The Edge of Heaven (21 page)

Once he did, none of them knew what to do. Mostly, they tried not to look at each other and not to talk about it.

Emma was thinking now that she needed to straighten the chair in the corner. It had gotten turned over onto its side, and the lamp on the table was in pieces on the floor.

Someone could get cut on that.

She should sweep it up.

She went to the chair first, her head protesting the movement. She turned it carefully and gently onto its side and then lifted it with her trembling hands into its place by the window. There. It looked just the way it was supposed to.

The lamp was more of a problem. She stared at all the pieces, too many to ever put back together. She couldn't make that right again.

The frosted white glass of the lamp had been hand painted with dainty blue flowers to match the blue in the stained-glass windows. Rachel had done this herself. It had been so pretty. Emma loved this lamp.

She picked up some of the biggest pieces. They clinked together as she stacked them on one of her hands.

"Emma?" Rye asked. "What are you doing?"

"Picking up the pieces."

"Why?"

She frowned, her hand trembling, the glass clinking from that alone.

It made perfect sense to her. You couldn't pretend everything was okay until you swept up the mess and put everything back in its place.

"It's what I do," she told him.

Her job had been picking up the pieces and making sure her brother and sister were all right. She was ready to get the broom when she first heard the sirens and decided to sit down again.

It was odd having strangers in the house picking over the wreckage. They'd never called the police or the ambulance for her father and mother.

Joe came roaring into the house, another of his deputies behind him, and he stood there speechless for a moment. She looked up at him, thinking he could fix things. He could put all the pieces back together. But he looked dazed and kind of sick, too.

"Get the paramedics in here," he called over his shoulder, then looked back at Emma. Very, very gently, he said, "Are you okay?"

She nodded.

The paramedics came in a rush, with all sorts of equipment and a stretcher. "Jesus," one of them said. "Look at what's left of his face."

"What happened, Emma?" Joe said, trying to put his body between her and Mark to block her view.

"Mark came to get me," she said, then made the mistake of looking down at her hands. There was blood on her hands. She closed her eyes and remembered how Mark looked, what was left of his face.

And then everything went black.

* * *

Rye sat on the arm of the couch, wiping a trail of blood from the side of his face, looking at the end of life as he'd known it. He'd almost made it. Eight years. The magic mark. The end of his probation. When something like this would cease to have the power to send him back to prison.

He was two months and four days shy of that, and why the hell he hadn't just waited until then to come here...

And then he looked over at Emma and knew why.

She'd told him she was okay. Scared, shocked, but okay.

Of course, she'd never look at him in the same way again. He'd known that when he whirled around in a flash and grabbed her.

Rye heard the sheriff ask Emma what happened, heard her say, "Mark came to get me," and then she pitched sideways in a dead faint.

"Emma?" He caught her before she fell over and leaned her gently back against the sofa cushions. "Dammit, she said she was okay."

The sheriff was right there, looking like he didn't want Rye even touching her, not that Rye could blame him. He'd obviously found out all there was to know about Rye's past.

"Did you hurt her?" the sheriff asked.

"No," Rye lied. He could see the discolored flesh on her arms where he'd grabbed her.

"Did he?" The sheriff gestured to the man on the floor.

"I don't know."

"You don't know? Where the hell were you?"

"He bashed me over the head with something, and I blacked out. I don't know for how long." Rye felt sick just thinking about it, him lying here while that guy had Emma. "I don't know what he did to her."

The sheriff called one of the paramedics over to look at Emma. He listened to her heart and lungs quickly, checked her pupils.

"Did he have a weapon?" the sheriff asked.

"Just that shovel from the fireplace, as far as I know," Rye said. "Did she hit her head? He knocked her down the other day. Maybe he did it again."

The paramedic checked quickly. "There's a knot on her head, but I don't think it's too serious. What about you?"

"I'm fine," Rye insisted. There was hardly any blood. "What about her?"

"Give me a minute with this guy, and I'll make sure she's okay."

"Is he going to make it?" the sheriff asked.

"Who knows? We cleared the airway, but I can't see inside of him. Who knows what kind of damage might have been done."

Rye kept his gaze locked on Emma. If he never saw her again, Sam had damned well better take good care of her.

"Emma? Come on. Wake up for me. Tell me you're okay."

"You tell me what happened here," the sheriff said.

"You know what happened," Rye said. "The guy got in here—"

"How? Did he break in?"

"I don't know," Rye admitted, hating himself for that, too. He'd been rolling around on the floor with Emma when it happened. "Emma and I were here, and the next thing I know, somebody hit me over the head. I was lying on the floor when I came to, and I could hear him talking to her. He wanted her to come back to Chicago with him, and he was mad that she hadn't. He said she'd have to learn how to behave. He drew back his hand to hit her, and I stopped him."

"You stopped him all right," the sheriff said.

"I had to make sure he didn't hurt Emma anymore," Rye said. "I couldn't let him have another chance to hurt her."

"Last guy you got into a fight with didn't ever hurt anybody again, did he?"

Rye just looked away.

What was there to say?

"And you're still on probation for that, right?" the sheriff asked.

"Yeah, I am," Rye said.

He started thinking that if the sheriff had hauled him off to jail the day before... But no. He looked down at Emma, still lying on the sofa between them. She would have been here by herself, then.

She started to stir. Rye could tell when she remembered everything. She jerked upright, and he grabbed on to her. "It's all right. The sheriff's here. Mark's... He's not going to hurt you anymore, Emma."

