Free Faith (Rescue Me, A Contemporary Romance) by Elizabeth Nelson Page A

house by yourself. Your mom is going to kill me when she finds out.”
    Neither Liam or Emily answered her.
    Finally the police pulled in, sirens wailing; the sound bringing the other neighbors out onto their front porches to watch the show.
    Liam wondered where they’d all been when he’d been screaming for help that night. Or moments before, for that matter. Up until the attack, he’d thought of their neighbors as his parent’s friends – of course Lisa and Bill were their closest friends, but he’d assumed that everyone on the cul de’ sac was friends. After their lack of help, he considered them nothing more than accomplices in his father’s murder. He said nothing, but just stared at them standing around watching as the police arrested the girl who had helped murder his father.

CHAPTER 12
     
    Faith threw the last suitcase into the trunk of the car and turned to hug Lisa tightly. Liam sat in the front seat and stared straight ahead out the window. He didn’t want to say goodbye to anyone or anything else. He didn’t care about Lisa and Bill, even though they’d been like temporary parents to him over the last week, he didn’t care to even look at the house where he’d spent the last ten years of his life. None of his friends from school had gotten so much as a ‘see you later’ from him. Most of them didn’t even know he was moving, just that his father had been murdered. Everyone in the tiny town knew that.
    “Thank you so much Lisa. I don’t know what to say. You and Bill have been like angels to me and Liam. In fact, you probably saved our lives. I know Mac would thank you too, and he probably is.” Faith said, tears springing to her eyes as she hugged her friend. Would she ever stop crying?
    “Shhh…” Lisa said. “This isn’t one of those things that needs a ‘thank you.’ Take care of that boy of yours. And give us a call once in a while. At least when you get to your mom’s place, okay? I’m going to worry about the two of you until you do. It’s a long trip to make by yourselves.”
    Faith hugged her even tighter in answer.
    With one last kiss, hug, and a farewell, she got into the drivers seat, pulling the door closed with a satisfying thud behind her. Inside the car, the air was thick with unanswered questions and unsaid thoughts.
    “Okay,” she said, falsely cheerful as she put the Element in gear and turned toward her son. “Are you ready for a road trip?”
    He shrugged the way that only surly teenagers can shrug and slipped his headphones into his ears, so he wouldn’t have to talk to her she guessed.
    Wonder if he’s going to listen to those all the way to Nashville, she wondered, and then discovered she didn’t care.
    “I don’t blame you, you know,” Faith told her son. It was almost under her breath, but not really. She said it to see if he was listening, but also because she felt like the air in the car was thick with doubt and she wanted to clear the air if she could.
    “And your father doesn’t blame you either,” she added.
    At her words she could see Liam’s skin go a little pale and he shifted uncomfortably. Yep. He could hear her, she knew.
    Watching his thumb spin through the music selections on his iPod she kept talking, almost to herself, but mostly to him.
    “I don’t blame her either, you know. Emily.”
    His thumb stopped spinning, but he didn’t look up or say anything to her.
    “She was being abused. She was just as much of a victim as her father as Mac was. As we were.”
    Still he looked out the window. By all appearances, not listening to her.
    “The police found cigarette burns and rope marks all over her body. He’d been torturing her they said. Physically. Sexually.” She felt uncomfortable even repeating that last bit of information, and not just because she was talking to her teenage son. The thought of abuse made her queasy. No child deserved to suffer. Of course she couldn’t condone what Emily had done. She could have run away