"What are we going to do?" he asked.
"My mom. My mom will help."
"She thinks I did this," he said.
"I'll tell her what happened."
"I don't trust her. I don't know what my dad wanted me to do."
"Let's talk to her. Let me call her."
Chapter Seventeen
Friday, 6:30 A.M., Cherrystone, Washington
Emily could not believe her ears. She was dripping wet from the shower and she risked an electric shock to turn up the volume on her bathroom radio. Candace Kane was reporting on the news that Jenna was on the run with a suspected killer. She didn't use her name, but might as well have.
"We're not identifying the girl, because she's a juvenile and out of respect for her mother, a county sheriff's employee," Kane said. "A source close to the investigation says that the girl disappeared the day after the Martin murders were discovered."
I'll kill her Emily thought. Why is she reporting this? How does this help any of us?
Water pooled where her feet were planted on the slippery ceramic tiles. Emily just stood there, frozen, taking in each word and growing angrier by the nanosecond.
Candace went on, "Classmates at Cherrystone High said the girl and Nick Martin were close."
Static followed for a second, then the voice of a teenage boy came through the speaker.
"Yeah, they were both artsy. He was kind of a Goth, I guess. She's probably one of those goody goodies that like to hang with the bad boys. Pretty common knowledge around here they were seeing each other."
Another voice cut in. This time it was a girl.
"It was like Romeo and Juliet. It was like both parents didn't want them to date and maybe that's why he offed his family."
Emily reached for a towel. Her body was shivering, but mentally she was numb with anger at Candace Kane and her so-called news station. Her daughter was not "on the run" and there would be no more "updates to come" As far as Emily knew, there had been no Romeo and Juliet love affair. Not on Jenna's part. These kids were taking a tragedy and working it into some kind of overwrought teen romance. Jenna might care for the boy, but if she was in love with Nick Martin, she'd have told her mother. Just what was going on?
The calls had been coming in all morning. They were stinging wasps that couldn't be knocked away with a sledgehammer. One after another. Some were friends and family, worried about Jenna and where she was. Those came out of concern, but Emily Kenyon wished she'd been able to say more than, "Thank you for your concern, your love." It felt so useless, so damned weak. But the vast majority of inquiries flooding every phone line at the sheriff's office were from media jackals looking for a story. The story. Some got through to Kip and Jason, and by mid-morning the beleaguered dispatcher, Gloria, stopped patching anyone through. Lavender Post-it notes encircled the screen of Emily's computer monitor like a feather boa. Call. Urgent. Third time. Important tip want to share. Emily made a stupid mistake on that last one, calling back only to find that the reporter wanted a tip, he didn't have one.
Thank you, Candace Kane, for your fantastic story, Emily thought. You've made my life even worse than it was. No small feat. Maybe you should be promoted to TV?
Around noon, Gloria-the-dispatcher buzzed Emily on the intercom, a communications system so poor a shout down the hall would have worked better in most instances.
"Call for you, Emily. Line three," she said, her voice crackling under the strain of the failing speakers.
Emily jabbed at the answer button. "Message please, Gloria. I can't work with all this. Give the call to Kip or better yet, my detective in training, Jason." Her tone was decidedly sarcastic, which she regretted right away. "Sorry. Just take a message."
"Trust me, you'll want this one. Emily, I think it's Jenna "
Emily stared at the blinking white light on her phone. "Jenna?"
Gloria's usual cool demeanor ("gunshot vie on line two ... incest perp calling again about computer ... lawyer wants police report") ratcheted up ten times to over-the-top excited. "I think so, Emily. Talk to her. Pick it up!"
Emily pushed the flashing button and put the phone next to her ear. The room seemed suddenly small and dark. Closed in. The blinking light was now a solid glow. Just her and the phone, a lifeline to her daughter. Before she spoke, she heard Jenna's breath against the mouthpiece. It was soft and sweet. A mother knows when her baby is close. But where was she?
"Honey?"
"Mom? I'm sorry!"
"Jenna!"
"You're not mad at me, are you?"
"Of course not," Emily said, searching for a word that carried some measure of her pain. "Worried. I'm worried about you. Honey, where are you?"
Jenna fought to hold it together, but her grip on her emotions was spiderweb weak. "I'm all right," she said, her voice breaking. "I can't say where I am. But I'm safe. I'm fine. I told Dad to tell you that I'm okay."
A noise coming from the hallway cut into the conversation, and with the phone tight to her ear, Emily shut the door. "He told me, but why didn't you call me? I am your mother"
Jenna was crying softly into the phone. "Mom, you know how you get. Nick needed my help."
Hold your anger. Keep calm. Jenna's okay.
Emily heard a car with a bad muffler in the background; it seemed to pass near wherever Jenna was calling from. She could hear other voices, too. She wondered if Jenna was at a pay phone, maybe at a gas station or store.
"Nick needed you?" she asked. "Nick is in a world of trouble."
Another car passed by. Was she outdoors?
"I know what you're thinking, Mom. That's why I didn't call you first. You are always too quick to judge. Nick didn't do what they're saying-what you're saying."
Emily wanted to yell into the phone for her daughter to get a grip. The boy was dangerous, unbalanced, any number of adjectives zoomed through her mind, but she knew better than to use any of them. "Jenna, you don't know what happened," she said.
Silence.
"Jenna?"
"I do, mom. Nick told me. He didn't do this. He isn't capable of anything like this. I know him." Jenna's words shattered into pieces and she stopped to compose herself. "He's scared, Mom. I'm scared"
Emily had never felt so helpless in her life. Jenna was her baby. She thought their bond had been stronger than anything she could imagine. From her side, it was. But there she was, about to beg her scared little girl to come back to her. The idea of such a plea would have seemed beyond inconceivable a week ago. But the world had turned over since the storm. Nothing was as it had been.
"Come home, Jenna. Both of you. This isn't safe. Don't you know that the FBI is within a hairbreadth of getting involved? They're thinking kidnapping here"
"Kidnapping?" Jenna wasn't crying anymore. Her mood had shifted. She was angry. "You wouldn't let them do that. You know I went with Nick willingly. I went to help him. I care about him."
"I realize that," Emily said, now lying. She hadn't even heard Jenna mention Nick Martin's name up until that phone call. She wondered how well she knew her only child.
Jenna went on. "I told Shali to tell you the truth, but she didn't think she could get through to you. That you wouldn't listen to her." Her voice now showed traces of exasperation. It was probably abundantly clear that Shali didn't tell her mom anything.
"You talked to her, too?" Emily felt foolish to feel hurt over that, but the feeling grabbed her too quickly for her to assess it and set it aside. "Dad, Shali? Finally, you call me?"
"Mom," she said, "Don't be like that"
"All right. Now tell me where you are"
"I can't do that. I'm okay. That's all I'm saying right now."
"Jenna," Emily again struggled to keep cool. "Do you know what you're doing here? This is not right. His family is dead and he-"