"It's okay. We're clear." He turned the key. The engine struggled for a moment before springing to life. "It's too much to hope that Aaron won’t report his truck missing, so we'll need another car." The smell hit him anew. "And some fresh clothes."
"Where are we going?"
He popped open the glove box and pulled out Aaron Walker's wallet. There were two credit cards they couldn't use, but Matt stuffed the $87 in cash into his pocket. He hit the gas, drove through a creek bed, and just managed to climb the shallow gulley on the other side. "North. Somewhere they won't think to look."
* * *
The mountainous back roads of Tennessee made it easy to hide, even in a truck. Asphalt roads cut through winding forests broken up by quaint, half-dead coal towns that had run dry a century ago. Matt scanned the neighborhood as they drove through one of many suburbs without a city, then grunted in satisfaction at a lemon-yellow colonial with green trim. They ditched the truck next to a half-dozen decaying vehicles behind an abandoned rail yard, tossed the license plates into the creek, then walked back through the woods into town.
Matt felt a twinge of guilt when he stole a pair of boots and a long overcoat off of a porch, but it didn't stop him. Satisfied that his bloody clothes were well-hidden, he went into Wal-Mart to buy them new ones.
He wanted to replace the boots and coat, but didn't have enough cash. At the last second he grabbed bottled water, a ten-pound bag of dog food, and blonde hair dye. After tax, he had just over two dollars. He tossed their old clothes in the dumpster behind the store while Monica changed, shivering as she scrubbed off filth with the water. The yellow maternity shirt hung a little big on her, but it worked.
He sniffed. "We don't smell good, but it's better." He leaned over and let Ted lick his nose. "You stink." Ted gave a happy chuff and wagged his tail.
They walked through town hand in hand, Ted at their heels, a happy couple and their dog out for a morning stroll. Drivers waved as they drove by, and they waved back. They loitered for a moment as a red Ford pickup passed, then ducked down the driveway of a white split-level. They approached the house from behind, creeping into a well-shaded back yard through the gate in the fence. Perfect. Nobody could see them from here, unless they climbed a tree.
He jiggled the handle on the back door. Loose, it rattled but the lock held firm. He took one step back, then kicked. The frame shattered around the deadbolt and the door banged open. Plastic covered the furniture, and the house smelled of dried rose petals and dust. Matt cleared the house, then grabbed two bowls to feed and water Ted.
He surveyed the half-dead street from the shadows of the living room. "I'll check our options while you dye your hair. Don't turn on any lights."
Monica kissed his cheek and swatted his butt on the way past. "Sure."
He heard the shower start as he opened the door to the garage. Dust motes scattered in the sunlight through the scratched Plexiglas windows of the overhead door. As neat and as packed up as the rest of the house, the garage was spotless—every tool had a place, hung on the wall or tucked into a drawer in one of the several tool boxes surrounding the tarp-covered car that dominated the center of the room. Matt removed the cinder blocks from the blue tarp and folded the cover back. He let out a low whistle at the gold-tone 1954 Oldsmobile F-88 convertible, with whitewall tires and cream leather seats.
He popped the hood, examined the engine, then looked around for the keys. He found them hanging on the wall next to the garage door clicker, put them in the ignition, and fired it up. The motor purred without so much as a tick, and the gauges all worked. It even had a quarter tank of gas. He turned it off, got out, and rummaged through the tool boxes. He found a tire iron and a jack, which he put into the trunk, and left the rest in place.
A shadow crossed his vision so he turned toward the door and almost didn't recognize his wife. Monica had cut her platinum blonde hair short, in what he'd have called a dyke cut back in high school. In the yellow shirt she looked so . . . bright wasn't the right word. Ephemeral. Like a fairy or an elf. "Wow."
"Wow, yourself," she smiled. "That's some car." She hopped down the single step and kissed him on the lips. "Do you like it?"
He shrugged, and wished he could withdraw it when she scowled. "You're beautiful. It's just different is all."
