Note: Updates are going to be slower from here on out, as I'm back in grad school, but I'm hoping to get quite a bit of this done during the hiatus.

Chapter 8

"Stop!" Emma yelled, making a lunge at the wheel as if she thought she was going to grab it and steer them off onto the shoulder, or at least cause him enough alarm to be distracted, or however the hell she thought she was going to deter him short of actually crashing the car. She frantically fumbled in her purse for her cell phone, which had been returned to her as she left jail – then, as her finger hovered over the power button, it froze. Who was she going to call? The police? To tell them that not even hours after being bailed out but still awaiting trial on a felony drug charge, she was now fleeing across state lines with a potential murderer? Yeah. That would be a brilliant fucking idea.

Her moment of hesitation cost her. Killian pushed her smartly away with his free hand, and her seatbelt locked as she jerked back. He changed lanes, so any attempt to strand them would almost certainly result in an accident, and kept on driving as if nothing had happened. "Calm down, lass."

"Calm down? You think we can just vanish forever and expect nobody to – "

"Who said anything about forever?" He flashed a grin. "I have my literature class to teach on Friday morning, and I fully anticipate being back in time for it. This shouldn't take long at all."

"You – " It had already been a bitch of a day, to say the least, and Emma was in no mood to tolerate his enigmatic bullshit. "You're technically kidnapping me right now, and don't think I won't tell someone about it if I have to. Why are we going to Storybrooke?"

For a fraught moment, Killian didn't answer, but she could see taut anger etched into every line and sinew of his face. His mocking, smiling manner had vanished, and his knuckles went white on the wheel, making the livid scar on his left wrist stand out starkly against his pale skin. Finally he said, "All right, lass. Here's the bloody long and short of it. Milah – Gold's wife – and I were in love, a long time ago. She left him for me, him and their young son, and he's not the sort of man to forget that easily. The son ran away from home, and he certainly didn't forget that either. After gods know how long hunting for us, he finally found us. Whereupon he murdered his own wife, the mother of his child, in cold blood in front of my eyes. She died in my arms, with her last breath she told me that she loved me, and then she was gone. Ever since, I have been searching for Gold. He will pay for it with his life's blood, if it's the last thing I do."

Emma was utterly taken aback at the fury in his voice, the violence and the nearness of the loss, and she involuntarily put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry."

"Why?" He glanced over at her with a bleak, grim smile. "Not your fault."

"I. . ." She had never suspected that this was lurking beneath his apparently cosmopolitan exterior, but something about it wasn't matching up. Killian had clearly been otherwise occupied long enough to get a doctorate and a professorship, and for all of Emma's almost twenty years of life, she had never known Gold to leave Storybrooke for even a day. It was entirely possible that he'd done it in the numerous periods where nobody knew what he was up to, of course, but she didn't think so. And Killian was, at most, fifteen years older than her. Two decades ago, he'd have been barely a teenager, certainly nothing to entice a grown woman unless she was some kind of Mrs. Robinson. . . but then they'd been together long enough for Gold to come after them, and where in this Killian had decided to go to school instead of striking back didn't fit into the timeline at all. . . as well as his cryptic implications that he would have gone to Storybrooke before if he could. . .

"I'm sorry," she said at last, having sifted through the available evidence and come to the only possible conclusion. "That's a load of crap."

He smiled at her again, but with much less friendliness. "You think so?"

"Yes, I do. Gold hasn't left Storybrooke in at least twenty years. It's not possible. I'm not going to deny that something might have happened with his wife, but. . . Killian, I looked into it. Milah Gold, at least under that name, doesn't exist. Whatever you think you're doing, it's not – "

She was cut off as he let out a barking laugh. "Oh, and look at you knowing all about me, lass. Let me tell you right bloody now, you don't. You don't know a thing. You've been in my life not quite a month, and suddenly you're fit to understand? You don't even – "

"Stop it!" He was scaring her. "I told you, I know you think you're Captain Hook, and until we get that sorted out, I can't – "

"Why do you think I'm not?"

