…a rush to judgment…12/26/22

	Emma Evans, once Pearson, lost the tail in the construction zone around Akron just after one in the morning. To be safe, she took the exit toward Kent, then pulled into a storage lot, cut the lights, and stared down each vehicle, very few at this time of night, that passed along the road. After scanning the roadway, she checked the rearview mirror. The twins slept in their car seats, chocolate-smudged cheeks resting against slumped shoulders, oblivious to the fear that nestled inside her, and the fury that twined like strangler vines around her shattered heart. She was so tired, but she had to press on. She could make it to Erie, then stop to feed Randy and Amanda, entertain them until naptime, and grab a few hours of sleep before the winter day melted into night, providing the cloak she needed to conceal her escape, until she could disappear into six million acres of wilderness and save her children. 
	A semi lumbered south, the long trailer cutting off the lights illuminating the entry ramp back onto 76. Emma rested her head against the wheel. Just for a minute, she whispered. When Mandy whimpered, she jerked upright, drool trickling down her chin. She checked the dash clock. They’d been idling in the lot for almost half an hour. She stiffened and stretched. On the other side of the chain link fence encircling the storage lockers, a shadow within the shadows prowled. Condensation from their breathing threatened to fog the windows. She scrubbed at the glass. What was out there? The dark figure crept closer until, captured by a stray beam of starlight, Emma made out the muzzle of a giant Doberman. Swallowing down a yelp, she turned on the headlights and exited the lot, pursued by several warning barks and a lunge that made the fence rattle.
The past, and her gullibility, sneered at her as she followed the entrance ramp back onto the Interstate, guided by the disembodied voice of the navigation app, and headed east, the unknown ahead preferable to the wreckage behind her. Strong winds buffeted the late-model Land Rover she had purchased from a seller on Hopewell’s Internet Marketplace for all cash and no questions. Her parents had helped load her belongings, avoiding the questions uppermost in their minds. Where are you going? When will we see you again? She didn’t offer answers. Keeping them in the dark was the only way she knew to keep them safe, so she shrugged off reminders to call when she got there, wherever there was, buckled the kids into their seats, and pretended they were making a fast-food run. Her father waited to open the garage door until the street had emptied. 
She had taken every precaution. No one knew her destination, not her co-workers at Hopewell Elementary, not the pediatrician whose office handed over the twins’ records without comment, not even the FBI guy assigned to her case. No, not hers. Gary’s. The husband she thought she knew with the secret no one could have guessed. When she closed her eyes, the photographs of his murder flashed across her mind like the trailer of a horror movie. Full color and black and white. Gary lying face up in the doorway of a modest bilevel. His ‘other’ wife slumped in a chair at the kitchen table. The infant almost invisible in the highchair, blood pooling on the tray.
Emma stifled the sobs demanding release. Her eyes drifted closed. She yawned, pinched her cheeks, rolled her neck. When her cell phone chirped with incoming news blasts, the screen lighting up like a firefly. She hadn’t shared her new number with anyone, had disabled her Facebook and Instagram accounts and the location tracker on every device she owned, intent on erasing Emma Pearson and reconstructing Emma Evans, the woman she had been before she met Gary at Ohio State University, before she fell in love and had his babies, before the visit from law enforcement. She wished she could erase October 15 from her mind but purging Gary Pearson seemed impossible. His betrayal tainted every memory of the past six years. There was no coming back from that. 

…a matter of logistics…
	Chuck Muster tucked the delivery shirt into the brown trousers, checked the boxes piled up in the back of the truck, and punched in the co-ordinates for 110 Poplar Lane, Hopewell. Dispatch would be calling to check on his progress as a new hire. They had an app to read his location, as well, which had delayed his approach to the Pearson home until one of the neighbors ordered another box of cleaning supplies or a year’s worth of toilet paper. Muster sniffed his disgust at the petty consumptions of the majority of humans even as he found it helpful in his work. Surveillance came easy when the average Jane or Joe had no idea who cruised down their streets. His own Jane, two states away in Ames, Iowa, never questioned how he paid the mortgage or the utilities, nor did she question how they could afford trips to Disneyland with the children every year. Muster wasted no time in moral pondering. He was good at what he did, discrete, efficient, untraceable. The baby had been unfortunate collateral damage. If the woman hadn’t risen to shield the infant, that loss would have been avoided. Muster sloughed off the brief stitch of remorse. He had a job to finish. Gary Pearson and his secret family were erased, but the real threat remained. Turning down the Hopewell-Springboro Pike, he rehearsed the plan. Find Emma Pearson and the twins. Locate the thumb drive her husband had hidden. Eliminate all the loose ends the undercover cop had left behind. Just a matter of logistics.
	He cruised Poplar, pretending to check his phone for the address. The FBI had parked two doors away, as if they could hide their presence. For the past three days, Muster had used a van to check out the neighborhood. The magnetized A-One Plumbing signs on the side panels meant no one even blinked at his slow progress along the curb. Yesterday he’d noted the Pearson woman’s parents coming and going with armfuls of grocery bags. The family must be planning for a siege. The thought amused him. He was the battering ram to bring down their castle. If the woman’s mother and father were there when he took it down, that’s life. The Fed behind the wheel looked up as Muster passed, waved, and returned to his tablet. Muster saluted with his forefinger, pulled up in front of the Pearson driveway, and retrieved the package intended for one of the neighbors. He tightened his grip on the box, patting the underarm holster and the weapon inside. He didn’t intend to use it tonight, but who knows? Maybe he’d get lucky and finish this job in time to join his Lanie for a New Year’s Eve fuckfest.
	Normal procedure was to deposit the package on the porch or front step, knock or text, and return to the truck. Instead, Muster rang the bell, tapping his foot as he waited. Delivery men were always in a hurry. He didn’t want to raise any unwanted attention. Nothing to see here, folks, just a driver hurrying to do his job. No one answered the first of his rings. He pressed the ring button again, aware of the camera poised to capture his face. He hoisted the box higher, turned in a circle, and noticed the fed from the passenger seat had gotten out of the car. If someone was home, they were ignoring his summons, so he shook his head, checked the address again, and hopped off the porch with slumped shoulders. He crunched his way across the half-frozen grass to the neighboring house, rang their bell, and tucked the package against the front door.
	Tiny ice pellets drummed his shoulders and the brim of his cap. The federal agent had retreated into his vehicle. Muster twisted his lips into an expression of dismay as he jogged toward his van. If Emma Pearson and her children weren’t in their home, where were they? Time for more aggressive action. He’d like to be home for the final holiday of the year, but the job came first. Money was money, and the boss had been quite clear in his instructions. Find the thumb drive. Kill Gary Pearson’s family, both of them. No one fucks me over and survives.

