Chapter 10 - The Man in the Parking Garage
We moved Emily under police protection again.
This time, she refused to disappear completely.
“I’ll follow security rules,” she said. “But I’m going back to the hospital.”
Dr. Shah welcomed her personally.
Some colleagues avoided her. Others hugged her. A group of nurses had watched her courthouse statement and organized a fund for domestic-abuse survivors in her name.
Emily asked them to remove her name.
“Make it for every person who couldn’t speak yet,” she said.
Her first shift back lasted six hours.
I waited nearby with an officer, despite Emily’s insistence that she did not need her mother pacing the lobby.
At eight fifteen that evening, she finished.
The police officer escorted her to the employee parking garage.
I followed several yards behind.
The lights on level three flickered.
The officer paused.
A maintenance door slammed.
Then the fire alarm began.
Red lights flashed. A recorded voice instructed everyone to evacuate.
Cars started moving toward the ramps.
The officer reached for his radio.
Static answered.
Emily turned toward me.
A vehicle accelerated from behind a concrete pillar.
The officer pushed Emily aside.
The dark SUV struck him and threw him across the pavement.
I heard Emily scream.
The SUV stopped.
Victor stepped out.
He looked thinner than he had at the restaurant, but his suit was immaculate. His calmness was more terrifying than rage.
“Emily,” he said. “Get in the car.”
She backed away.
“You hit a police officer.”
“He’ll live.”
“You tried to abduct me.”
“I’m taking my wife somewhere safe.”
“I am not your wife anymore.”
His face tightened.
“The court has not finalized anything.”
“You drugged me.”
“My mother made mistakes.”
“You drove the car that hit me eleven years ago.”
That accusation broke his mask.
Only for a second.
Then he smiled.
“You shouldn’t believe everything frightened men say to save themselves.”
The officer on the ground moved.
Victor kicked his radio away.
I reached into my bag.
Victor saw the motion.
“Don’t.”
I stopped.
He opened the SUV’s rear door.
“Get inside, Emily.”
“No.”
“I am trying to protect you from what happens next.”
“What happens next?”
“Your mother loses everything. Daniel goes to prison. My mother makes bail. People forget your little speech. And you discover no hospital wants the liability of keeping you.”
Emily’s breathing shook.
But her feet remained planted.
“You still think fear is the same as obedience.”
“I know you.”
“No. You studied me.”
His expression hardened.
“I gave you a life.”
“You gave me a cage and made me pay for it.”
Somewhere below us, sirens approached.
Victor looked toward the ramp.
The false fire alarm had delayed security, but not indefinitely.
He grabbed Emily’s arm.
She reacted instantly.
Her knee struck his thigh. He cursed and pulled harder.
I removed the small canister of pepper spray from my handbag and fired directly into his face.
Victor screamed.
Emily tore free.
He swung blindly and struck me across the shoulder.
I fell against a parked car.
Then the injured officer tackled him.
Victor fought with desperate violence. He drove an elbow into the officer’s wound and reached beneath his jacket.
Emily saw the gun first.
“Gun!”
She kicked Victor’s wrist as he pulled it free.
The weapon slid beneath a car.
Hospital security rushed onto the level.
Within seconds, Victor was pinned face-down on the concrete.
His eyes streamed from the spray.
He turned his head toward Emily.
“This is your fault,” he gasped.
She stood above him, trembling.
“No,” she said. “This is the first thing that isn’t.”
Police arrested him on charges including attempted kidnapping, assault on an officer, unlawful possession of a weapon, stalking, fraud, and conspiracy.
In the ambulance, a paramedic examined my shoulder.
Emily sat beside me.
“You carry pepper spray?”
“I was a judge for twenty-seven years.”
She almost laughed.
Then her face crumpled.
I held her.
This time, she allowed it.
Victor’s arrest should have brought relief.
Instead, it uncovered a new threat.
The handgun beneath the car was registered to me.
It had been stolen from a locked box in my home three months earlier.
I had never reported it missing because I did not know.
Victor had entered my house long before the restaurant dinner.
And investigators found something else inside his SUV.
A typed suicide note bearing Emily’s forged signature.
It confessed to attacking Victor, fabricating abuse claims, and framing Lorraine.
May you like
Victor had not planned merely to take her away.
He had planned to make sure she never returned.
