Chapter 2 - THE NIGHT WATCH
Emma hated the plan.
“You went to a biker gang?”
“They are not a gang.”
“They have a skull painted on their building.”
“It’s an eagle.”
“It’s an eagle holding a skull.”
She stood in our kitchen wearing her bakery uniform, her dark hair pulled into a loose knot. Exhaustion had made her cheeks look hollow.
Thomas and Amos waited outside while we argued.
I had expected relief.
Instead, Emma looked betrayed.
“You hired strangers without asking me.”
“I asked them to keep you safe.”
“You asked them to surround me.”
“There is a difference.”
“Not when I’m the person in the middle.”
Her words landed because they were true.
For three months, every decision in our house had been organized around Richard.
Which door Emma used.
Where she parked.
Whether she could attend an evening class.
Whether the bedroom curtains remained open for five seconds after sunset.
Now I had made another decision because I was afraid, without asking what fear had already taken from her.
Thomas knocked gently before entering.
Emma crossed her arms.
“I don’t want twenty men following me.”
“You won’t have twenty,” he said. “You’ll have two when you request them.”
“When I request them?”
“This is your safety plan, not your mother’s military operation.”
He looked toward me.
I disliked him for the sentence.
I respected him for saying it.
Thomas placed a legal pad on the table.
He asked Emma where she felt most vulnerable.
The college parking ramp.
The alley beside the bakery.
The ten steps between our driveway and the front door.
He asked what would make her feel safer without making her feel watched.
Emma agreed to visible escorts after evening classes and closing shifts. She refused to have riders sit inside the bakery. Instead, Amos arranged for one person to occupy a public parking space across the street.
Thomas installed no cameras without Emma’s permission.
A rider named Tasha, who worked in information security for a hospital system, helped us change the passwords on our phones, wireless network, and home-security account.
We found no hidden camera in Emma’s bedroom.
The photograph remained unexplained.
That first night, Thomas and Amos parked their motorcycles beneath the streetlight across from our house.
They did not rev their engines.
They did not carry weapons openly or wander onto neighboring property.
They drank coffee from paper cups and wrote down the license plates of unfamiliar cars that slowed near the curb.
At 1:12 a.m., a white Honda Civic appeared.
It passed once.
Then again.
On the third pass, Thomas stood beneath the streetlight where the driver could see him holding up his phone.
The Civic accelerated away.
Thomas did not follow.
“The plate is enough,” he said.
The vehicle belonged to Richard Kelley.
The following morning, Officer Paula Nguyen added the report to Emma’s existing file.
“It helps establish a pattern,” she said. “But driving on a public road is still legal.”
Emma gave a tired laugh.
“Everything is legal until he picks the right door.”
Officer Nguyen did not argue.
For the next four days, Richard stayed away from the house.
He appeared outside the bakery instead.
Amos sat in his truck across the street with a dash camera recording.
Richard stood beneath the awning of a closed pharmacy and stared through the bakery window.
He did not enter.
He did not approach Emma.
But when she left with her manager, he called across the sidewalk.
“Good night, Em-Bug.”
Emma stopped walking.
Amos was beside her before Richard crossed the street.
He did not threaten him.
He simply stood between them and said, “She doesn’t want contact.”
Richard smiled.
“I was being polite.”
“You have been informed.”
Amos repeated the statement for the dash camera.
Richard looked around him toward Emma.
“Your father wouldn’t like you hanging around people like this.”
Then he walked away.
Emma did not speak until we reached home.
She sat at the kitchen table, still wearing her coat.
“What did he call you?” I asked.
She stared at the wall.
“Em-Bug.”
“Did he call you that before?”
“No.”
“Who does?”
Her answer came slowly.
“My dad.”
David and I had divorced six years earlier.
He lived twenty minutes away in a condominium near the Thornapple River.
He visited Emma for breakfast twice a month, paid half her tuition under our divorce agreement, and complained constantly that I told him too little about her life.
He was also the only person who still called her Em-Bug.
Thomas stood near the doorway.
“Would Richard know your father?”
“I don’t think so,” Emma said.
Her hesitation was small.
But I heard it.
“When was the last time you saw David?”
“Monday.”
Monday was the day before Richard had appeared at the bakery for the first time.
“What did you talk about?”
Emma removed her coat.
“My classes. Work. Whether I was still living here.”
“Why would he ask that?”
May you like
She did not look at me.
“Because he said he might stop paying tuition.”