"It's supposed to be. We're in disguise, remember?" She kissed him again.
This isn't a game, he thought.
"So this is our getaway?" She ran her hand down the door and peered at the console. "We could do worse."
"Yep."
"How'd you know it was here?" she asked.
"I didn't. Saw the unmowed lawn and the pile of newspapers on the front porch when we drove by. Figured someone was on vacation, and it'd give us a chance to get cleaned up. I didn't figure they'd leave a car. That was a bonus."
"Well, you did good." She held out a child's Crayon drawing of an older couple. The purple chicken scratch at the bottom read, "See you springtime bam and poppop."
"Snowbirds. Probably won't even miss it until spring."
"Good. I need—"
"There's a lockbox in the bedroom closet. Think you can open it?"
He looked around at the toolboxes. "Probably. But let me shower first."
She bit his shoulder, a little too hard. "Want company?"
He grinned. "Of course, but we'd best not. What if someone came in, or Ted started barking?"
She pouted. "Oh, poop."
"Yep."
* * *
They pulled out of the garage with two thousand dollars in cash stuffed into a stolen purse. Matt vowed to pay "bam and poppop" back when this whole thing ended. If we live through it. He tried not to look at Monica as he shoved the thought away—he could psychologically handle his own life in danger, but the moment he dwelled on Monica he froze up. He made a left toward the highway and waved at a couple walking a floppy-eared Doberman.
Monica spoke through her smile. "What if they report us?"
Matt dropped his hand as they passed. "If they know the car, the wave makes us look less suspicious. People tend to write off the friendly. But yeah, we'll ditch it for something less conspicuous when we can."
They filled up the car at the next town, shadowing the highway on back roads, a happy couple making one last drive in the classic car before winter forced it off the road. Monica made small talk with the old gentleman who walked over to admire their ride, and Matt admired how well she lied even as it stabbed at his heart. As they crossed the Kentucky border, Monica rubbed his thigh over the top of Ted, who had dropped from exhaustion after hours of ecstatic overstimulation with his head in the wind.
"You sure about this?"
"You trust him." He kept his eyes on the road. "And I trust him to keep you safe."
"But—"
He put his hand over hers and squeezed. "Stop it, Mon. You were in pain, you got drunk, he got drunk. What happened, happened. I can't forgive you without forgiving him. What's important is that he loves you, and that love will keep you safe while I deal with this. Ancient history is ancient history. And besides, he's not exactly on the dating scene anymore."
She pulled her hand out of his grip, then set it on top of his. "But you haven't talked to him in eight years. Not since . . . ."
Not since you went to him for solace after your first miscarriage.
"Are you sure he'll even talk to us?"
Matt tried not to snarl. "He's going to cooperate, or I'm going to tear off his arm and beat him to death with it."
She squeezed his hand again. "I don't know that this is a good idea."
He sighed. "I can trust you, right?"
"Of course," she said, without the slightest hesitation.
"Then it's a good idea. Nobody would ever imagine I'd leave you with him on purpose."
* * *
St. Martin's website put their Mass schedule at eight and eleven. Matt pulled into the half-full parking lot at eleven forty-five, as parishioners trickled out under t
he sound of Father Rees's final prayer. The Baptist haven of Franklin, Kentucky, compared with Damascus as a hotbed of ardent Catholicism, and the sparse attendance played that out.
A gaggle of white-clad altar boys went from solemn to roughhousing the moment they left the church, punching and hollering as they looped around toward the side entrance. A chubby woman carrying a red Bible the size of Texas came next, then another boy with a brass candelabra-thingy. Father Rees came last. Jason looked good—thirty years old, with black hair buzzed close to his head to almost hide male-pattern baldness, a healthy, tan complexion and intense, steel-gray eyes. He smiled and waved as his flock dispersed.
Matt stepped in his path, hand extended. "Father."