"Because – because – " She floundered. How in the hell were you supposed to answer that? "Look, Killian," she said, almost pleading. "I get that you're upset and something traumatic happened to you and you're just dealing with it somehow, but I don't think – "

He raised a hand. The glow of the highway lights limned his face, dwelling deep in his eyes and making him look suddenly a hundred years old. "I'm not interested in hearing it," he said wearily. "I'm not going to hurt you, and you're in no danger with me. But just now – "

"You just said you're going to drive to my hometown and kill the man who pretty much runs it. While I've already been framed for a drug bust, for that matter. You think nobody's going to notice? That you'll just roll into Storybrooke and do your vigilante thing and roll out again and go back to your life at Boston? You teach that class on Friday, and the marshals will be coming in to arrest you this time. Take you out in handcuffs. Great publicity for the school, especially in the wake of my scandal."

Ridiculously, that only made him smile. "I don't think so."

"Why the hell not?"

"First, someone would need to know that Storybrooke exists, and second, that Gold is dead."

"Try the entire damn town."

"Oh, because you all love the man and would be terribly grieved to see him bite the dust, instead of being secretly relieved that he can't call in those favors he has lined up against you? Yes, everyone would be weeping their eyes out. You're all scared of him, and don't waste your breath telling me otherwise. You've been waiting for someone brave enough to take him down."

"For someone who's never been to Storybrooke, you sure seem to know an awful lot about it."

"And why is that? Do you think?"

"As far as I can tell, it's part of this fantasy explanation you've come up with. That there's something strange about us, that no one can find us, that we're not even. . . real." Emma faltered over the last word. There were admittedly a lot of things Killian brought up that she couldn't explain away, his relentless questions flying at her like shrapnel in the wake of her world already being blown up by Neal (had it been Neal?) But how could she not be real? She'd grown up in a regular middle-class American home with her parents, gone to school, fretted about zits and if any boy would ever like her and math homework. She had embarrassing pictures from birthdays and Christmases and summer vacations. She had dreams for her future, or at least she had. How could she not be real?

"Closer." He smiled again, with just as little humor. "I'm trying to decide whether to tell you."

"Tell me what?" Emma almost screamed. She was sick to death of him and his coy hints, and what had happened when she'd kissed him and seen. . . whatever she'd seen. Somewhere in the back of her head, she knew that there wasn't and couldn't be a rational explanation for that, and it scared her almost more than the first-hand tour of the criminal justice system she'd taken today. "First you kidnap me and now you want to make me an accessory to a murder that's going to turn Storybrooke upside down, and then you're doing this to me too?" She was in tears by now. "I would rather have stayed in jail!"

He flinched as if she'd hit him. He reached out awkwardly as if trying to wipe her eyes, but she recoiled, and he jerked back as well. Then he changed lanes, took the next highway exit, and pulled into a dingy little 24-hour gas station and mini-mart, the buzzing "Open" sign in the window smearing neon light against the darkness. He nosed up alongside the pump and turned the car off, then reached into his wallet and handed her ten dollars. "You're probably starved. Go in and buy yourself some food."

Emma stared at him suspiciously. "What?"

"Food," he repeated. "Dinner. Not enough? Here." He thumbed out another tenner.

"What makes you think I won't go in and tell the guy behind the counter that you're kidnapping me and planning to commit murder, and that he should call the cops?"

"What makes you think I won't have dialed both 9 and 1 on my cell phone, and only need to add another 1 to tell the operator that you're not only a felon, but a felon on the run?" He grinned. "Eh, love?"

"Jesus Christ, you play dirty," Emma seethed, ripping the passenger door open and stepping out into the cold, windy night. They had been driving for at least forty-five minutes, enough to have left Boston well behind; there was no way she was going to find a T station out here, or hope that a bus was still running. That Irish accent wasn't nearly as charming when it was being used to openly blackmail her, and any remaining delusions about him swooping in like a white knight to save her – something which she had admittedly thought when she first saw him – were long, long gone. He was a dangerous man with apparently nothing to lose, and unless she thought of something fast, she was stuck playing his game.

