When Smiles Fade (50 page)

When Emma left after dinner, she exchanged phone numbers with Remo, promising to call and check in. “Don’t worry,” she reassured him, “the police will find her.”

Driving back to Kensington with Izzy, she reminisced about Alessa and how helpful she had been when the two had first met at Doubles. They hadn’t been the closest of friends, but Alessa had been the first person to help her without asking for anything in return.

Emma’s thoughts drifted to Harlin and the way he had harmed Alessa and her family. Her hatred for him flared up again and she wished she knew his whereabouts so that she could kill him herself. She wondered if people were just born mean or turned that way because of the way life had treated them. She remembered being an innocent child, but time and the ordeal of living with her father’s cruelty had robbed her of empathy for other people. No one is ever born mean, she decided. Life turns them that way.

The next afternoon, Emma felt tense and restless before going to Doubles. She tried to relax, but she knew it was impossible. She couldn’t stop obsessing about Alessa and the uncertain fate that awaited her and her family. The disturbing news about her missing friend fueled her aggression toward those sadistic people who walked the earth and took pleasure in ruining the lives of others. In an effort to distract herself, she reached under her mattress and pulled out Gracie’s journal.

Emma sat on her bed and looked at the journal in her hands, suddenly reluctant to open it. Eventually she did and fanned through its pages. It was about three-quarters full with Gracie’s thoughts, and as she continued to rifle through the diary, feeling the soft breeze from the turning pages on her face, she noticed an entry on a page toward the very back of the book that she hadn’t noticed the first time she’d read it. She flipped back the pages until she found the entry. As her mind absorbed the words, her gut twisted.

I didn’t think my life could suck any more than it already did. I wasn’t able to sleep for days because of what Ethan had done to me. So my friend gave me five of her mom’s Valiums. I was so happy when I felt my body relax as I became sleepy from the pills. Then I woke up to find Pete having sex with me. I had been in such a deep sleep from the pills I hadn’t even felt him taking off my underwear. When I tried to scream, he jammed my panties into my mouth. I tried fighting him, but I couldn’t make him get off of me. He told me he’d kill me if I kept it up. So I stopped fighting him and let him do what he wanted. When he was done, he told me he would much rather have fucked my sister. He laughed and said that all the time he was having sex with me, he had to pretend it was Em, because I was an ugly little freak who got all the bad genes from my parents. He said if I told anyone about what he had done to me, he would deny it and everyone would think I was lying. He said Ethan would stick up for him, anyway. When I got up to go to the bathroom, I was bleeding. He hurt me really bad, even more than Ethan ever had. Pete had just kept pushing himself inside of me and it had taken forever for it to be over, even after I had stopped fighting him. God, how I hate him! I hate both of them!

Emma shook with the rage that flooded her body. To think that she had defended Pete when Salvatore was threatening to kill him for raping her! She had, in fact, talked Salvatore out of the idea, claiming it was Ethan who had egged his friend on, and had even suggested that Pete was, at heart, a decent guy who just had too much to drink.

But now she saw him for the person he was—a scum-sucking maggot with a twisted sexual appetite. The journal entry made it all too clear to Emma. She now realized with a shock that Pete was Isabella’s father. She now understood why Gracie had lied to her all along about one of the boys from school being Isabella’s father. Since the paternity test results showed that Ethan wasn’t Izzy’s father the only other logical answer was that Pete was the father of her niece. Emma’s resolve hardened: she was going to make Pete pay for what he had done to Gracie.

By now she was pacing the bedroom, wracked by a thirst for blood that was no less intense than that of a vampire you read about in young adult fiction. She pulled the duffel bag out of the closet and reached for the cloth that concealed Ethan’s gun. She removed it from its covering and clicked open the chamber. It was loaded. Emma was no longer in control of her thoughts or actions as she put the gun into her purse and walked towards the front door without a single thought about Izzy.

“Are you leaving already?” Sydney asked, looking up from the book Izzy was reading to her.