The priest's genuine smile vanished, replaced with a car salesman's. "Matt!" He shook, squeezing too hard. "Long time, man!" He pumped his arm up and down, placing his left hand atop theirs as his eyes quivered in uncertain fear. "What brings you to Franklin?"
Matt didn't bother with the finger-crushing contest—he had less than nothing to prove about his superhuman physical prowess. He used the grip to turn Jason to his left, where Monica leaned against the brick facade, her cross outside her shirt. One look at her worried face and his cracked to near-panic.
"Can we talk?" Matt asked. "Now?"
"I have an appoin—"
"Cancel it. This is important."
As Rees turned to the Bible-woman his voice shook. "Mary, please give Mr. Elliott my apologies. See if he can reschedule for tomorrow or Tuesday."
"Yes, father," she said, and scurried off, glancing back over her shoulder with a worried frown.
Matt watched her go, then turned to Rees. "Thank you. Got somewhere private?"
He pursed his lips. "How about a diner?"
Matt shook his head. "Something . . . privater." As panic gripped Rees's face, Matt put his hand on his shoulder. "I'm not going to hurt you, father." No matter how much he wanted to.
Rees jerked his head toward the church. "Follow me. There's a Bible study in the Rectory at noon, but I've got an office in the back."
Matt followed him through the door into the church proper. The whispers crushed him, scoured his bones, burned his mind to ash. He gritted his teeth against the onslaught and fell to one knee. The odd symbol throbbed in his vision, the sinuous curves writhing in gore, the bisected circle dripping with gobbets of bloody flesh. He gasped as he fell forward, and the image—and the whispers—vanished. He caught himself inches from the floor. The carpet smelled of Febreeze and burnt matches. He let Jason help him up.
"Are you alright?" the priest asked. "That was a heck of a trip."
Matt frowned, and rejected telling the truth even as the thought sprang to his mind. "I'm fine. Stubbed my toe is all." These whispers had been different. Always on the verge of intelligible, they had had a consistent feel to them, an urgent need for carnage and death. These were anguished, angry . . . and impotent—the rage of a spoiled child denied his favorite toy.
"You sure?"
Matt looked around the church, a modern monstrosity bearing not the slightest resemblance to the dark, gothic, stained-glass festooned edifices you see in the movies. Instead, tall windows looked out into the parking lot on one side, and the Save-A-Lot on the other. The walls, a bland cream that reminded him of a Wal-Mart bathroom, blended with the drab, cushioned pews arranged in a U-shape around the altar. The marble slab stood atop a few short steps, and behind it hung a cross—far from the gory crucifix TV had led him to expect, the cherry-stained mahogany looked almost sterile. "Yeah. I'm good."
Jason—Father Rees—led him past the altar, through a cheap, pre-fab door into an office not much bigger than the Ikea desk crammed into it. Jason offered Matt a chair, sat down, opened a drawer, and pulled out a bottle of scotch and two glasses. He put them both on the desk and hesitated when Matt shook his head. He set the bottle to the side and sat back.
His tan hid the bags under his eyes, but not quite enough. His skin, healthy at first glance, pulled too tight against his face, and his nervous, bloodshot gaze flickered more than once to the bottle as they sat in uncomfortable silence. Hair of the dog, Jason?
Matt realized two things: One, that even with no other options, this might be a mistake. Two, that he'd lied to Monica and to himself about forgiveness. Fair or not, he could forgive her for sleeping with his best friend, but couldn't forgive his best friend for fucking his wife. Would never forgive him. Ever.
At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to dismember Father Rees with his bare hands. But that made him the perfect person to turn to. Matt smothered hatred with duty and spoke. "Has anyone from back home moved to Franklin?"
Jason furrowed his brow. "You mean recently? Um, Mrs. Kensington—"
"—is in her nineties and senile. Anyone who'd know Mon or me."
Rees looked at the ceiling, eyes wandering over the featureless off-white expanse before settling on the portrait on the wall of Jesus with a lamb. "No. Don't think so. Not much of anybody moves to Franklin these days. What's this about?"
