She squints at the bright sunshine. Her legs unfold as she turns away from the window and she sighs into the pillow. Her fingers slide up the side of her neck, trace the bandage’s borders. She presses down on the gauze and winces at the dull flash of pain.
A voice whispers from the back of her mind: Hesitation cut.
“Morning.”
She half-turns. “Hi.”
Aaron sits at the foot of the bed, a box of food balanced on his lap. “How are you feeling?”
Emily rolls onto her back and pushes a button set into the bedrail. The hydraulics at the head of the bed hum to life, pushing her up into a sitting position. “Better.”
“I brought you breakfast.” He smiles a little. “The team wanted to come but I said no. You need your rest.”
“I’m okay, I think.” She shifts the tubing taped to her hand, glances up at the IV bag. “I had some weird dreams.”
He chuckles, opening the box. “I’m not surprised.” The room fills with the smell of bacon. “You’ve been sleeping for about twenty-four hours.”
“How’s Foyet?”
Aaron studies her face. “Stable. I have a couple of plain bagels here, some cottage eggs, and bacon.”
“I haven’t had cottage eggs in years!”
“Well,” he says, his smile widening, “you’ve having them now. How much?”
Emily sits up and watches him scoop them onto a plate. “That’s…okay, that’s good. I’m starving. Did they wake me up to eat?”
“The nurse kept trying.” Aaron stands long enough to pass her a plate. “But every time she woke you you’d just ask her if Foyet was dead. She’d go to find out, and by the time she got back you’d be asleep again.” He glances at her. “The doctor asked me if you’ve been working especially long hours lately.” He spreads cream cheese onto a bagel. “He thinks you might’ve been sleep deprived in addition to the blood loss.”
Emily laughs, digging into the eggs. “Did you tell him I was on vacation?”
Aaron nods. He keeps his eyes on her face. “Yes.”
“I’ve had plenty of sleep.” She takes a bite. “All I’ve done is sleep. You know, when I was a kid I used to think that these were cottage eggs because we only ate them here. At the cottage.” She grins a little and rolls her eyes, holding up a forkful. “But nope. It’s the cottage cheese.” She chuckles. “Kids are funny.”
“Em.” He looks into her eyes. “You know I have to ask you what happened.”
Her eyes cut to the plate. “This is a conflict of interest for you.”
“Off the record.” His voice softens. “What happened?”
Emily stirs her eggs. “What do you think happened? I was alone out there, in the rain, and then I wasn’t.” She pulls in a slow breath. “There was a knife on my neck. I said a lot of things.” She pushes the plate aside and looks up at him, face tilted, watching him from beneath her lashes. “I don’t remember all of them. The things I said. He hesitated.” The corners of her mouth tighten. She turns and looks out the window, at the gorgeous blue sky filling up the panes. “Hesitation cut.” The sunlight is bright inside the pale room. “Not like him.”
“No.” He says it soft and low, like she’s a nervous horse. “It doesn’t fit the profile.”
She lets out a sharp breath. “Stop handling me, Aaron. I know that’s what you’re doing.”
“I’m sorry. Do you have any idea what he was doing there?”
She looks at him and the longer he looks into her eyes, the more her face relaxes. “No.”
“I know he spent summers here growing up.”
“Yeah…so?” She picks up a clump of eggs with her fingers and eats it. “I spent a few myself.”
He sits back. “You don’t think that’s interesting?”
“Am I supposed to?”
“The case,” he says. “That story left at the scene. ‘A Rose For Emily.’ You don’t find that…strange? Coincidental?”
She sucks cottage cheese off her fingers. “It doesn’t fit the profile. It doesn’t even come within shouting distance of the profile. Look at those bodies. Look at those wounds. There are no defensive marks at all. Those women had to be sedated, maybe even unconscious to be killed that way, in such a…calm and orderly manner.” She looks at him. “So there’s no sadism, no terrorizing them. No feeding off the fear.” She taps her index finger. “There’s no Eye of Providence.” She taps her middle finger. “There’s no chain of evidence, no trophies linking one scene to the next.” She taps the tip of her ring finger. “There’s no contact with the police. It took months for these murders to even be linked to one another. It would be a huge deviation in signature. Does that sound like the Boston Reaper to you?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “He shouldn’t have let his guard down enough for you to get control of the knife. He should’ve killed you.” He takes a bite of his bagel. “But he didn’t.”
“The hesitation cut.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand it either.”
“Do you have any reason to think he followed you here?”
“Can I have the other bagel?”
“Sure.” Aaron puts the halves together like a sandwich and picks it up. “Do you want cream cheese?”
“Um…yes. Please.”
“A lot or a little?”
“Somewhere in between. Would you mind opening the window?” She holds up the call button. “Or, I could get an aide to do it.”
“No, no…”
He gets up and carries the bagel and the cream cheese to the bed. He hands them to her, then crosses the room and opens the window. A warm breeze moves into the room, smelling of wet grass and salt. A sound of chirping birds filters in.
“It’s a beautiful day out,” he says.
Emily smears cream cheese onto the bagel and presses the halves together. She takes a bite. “I don’t know why he would be here.” She wipes her mouth. “It’s not the brightest move he’s ever made. It’s an island, hello.” She rolls her eyes. “Not so easy to get on and off.”
