A/N: I have returned from the shadows… For all of those who are still reading – the last 3 months were a bit of a doozy. I quit my job after tolerating a terrible manager for far too long, went on a string of bad dates, life took a little bit of a U-Turn and I had a lot of figuring out to do. Things are returning to normal, and so is my mood (you know when you just get stuck in a rut?), so I’m finally able to write again J I know I made this promise before, but I really want to finish this story – so the plan is to update every week. Every Sunday or Monday, there will be an update. Enjoy!
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This was starting to feel like her second home. What did it mean that she was beginning to recognize every officer’s face and that her name was a common reoccurrence at the police station? To think that six months ago she was a nobody in a big city, squatting in ex-boyfriend’s apartment. Now she was pretty much the Lindsay Lohan of a small town in Canada.
Perched beside the floor heater that was rotating slowly near her legs, Emma was sitting in Detective Jackson’s office with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders to help stave off the cold that kept creeping through the door. She was nervous, especially having eavesdropped on the snippets of conversation from the kitchen. The murder had something to do with her? This town had literally gone from a bad dream to a nightmare.
Detective Jackson was an intimidating little thing, the words little and thing meaning a lot and going a long way. He wasn’t as lean and muscular as Hunter, and was a few inches shorter as well. But the lines in his face ran deep, etching out the visage of a man who had seen a lot and survived the worst. From the very way he carried himself, he reminded Emma of a man who’d remained standing against the harshest of winds, completely unfazed. She couldn’t figure him out. He didn’t smile, make jokes, or even attempt to get along with any of the officers but everyone still seemed to roll out the red carpet for him. She could only dream of having that influence one day. People in this town seemed to have zero issue with trying to walk all over her.
She readjusted her legs, shifting in the seat so that she could uncross them. She could still feel it – him – inside of her. As short as it had been, and she was definitely going to harass him for that later, he had filled every inch of her and her muscles had strained to accommodate him. She flushed and let out a pent up sigh as she tried to shake off the sudden chill that had scattered across her chest and arms. He had the power to turn her into a puddle in his hands. She smugly noted that it appeared that she had somewhat of a similar effect on him.
Detective Jackson entered the room again, with two cups of coffee. He handed her one and she accepted it graciously, basking in the steam that still wafted up from it.
“How was your night?” he started, slipping on the pair of glasses that he’d kept tucked away in his shirt pocket. “Hope I didn’t wake you up too early.”
“No… not at all,” she responded drily, unable to look at anything but the table in front of her. She was a terrible liar, and her tongue already felt parched. The consequences of her actions seemed to be having a delayed reaction, but they were there. A looming, bulbous cloud of repercussions waiting to be acknowledged at the far reaching corners of her mind.
The town would literally go bat shit crazy if they found out she was sleeping with their sheriff. Correction. Had slept with. She needed to remind herself that it this needed to be a past tense and not a present verb. Grade Three English rules were finally coming to use.
“You may be aware Emma, there was a murder committed last night. Young girl, early twenties, thin build and frame, around your height.” He settled down in the chair across from her and opened up a manila folder, shuffling out laminated photos. Jackson took a swig of coffee before splaying them out in front of her.
Emma immediately grimaced, her eyebrows furrowing as her eyes traveled across the photos.
“Why are you showing these to me?”
“Do you recognize her?”
“No. I just moved here a few weeks ago. I don’t really know anybody.”
“Hm,” his chair creaked under his weight, “look, Emma. I’m going to be blunt with you. From what I gather, and from what Sheriff Stone has filled me in on, you’re not well liked here. Vandalism, threats, public harassment… your dad’s history hasn’t made it easy for you. I won’t jump to definite conclusions but let’s just say it’s an easy assumption to make that this homicide was meant to be you.” Emma still couldn’t get her eyes off the photos. A different sort of chill had filled her now, followed with an unsettling degree of dread.
“Someone killed someone else because of… me?”
“Not because of you. They wanted the victim to be you.”
Emma simply cocked her head to the side, not fully able to comprehend the reality of his words just yet. “I don’t understand.”
“Are you aware of why they would?”
She finally tore her eyes away from the pages in front of her and looked ahead at the detective. She was almost offended that he’d ask. “I just told you. I moved here a few weeks ago. I don’t know these people. I left here when I was a little girl. I’ve done nothing to them. They clearly have some sort of fucked up projection issues because they’re hating on me for -.”
“I’m not implying you’ve done anything wrong,” Jackson cut her off, clearly not in the mood to deal with town drama. “I’m genuinely asking you if you are aware of why someone may want you dead.”
“Nobody wants me dead.”
