Chapter 1 — Eleven
Emily shoved the service door open with her shoulder and nearly dropped the bag of empty bottles when she saw Dean Ashford standing on the stairs.
He smiled at her like they had arranged to meet there.
They had not.
It was after one in the morning; she had been working since three that afternoon, and Dean had spent most of the night planted at the end of the bar trying to get her attention. Mid-thirties, clean coat, expensive watch, and decent-looking if she ignored everything coming out of his mouth.
He had bought the three drinks she never touched.
He had also asked her name three times even though EMILY was printed on the tag pinned to her shirt.
Emily tightened her grip on the bag. “I need to get downstairs.”
Dean moved aside just enough to make it look as though he was letting her pass.
She took one step.
His hand closed in her hair.
The bag slipped from her fingers. Bottles crashed together as her back hit the metal railing.
“What the fuck?”
“Calm down.”
“Let go of me, you asshole!”
“You’ve been rude to me all night.” He sounded almost reasonable.
Emily grabbed his wrist and tried to pull his hand away. He only tightened his grip, dragging her head back enough to hurt.
“I bought you drinks, and you laughed at me.”
“Get off me.”
Emily’s free hand went to the front of her apron. Her fingers hit something hard. The paring knife.
She had spent the last hour cutting limes and forgotten to put them back with the rest. Her hand closed around the handle.
After that, there was nothing. A clean white space where thirty seconds of her life should have been. Then, seconds later, she was kneeling on the landing. Her right hand hurt, and the knife was still in it.
Dean was on the floor below her, making a wet sound every time he tried to breathe.
“Oh shit!”
For several seconds she only stared. Blood covered the front of his shirt. More of it was on her hand and the concrete beneath him.
Emily looked at the knife. Then back at Dean. She remembered pulling the knife out of her apron, but she did not remember using it.
Seven months later, Emily had both hands in a hotel pan of overcooked potatoes when a corrections officer called her name across the county kitchen.
“Fields.”
Emily looked up.
The officer jerked her head toward the door. “Legal.”
Emily wiped her hands on her pants. “Did I do something?”
“No.” The officer looked tired enough not to care.
Emily washed her hands and followed.
County had taught her plenty of things she could have lived without knowing. It had also reminded her that she was good in a kitchen.
They put her on the food line because she had restaurant experience, and within a couple of weeks she had started fixing what she could. More seasoning when nobody was looking. Draining vegetables before they turned to mush. Trading favors for garlic powder.
It wasn’t much, but women noticed when food stopped tasting quite as bad.
Denny Vasquez was already sitting in the legal visit room when she arrived. He was smiling.
Emily stopped beside the chair. “What happened?”
“Sit down.”
She sat.
Vasquez opened the folder in front of him. He was twenty-nine, always overworked, and usually looked like he had not slept properly since law school. Today he looked almost cheerful, which made her suspicious.
“Ashford signed a withdrawal.”
Emily stared at him.
“He what?”
“He gave another statement. He’s calling what happened a misunderstanding. The DA reviewed it. They’re not going forward.”
She waited for the part that made sense, but it didn’t come.
“You’re getting released today,” Vasquez said.
“Why? I mean…why would he do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“He got stabbed eleven times, and now it was a misunderstanding?”
Vasquez rubbed his forehead. “I’m telling you what his attorney submitted.”
Emily looked down at the paperwork.
Eleven. She knew the number better than she knew most birthdays. Eleven stab wounds. She remembered one. The rest she had no recollection of doing.
“What changed?”
“I wish I knew.”
He meant that kindly, and that was when Emily understood nobody was going to keep asking.
For seven months, she had assumed eventually someone would figure out what happened in the part she couldn’t remember. A doctor. A lawyer. Somebody.
Vasquez leaned forward.
“You should be happy. You’re free.”
Emily looked at him. “Am I really free?”
Four hours later, a clerk handed her belongings back in a paper bag. A dead phone, a hair tie, and forty-one dollars. That was everything.
Emily had gone into the county in August wearing a T-shirt. She came out in March wearing the same one. Cold air hit her so hard on the courthouse steps that she stopped walking.
Then she noticed a silver Mercedes waiting at the curb. An older man leaned against it, silver-haired, wearing a dark coat Emily knew cost more than anything she owned.
He straightened when he saw her. “Emily Fields?”
She stayed where she was. “Who’s asking?”
“My name is Hollis. I work for Mrs. Aurora Holloway.”
He held out a business card.
Emily didn’t take it. “I don’t know her, but what does she want?”
“To offer you employment.”
That finally got her attention. “A job? What kind?”
“Live-in companion. Room and board included.”
Then he told her the salary.
Emily blinked in disbelief. “Sorry. How much?”
He repeated it, and Emily looked at the Mercedes, then at Hollis.
“You know where I just came from?”
“Yes.”
“You know why?”
“Yes.”
“And she still wants me living in her house?”
“She does.”
“Why?”
“Mrs. Holloway doesn’t mind the record. She minds the silence.”
“Whatever.” Emily took the card. “But I need to think about it.”
“Of course.”
Hollis turned toward the car.
“Wait,” Emily called.
He looked back.
Emily hated the next part before she even said it, but she said it anyway, “Do you have, like, fifty dollars?”
She caught a loose bit of skin on her lower lip with her thumbnail and started peeling at it before she realized what she was doing.
“I’ll pay you back. I just…” She looked down at the paper bag in her hand. “My phone’s dead, I don’t know where I’m sleeping tonight, and forty-one dollars isn’t going to do much.”
Hollis took out his wallet and handed her a hundred.
Emily frowned. “I said fifty.”
“I heard you.”
“I’ll pay it back.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I will pay you back.”
He didn’t argue.
After the Mercedes pulled away, Emily stood there with the hundred-dollar bill and Hollis’s card in her hand.
Then she noticed someone across the street.
A man in a dark hoodie and baseball cap stood near a closed shop, watching her.
Emily stared back.
He didn’t move.
She was cold, broke, exhausted, and had already had enough strangers watching her for one lifetime.
Emily lifted one hand and gave him the finger before turning and walking away.