She looked up at him, still half out of it, and he could tell when she remembered what he'd done, because she looked scared of him then.

He eased her back against the sofa cushion once more and let her go, probably for the last time, then got up and walked to the other side of the room, waiting for the sheriff to haul him off to jail.

* * *

Sam got the call that evening, but couldn't make sense of it at first.

Emma was at the hospital? So was her ex-boyfriend, who'd broken into the house, and his brother was in jail?

It wasn't the first time, either. The last time, his brother had killed a man.

Sam covered the mouthpiece of the phone and yelled, "Rachel," in much the same way he had the day before when he found out his brother had come to find him. His brother who was in jail, not for the first time.

"Sam, I'm sorry," said his friend Joe Mitchell. "I feel terrible. I just didn't see it coming. And Emma—"

"She's okay?"

"She has a concussion, a few bruises, but other than that, I think she's just shaken up. She claims the guy hit her once, and that was it. I had one of my guys call Rachel's Aunt Miriam. I thought Emma might want someone with her, until you and Rachel can get here."

"Thanks, Joe," he said, then just stood there, a thousand conflicting emotions rushing through him. Finally, one came to the forefront. "What's going to happen to my brother?"

"I don't know, Sam."

* * *

Rye sat in one of the county's four jail cells, which was actually nothing more than a holding area. They normally took people right away to the regional jail thirty minutes away, but so far, he was still in Baxter. It wasn't anything more than two cells on either side of the room, a narrow hallway between them. He didn't know how long he'd been here, and he really didn't care.

The door to the cell block opened. The sheriff walked in, unlocking the door to Rye's cell and holding out a cordless phone to him.

"I don't think we got around to offering you your one phone call."

"You call Sam?" He wanted to make sure Sam was on his way to Emma.

"Yeah."

"There's nobody else to call."

"You sure?"

"You could call the hospital and check on Emma," he said. That was really the only other thing he needed that could come from a phone.

"I did that already. Mild concussion. That's it, except for... Well, she's pretty upset. When they finish checking her over, if they think it's safe, they're going to give her a sedative to help her relax. Sounds like when Sam gets there, they'll let her go home."

Rye nodded, the invisible band gripping his chest easing a bit. He could almost breathe again, then found the courage to ask, "The ex-boyfriend still alive?"

The sheriff nodded. "You broke about every bone in his face, compromised his airway, broke a couple of ribs."

Rye shrugged. "Yeah, well, the guy pissed me off."

"Me, too," the sheriff said.

That surprised Rye. He hadn't expected any kind of understanding.

"But you didn't nearly kill him," Rye said, wondering if the fact that the guy wasn't dead would be of any great help to him. Not that he was expecting any miracles. He was going back to prison.

"Look, I should have done more," the sheriff said. "I thought the guy was annoying as hell, but not really dangerous. I wish I'd done more."

That surprised Rye even more. A cop who really cared? One who could admit to making a mistake? Not that he thought it would do him any good.

"Am I going back to Georgia? Or do we settle this mess here first?" he asked. To this point, he'd confined his crime spree to one state. He wasn't sure what the process would be like from here. "I just want to be sure Emma's okay, and if I go back to Georgia right away—"

"You're not going anywhere fast," the sheriff said. "Except maybe to get that cut on your head looked at. I didn't think it was that bad, but... Maybe you and I should take a ride over to the hospital."

Rye looked up, surprised once again. They'd offered to take him to the hospital earlier, and he'd refused. Emma had been so upset, and he'd thought it would be better for her if he just got the hell away from her. So he'd turned down their offer of further medical attention.

But if the sheriff was saying what Rye thought he was saying... Emma was there. He'd cut off his right arm for the chance to see her one more time.

"Hurts, huh?" the sheriff asked, nodding toward Rye's head.

"Yeah, it hurts," he agreed.

Fifteen minutes later, Rye was in the emergency room of the small-town hospital, which was actually not much more than a clinic. He was in handcuffs. The sheriff had caught hell about that from at least a half-dozen people who knew Emma and knew that no matter what else Rye had done, he'd saved her. He guessed they hadn't seen what was left of Emma's ex-boyfriend's face yet.

Ten stitches later, he and the sheriff were out in the hall. The sheriff said, "I'm thinking I should check on Emma. Guess you'll have to come with me."

Rye shook his head as they headed down the hall. "I've never met a cop like you."

"Yeah, well... Me and Sam go way back. Doesn't seem like that long ago I was hauling him off to jail."

"Sam? The way Emma talks, the man's a saint."

"Not when he was fifteen or sixteen. He's straightened out pretty well since then," the sheriff said. "You got locked up when you were sixteen?"

"Yeah." He and a buddy of his had stolen a car, just for the hell of it, just to piss off their parents. It had worked really well.

Rye and the sheriff walked down the corridor to room 104. The sheriff pushed open the door. "They said she'd probably be sleeping, that it's what she needs now. Other than a bump on the head, she's fine."

Rye walked over to the bed. She didn't stir, just lay there so still and so pale against the stark white sheets, her hair falling across her face. He wanted to push it back out of her eyes. But the thought of touching her with hands bound together by handcuffs was enough to make him feel sick.

So he just stood there with so many regrets it seemed they should have choked him by now. If he didn't watch it, he might damned well cry.

He'd have given anything to be able to come to her as anyone except who he was, but that was impossible. He was chained to the past, as securely as his hands were chained together in front of him.