Taste Page 17

  “If anyone tries to call for help, I’ll shoot.” She yelled to the crowd. “Phones, on the floor over here, now!”

  People fumbled about for their phones, their lifeline, and slid or threw them toward the center of the room.

  “Mine’s in my bag,” I whispered with a shaky voice.

  “What?” Emilia urged.

  “My phone, it’s in my bag. In there.” I pointed to the kitchen.

  “Well, you better not try and run to get it then. Stay right there, you.”

  Her words and the sight of her were like a shot through the heart. I’d told her things; I’d trusted her. And here she was, doing something I would have never have imagined. I wished so hard that lying and stretching the truth was all that she’d done. A few minutes ago it had filled me with confusion and anger, but now I ached for those feelings. Anything instead of this.

  “Emilia, whatever the problem is, we can work something out,” said Sam, hands raised calmly.

  “He needs to be stopped!” she yelled. “Before he takes things too far. It’s the only way.” As Emilia faced Sam and continued to yell explanations, the strong taste of Dad’s coffee swum around my mouth. I licked my lips, no longer dry from my fear, but filled with the sensation of hope that my father’s presence was around, somewhere. That he was standing with us, doing what he could to protect us.

  I felt compelled to look to the right, and I saw a tiny bit of movement.

  Serena!

  She was hiding behind the wall near the restrooms.

  Her terrified gaze caught mine.

  “Go! Hide!” I mouthed, hoping she could understand, or even hear my words or thoughts. I seriously hoped she had her phone with her, and that it wasn’t one of the ones that had been thrown onto the floor. But if she called for help, she would have to do it quietly. And if she went back in the restroom, the door might squeak, or slam shut. We had to keep Emilia talking, as background noise, in case Serena was able to call for help. Serena’s petite frame disappeared from view, and I was thankful at least one of us was out of immediate danger. Serena was smart, and if there were something she could do to help, she’d do it, even if it scared the life out of her.

  “Please! Please just let me give him the shot!” the woman pleaded.

  Emilia pushed past me and stepped close to her, pushing the gun inches from the woman’s face. “Don’t say another word.”

  A chair clanged against something to my left. I turned, and my Mom’s face was fierce. “Just let him have the shot, then we can talk about the problem. I can help you. Don’t let him suffocate!”

  Mom, no!

  Emilia swung around and pointed the gun at my mother. I wanted to vomit. Screams erupted from my sisters, and possibly myself; I couldn’t figure out if the things I was thinking and feeling were making their way out of my mouth or if my voice box was frozen like my body. Mr. Jenkins shoved himself in front of my mom. It wasn’t the first time he’d risked himself to save her.

  “Shut up!” Emilia yelled. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else, just him. And her. But I will if anyone gets in the way.”

  To my right, the girlfriend’s hand shook, and as Emilia was focused on my mother and her brave yet dangerous offer to help, the woman, with one quick movement, jabbed the EpiPen into her boyfriend’s thigh.

  I gasped, and wished I hadn’t. But it was instinctive and automatic.

  Emilia turned. Her eyes bulged. She fired.

  A loud crack erupted, and I screamed, jumping sideways and falling to the floor. Michael’s girlfriend clutched at her foot as she cried out in pain, blood oozing from her ankle onto the floor.

  Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. I thought for a moment that Emilia had killed her, that we would all be next. I wanted my mom, my sisters. Leo. I wanted to be home and safe. I wanted my dad to do something, something amazing, magical, to stop this nightmare from continuing.

  “If anyone even thinks about reaching for a phone, the next shot will be higher.” She stood, still pointing the gun at the injured, crying woman. Though her hold was no longer as steady. The barrel shook slightly as she aimed it at the woman’s chest.

  I could hear weeping and sobbing in the crowd. Someone was breathing rapidly, as though they’d run a marathon. Then I realized that person was me. I felt separate from my body, as though I was trying to prepare for the worst. I didn’t want to see the fear in my family’s faces, but I couldn’t help but look their way. Mom was holding my sisters close to her, her arms reaching as far around the three of them as she could. Mr. Jenkins stood in front of them, as did Sam and Leo.

