Emmie could just make out Ryker's feeble protests as she exited the diner and turned down the road in the direction of her apartment, a small two bedroom above an art gallery a quarter of a mile away. Her route would take her through the heart of Moon Beach's commercial district; tourist shops peddling hand dipped candles and keychains made from seashells intermixed with outside kiosks advertising tickets for whale watching tours. Yesterday she'd noticed three different candy shops with window displays featuring the town's famous saltwater taffy.
After several blocks of tourist traps, she would take a left, walk passed a fire station and the town library to another row of businesses, these more centered on the needs of the town's several thousand full-time citizens –a hardware store, a grocery, and a tiny corner pharmacy. Kitty-corner and one door down from that was the art gallery and above it, home.
It would take her under ten minutes to make it there if she kept a brisk pace, not hard to do considering that her puffy jacket might as well have been a beach wrap in the afternoon's bitter, winter wind. She couldn't wait to get back to her apartment, throw on her pajamas, slip under a wool blanket, and forget she'd let a man rile her up today.
Emmie stopped dead in her tracks. Was she only eager to get home because Ryker had aggravated her?
Just because she wasn't interested in taking the Moon Beach tour with Ryker James didn't mean she couldn't explore it on her own. The park Iola had mentioned did look appealing. She hadn't gotten out much since arriving in town last week. It had taken all of her emotional energy to organize her new space with the few meager possessions she'd been given. When that was finished, it had finally sunk in that this was it; this was her life now. She could never in a million years have predicted it would come to this.
Two months previous, Aimee Larson, as she had then been known, was living in Chicago, working as assistant director of Human Resources for a local hospital. She was in a committed relationship and was sure any day that her boyfriend, Ian, would pop the question. Her mother lived in the same neighborhood, her sister and niece were only twenty minutes away. She had friends, hobbies, ambitions.
She'd been happy.
Six weeks ago, police had shown up at the lakefront condo she shared with Ian. Their arrival came in the middle of the night and, disorientated, it had taken her a moment to realize what was happening.
A pounding on the door. Muffled yells from someone on the other side. Ian telling her to stay in bed. He'd take care of it. A flash of metal followed by her shocked voice asking "is that a gun?"
She was fully awake by then. This was the moment she realized she didn't know as much as she'd thought about her boyfriend. She hadn't even known he owned a gun. Emmie pleaded with him to put it down. What would the cops do if they saw him brandishing it?
Finally, he'd agreed, leaving it in the drawer next to their bed.
That decision had probably saved his life. But it had ruined hers.
Ian went along peaceably with the police. Emmie found out later that he'd gotten himself involved with a very bad group of people. The money he'd used to purchase their plush condo and her brand new Maserati hadn't been earned because the financial firm he supposedly worked for was doing well; he'd been part of some sort of Ponzi scheme.
Ian wouldn't talk to her about any of it. She'd given up trying to get any useful information out of him during her visits to the state penitentiary, visits in which she spent fruitless hours studying him with growing distain from the other side of bullet-proof glass. The internet was much more forthcoming, however. Hundreds of people had been affected by the scheme. Three had committed suicide, and two more had died under suspicious circumstances. The general consensus was that the dead men had threatened to reveal what was going on and had been killed before they could follow through on those threats. Emmie had been mortified. He might be a liar and a thief, but surely Ian wouldn't have been involved in murder!
She racked her memory. There had been an evening when he'd come home late, maybe five or six months ago – it had been spring, she remembered, because she'd bought a bouquet of lilacs from a market near the hospital that afternoon. He'd been agitated and defensive when she'd tried to talk to him about what was bothering him.
"Bad day at work. Leave it alone, Aim."
She had left it alone, and the next day he seemed back to normal – still high strung, but no longer ill-tempered. Soon, she had forgotten the whole incident.
There was no forgetting it now, though. She checked the dates of death for the men involved in the Ponzi scheme. The second man to die, a forty-eight year old father of three, had been found the morning of May twenty-first. Lilac season.
