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“Are you hurt?” she mouthed.
I was fine…unlike her.
Rage surged through me, hot and blinding. All my fear, all my guilt was replaced by a burning fury. How dare this loser hurt my friend? Narrowing my attention on him, I let my anger seep into my words.
“Did you feel afraid for your life before or after you forced yourself into Emma’s bedroom and gave her that new bruise?” I spat, my voice shaking with rage.
Emma shook her head in a desperate plea for me to stop, but I couldn’t. Not anymore. Not when her cries echoed in my memory, when her pleas for help were forever etched into my mind. I’d stood back long enough and let her suffer.
Never again.
“Em,” I called out to my friend, stepping toward her, but her uncle moved to block me. I hated him with every fiber of my being.
Fury burned across his expression, turning to Emma “Get back inside,” he commanded, but she ignored him, rushing toward me instead.
Emma’s uncle grabbed her arm, yanking her back toward the house, her feet stumbling from his brutal force. She cried out in pain, and before I knew it, my muscles flexed, and I raced after them.
“Stop hurting her, you asshole!”
When he coiled around to face me with death painted on his face, the siren of a police car wailed in the air. Seconds later, the throbbing blue-and-red lights raced up the street and pulled up the driveway, the headlights blinding me momentarily.
Emma wrenched herself free from him and darted to my side, both of us putting distance between us and her uncle. Still fuming, I held my friend’s hand.
“We need to tell the cops what he’s been doing,” I whispered. “They have to listen.” I no longer cared that I crashed my stepdad’s car. They could be fixed, but if my friend kept getting hurt, she couldn’t.
Glancing out at the cops, I also noticed the car’s lights casting a glow on the faces of the onlookers who emerged from their homes to see what was going on. Oh, great!
It didn’t take long for two officers to emerge from their cruiser and wander into the front yard, one of them studying my car and the broken fence. The female cop moved toward us, and I held onto my friend, the world spinning around me as she approached with a stern expression.
I was in so much shit.
“What’s going on here? We were called about a disturbance of the peace.” Her dark hair was pulled tight in a bun at the back of her hair, her gaze flicking between Emma’s uncle, Emma, and me.
Before I could answer, Emma’s uncle did. “This girl,” he spat, pointing a thick finger at me, “crashed into my fence, almost killed us, then tried to kidnap my niece!”
I recoiled as if struck. “That’s not true!” I protested, but my voice was drowned out by the murmurings of the crowd. My heart slammed harder, my mind screaming.
Emma’s face paled as she stepped forward.
“He’s lying!” she announced, her voice shaking, and I noticed the officer study her face, most likely her purple bruise. “Kat is my friend and just trying to help me!”
The officer studied us all suspiciously before turning her attention to the wrecked car. “Have you been drinking?” she asked me. Her tone was clinical, detached.
“No,” I replied, my voice a whisper.
She raised an eyebrow, appearing skeptical.
“Check me, check the car,” I insisted, desperate to prove my innocence. “I rushed over here to get to Emma.”
With a nod, the officer gestured for her partner to start searching the car. I watched as he pulled on gloves and began rifling through the vehicle. I hoped my stepdad wasn’t hiding anything in the car. I almost choked on my breath at how wound up I felt.
The crowd from the neighbors grew thicker, their eyes watching, judging. Was this the neighborhood watch coming to find something to gossip about tomorrow?
“Obviously, she’s drunk,” Emma’s uncle blurted. “She’s a menace, and I intend to sue her for everything.”
I swallowed hard, well aware I had nothing to give, but my stepdad would have an aneurysm and he had his house to lose. Emma tightened her hold on my hand, reassuring me I wasn’t facing this alone.
The male cop emerged from my car, holding a transparent, Ziplock bag filled with a lot of small white pills. “Found these tucked under the passenger’s seat,” he said, holding the item up for his partner to see.