“You think he wanted to be caught?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice goes somewhere deep. “That’s a thought, isn’t it?”
“Your point is a valid one.” He watches her as he takes a bite of bacon. “It is an island. Especially with the FBI here, it’s a ready-made trap.”
Her head moves like she wants to shake it. “I don’t know. That doesn’t seem…that doesn’t feel…” She sighs and looks at her food. “I don’t know.”
“You can’t guess?”
She looks at the bagel and tosses it onto her plate. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you want any bacon?”
She shakes her head. “No. Thanks.”
Aaron wipes his fingers on a napkin. “I think they’ll probably discharge you later today.”
“Maybe.” She glances at the window. “I hope so. I do feel a lot better.”
He opens a small carton of orange juice and sighs through his nose. “You’re off the case.”
“What?” Her eyes widen. “Why?”
He fidgets a little, glances away from her face. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stay here. You need rest.” He looks at her. “You need to be away from Nantucket.”
Her mouth opens. For a moment she can’t speak. “Aaron, I am fine. I’m fine.” Her expression hovers close to the edge of vulnerability. “I’m fine, it’s just a little blood loss. I am all right. If the doctors are ready to let me go, if I am stable enough to go, then I can stay here. I can work. You know and I know that you need as many pairs of eyes and hands as you can get.”
He shakes his head. “Emily, I’m sorry. The answer is no.”
“Well, you can take me off the case.” Her tone sharpens. “And you can suspend me if you want to, but you can’t make me leave.”
“You need to get off this island.” He stands up and hands her the orange juice. “You need to be at home.”
“You need to stop telling me what to do. You need to stop telling me what’s best for me. I’m fine.” She takes a sip and watches him. “You can’t make me leave.”
“If you don’t do as I ask, I’ll have to suspend you. I don’t want to do that.”
“Oh really, and how will you write that one up?” Emily snorts. “‘Agent is suspended from duty because, in her time off the clock, she refused to go home?’ If I stay out of your way I’m not obstructing anything.” She takes a long drink of orange juice. “Call it…I don’t know, moral support. I’ll rub your feet. I’ll liaise with the takeout joints. I’ll stand in the background and go rah rah rah.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
She looks into his eyes. “I don’t care.”
“Look…” He sighs. “I don’t want to fight with you about this.”
“Then don’t.” She crumples up her napkin and tosses it into the wastebasket. “Easy enough.”
“I don’t want to ask you this, but I have to.” Aaron sighs and rubs at his face with the heels of his hands. “Is…is there something going on here? Something I don’t know about?” He looks at her. “Is there something going on between you and Foyet?”
“Why the hell would you ask me that? Are you…are you fucking serious?”
“You keep asking about him.” He glances away from her. “You did it a lot when you were sleeping. That feels strange to me.”
“I don’t want him dead. I never wanted him dead. You can’t prosecute a dead man.”
“He tried to kill you.”
“Yes!”
He studies her face. “What were you doing out there?”
Emily sits cross-legged, holding her elbows. She gives him a cornered look. “Something happened to me there when I was a teenager and I’m not going to talk about it, because it’s none of your business, so don’t push me. I was…alone, and I couldn’t sleep, so I felt like taking a drive out there. The cottage there is empty. There’s a path that goes through the trees and down to the beach. It’s quiet. It’s empty. I wanted quiet.”
“So you drive out there in the middle of the night when it’s raining.” His eyebrows go up. “To get some quiet.”
“Yeah.” Her eyes narrow. “What’s it to you?”
“And there’s George Foyet with his knife.” He watches her without expression. “How did it happen? Did he come up behind you?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what happened.” She hooks her hair behind her ears. “I was on my knees and he came up behind me.”
“Why were you on your knees?”
“I saw something on the ground.” She glances toward the window. “I knelt to pick it up.”
“What was it?”
“It was a gold candy wrapper.” She looks at him. She swallows. “I thought maybe it was a piece of jewelry or something.”
Aaron nods. “What did he say?”
Emily closes her mouth. She stares at him for a moment, then looks at the blankets in her lap with high patches of color blooming in her cheeks. She breathes hard through her nose. “He didn’t say anything.”
“He didn’t say anything.”
“No.” She looks at him. Her jaw clenches. “Until he said he wanted to kill me.”
“He said it just like that. He said, ‘I want to kill you.’”
“Yes!”
“He didn’t say ‘I’m going to kill you.’ You’re sure.” Aaron leans forward. “He actually used the word want.”
“Yes.” Emily glares. “I’m sure. He used the word want.”
“And yet,” says Aaron, voice softening. “He couldn’t do it.”
“What do y”“
He looks into her eyes: “Hesitation cut.”
She recoils. “Get out.”
“Emily…”
“No. No. You get the hell out of here.” She sniffs. “You’re not going to interrogate me.” She plucks a tissue out of the bedside box. “I’m not going to let you. If you want that, then you send another team in here, and you get a formal statement,” she snaps. “You do it right.”
He closes his eyes, lets out a long sigh. “Please, Emily.” He looks at her. “Just tell me what happened. This doesn’t have to be on the record.”
“I already told you what happened.”
“Do you want to see him?”