She pushed open the door and headed inside. Gas stations late at night were uniformly the most depressing places in the universe, and this one was no different. A cooler of off-brand beer, a display of plastic tourist kitsch that even China would have been embarrassed to take credit for, incomprehensible music mumbling on the radio, and a pudgy loser in glasses manning the fort, surreptitiously perusing a comic book behind the counter. He glanced up at her entrance, seemed to judge that she wasn't a likely candidate to shoot up crack, demand cigarettes, or force him to empty the register, and went back to reading.

Emma browsed among the shelves, trying to work up an appetite for jerky, potato chips, candy bars, or Hostess cakes, but couldn't. In fact, though she'd barely had anything to eat all day, the very idea turned her stomach. Besides, she was determined not to allow Killian to buy her off with a miserly twenty bucks; she'd throw it back in his face when she returned (was she going to return?) She could call his bluff now, before he came in to pay for the gas, and get the police to take him away in cuffs. And then. . .who the hell knew. Sneak out the back while they weren't looking, or something. Hitchhike home. She hadn't exactly thought this through.

The door banged, and Emma jumped, looking up guiltily. Shit, that had taken less time than she thought. Now what was she going to do, just –

Upon second glance, however, she realized that it wasn't Killian, but a gang of pasty-ass dudebros rocking straight-billed Red Sox caps, baggy hoodies, sagging pants, and the whole douchebag chic. They were loud and obnoxious and clearly looking for someone to torment; they grabbed the comic book out of the cashier's hands and began tossing it from dudebro to dudebro, while he pleaded that it was a first edition and could they please stop before he had to call his manager. As if he didn't have enough misery to start with, working the graveyard shift in this place. Really, taking the man's comic book was just beyond mean.

Emma put back the candy bar she'd had in her hand, and took a step toward the door. But that action brought her squarely into their line of sight, and someone wolf-whistled loudly at her. "Hey, babe! Why don't you come over and say hello?"

Emma tensed. Like every other attractive college girl, she'd dealt with her share of unwanted male attention: the creeper who spied on her at the library, the perv who flashed her at the train station on her way home from the Maroon 5 concert with Wendy and Alice, and the general frat-boy attitude that they were entitled to comment on any aspect of her body any time they wanted. Neal had never been a damn bit of use at fending them off; he'd puff up and make a few threatening noises, but if there was actually the chance of a confrontation, he'd shrink. Thus, Emma had learned to shut them down on her own, but she really wasn't in the mood for it right now. She kept walking.

"Blondie!" Oh crap. Douchebag dead ahead. "Yeah, I'm talking to you!"

"Leave her alone," the cashier squeaked, thus making himself braver in one moment of not knowing her than Neal had been during their entire relationship. "I'm really calling the manager right now."

The guys paid him no attention. Grinning like a bunch of crocodiles, they closed in on her, one of them darting over to block the door and two more circling around behind. God dammit, she'd already used her pepper spray on that August jerk, and while she could probably nail the first one in the balls if necessary, that trick wouldn't work twice. She had a few tae kwon do moves from the self-defense class she'd taken in high school, but she wasn't about to be mistaken for Jackie Chan any time soon. Crap. Seriously, crap. Chowderheads were the worst. A bunch of bored middle-class white kids who thought they were street toughs.

"Where you goin', sweetie?" A moist hand closed around her wrist, spinning her around to examine a close-range leer. "Hey, we're nice, we promise. We just wanna get to know you."

"Yeah." His buddies cackled. "Yeah, that's it. Why don't you?"

Emma slapped at him. "Why don't you eat shit and die?"

