Page 45 of Killing Emma

“Yeah, sure. I’ll entertain it,” I joke, but it doesn’t land the way it usually would. I don’t even feel like the same guy I was before Emma.

Jude gives me a funny look as he leads me to his cave at the back of the house. I glance down at my watch as I follow him. It’s been too fucking long. I bought Emma clothes and shoes, and then came here. I’ve burned nearly four hours with all the drive time. I should’ve left Major downstairs with Emma.

But I was pissed at her.

Well, I was jealous. I’m still jealous, and I don’t understand it, really. I shouldn’t be jealous. I don’t want to love her. I don’t know how to love. The closest thing I’ve had close to love is the fucked-up relationship I had with my mentor—adopted dad—whatever he was. Something broke that connection after Emma showed up in my life.

“You gonna just stand there or…?” Jude cuts into my thoughts. “The video is already pulled up.”

“Sorry, lost in my thoughts.” I shake my head and step into the darkened room. I don’t understand why the IT type of guys like to sit in the fucking dark. Jude’s sitting in front of a wall of computers, but the video is pulled up on the monitor right in front of his face. I squint down at it, just thankful the camera isn’t pointed in the direction of where I was stalking.

“So, here it is,” Jude smashes the space bar, and I watch the familiar scene play out. “It’s really just a confrontation between them—a pathetic one, actually. Emma is really detached emotionally, and Lydia said it was how she copes with things. She pushes people out, and she knew that she was going through it.”

And now she plays fetch with my dog in the yard.

I chew the inside of my cheek as I watch the wine glass shatter on the sidewalk. Even from the grainy footage, Emma looks striking. I’m partial to her unconventional, messy kind of beautiful. She’s the girl who’s flawless in her chaos, and I’m drawn to the storm inside of her.

“Yeah, so now she goes inside,” Jude says as Emma heads back to the house. “And Jared leaves, presumably.”

Presumably? I don’t say anything as the footage shifts. Please Manny, tell me you did a good job. Please. My partner’s techniques can be careless, and while the average detective might miss it, Jude won’t.

“Right here,” Jude points to a blip in the time stamp. “The count is off.”

Shit, shit, shit.

“It’s been replaced.”

“Yeah? Or the time stamp could be shit. That happens with these cameras all the time.”

“Sure, I always consider that,” Jude says as the video continues to play. “But then there’s this.”

My heart throbs in my temple and I rub at it, preparing for what I know is to come. I tense my jaw as Emma’s car backs out of the driveway. I know who’s behind the wheel, and I already know I’m fucked. Royally.

“So, she leaves?”

“I don’t know,” Jude says carefully. “We didn’t see Jared leave, either.”

“Was his car parked out of view?”

“No,” Jude backs up the video. “You just missed it in the frame.”

Oh fuck. Manny missed it.

“Right here,” he pauses the video at the end of the confrontation. “Here’s his car.” Just in the corner, the front of an SUV is visible. “Keep your eye on it.”

I already know what’s going to happen. The video plays until the blip in the time stamp, and the car remains there through the blip. However, as soon as Emma’s SUV appears, the front of the SUV disappears in another blip. The footage has been written over, and Jude knows it.

“Clearly, someone manipulated the footage—and they didn’t think about Jared’s car there in the drive. It might be enough to slip past police, but this is a rookie mistake.”

It’s a fucking Manny mistake, is what it is.

“So you think Jared did it?”

Jude shakes his head. “No, I was able to hack into the CCTV footage. I caught him at a gas station less than five minutes after their encounter. His car wasn’t there when it said it was.”

“I can take care of him anyway,” I reason. “He seems like a dick.”

Jude raises a brow. “He’s obsessed with Emma. He cheated on her with his secretary but broke it off as soon as Emma found out. They were having some serious troubles, apparently. That’s what Emma told Lydia. Jared was desperate to get her back. The more digging we’ve done, the more it appears that Emma projected some false issues in order to cover for the fact that she was drowning in grief.”

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