…into uncharted territory…
	Erie, Pennsylvania, was cold and blustery, but the hotel had an indoor pool, which helped relax the twins and send them into naptime. It seemed like she’d barely closed her eyes when the phone blared a warning. Resetting the alarm, she dragged the cooler from the car to prepare a light supper, then entertained the children with a Lego movie until Randy nodded off. Amanda stayed awake until, buckled in once more, she, too, drifted off. Emma stopped for coffee at a McDonald’s and continued the push toward Syracuse, the glove of night enclosing her in a soft grip of anxiety and relief. No suspicious headlights followed her, although the blasts of light from the phone whenever a news story broke provided eerie backup to the noise in her head.  Shrugging off the why’s and what if’s that threatened to drown her, Emma plotted her next step. One more day to hide and sleep, then a final push north into the wilderness where she could hide and keep them all alive.
	A brisk wind stirred the snowflakes drifting down from the leaden sky as she turned north. The roads had been cleared after the last storm, drifts piled along the roadway silent witness to the area’s reputation for record snowfall amounts. Randy and Amanda awoke cranky, their questions about when they were going to get there and would Daddy be coming with them pounding at her until she wanted to scream, but she kept her voice low and calm. No need for her children to know how scared she was. Their world had been upended enough. She stopped at Parish to top off the gas tank. Running out of gas was not a pleasant thought deep in upstate New York. The scenery grew gradually wilder, less inhabited. When the GPS told her to turn, she did, passing Fort Drum and then up 3A and back to 3 West. The closer she got to Wanakena, the more apprehensive she became. What if they couldn’t find a place to live? What if she couldn’t find work? The question uppermost in her mind, however, the one that kept her gripping the wheel until her fingers went numb, was this: would the men who killed Gary come after her?
	The sign announcing Gateway to the Wilderness loomed at the fork in the road. She veered left, then right, then right again, pulling up in front of Otto’s Abode as Amanda kicked the back of the seat. “I’m hungry, Mommy.”
	“I know, baby,” Emma said. “We’re going to get out here, have some lunch, and then find out how to get to Aunt Riley’s house.”
	“Auntie Riley?” Randy hopped up and down, snow puffing up around his boots. His little faced beamed up at her. “We’re going to see Auntie Riley?”
	Boots pounded along the porch. A deep voice boomed at them. “Snowstorm’s coming. Foolish to be on the road when it hits, especially with small children. You should hurry back where you came from.”
	Emma shivered at the rebuke in the man’s voice. Herding Randy and Amanda up the stairs, she stared into dark brown, brooding eyes and the scowling face of a man who stood, arms crossed like a guardian gargoyle, at the top of the stairs. She recalled Riley’s most recent description of the hamlet’s local inhabitants and the negative energy that had arrived with the return of the man looming over them.
	“You’re Anton Storms, aren’t you?” Emma said, noting the broad shoulders, the brow shadowed with grief, the mouth that might, if relaxed, convey warmth and invitation. A kissable mouth, if she were interested in that anymore. A masculine, sensual man whose demeanor matched his name. Determined not to allow him to dominate the moment, she met his stare with one of her own. “Riley and Josh--”
	“Are you Emma?” He growled out her name, his gaze shifting to the two children cowering beside her. “Those the twins?”
She wrapped a gloved hand around each small head and nodded. “Riley said you’d come back to Wanakena.”
Ignoring her friendly overture, Storms brushed past her, their thick coats rubbing elbows. He paused at the bottom of the steps, his eyes filled with fury and regret. “Go back where you came from, Mrs. Pearson. We don’t need any more outsiders here.”
	Randy twisted to watch the man stomp his way to an older model camper truck. “Is he Auntie Riley’s friend?”
	Emma followed her son’s pointing finger as Anton Storms settled a stocking cap over his scarred head. Before she could reply, her son grabbed her hand and squeezed, his next words a blow to her heart. “Don’t be angry, Mommy. Maybe he’s just sad, like you.”