The Assistants(60)

“I knew it. I knew when you got fired.” Emily shut her eyes and let out her breath in this defeated way that got me sobbing again.

“Oh no, don’t do that.” Her eyes shot back open. “Don’t start crying again, we just dried you off.”

She reached for my glass of Jameson and waved it beneath my nose, but I batted it away. She tried a Girl Scout cookie next with the same result.

“What are we going to do?” I bawled.

“Listen to me.” Emily wrapped her arms around my shuddering torso. “We’re in this together, okay? Till the end. And I’m not going to jail, so neither are you. Do you understand?”

She squeezed me with a brute strength I never knew she had. It was impressive, her ability to rise up and be strong this way now that I had totally fallen to pieces. “Whatever we have to do,” she said, “we’ll do it. I promise you, okay?”

It was a question, I realized, that I was supposed to answer. “Okay,” I said.

“Do you believe me?”

“I believe you,” I said.

“Do you trust me?”

In this case I did. Because if anyone could figure out a way out of this it was Emily, even if it meant our having to run away and forge new identities. Reinvention was Emily’s specialty.

“I trust you,” I said.

“Good.” She let me out of her hold and stared straight ahead for a moment, calculating something invisible. “Our site really ticked them off. They’re probably just looking for a way to discredit us.”

“But the site’s funding is legitimate,” I said. “We haven’t faked an expense report in weeks. Do you think—?”

Emily began shaking her head. “Now that they’re on a hunt? No. And if Glen Wiles is already involved, forget it, it’s only a matter of time. We were safe before because no one had a reason to take a second look at anything, but now they do.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think, too.” I sat up to retrieve my drink. “Does this mean we should pack a go-bag? I don’t own any actual luggage, but I do have one of those giant blue IKEA sacks.”

Emily glanced at the window. It had finally stopped raining. “How drunk are you right now?” she asked. “Too drunk to—”

“I don’t think I’m sober enough to drive anywhere,” I said. “But I could definitely fly a plane.”

Emily blinked her eyelashes at me a few times. “Okay. For now let’s just get you through the night.”

She returned to my laptop’s keyboard. “You said you wanted ugly. How about something with Michael Cera? Or Steve Buscemi?”

“Emily, I f*cking love you.” My eyes welled, but I fought off another sob. “I’m sorry I’ve never told you that before.”

“I love you, too, Fontana,” she said. “I really f*cking do. And that’s why I think we should leave first thing in the morning.”





26




IT WAS FIRST THING early the next morning when they came. One man cop, one woman cop, wearing regular-people clothes. Business wear. Neither wielded a gun but they each probably had one.

“Tina Fontana?” the woman said when I opened the door.

“Yes.”

She was polite and she did all the talking. A black woman with auburn corkscrew curls. Past the doorway were a few squad cars, uniformed cops.

Emily was at my side. We were both in sweatpants, what Emily called house clothes, which for her meant pajamas that actually covered her body and provided warmth.

“Are you Emily Johnson?” the woman asked.

“Yes.”

The man cop pulled out handcuffs then, shoved me aside, not roughly, but assertively. He began reciting the rights, just like out of a TV show where the antihero finally gets what’s coming to him.

The man cop had his olive-skinned palm on the back of Emily’s T-shirt. He’d gone around behind her and secured her wrists.

I held my wrists out to the woman, waiting.

“Please step aside, Ms. Fontana,” she said.

Emily’s blue doll-eyes pooled, but she remained silent. Not because she had the right to, but because her shrieking was coming out without sound in a silent scream.

“You have the right to an attorney,” and all that, the man cop was explaining to her.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why are you only taking her?”

They guided Emily to the door and she finally eked out a sound. “Tina?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t understand, but listen to me, I’m going to figure out what’s happening.”

Yet even as I said it, I knew. Robert had spared me. Emily was going down for the both of us.

“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “I’m going to get you out, I promise.”

Makeup-free tears streamed down Emily’s face. She hadn’t even had a chance to put eyeliner on—that was the thought that ultimately broke me up. I knew how much Emily would be pained by sitting in a cell wearing her house clothes and no foundation. It would feel to her like they’d stripped her naked.

I followed after them, out to the street, where the cool autumn morning air stung my cheeks.

“Step aside, Ms. Fontana,” the woman cop ordered me.