"Ooooh." They exchanged bigger grins. "Or maybe you should just – "

At that moment, the door blew open again, bringing with it a sudden blast of chilly night. Emma had her back to it, having been thus positioned by her unwelcome suitors, but she did hear the sudden hush that fell over them. Then one of the douchebags said, "Oh, Christ. Another fuckin' nerd."

"Come again, mate?" She'd recognize that voice anywhere, that Irish accent low and lethal enough to cut a diamond. "You think this is a bloody joke?"

Oh God. Emma twisted around and beheld, of course, none other than Killian Jones in the flesh, still in black leather and earring and boots. But he had added something else to the ensemble. Held casually in his right hand, glittering and long and dangerous, was something that looked awfully like – no, definitely was – a sword. An actual cutlass, and no movie prop or hobbyist's collector item. It looked fully capable of running, say, a chowderhead through the beer belly.

"Dude. Easy with the sword." One of the dudebros, smarter than the rest, had apparently come to the same conclusion. "We were just. . . were just. . ."

"I don't bloody care what you were just. I'm insulted at having to breathe the same air as you, and if you have the foggiest notion what's good for you, you'll unhand the lass and never be seen again." Killian slashed the air with a whistle, flipping the blade as dexterously as if he was about to throw it and causing a communal panic among the douchebag brigade. "I can promise you that you'll have an excellent opportunity to examine it when it's three feet out your arse."

A few still seemed inclined to protest, but when Killian stalked nearer, looking (Emma had to admit) for all the world like a vengeful pirate, they decided it wasn't worth the effort. With mumbled apologies, they let go of Emma and fled into the night, and he stood watching them with a balefully black stare that would have caused Medusa to file for copyright infringement.

"Uh, hey. . . m-man?" the cashier stammered at last.

Killian, snapped out of a trance, glanced up shortly. "Aye?"

The cashier tore off some receipt paper and a pen, and held it out. "Can I have your autograph?"

After that little episode – had he seriously just busted in there with a motherfucking sword to defend her honor while he was in the process of blackmailing the shit out of her? – it was almost 10 pm by the time they finally hit the road again. She had seriously considered making a break for it, but somehow the sight of that thing had dampened her eagerness to cross him as well, and it would be better to wait until they were closer to Storybrooke, when she had a chance of actually finding an ally. Furthermore, she was emotionally and physically exhausted, had no wherewithal either to come up with an escape plan or to pull it off, and was soon drowsing in the passenger seat as they continued to speed north, telling herself that she really shouldn't.

"Killian," she mumbled. Here in the car, with the smooth rumble of the engine below, the flashes of passing cars lighting up like stars, she felt almost like she was in a dreamworld, that place between sleeping and waking. "Why did you even come here?"

His voice sounded just as far away. "Come where?"

"Here." Emma waved a hand. "Actually, not here, but you know. Boston College, of all places."

He took his time answering that one. "Favor," he said at last. "Old friend, very old friend, pulled some strings."

"What friend?"

"Lives in London. Doubt you know her."

"Try me."

"Don't think I will. Proprietary." He shrugged. "All you need to know is that her granddaughter goes to the school and she's given extremely substantial sums to it, thus placing her in a certain position to recommend me to the dean of the faculty. She funded my education at Trinity as well, kept a roof over my head when I was all but bloody penniless. I owe her a great deal more than I can ever repay, in fact."

"Yeah, that. You said. . . Milah.. was murdered by Gold, but somehow you've had the time to chill out from your quest for vengeance and do a doctorate? Those things take like five years."

"Because when I first came here, I found out that so far as the real world was concerned, Storybrooke, Maine did not exist and I had no chance of finding it. I couldn't go back, and I had to find some way to support myself, hope to make a new life." He shrugged again. "Discovered to my own shock that I was good at reading books, critiquing arguments, writing papers. I'd never been the sort before. Did my arguing with a sword, not a pen."

"I kind of got that impression, but. . . what do you mean? The real world? Go back where?"

"All those questions you keep asking, lass, but won't hear the answer to."