“Yeah, I gotta go. I got called in to work early,” she lied.

Izzy ran over and gave her aunt a kiss. “Be careful,” the child advised her wisely.

Emma didn’t respond. She was too consumed by her thoughts of getting even with Pete to consider the child whose future she might be jeopardizing by embarking on a mission of this kind and endangering her own life. She walked briskly to her car and spun off toward Ambler. Half an hour later, she was parked down the street from Pete’s house. She shut off the engine and waited. At ten o’clock, she watched the pig strut from his house, get into his car, and drive off. She followed him in her own car to a small bar twenty minutes away. She parked in the rear of the lot so he wouldn’t see her, then watched him get out of his car and enter the bar.

As Emma walked through the entrance of the bar soon after, she didn’t notice any of the customers who crowded the place, although they were drinking heavily and shouting to be heard above the music playing through the old, fuzzy-sounding speakers. She spotted Pete standing among a group of men and watched one of them hand him a beer. As he lifted the beer to his lips, Pete froze; he had noticed Emma approaching. He hadn’t seen her since the night of the rape well over a year ago, and the sight of her made him nervous.

She eased up beside him with fluid grace. “Well, look who it is!” she said, leaning in close to Pete.

“Listen, Emma,” he babbled, “all that shit that happened the last time I saw you, that was all Ethan. I never wanted to do that to you.”

Emma cut him off before he could utter another word, knowing that if she allowed him to continue telling his lies, she just might kill him before she had a chance to say everything she wanted him to hear.

“Pete, say no more,” she said reassuringly. “I know you’re a decent guy and that Ethan was a bad influence on you. See, part of the issue that Ethan and I had was my attraction to you. He sensed it, and it made him jealous. I knew it would only be a matter of time before you and I hooked up.” Then she slid her hand over his bicep.

“Wow, for real?” Pete asked in disbelief. “I mean, I’ve always had a crush on you. Look at you!” he exclaimed, gesturing with his hand down her body. “You’re gorgeous! Who wouldn’t want you?”

“Good, now that we have that settled, how about buying me a drink?” Emma suggested seductively.

They settled themselves on two seats at the bar. Emma was going through the motions possessed with revenge for Gracie and no longer in control of her emotions. Meanwhile Pete’s friends couldn’t help gawking at the incredible creature talking to him. With her sexy blond hair hanging loose down her back, her skin-tight jeans outlining her perfect curves, and her firm breasts peeking over the top of her blouse with its low “V” neckline, they thought she was exquisite and all of them envied Pete.

After they had finished their second drink, Emma slid off the bar stool and moved close to Pete so that she was standing between his legs. She put her hand on the back of his neck and moved in to kiss him.

“God, Em!” he muttered. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted you to be mine? I never thought Ethan was good enough for you.”

“I know, Pete,” Emma replied calmly. “I’ve felt the same way about you. It was always you I wanted. I think Ethan sensed how attracted we were to each other. Now there is nothing to stop us from being together, is there? What do you say we get out of here?”

Pete pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and slapped it down on the bar. Turning to her, he said, “Let’s go,” before getting to his feet and leading her out of the bar.

Emma took his hand. “Where’s your car?” she asked.

“Over there,” Pete replied, gesturing in its direction.

Once he had unlocked the car doors, they slipped into the backseat. Emma lay on top of him as they kissed passionately. As he began roughly unbuttoning her shirt, she reached sneakily into her back pocket, diverting his attention from what she was about to do by using her other hand to rub the crotch of his pants. Distracted by his lust for her, he couldn’t think clearly.

“How’s that feel, Pete?” she murmured.

“Great, Emma…” he managed in a voice hoarse with desire. “It feels…just…great. Don’t stop!” he implored in a demanding voice and pulling hard at her breasts, his sexual appetite for her rising as he began to get more forceful with her.