  Leo’s eyes caught mine. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to say I was sorry for believing Emilia; I wanted to say how much last night meant to me. I wanted to say he was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and that if this was going to be our last moment here on earth, it had been worth it to have had him in my life, if only for a short time.

  He must have been thinking the same thing, worrying that he wouldn’t get a chance to say the things he wanted, because he parted his lips and mouthed, I love you.

  My bottom lip trembled. I wished I were next to him. Wished I could feel him next to me one last time.

  I love you too, I mouthed.

  And that did it. That made something inside of me rise up. How dare this girl threaten us, threaten to hurt us, or worse, if we tried to get help. I was over it, people like her thinking they could play God, deciding who got to live and who got to suffer or die. People like her took my dad from me, and I’d had enough. “He’s had his shot now, Emilia,” I said, slowly forcing my legs to cooperate and lift me to my feet. “It’s over. Put the gun down.”

  There was some relief in the man’s eyes as his breaths became a little easier, despite the fact that his girlfriend was writhing in agony next to him.

  “Tamara,” Leo said, quietly.

  Emilia chuckled. “Don’t you know anything, Tamara?” she said. “The injection is only a temporary solution. He may start to feel a bit better now, but pretty soon the symptoms are going to come back if he doesn’t get to hospital for more treatment.”

  Huh? I had thought that an EpiPen would fix it all in one go. Or maybe the guy just had a particularly severe allergy.

  “He knows what I’m talking about, don’t you darling,” she mocked. “How long did the doctors say, last time you had a reaction? That you’d have, what, about fifteen minutes to get to hospital before it would get real bad, real quickly?” She laughed. “And I put a good serving of peanut oil in that dressing, I’m surprised you couldn’t smell it a mile off! Good thing you chose the fish and asparagus with chili and lemon and our special secret dressing. It was easy to hide among the stronger flavors.”

  Chili. Lemon. Our vision.

  She was crazy. But if she kept talking long enough, maybe help would come. Someone must have heard that gunshot, right? The restaurant was fairly isolated on the hill near the harbor, farther away from the main strip of stores, not that any were open at this time of night. But a shot was a shot, and it had been loud.

  “You bitch,” Michael scowled.

  “Why are you doing this?” his girlfriend cried out.

  Emilia laughed. “We were together. You cheated. And now you’re stalking me. End of story.”

  Maybe this guy could talk her down. If he knew her, he might know how to get through to her and convince her that doing this was a crazy idea. Maybe.

  “You’re deluded,” he said.

  “That’s no reason to do this, Emilia.” Was that my voice? What was I doing?

  “It’s none of your business!” Emilia whipped around and faced me with the gun. I gasped and gripped the side of the chair. Then she turned back to the couple.

  “As soon as I realized I had feelings for someone else,” Michael said, “I broke it off with you.”

  “Yeah, after you’d already got it on with her.” Emilia tightened her grip on the weapon.

  He didn’t respond.

  “See?
I know it’s true.”

  “That doesn’t mean you need to get back at him this way, Emilia,” Leo said.

  Leo, don’t speak. Don’t be a fool like me and risk provoking her into doing something crazy. But he knew her too, or had thought he did. Maybe he could get through to her.

  “Shut it, Leo!” Emilia said.

  Michael tried to help his girlfriend with her ankle, covering it with his hand to slow the bleeding.

  “Hands off!”

  He obliged, and the woman whimpered.

  “Just let them get the help they need. Come on Emilia, I know you have a good heart. Put the gun down now, and we’ll let you leave before the cops get here.” Leo persisted. Though I was sure he was lying. Someone with a good heart wouldn’t do this.

  “I’m not leaving till he takes his last breath, here on this floor.” She chuckled. “Just like my stepdad. It was such a relief to see that evil light go out in his eyes. But now, here, this time… I can stop his evil plans before they happen.”

  Oh my God. She was responsible for her stepdad’s death?

  Emilia’s eyes looked evil themselves. Wide, alert, psychotic. Then something like fear flashed through them, at the same time as I heard something in the distance. A siren.