“Emma…” Jackson cleared his throat, and licked his lips as he thought of what to say. “Unless we have the killer behind bars, we can’t be a hundred percent sure of anything. However, we do have reason to believe you might be in danger so my job is to make sure that you remain safe above everything else. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
It was at that moment that Emma suddenly felt exceptionally, beyond all doubt and realm, alone. The wind has escaped her chest entirely, and her shoulders deflated. She basically crumpled in the seat in front of him. Staring at the pictures, she was vividly aware of the tick-tick-tick second-hand of the clock in the hallway, and the sound of a printer going off in a room somewhere in the near distance. There was something so odd and surreal about being told that someone wanted you dead that made you realize how human, vulnerable and alone you really were. Here she was, sitting in a police station, being told someone wants her life stamped out of existence and who was she going to seek comfort from? Her mom was dead. Her dad was dad. Her friends were miles away. She had no relatives that she knew of.
A choking sort of fear and forlornness suddenly clawed her throat.
No, she wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t. If she cried, she wasn’t sure she’d stop.
“Emma, are you listening to what I’m saying?”
She jumped as she felt a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up to see Hunter looking down at her, a minutia of concern glinting in his eyes. When had he entered the room? She blinked as she looked at Detective Jackson, just realizing now that he’d been speaking the entire time and that she’d zoned out completely.
Hunter pushed something into her hand and she realized it was a wrapped pastry. Right. She hadn’t had breakfast yet and she’d been here for an hour yet.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Just eat it,” his voice was curt. He wasn’t in the mood for arguing.
She simply placed it on the lap and cleared her throat, trying to get that that seizing panic that was coagulating in her lungs cleared away. “What did you say?” she asked again. Her voice sounded distant to her own ears.
“Are you aware of why someone might want you dead?” Jackson repeated for the third time. She could feel Hunter’s gaze on her face, which would’ve usually made her anxious or nervous. Right now, she just felt numb.
“No. I mean. Yeah. Hunter filled –” she paused as she began to come back to her sense, “I mean,
Sheriff Stone filled me in on things that have happened here and there.” She didn’t miss the way Detective Jackson glanced at Hunter briefly and she cringed at her misstep. “I know he owed people money, and was a drunk, and had an affair but I mean… that’s at least a good chunk of the population anywhere, no? I moved here from west coast. That happens all the time. I don’t understand why someone would want me dead for it.”
“Emma, are you aware your father left you an inheritance?”
Her face went blank and she looked at Hunter, “huh?”
He didn’t say anything, and simply moved to the side of the room to lean against the wall, arms crossed. Jackson continued.
“Didn’t you get a call from the bank when you moved here about settling your father’s accounts?”
She pressed her memory to remember and then bit her lip as a certain call came to mind. She literally had disregarded it as spam. “I got a call about going down to the bank but I never went.” “Your father owned the lighthouse. Your ancestors have been running that lighthouse for centuries. That entire piece of land… apparently, all…” he looked at a few papers on his desk, “eighty acres running south east into the escarpment belong to your family. It’s worth millions of dollars. We assume he’s left it all to you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” She immediately snapped, looking at Hunter again who casually shrugged his shoulders.
“I didn’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
“Did you not just say you ignored a call from the bank about your finances?”
“Hunter -.”
“Miss Adenson,” he retorted, and was about to respond when Jackson interrupted.
“Is there something going on here?”
“No,” both of them responded, probably far too quickly.
An uncomfortable silence filled the room, which nobody seemed willing to break until Jackson simply shook his head.
“Look, Emma. You can’t inherit any of the land just yet anyway. We’re assuming your father left it to you but he never filed the papers before his death. We don’t know where the papers are but apparently they exist, according to his will. If you’re the beneficiary, the land goes to you and you can do whatever you want with it. Sell it, keep it, build on it. Whatever you want.” “But if I’m dead, and my dad left it to me, the land goes to the town.”
Everything made sense then. It clicked into place perfectly. The reason why someone wanted her out of sight and out of mind.
Hunter finished off what she’d just realized as well. “If the land goes to the town, Harbordale can then sell it off to investors who could invest millions into building real estate here. Cottages, hotels, a countryside getaway. Hell, you name it, whatever the fuck you want. It’s a goldmine that’s up for grabs.”
If she was dead.
Emma leaned forward, burying her head into her hands. Her face felt hot, and she could barely take in everything that was being said right now. So that’s what it was. It wasn’t that people hated her dad so much that they wanted her gone. It was a matter of greed. And greed was on the list of the eight deadly sins for a reason. It made people do crazy things.
