Emily felt guilty walking out to her car. Lance stood at the end of the driveway, waiting for the big yellow torture chamber they called a bus.
She got in and put her coffee cup in the drink holder, her books on the seat. She adjusted her rearview mirror, turned the ignition —
A pop shook the car, startling her. Suddenly, she saw Lance waving at her, arms arching wildly over his head. Confused, she rolled her passenger window down. “What is it?”
“Fire!” Lance yelled. “Get out!”
Emily jumped out. Smoke, white and thick, floated out from under her car, and as she stumbled back, she saw the small flames, way too close to the gas tank. Lance dropped his backpack and dashed into the garage, then reappeared with a fire extinguisher.
Emily stood back as he sprayed foam at the origin of the fire under the car. It went out, leaving only a cloud of smoke.
Out of breath, Lance leaned into the car and turned off the engine. His cheeks were mottled red as he stumbled back. Emily gaped at the car, stunned. “What was that?”
She hit the concrete and looked under her car. There was duct tape stuck to the wheel well, broken glass scattered in the foam, the smell of gas. A cord ran from the duct tape to the front of the car. Lance bent down and crawled closer. “Dude, that’s a bomb!”
No way. Something must have come loose . . . a wire . . . a belt . . . But duct tape? Emily moved into the foam and reached for the cord, but Lance grabbed her hand. “Don’t touch it. Call the police. They should see it just like that. Want me to call Kent?”
“No, I’ll call 911.” But she didn’t. Instead, she just crouched there, staring. A bomb under her car? Who would do that? It could have killed her if the flames had gotten to the fuel tank. Why would someone want her car to explode?
She heard the rumble of the school bus a couple of blocks up the street. “Bus is coming,” Lance said. “But I’m not going. I’m staying with you.”
Emily didn’t argue. She didn’t want to be here alone if someone was trying to kill her. What if there was another booby trap somewhere?
She got her purse out of the car and dug out her phone. Would the police even believe her, if they knew of her past? Her face had been all over the news here when she was missing two years ago, and lots of people still remembered her. Her DUIs in Jeff City would be on their computers like neon reminders that she used to live dangerously.
Swallowing the fear, she made the call to 911. When she was assured that the police were on their way, she handed her phone to Lance. “Will you call Mom and tell her?”
Lance took the phone as the bus squeaked to a stop. He waved it by. The voices of the kids faded as the bus huffed past.
Emily’s mind raced as he called their mother. This couldn’t be real. Someone was playing a joke on her. It couldn’t be a real bomb, just a smoke bomb, something to scare her. There was no one in Atlanta who would deliberately want to hurt her, was there?
Back in Jefferson City, she’d run with a pretty rough crowd. She’d even made a few drug dealers mad when she went into their lair and dragged a friend out last year. But Jeff City was five hundred miles away, and almost a year had passed since then.
She heard Lance connecting with her mother. “Mom? You’re not gonna believe what happened. I’m standing here waiting for the bus and Emily gets in her car, and . . .”
Arms crossed, she paced up the driveway, avoiding the foam on the concrete, and tried to think. Yes, she had a few friends in the drug culture here, but only because she worked part-time at a local rehab. She’d needed a job when she moved here, but people were reluctant to hire her. Though she’d been cleared of any wrongdoing after her face was plastered all over the news, people weren’t entirely sure that she was trustworthy. Some of them couldn’t remember how the case had ended. They only knew that she’d been a suspect in a woman’s death.
Then she’d had the idea to apply at the Haven House Treatment Center not far from her area of town, and they’d hired her to work in the office on Saturdays. Some of the clients could be unpredictable if they were using again after graduating from the program. Some might even resent her being part of the staff that controlled their lives for twelve weeks. But she was never in charge. She only checked visitors in and out, answered the phones, and searched and breathalyzed clients when they came back from passes.
Would anyone come after her now to kill her? She shivered, though the air was muggy and warm. Where were the police?
“Emily, Mom wants to talk to you.”
Sighing, she took the phone. “Hey.”
“Emily, what’s going on?” Panic, anger, and accusation rippled in her voice.
Emily bit back the urge to defend herself. “I don’t know. The police are on their way. The fire department, too.”
There was a pregnant silence, then her mother blurted it out. “Emily, what have you dragged us into now?”
The words hit her harder than the bomb had. She heard sirens in the distance. “Mom, I don’t know what’s going on! I didn’t drag us into anything!”
“People don’t put bombs under your car for no reason! Have you been hanging out with those people again?”
“What people?”
“Drug dealers! Crazy addicts!”
“Mom, you know I haven’t.”
“I knew when you were staying out so late that something wasn’t right. And working in that place with all that temptation.”
Emily couldn’t take anymore. She saw the fire trucks turning onto her street. “Mom, I’ve gotta go. They’re here.”
She clicked off the phone, knowing it would only set her mother off, and walked to the end of the driveway to meet them.