"And that is?"

He turned to her, sea-blue eyes utterly, deadly serious. "You think I'm lying. I'm not. I am Captain Hook."

Emma instinctively opened her mouth to tell him once more that he was full of it, but she hadn't gotten anywhere pulling that card before, and if she played along, maybe it would coax him to reveal more of this demented, intricate backstory he'd ginned up for himself. "Okay."

His look turned narrow. "What?"

"What what?"

"That was a bit too convenient of an agreement."

"Jesus, I've spent the entire time thus far telling you that you're nuts, and now you want me to keep on doing it?"

He shrugged. "Point taken. Very well, then. There's part of the answer. The rest of it is, I can't find Storybrooke because it's enchanted. Cursed, in fact. Completely shut off from the outside world, though I can't figure out how you and your parents were able to leave, and you were able to have, so far as I gather, a relatively normal life. It clearly didn't work quite as it was supposed to, and I've spent a great deal of time doing research – the other reason the academic's life appealed to me, by the way. You can look up all sorts of things, and say it's for a book."

"Cursed?" Emma repeated stupidly. "Don't you think that's a little. . . extreme?"

"Your decision whether you want to believe me or not, love."

"Yeah, I'm taking a rain check on that."

"And yet a moment ago you seemed willing to accept that I was Hook."

"Did I say that?"

"Open book." He glanced at her again, which although there weren't many other cars on the road, still seemed like a dangerous habit. "I know you were lying about it. Of course you don't believe me, and what bloody reason would you have to? You've grown up in a sensible place where sensible people do sensible things, and certainly you know not to believe in fairytales. But when we had that. . . meeting back at my office, you saw something, and it rattled you. I know, because I saw something as well. Now you're beginning to question, because there isn't another explanation, and after the day you've had, you don't feel up to facing just what it could mean."

Emma was rattled anew at this spookily accurate précis of her situation, just as she had been when he perfectly described Mr. Gold. It was true that he knew things he had no way of knowing, but to ask her to swallow the pirate thing was pushing it. Instead of challenging him, she closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest, meaning to just steal a nap, forty winks, that was it. Enough to forget about this crazy for five fucking seconds, enough to. . .

falling nothing but falling darkness everywhere screaming roaring like being caught in the biggest damn break of a wave, like that summer on Martha's Vineyard when she'd almost drowned and her dad had swum out to save her. . . her dad was somewhere in here but she couldn't see him anywhere and they were still falling and there was no end to the abyss, torn away and splitting back and vanishing, a castle crumbling off a cliff and a massive green-black cloud engulfing a forest, lightning sparking and spitting and howling, vanishing, everything vanishing, dead and destroying and over, clutching her to the heart of darkness as she was falling and falling and nothing but falling and it wasn't ever going to –

Emma's eyes jerked open with a gasp, the sensation of a never-ending plunge still so strong that she instinctively grabbed for the car seat under her. It was there, thankfully, but it took her a further moment to realize that the car itself was stopped. Skeletal dark forest fringed the undersides of the sullen dawn sky, casting an eerie winter-rose light across the dashboard. They were parked on the shoulder of the two-lane highway that led into Storybrooke, a realization that sent a bucket of ice water down her spine, and the driver's seat was empty.

"Killian?" She panicked, reached for the door, and stumbled out into the silent sunrise. "Killian!" Oh God, had he really been cold-blooded enough to park here, leave her behind, and walk the rest of the way into Storybrooke? A man in black leather with a sword. . . Graham had probably gotten to him already and clapped his vengeful ass into a jail cell. For the best, but. . . "Killian!"

She heard a faint answer, and scrambled to the edge of the road, sliding on her butt down the bank and into the forest below. A moment later, his lean, dark form appeared among the trees, striding toward her with an expression of some alarm. "What, lass?"