Her father could literally not have left her a bigger pile of shit to deal with even if he’d tried. “Where is it then? The papers that he spoke about in his will? I don’t want it. I don’t want any of the land. The town can have it. Can we just waive it off, so someone doesn’t feel like the only way to get this land is by killing me? This is nuts! Absolutely insane! This person has to be a psychopath!”
Jackson gave her a poignant ‘do you not get it?’ stare, “we were hoping you might know where the papers were.”
She blew up there, “are you kidding? This man hadn’t spoken to be for a decade! How would I know?”
“Did your dad leave you any clues? Any sign of -.”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said? He hadn’t spoke to me for a decade!”
“Emma, calm down,” Hunter clipped shortly, “we’re on your side here.”
“I’m sorry if I’m not calm, Sheriff Stone, I just found out someone wants to kill me for some million dollar inheritance I may or may not have! Give me a few fucking moments to panic!”
“Why don’t we take some time off?” Jackson offered, leaning back in his chair. “You’ve had a lot to take in, and I don’t think any one of us have had breakfast yet. Correct? Let’s take a thirty and continue from then.”
“How’d she die?” Emma asked, standing up at the same time Detective Jackson did to stop him
from leaving. She wasn’t done here. “Didn’t the murderer leave fingerprints or…”
“She was shot and dumped there. No fingerprints as far as forensics can see so far. Now take a breather. Calm your nerves, and we’ll take it from there.” Jackson gave what Emma assumed was supposed to be a comforting squeeze of the arm before leaving her in there with Hunter.
As the door clicked shut, Emma turned on Hunter. It felt surreal that a mere two hours ago, they’d been intimate. She couldn’t feel more alone, and deserted even if she tried right now. “You might not have known about the specifics but you must have had an idea why someone was targeting me,” Emma drawled coldly as she sat back down on the chair. She dropped the pastry on the table in front of her and leaned back against the backrest. She felt absolutely exhausted. “I’m not an idiot.”
“You’re right. I knew that he’d left the land unaccounted for and that it’s worth a lot, being right by the water,” Hunter moved to stand in front of her, leaning against the desk for support. She ignored the way his shirt bunched up against his flat chest, his biceps firmly taut against the material. “When you didn’t say anything within the first few incidents, I assumed he hadn’t left the land to you. How the fuck was I supposed to know that you ignored the call from the bank and had no idea?”
She was really regretting not taking that call from the bank seriously now. “I can’t believe my
dad was sitting on top of millions of dollars but was still a senile, old, miserable prick.” Emma took a hearty swig of the coffee. It was the only thing that she could swallow right now.
“I’d reconsider publicly waiving your rights to the land,” Hunter went on after a deliberate pause, “you’re in debt, aren’t you? Sell it and make some money.”
She’d be lying if she said that the thought hadn’t immediately crossed her mind. “I don’t want it.
Everyone hates me as much as it is.”
“Why does it matter what they think?”
“You’re quick to forget that you’re one of them too, Hunter. You’ve tried to drive me out of here yourself.”
He sighed angrily and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, “I’m not having this conversation again.”
“Then just leave me alone.”
“You’re letting your emotions cloud your judgement.”
“I just found out someone wants me dead, for reasons I can’t control. I’m sorry if I’m not fucking on the moon about it.”
A knock on the door sounded before an officer she recognised as Officer Robbie came inside.
“Family’s here, Sheriff.”
He sighed, pushing himself off the edge of the desk. “We’ll continue this later, Emma.” The door shut behind him and she closed her eyes, trying to calm the raging battle of emotions around her. Focusing on the whirr of the heater near her feet, she tried her best to think of happy memories, and not of deer heads and murdered women.
x.x
Emma spent the entire day at the police station, being moved around from room to room a dozen or so times. Questions flew over her head, since really – she knew absolutely nothing, and she could see the gnawing frustration on everyone’s faces. In terms of providing any clues or details, she was absolutely useless at no fault of her own. It wasn’t her fault that she’d had zero communication with her father for years prior to his passing.
Around lunchtime, she watched through a window as the family of the victim left Hunter’s office to be escorted back to their homes. She couldn’t help but feel guilty and she slithered lower in her chair so that she could disappear. She was sure that there was only one thought on that family’s mind. That it should’ve been her.
The numbness and franticness that she’d been feeling began to dissipate a couple hours later. She’d been at the police station for a few hours. Really, nobody knew what to do with her but nobody was really quite ready to let her go yet either. In place of the helplessness she’d been feeling, she finally began to feel a certain sense of peace. She’d begun to formulate a game plan, one that she hoped would help her navigate this mess.