  Had Leo somehow been able to call them? I didn’t know how. No, it must have been Serena.

  Emilia’s lips became taut, then she shouted, “Who called for help? Tell me!” She waved the gun around loosely, and people gasped and screamed as it pointed toward them. She breathed in sharp, rapid breaths, and I noticed a bittersweet taste on my tongue as I felt both dread and hope. The time crunch might cause her to do something drastic, but the fact that sirens were in the distance… Help was coming. But what would happen between now and then? Things could change in an instant.

  Then Emilia narrowed her eyes at my family’s table. She looked at my sisters, then turned to me. “Didn’t you say you had four sisters? And I’m sure they were all here tonight.”

  Oh no.

  No, no, no.

  She lifted the tablecloth and peered underneath. “Come out come out wherever you are,” she said.

  My heart palpitated.

  Serena, climb out the window of the restroom. Wait, was there a window in the restroom? My mind tried to think of ways she could hide or escape. But Emilia’s logic must have kicked in. She moved over toward the wall near the restrooms. “The bathroom, of course. Lucky you, in the bathroom when I had my little freak out. Well, you can come out now. I know you’re in there,” she called out. “If you don’t come out now, I’ll shoot your sister.”

  I gulped, but whatever was in my throat wouldn’t go down.

  I heard the tiny squeak of the door to the restroom open, followed by Serena’s whimpering, and my heart sunk. No, no.

  “That’s it. Out you come.”

  Instinct took over, and I dashed toward the wall. “Don’t come out, Serena!”

  “Tamara!” Leo’s strong voice rang out through the room.

  I stood by the wall, my arms out to guard my sister, who was just behind the corner. Emilia charged toward me and pushed the muzzle of the gun near my throat. The scorching heat of it took my breath away.

  “No!” my mom called out, and tried to rush toward me, but Mr. Jenkins held her back.

  I held Emilia’s fierce stare with one of my own. If she was going to kill me, I wanted her to be haunted forever by the look in my eyes. As I stared into her troubled soul, I waved my left arm about, trying to instruct Serena to get away from us. “I thought we were friends,” my voice croaked, through the strain of the pressure and heat.

  “I don’t make friends. They only end up disappointing me.” Her voice was cold. “I always knew you’d be trouble, from the moment I met you. When you moved around the kitchen like you owned the place. Like you were Leo’s perfect little assistant. Teacher’s pet. Although,” she chuckled, “I guess you became more than that, didn’t you.”

  My lips clamped together, my body shaking. When I saw movement over Emilia’s shoulder—Leo approaching slowly and quietly behind her—I broke her gaze for a split second.

  She noticed.

  She kept the gun close to my neck but turned around, and just as Leo looked like he was about to lunge for her, she flung her arm around my neck and grabbed my head in a headlock. “Come closer and I’ll shoot your precious girlfriend, Leo.”

  He stopped dead, his hands raised, his gaze flitting between her face and mine. “Emilia. Please.” He tried to force himself to speak calmly, but he had the same gulping problem as me. “There’s no need to do this. Soon the police will come through that door and take control. Don’t let them hurt you. Surrender, now.”

  “Surrender? Surrender?” She guffawed, then wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. “You men are all the same.”

  “Then take me. Let Tamara go, and take me.”

  “Leo, no,” my voice came out weak and scratchy.

  “Nice try. Like I’d swap her for someone stronger. No. She stays right here. She’s my leverage.”

  “For what? You can’t hold her like that forever. You’ll have to let go eventually.”

  “Then maybe I’ll pull the trigger and get things over and done with nice and quickly.”

  The sound of my mom’s cry made me wish I were deaf.

  “You’ll go to prison,” he said.

  “I’ll probably go anyway. Might as well make it worth my while, eh, chef girl?” She spoke close to my ear. “It’ll make all those inmates scared of me, knowing I took a close-range shot in cold blood.”

  I blinked hard, pressing my tears back in. I couldn’t believe she had fooled me all along, that I’d thought she was the one who needed protection. “But if you give in now, you might get a reduced sentence,” I tried to speak through the pressure of the muzzle and my trembling body. “Shoot me, and that’s your whole life wasted.”