Emma breathed out a ragged sigh of relief, despite herself. "What the hell are you doing? Trying to get into Storybrooke that way, or – "

"Not precisely." He took her arm, as protectively as if he was escorting her through a bad part of town late at night (which he had, after all, more or less already done) and began to climb with her back up toward the car. "Thought I saw somebody wandering in the woods."

"Who?" Emma asked nervously.

"Couldn't say. Thought it was a woman, though. Wearing white, some sort of gown or sack or gods know what. Gave me something of a turn."

"Oh?" Emma tried not to think of every spooky story she had ever been told at a middle-school cookout, about weeping women and young female hitchhikers who vanished when you picked them up and all that other stuff. "Probably just. . . a will o' the wisp or something."

"Probably," Killian agreed. They'd reached the car, and he held the door open for her. "Well?"

Emma didn't move. "If I don't get back in, are you going to be able to cross the town line?"

"Likely not, seeing as what happened last time."

"What are you going to do to me if I refuse?"

She'd expected, feared that to trigger another transformation from charming scholar to ruthless pirate, but instead he smiled crookedly and stepped closer. Their noses were brushing, his hand on her back, as he whispered seductively, "Come now, lass. I'm sure we can arrive at some sort of agreement. You enable me to do what needs done, and I'll have a word with my wealthy benefactress about smoothing everything over with the school. Just now, they won't want you back, not if you've cast their flagship athletics program into disrepute. But you don't want to throw away your future, your chance to graduate and have a career, over something that's not your fault. That's right. Think about it. I can speak to her, and she can make this all go away."

Emma bit her lip. He has me. She had no idea who this rich old lady was, someone who had a granddaughter at BC and apparently enough clout (and bank account) to sway the board of trustees, but it was a hell of a lot better than expulsion and panhandling at street corners and whatever else her life would entail as a flunked student and felon. But what if Killian is making her up? He'd certainly proven adept at lying on his feet, changing hats and stories as he pleased. She didn't want to bite for the worm, only to get stuck on the hook. Possibly literally.

Nonetheless, she didn't have any other ideas coming to mind. BC was insanely protective of its hockey team, its pride and joy, and finding out that she was purportedly responsible for selling weed to a bunch of the players wasn't going to be cause for a party in the department. She could fight to clear her name through the legal system, but that would take time. Months at least, and she'd be suspended for the duration, falling behind on her education and with no guarantee of getting her spot back and. . .

It couldn't possibly be this easy. Could it?

She was not yet twenty years old, and a day ago, she'd thought (with good reason) that her life was over. Now it could be just a bad dream. It could go away. She could wake up.

Without a word, she stepped back from him and got into the car.

The sun was coming up over Main Street by the time they were driving down it. It couldn't have looked more like quintessential Americana, Granny putting the sign outside her diner for the breakfast special and the yellow school bus heading by. It gave Emma a strange sense of déjà-vu to see her hometown like this, just like she always had, appearing in the middle of them like a ghost in a strange black car with a strange man in black at her side. She could see people already turning to stare; Marco, on the ladder outside the general store, gave her a moment of panic as she was certain that the kindly old woodworker had recognized her through the car window. But he didn't immediately reach for a phone, and they rolled by without incident. She'd never told Killian where to find Gold's house, but he didn't seem to need the help.

This was a bad idea. She already felt slimy and uncomfortably guilty, and by the time they finally pulled up onto the quiet, tree-lined street housing Gold's mansion, she felt like she was going to be sick. As Killian expertly parallel-parked on the first try and jerked up the hand brake, she had to try one last tack. She grabbed his arm and cupped her other hand around his cheek, then pulled him over the gearshift toward her.

It was a clumsy schoolgirl kiss, more of a peck that almost missed his mouth, the first time it had ever occurred to her to try to use her feminine wiles to get her way (she had, in her opinion, never had any to speak of). "Please," she breathed. "Don't. You have a life back there too. You don't need to do this. How about we both just – "

Killian disentangled himself, gently but firmly. "A deal's a deal, lass," he reminded her. "And as a matter of fact, I do have to do this. Ever since I found out he was still alive, that there was even the barest chance that I could get to him, I haven't been able to sleep at night."

