”
“No shit I didn’t murder Allison. I needed her to give me the video—there’s no way Gilchrist is gonna pay up without it. Stop.”
The last word hadn’t been directed at Jude. Emmy had tried to take advantage of the distraction. She’d been reaching for her Glock.
Russell said, “Put it on the floor. Slide it over.”
Emmy used her thumb and forefinger to carefully extract the Glock from her holster. Her duty vest bunched up. The straps hung loose. She was laser-focused on Russell as she crouched to the floor. She was making calculations, too.