She’d carry on life as normal – the normal that she’d become accustomed to anyway – but there was one additional bullet point to her list. She needed to find those papers before anyone else did, so that she could decide what the hell to do with them. She was sure whoever this psychopath was, he was convinced that she’d simply inherited the land and was now sitting on top of it. She needed to find that shit, see if her dad had even given the acres to her, before figuring out what to do with it.
The sun had set outside, and people had passed in and out to give her meals here and there but her appetite had pretty much vanished. She’d begun to notice that people were moving differently around her, and she couldn’t pinpoint if it was apathy, sympathy or a little pit of pity that was affecting them. Maybe all three.
What she’d noticed as well was how Hunter commanded the station so effortlessly. It was her first time truly seeing him in his comfort zone and she could see how this place fit in with the rest of his personality. The amount of respect that he commanded was easy to tell and he had a way of relaxing those around him, even the grieving family that had left hours prior.
She watched him with a mixture of emotions that she couldn’t decipher. Bitterness because he was still an asshole most of the time, envy because she could only wish she could command a room in that way, and to her horror, she realized she also felt a bit of affection. Despite having sent her to hell and back, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t aware of the sheer goodwill with which he operated. He genuinely, truly cared about this town. She wasn’t sure she’d ever understand why anyone would care about a town that literally the rest of Canada could give two shits about, but he truly, genuinely did. He cared about the people, about protecting them, and in making the people feel safe. He was angry that there was somebody among them that would do this.
As much as Hunter had wanted to give her grief for moving here, she was certain then, that without a doubt, he’d never have wanted to actually hurt her.
And that only pissed her off more. She wanted reasons to hate him, not reasons to want to like him.
Fuck, this made things complicated.
It was around seven p.m. when both Jackson and Hunter were in the same room with her again. She’d spoken with Jackson intermittently throughout the day but both Hunter and Emma had kept their distance from each other as much as they could. It wasn’t that they weren’t aware of how to operate around each other since that had happened. It was that both were so paranoid that should they be in the same room, someone would somehow know.
And neither of them wanted to deal with the repercussions of that just yet. Or ever. “Okay,” Jackson was clearly tired, having spent the entire day either with Emma or sifting through evidence and interviews. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. The inside of this room has been wholly entertaining.” Emma said dully, almost sarcastically so and she swore she saw Hunter repress a chuckle. Possibly an illusion.
“Emma, what I propose is that you move back to your house -.”
“Absolutely not,” Hunter interjected almost immediately. His body was tense, and he looked even more exhausted than Jackson having spent the entire day dealing with the victim’s family and townsfolk. “That house is entirely isolated. If anything happened, it could take hours before neighbors even noticed.”
“I understand,” Jackson went on, but his jaw was set stubbornly. “We’ll set up cameras, a security alarm, and put a surveillance detail on her. Better than the one we had before. Whoever this
person is, he’s going to try to do this again. We need to make him or her feel comfortable.”
Emma almost laughed, “you want to use me as bait?”
“Not necessarily. We want you to carry on as normal, and then catch the guy once he tries again. Hunter, this would be safer than storing her at your house. You can’t keep an eye on her at all times. If nothing happens for a month, we revaluate.”
She could see Hunter almost jumping to argue, but he bit down his words. This wasn’t his case.
He didn’t have jurisdiction over it. Whatever Jackson said, it went.
“Emma, what I want you to do, is if you see any suspicious people, anyone who talks to you that shouldn’t, who looks at you longer than they should, lingers too close than normal – you tell us. At this point, judging by your dad’s history, the entire town is suspect.”
Emma released a nervous sigh, but nodded anyway. “Okay.”
“Obviously, we’ll keep you informed during every step of the investigation, but you should try to carry on normally as much as you can.”
She nodded, not knowing what else to really say.
“The town doesn’t know,” Hunter said, after a stretched silence. “About the value of that land or that it could possibly belong to you. It’s confidential information, so the only people who know at this point are in this room, the bank, and whoever’s after you. We want to keep it that way.”
“The town knows that someone wants me dead, though?”
“Well…no,” Hunter gave a half-hearted shrug, “we’ve emphasized that cause and motive are
undetermined. If people say otherwise, it’s pure speculation on their end.” And she was sure they’d be speculating away. “Ok. Well, then can I go?” Hunter and Jackson exchanged a glance before nodding.
With a heavy sigh, she stood up for the last time day that day and after saying goodbye to the detective, followed Hunter out of the station.
A/N: Thank you for the very, very warm welcome back, you guys. Also - I wasn’t sure where exactly to do this so responses to certain reviews I got for the last chapter are at the end of this chapter. =)