He smiled at her, almost sadly. Then he reached over, popped open the glove compartment, and removed the only thing that could have been in that drawer in his office. A gleaming, silver, lethally sharp hook.

"This won't take long," he promised. "Stay here." And got out.

Emma sat stone still for about thirty seconds, left in the getaway car, fresh off the most surreal twenty-four hours of her life. In those thirty seconds, however, she did some extremely fast thinking.

Now, by agreeing to this, she had made herself a criminal, regardless of what panned out from the drug charges. Her entire life, her parents had tried to drill into her head that there was a fundamental difference between doing what was right and doing what was easy, and that a person was shaped by the choices they made in those moments. By agreeing to let Killian go murder Gold, no matter what Gold had supposedly done in the past, in exchange for him tidily pulling strings to get her enrolled back at BC, she had chosen the latter. It wasn't right, and no amount of concern for her own ass, her own future, would make it so. She had completely blown it, and all she could do now was hope it wasn't too late.

Emma spun around, fumbled in the back seat under the spare jacket, and felt her hand close around it: the hilt of the sword Killian had used to threaten her unwanted admirers in the gas station. It was heavy, heavier than she'd expected, real and sharp steel, designed for the express purpose of taking someone else's life. She didn't mean to use it in that capacity, but she wasn't going in unarmed. Clutching it, she got out of the car and started at a dead run up the porch steps.

The door of the mansion hung open, where Killian had invited himself in. Breaking and entering. Depending on how good of an alarm system Gold had, they could have five minutes or fewer before Graham got here, and if Mayor Mills got wind of this, everything was shot to hell. Emma's pulse was screaming in her throat as she banged through Gold's foyer, expecting every moment to see blood spreading on the ornate oriental rugs – though whether his or Killian's was an open question at this point. But she caught sight of a black leather jacket, and veered in that direction instead.

Killian was standing in the living room, hook in his hand, looking as if he wasn't quite sure what to do next. Hearing her, he whipped around, clearly ready to dismember her, then recognized her and stared. "Bloody hell, lass. What are you doing with my sword?"

"Stopping you," Emma panted. "I'm sorry. The deal's off."

"Is it?" He arched an eyebrow. "For your information, it actually is, but not for the reasons you think. If the crocodile was here, I'd know by now. But he's not. He's gone."

"He's. . . gone. . .?" Emma was flabbergasted. She'd said it herself on the drive up here, desperately trying to talk Killian out of it. Gold hadn't left Storybrooke, ever, in at least twenty years, living here as a hermit and doing whatever he did at his pawn shop and accumulating his miser's hoard of favors which people owed him, which he then called in and paid out as expertly as any unscrupulous and fabulously wealthy banker. For him to be gone now, there was nothing that could have happened, nobody who would be desperate enough to. . .

No.

Wait.

Oh God.

She had called Mary Margaret from jail yesterday – was it only yesterday? Talk about time getting away from her. And, of course, her mother hadn't picked up, so Emma had just left a message. She'd known it would make her parents panic, probably even drop everything and come down to Boston, but it had never occurred to her that they wouldn't stop there.

That was it. Gold liked to moonlight as a lawyer from time to time, and so David and Mary Margaret must have gone to him. Made a deal with him. Agreed to whatever he'd asked for, as long as he'd accompany them to Boston and get their daughter – get Emma – out of whatever she was accused of. Stopped at nothing to clear her name.

Hence, Emma and Killian were now here in Storybrooke, having just broken into Gold's house, and her parents and Gold were in Boston. Waiting for them. Looking for them. And about to discover that they were missing. That she was missing. In company of the very man who was planning to murder the man who could be crucial to getting her out of charges.

Oh. Shit.

And then, just since this had to get worse, Emma heard the sound of footsteps on the porch. And a very familiar voice calling, "Sheriff."