The Reckoning by Christie Ridgway Page B

didn’t have a clue as to where Emmett was residing at the moment and would never think to look for him in the Armstrong’s guest house. Jason didn’t know that the older couple or Ricky and Linda even existed, so Emmett was reasonably sure they were safe from Jason’s latest threat.
    But damn, the truth was Emmett was just sitting around.
    Taking care of this promise regarding Linda meant hewasn’t taking care of the problem that was Jason. It put the ball in his brother’s court— I’m coming after you —and Emmett didn’t like it. At all. He was used to controlling the action, not letting others control him.
    â€œG’morning.”
    His gaze lifted in time to see a sleepy-eyed Linda enter the room. She was wearing a thick robe and terry-cloth slippers, had bedhead and a pillowcase crease across her left cheek.
    He grunted, tightening his grip on his coffee mug as desire pinballed through his system. For some inconvenient reason, she gave him a bad case of the gimmes.
    She squinched her eyes at him and pushed back a hank of her iron-straight, golden hair. “You are Emmett Jamison, yes?”
    Was this another symptom of her brain injury? Had she forgotten him, or was she joking around? “The last I checked, that’s me.”
    She nodded. “Good. I thought so, but the way you greeted me set me off my stride for a second.”
    â€œThe way I greeted you?”
    â€œThat cheerful good morning grunt.”
    â€œOh.” She was joking around. “Sorry.”
    Her hand waved. “No apology necessary. I’m not much of a morning person myself. It’s just that after I came out of my…condition, I found myself often confused by new and unfamiliar faces. So I learned to gauge whether I was already acquainted with someone by the warmth of their response to me. Yours was a sort of stranger-type grunt.”
    Funny, how she could make him half grin and feel guilty at the same time. Then more guilty when he saw that she was staring at the now-empty coffeepot. “Let me,” he said, starting to rise.
    â€œNo, no, no.” She waved him down again. “I can do this.I can make coffee. We had a practice kitchen in rehab. Like kindergarten class, you know? We played house in order to relearn how to do simple tasks.”
    He watched her trudge to the counter. She pulled close the bean grinder he’d left on the tiled surface and lifted off the clear plastic top to reveal plenty of freshly ground beans. Then she removed the basket from the coffeemaker. Inside was the used filter and a mess of wet grounds.
    She stared at them. Then her gaze moved to the grinder. Back to the full basket.
    Like yesterday in the grocery store, he could feel the confusion radiate off her slim body. Her spine became as straight as a steel rod, and her shoulders looked stiff. Something in the middle of his chest hurt.
    He was almost out of his chair when she spoke, her voice tight. “Remind me again. What should I do?”
    Breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding slid out of him in a silent whoosh. “Throw the old grounds and filter into the wastebasket under the sink,” he said, careful to keep his voice free of anything but information. “We put the fresh filters in that clear jar over there by the grinder.”
    She crossed to the sink and he watched her reach for the wastebasket even as he pretended not to. He held his breath again and caught himself—barely—before telling her not to throw out the plastic basket along with the old filter and beans.
    She caught herself—barely—before doing just that. Emmett let out a silent cheer as she rinsed the basket and then crossed back to the coffeemaker. “I knew that,” she said conversationally as she fitted in a clean filter. “That part about throwing away the used filter and grounds. But we’d only practiced with a clean coffeemaker in rehab and little