Page 86 of Killing Emma

“And I’m sorry I didn’t call more. I’m sorry that I shut you out. I felt like there was something wrong with me, and now I know for sure there was. But I feel so much better now. He was such a coward, hiring someone to kill me. He needed to die. I just realized that I wanted to be the one who did it.”

“Yeah…” Lydia’s voice is soothing. “You’re going to have to sit tight for a little longer though.”

I glance down at my shirt. “I have extra clothes in the car outside when you get here. I can’t walk out like this.”

“You’re so chill about this that it’s terrifying,” Lydia says, hesitance in her voice. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I am. I just hope he’ll take my apology before he kills me.”

“Misunderstandings happen,” Lydia says. “Sounds like maybe you just need to have a good conversation… Or something.”

“Do we need to call in a cleanup?” I hear a voice in the background. “I can have them there before we can get there.”

“Um, so this is going to be weird,” Lydia comes back on the line. “But you, um, took care of Jared?”

“Yes,” I say flatly.

“Yeah, she needs one,” Lydia says to whoever spoke. I think it was Henry. “Pronto, probably.”

“We need to know the scale.”

“Did you hear that?” Lydia says into the phone. “Henry needs to know the scale—so what happened, I think.” I’ll put you on speaker.

“Um,” I begin, eyeing the body and the blood—that I now realize is everywhere. “I stabbed him in the neck with a filet knife. I don’t… There’s a lot… There’s a lot of, um, blood.”

Someone laughs, but it's too distant to recognize.

“Are you hurt?” Henry, the voice asking the questions, speaks up.

I glance down at my hand, cut from the force of the blade. “Maybe… I have a cut on my hand. I think it’s fine though.”

“And the dog?”

“He’s good. I don’t think I could’ve done it without him.” I pet Major’s head as he lays down next to me. “I can’t believe I did it. I finally got revenge. All by myself.”

“Yeah, someone will be there in an hour,” Henry says. “Take some deep breaths, don’t tell them anything. They’ll be in an HVAC van. Just stay out of their way, okay?”

“Okay…”

“We’ll be there as soon as we can. We’re making great time.”

“Okay.”

“This is Jared’s phone?” Henry asks.

“Uh huh,” I answer.

“Okay. We need to hang up then. You hold tight and wait. Don’t touch anything. It’ll just make their job harder.” He hangs up, without giving me the chance to say goodbye to Lydia.

I sit in the spot on the floor, zoning out as I stare at Jared’s body. Will Luca still be mad at me? Fear tugs at my heart.

“I fell in love with him,” I tell Major. “And now he’s going to kill me for this.”

Major lets out a sigh.

And we sit there until the strange HVAC van shows up an hour and a half later—thirty minutes past when they said it would. I stay out of their way as they pull the van and Tahoe into the three-car garage.

“Do you know when the wife will show up?” One of the people asks me.

---