Hijacked

Chapter Sixteen

Tom fell asleep quickly, Emily on the other hand had a little more trouble finding sleep.

Every time she closed her eyes the scene in the cabin flashed in her mind. She'd never seen a dead body before, well, a murdered body. She'd been to funerals , but she'd never seen blood and death together at the same time.

She tried to think of something else, anything else, but if she wasn't thinking about Mike's body, she was thinking about Tom and Murph fighting. Tom fighting the man at the rest stop who had attacked her.

No matter what she did she couldn't think of anything that didn't scare her, and the images that were swirling around in her mind were haunting .

She could hear Tom's even breathing beside her and she forced herself to think about anything and everything else. She thought that maybe thinking of familiar things like song lyrics or book plots would help, they didn't. She tried counting and doing math in her head, and that really didn't help either. She tried going through her memories and picking happy ones but she couldn't concentrate on them and the images she was so desperately trying to forget kept slipping in.

She didn't know how long she lay there, trying to sleep when she finally drifted off.

***

Tom awoke with a start. Something had jarred him out of his slumber and he shook his head. He opened his eyes in the dark room and slowly his senses came back to him. It was Emily, it sounded as though she was crying.

"Emily?" He rolled over and faced her back. "Emily?" he repeated when she didn't answer him.

He scooted closer to her and touched her shoulder. She was crying. Softly and into the pillow, but she was crying. He reached out and gently pulled her closer to him, rolling her so that her face wasn't in the pillow and he noticed that she was asleep.

He had no idea what to do, if he should he wake her or just let her cry. He didn't know if this was like sleepwalking and he should just let her cry it out or if waking her would hurt her somehow. He wanted to help her, but he didn't know how.

She started to whimper and he decided to wake her up.

"Emily, wake up," he whispered in her ear as he shook her gently. He was hoping to ease her out of sleep but something spooked her.

She woke up with a jolt and a quiet cry and looked at him in the dim moonlight that was streaming through the curtained window. She turned to face him and wiped her eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asked as he held himself up with his elbow and leaned over her slightly.

She nodded, unconvincingly.

"What's wrong?" he asked, wiping her damp cheeks with his fingertips.

"Nothing."

"Emily, you can talk to me."

She took a deep breath and looked away for a second as more tears fell down her cheeks.

"Emily?"

"I can't get the scene in the cabin out of my head," she confessed. "The blood, the body...I've never seen something like that, anything like that." She was struggling to hold back her tears even as they continued to fall from her eyes. "I don't even like watching horror movies."

"I'm so sorry you had to see that," he said softly. He really was, he'd never in a million years thought that something like that would have happened. He never would have brought her along if he had. "I had no idea, I didn't know."

"I know." she nodded and angrily wiped away her tears. "I just can't get it out of my head and when I do I start to picture you..."

"Me what?" he asked softly when she trailed off.