Darkness Torn Asunder Read Free Page B

arm, to let him know that neither of those things mattered. “If you were any danger to me, Dan would never have left me alone with you. Even with the bar open, he would’ve stayed until we were done. He’s done it before, when a couple of his customers got rowdy.”
    Emmett clearly wasn’t happy with her assessment of the situation. “Dan has only known me a short time. Neither of you knows what I’m capable of.”
    Did he want her to be afraid of him? That made no sense. “Okay, Emmett, you seem to want me to ask, so I will. Why were you in prison?”
    He stared past her, his eyes lost somewhere in the past. “When I was young and stupid, I waded into a fight where members of a gang were beating up on another teenager. While I was peeling the others off the kid, he and the gang leader got into it but good. The gang leader ended up hitting his head on the corner of a brick building and went down, knocked out cold. He never woke up. The teenager ran off before the police got there, and the gang was out for blood. They pointed at me and told the cops that I’d started the fight and deliberately killed their friend. With no witnesses to the contrary, the conviction was pretty much a slam dunk. Because I was twenty-two and the dead kid was underage, I got twenty-five years.”
    “So you’re out on parole?”
    He finally looked back down at her. “No, actually, I was exonerated when the kid I was trying to help finally came forward and told the truth about what happened. Seems he found religion or something. The DA and the police weren’t very easy to convince; they didn’t like finding out that they’d convicted the wrong guy. Luckily for me, the public defender appointed to me years ago had kept in touch and went to bat for me.”
    Stories like Emmett’s rarely had such happy endings. “I’m sorry he waited so long, but I’m glad your name’s been cleared. Good for you!”
    He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. It’s good, all right, though I’m still trying to get used to being on the outside. A lot has changed since I went away.”
    As he spoke, he scanned the area around them. She wondered if he’d always been that cautious, or if it was leftover from his time in prison. He seemed unusually calm about having lost fifteen years of his life for a crime he hadn’t committed, but maybe he was simply good at hiding his emotions.
    “Well, that’s my car, so this is where we part. Thank you again for walking with me, Emmett. See you in a week. Sooner if you have any problems.” She smiled up at him. “We’ll probably cross paths occasionally since this is a pretty close-knit neighborhood. Hopefully the next time won’t involve blood and stitches.”
    His laugh was a deep rumble. “Yeah. Thanks again for everything, Jana.”
    He waited until she pulled out of the parking lot. She waved one last time and headed uptown toward her house. Before she turned the corner, she glanced up at her review mirror for one last look. He had reached Dan’s bar, but had stopped to watch until she was out of sight.
    What an interesting man. One she’d be seeing again. For some reason, that thought had her smiling all the way home.

Chapter 3
    E mmett wiped down the counter and checked the time. Five more minutes before his boss would relieve him for his break. So far, Dan had turned out to be easy to work for. All he asked was for his employees to show up on time and give him a fair day’s work for the money. The handful of people who worked at the bar all seemed nice enough, but Emmett had no desire to see them outside of the job.
    It was easier to go it solo than to worry about having to hide his secrets from the people around him. If no one got close, they couldn’t learn what kind of freak he really was. Looking back, he’d always been pretty much of a loner, and fifteen years of being forced to live locked up with some of the most violent scum around only made him more so. For now, he was happy to spend