  “My life is already a waste,” she said flatly.

  A tiny, microscopic part of me felt sorry for her. Even in that moment, even with only a thin layer of skin and a single pull of that trigger separating me from death. Surely she hadn’t always been this way? She must have been through trauma with her stepdad, but who knew what she’d said to me was truth and what was lies. The only thing comforting me in that moment was the knowledge that if she did do what I dreaded, at least I would see my father again. I would know what had happened. But as much as I wanted that, there was no way in hell I wanted to die. Not now—not at seventeen. Not when my whole life and all my dreams lay ahead of me. I wanted to do so much. I wanted to see things, experience things, be with my family, and be with Leo.

  She pressed harder.

  Please, please don’t do this.

  I forced myself to look away from the desperation in Leo’s eyes, and drown out my family’s sobs from my senses. I closed my eyes. But I opened them again when she shuffled me sideways, moving closer to the kitchen entrance as, through the windows, I saw cops in black surrounding the building.

  Three barged in, and the crowd of people behind the tables and chairs dropped to the floor. “Police! Drop your weapon!”

  Her headlock tightened. “No!”

  “Drop your weapon!”

  “You drop yours, or I’ll shoot her!”

  “You don’t want to do that, miss. We’ll get to you first; you know that.”

  “You won’t risk hurting the girl.”

  “Drop your weapon, now!”

  Emilia’s arm was sticky with sweat around my neck. I could almost taste the adrenaline that was running through her veins and mine. Sharp, strong, overwhelming. She was panicking; she didn’t know what to do next, I could tell. She hadn’t planned for this. She had just wanted her ex to die from anaphylactic shock as his new girlfriend looked on helplessly. The gun was clearly plan B.

  She sucked in short, sharp breaths, and I kept my eyes on the cops, my lifelines.

  They moved closer, and the one in front spoke calmly and c
learly. “Put the gun on the floor, and you won’t get hurt. Let the girl go, or we’ll have to use force.”

  One of the cops glanced briefly at the groaning woman on the floor. She was still gripping her ankle. Her boyfriend now looked like his symptoms were returning, his face puffy and pale and his lips tinged blue.

  I never thought I’d be standing in one of my favorite places, looking death in the eye. And as thoughts and images and emotions tripped over each other in my mind as I tried to process what was happening, getting ready for the loud bang that would signal my end, the pressure on my neck eased slightly.

  “And then what?” Emilia said, frustration in her voice. “You’ll arrest me and take me away. The longer I’m in control, the longer I’m free.” She retightened her grip on the gun and tried to slowly move backward with me into the kitchen.

  “Don’t take another step, or we’ll shoot! And we won’t miss.” He did some sort of hand signal to the other cops, and they got into a different position, and I saw one out of the corner of my eye point a weapon through the window on my right.

  Fear boiled up inside, disintegrating my muscles into useless, shaking jelly. If it wasn’t for her holding me around the neck, I think I would have collapsed.

  Emilia swiftly turned her head to look behind her. She noticed the cop outside the window and stepped back into the kitchen, blocking the potential shot from his vantage point.

  “This is your last warning. Drop the weapon now!”

  Emilia sounded like she was hyperventilating, her hot breath rancid on my face.

  The cop’s arm stiffened, and I sucked in a breath, ready to hear the fire, feel the impact next to me, or in me if they missed, and prepared myself for the possibility of Emilia’s blood splattering onto my skin and clothes.

  I recognized the look of focus and resolve in his eye, and knew this was it.

  He was going to shoot.

  And in that instant, Emilia’s voice rang loud in my ear and throughout the room. A loud, frustrated, angry wail, as she removed the gun from my neck and slowly lowered it, her arm still around my neck.

  She took me down with her, crouching low, the cops’ weapons effortlessly following her. I eyed the gun in her shaking hand, and relief flooded my lungs when she placed it on the floor and let go of me. She dashed back into the kitchen with a scream, but the cops barged through, and the only thing I saw before someone’s arms grabbed me and pulled me away was one of her legs sticking out from under a cop as he sat on her back after tackling her to the floor.