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“No?” I cocked my head, listening, but the only thing I heard was the sound of the faucet running.
“Get into the nursery,” he said, suddenly all business.
“Uh, what’s wrong?”
“Go, Tara. Now.”
I left the bathroom and went into the nursery. Mason was safe in his crib.
“What’s happening?” I asked him.
“Stay here.” He pulled his gun from his pants. “No matter what you hear, don’t leave this room.”
“Emory?”
He disappeared.
I stared at the door, fear and terror running through me. What the hell was happening? I hadn’t heard anything, but apparently he’d heard something that set him off. One second he was a cocky asshole making jokes and the next he was something completely different.
The transformation was amazing. His whole body had gone tense and ready, like an animal about to pounce.
I waited for a few minutes, but I couldn’t just sit in there. I set up Mason’s baby monitor and took the monitor with me as I crept out of my room.
Sure, Emory told me not to, but my parents were still downstairs, and I couldn’t just hide in a nursery while they were potentially in danger. If anything happened with Mason, I’d hear it on the monitor.
But I didn’t hear a thing. There wasn’t a single sound, not even coming from downstairs. Normally my parents were talking or listening to the radio or watching TV. It was basically unheard of that the house was this quiet with this many people in it.
I moved down the steps and looked over the bannister. My parents were both sitting at the kitchen table, looks of terror on their faces.
And then I saw him. He was a man I didn’t recognize, bearded, tall. He was wearing a black T-shirt and camouflage pants, and he was holding a large gun, like a rifle or something like that.
My heart skipped a beat. He was looking out the back window, and so he didn’t see me. I moved back slightly but kept my eyes on him.
Terrorist. There was a terrorist in our house. This wasn’t the Omar man, since this man was white, but he was definitely one of the terrorists Emory talked about.
Where was Emory? He’d snuck out of the room, but he wasn’t anywhere in sight. My parents were just sitting there, looks of abject terror on their faces, as the man looked out the window.
What happened next happened fast, almost too fast for me to follow. As the man straightened up to look at my mother, Emory appeared behind him.
And cut his throat open.
Blood spouted from the wound as Emory held his hand over the man’s mouth. He took the man slowly down to the floor, the blood coming out in gushes, so much blood. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing.
My parents stared, their eyes wide. They didn’t make a move or a sound, and Emory simply put his finger to his lips to silence them. He kept the man down as he slowly stropped struggling, the blood pooling around the kitchen floor.
Emory moved again out of my sight. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I felt like I couldn’t move. The world was frozen. My parents both slowly moved off their chairs and got under the table, huddling against the wall as far from the dead man’s body as possible. His blood was covering the whole floor.
“Hey! The girl!”
My head shot up. Across the hall in the formal sitting room was another bearded man, this one shorter, his skin a bit darker. He was dressed in the same clothes as the other guy, and his gun was pointed right at me.
“Moe, it’s the girl, on the steps.” The man stepped toward me.
We made eye contact, and in that moment, I believed in evil. There was no emotion there, nothing to show that he felt anything for what was happening. He walked toward me slowly, his gun pointed right at me.
“Don’t move, bitch,” he said.
Then gunshots rang out. I shrank back against the wall, terror rolling through me. I looked down at myself, but I wasn’t shot. I looked back up as the man collapsed, red blooming along his chest.
Emory was standing there, his face grim, smoke curling from his weapon.
“Upstairs,” he ordered me.
“What’s happening?” another voice called from the other room. Emory moved fast, staying low. He moved toward the kitchen just as the man came around the corner and stumbled over the first body.
Emory knocked his gun away and cracked him in the skull. The man stumbled back and Emory went at him, punching him in the throat, the chest, and the stomach. The man toppled back and Emory was on him, disarming him with incredible speed.
The man began to struggle, pushing back against Emory, but Emory was clearly stronger. I watched as Emory took his knife and slid it across the man’s neck, killing him the same way he’d killed the first one.