When the blade of her knife had sliced through his jeans and was embedded in his erection, the pain finally wiped out the sensation of his arousal. Pete snapped back into awareness and his eyes focused on the knife sticking out of him. It was then that he realized what she had done to him. He screamed, going into panic mode, as the pain signals reached his brain and the horror of what Emma had done sank in.

“You fucking cunt!” he screamed, trying to reach up and grab her neck.

It was at this precise point that she reached into her purse, pulled out Ethan’s gun, and placed it against Pete’s head. He lay on the backseat of the car, perfectly still, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

“You know,” she began softly, “it was just a couple of hours ago that I read an entry in Gracie’s journal. She wrote it the night you raped her.”

Then she sat in silence, watching him.

“Please, I’m sorry. I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said, hoping for mercy, but she cut him short.

“Oh, there’s no point begging, Pete,” she said evenly, as though they were engaged in a polite conversation. “There’s nothing you can say that will help you now. You raped my little sister and you are Isabella’s father.”

He saw the madness in her eyes. She was like a beast that had stalked and cornered its prey and he knew there were more horrors in store for him. He tried to reason with her again. Emma’s persona had changed. This time her contempt overpowered her ability to be calculated in her actions.

“Emma, please,” he whined, “I was drunk.”

“Emma,
please
,” she mimicked, her manner and voice unnaturally composed. Then her expression changed and she twisted the knife in him viciously, watching him scream from the unbearable agony she was putting him through. “You thought you’d got away with it, didn’t you?” she murmured. “You assumed your horrible little secret had been buried with Gracie. By the way, she also wrote in her journal that you had told her she was ugly. You hurt her. Do you hear me, you fucking loser?!” she yelled.

Pete’s survival instincts kicked in. He knew now that it was a matter of life or death—his own. He began struggling to push her off him. If he could manage that, he thought, he would be able to pull out the knife she had stuck in him and use it on her.

It seemed as if she had read his mind. “No, Pete, I don’t think so,” she said, her tone malicious.

Before he could react, Emma yanked back her index finger and coolly shot him in the face. Fragments of his skull and bits of brain matter flew out and clung to the car’s windows and backseat. At the sound of the gunshot Emma was jolted back into reality. For the first time in hours her thoughts went to Izzy. Her heart raced as panic rose and a lump formed in her throat.
Oh fuck! What have I done? Why wasn’t I more careful?
Then as if she were outside of her body looking down on herself, all of the destruction that surrounded her came into clear view and she grimaced at all the blood in the car. Her mind shifted into overdrive as she searched for something to wrap around her hand so she didn’t leave finger prints in the blood. On the floor she spotted a pair of Pete’s work gloves. She picked them up and shoved her hands into them and proceeded to exit the car. Just before she got out, she pulled the knife out of Pete’s body and looked down at what was left of his mangled face.

“Now who’s ugly, motherfucker?” Emma asked feeling conflicted by the fear of getting caught and the satisfaction of avenging Gracie’s honor.

Then she quickly stepped out of the car, strode briskly to her own, and sped away. Inside the bar, Kid Rock’s song American Bad Ass blared so loudly that it drowned out the noise of the gunfire and none of the drunken patrons heard a thing.

As she drove fast through Ambler heading toward Double Visions, Emma pulled her cell phone from her purse, found the phone number she needed, and pressed “send.”

A moment later, Salvatore answered. “Emma?” he asked with anticipation.

“Salvatore, I need your help,” she stated, the sound of her own heart drumming in her ears. “Can you meet me at Doubles?”

“Of course, Bella. Are you okay?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

“I’m fine. Just get there as soon as you can,” she told him, a note of urgency creeping into her voice as she dwelled on Isabella and her lack of consideration.

For the remainder of the drive Emma was traumatized by her own behavior. She was irritated with herself for acting with reckless abandon. She had always been so careful and patient, but this time her self-control had betrayed her and now she was worried. Ten minutes after Emma parked her car at Doubles, Salvatore pulled into the parking lot with Tony and Vincent. She stayed in her car and watched them approach.