When an old lady with pockmarked skin and colorless, sunken eyes spoke on the local news about how she'd lost everything thanks to the scam Ian had been a part of, Emmie couldn't help but sob. She'd accepted by then that he'd been integral to what had happened, but at the same time, he was only one of several players. And the top players were still free, not enough evidence to bring charges against them. That was, unless a certain good-for-nothing boyfriend of hers turned informant.
On her last visit to see Ian, she'd begged him to take the plea deal he was being offered: give the FBI the information they sought. This would help them build a case against the men who were certainly much guiltier than he was. In exchange, he'd receive a reduced sentence.
He did what she wanted, but not because she wanted him to do it. The difference between him being a hired gun and the mastermind of that murder was his to prove, and it also meant the difference between life without parole and life with the possibility of release, however far off it may be.
Richard and Alfonso Chamberlain, brothers with suspected ties to Chicago's organized crime families, were arrested soon after, Ian obtained his plea provided he testified against them, and Emmie received her first death threat.
Coming home from work, she found a knife sticking out of her front door, an ominous note dangling from it: "If he testifies, you die."
Pulse racing, she'd looked around frantically, afraid every shadow hid her would-be killer. No one was there. The nice FBI agent who arrived minutes later tried to calm her down, assuring her that she would be no use to the Chamberlains if she were dead. Her remaining alive was the only leverage they had against Ian. It was only the threat to her life that they wanted to make clear to him. They could kill her whenever they wished, especially if he went through with his decision to testify against them.
None of this was particularly reassuring.
The Chamberlains were none too happy with their former lackey. Since he was being held under strict security, the easiest way to target him was through her. Never mind that she'd decided to sever all connections with him, that she'd never forgive him. It was a cruel irony to realize that she would have been better off if she'd let him pull a gun on the cops that night. They probably would have killed him and even though it would have been awful and she would have mourned him bitterly, her life wouldn't have been turned upside down like it had been now. Certainly no one would have cause to threaten her life!
To Ian's credit, he didn't want Emmie to become his sacrificial lamb. He would testify only if the government ensured her safety.
One week ago, US Marshals showed up to her home and suggested that she pack her bags. They weren't forcing her to leave, of course. She could choose to stay, but they strongly advised against it. Her life was in danger, which surely she already knew. They couldn't guarantee her safety if she remained in Chicago. But if she came with them, she could have a new life, she could start fresh.
No, she couldn't tell her mother what was happening. She couldn't hug her sister goodbye. They were sorry about that, but it was for her family's sake as well as her own that they knew as little as possible.
Emmie had excused herself, gone into her bedroom and bawled her eyes out. She was close to her family. Her four year-old niece probably wouldn't even remember her auntie when she got older. And her friends—she'd known her closest friends since elementary school. How could she leave them?
She placed her hand on her belly, gently rubbing the flat surface that would not stay flat much longer. She had more than her own life to consider, though no one, including the US Marshals helping her right now, knew it. Emmie had never imagined she'd keep a pregnancy a secret. Normally this was the sort of thing she would have shouted out to the world the moment she'd found out. She would have figured out some clever way to tell people on social media involving ducklings or baby booties. But she hadn't wanted Ian to know so she'd told no one, not even her own mother. She had hardly allowed herself to think about it until this moment came.
She closed her eyes, envisioning the tiny bean sprouting inside of her. If she stayed, not only was she at risk, so was her baby.
Well then... Emmie knew what she had to do.
A/N: So... this is the Aimee/Emmie backstory update. There's a lot to absorb, but now you know: Emmie's ex is a dangerous guy, she's the target of mobsters and is secretive about her past because it's the only way to protect herself, her future child, her family, and all of her new friends too. Do you think she made a wise choice going into WITSEC (Witness Protection) or should she have stuck it out in Chicago? Did she make the right call not telling Ian and her family about the baby?
Thanks for filling in that voting star! Those votes will be collected and used to increase Emmie's WITSEC allowance so that she can buy herself some cute Moon Beach accouterments for her new home. Maybe a candle holder with seashells glued to it, or an end table made of driftwood. Or bullet proof windows. That might be good too.
Today's dedication is for borken-addict who offered helpful thoughts on my story blurb as well as suggesting actresses to play Emmie. She recently started a romance story of her own, which is pretty exciting. Yay, Summer!