"I need you to take in Monica for a while."
Jason choked on nothing. "Excuse me?"
Matt looked into those same steel-gray eyes that he'd dreamed of strangling the life out of countless times and tried to find his childhood friend. His mind smothered any pleasant memory with the lying, opportunistic traitor he'd wanted to kill for the better part of a decade. He expected the whispers to egg him on, but they remained silent. Maybe this hatred didn't need egging. "You heard me. I want Monica to stay in Franklin for a while, and I want you to look after her."
"Can I ask why?"
Matt ran his tongue over his teeth. "You need to know why, so you don't do something stupid. She's pregnant, and worried to death about it, and I need to go out of town for a bit. And someone's trying to kill us."
Rees froze. "Pardon?"
Matt told him everything he knew—about Dawkins, Lake Kivu, the hit squads sent after them the night before, even the bonk-guns.
"So we came here."
"Why?"
"Because they aren't going to stop trying to kill us, and anyone who knows me knows that I'd never leave my wife with you, not for one goddamned second. It wouldn't occur to Momma or her momma or Justin or anyone else to even consider it, if ICAP goes asking where we might have gone."
"I still talk to Justin sometimes—"
"Don't care. Just don't tell him she's here and don't invite him up. And if she needs to go to the hospital, she needs another name. Better, she needs another name for around town." He cut off Jason's question before he had a chance to ask it. "I hope no more than a few weeks, and we'll get out of your hair."
Jason sighed. We have a halfway house—
Matt slammed his hand down onto the desk, careful not to break it. "No halfway house. She needs to stay away from junkies." He ignored Rees's startled look, picked up the scotch, and set it between them. "And no booze." Bile rose in his throat as he admitted her weakness to the man who took advantage of it. "It's been a hard few years. For her. She got into some things she shouldn't have, alcohol, more than that, but she's been clean a while, and she needs to stay that way." For her. For the baby.
"Where am I supposed—"
Matt cut him off with an upraised hand. "Make up a story, make up a name, and find her a place local, somewhere that takes dogs. Just leave back home, White Spruce, and anyone we know out of it. And don't you dare drink in front of her. She doesn't get a drop, not even at service."
I'm so sorry—
Matt snarled. "Don't. You try to apologize, and I'm likely to get violent. We're here because you're good cover. We're here because you love her, and you're going to act out of that love and shelter her until her husband returns."
Jason said nothing for a long moment, then nodded. "Yeah. I will." Time stretched as the silence grew between them. "So, what now?"
"For me? It's better you don't know."
* * *
As Matt left th
e church, the whispers gibbered in murderous relief. He let their undirected, primeval hatred skitter across his mind, then gasped as they entwined with his own. He stumbled to one knee and stayed there, eyes closed, peeling away tendrils of inhuman monstrosity until only his remained. He shuddered, took a breath, and stood.
He approached the Oldsmobile on wobbly knees and found Monica dozing in the back. Ted stared at him from the driver's seat, tail a whirlwind of berserk, undirected love and loyalty. He took a deep breath, whole again, and grabbed the handle. She opened her eyes as he got in, and sat up when he closed the door.
"He wouldn't do it, would he?"
Matt didn't look at her. "He said yes. You'll be staying here a while, until I can figure out what's going on, get ICAP to back off." Or something.
"What if they don't?"
Then I kill everyone I have to until you're safe. "They will."
She reached forward to scratch Ted's nose and rolled her eyes. "Baby, you just killed twenty people they sent to murder us. And 'they' are a multinational organization that kills superhuman monsters all over the world with basically no jurisdictional boundaries. What could you possibly do to get them to back off?"
He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window. "I'm not sure. But I think I need to talk to Jeff."
"Can you trust him?"
A vision swam in front of his closed eyes. Monica, crying over a coffin draped with an American flag, Jeff behind her, face solemn for the cameras. As he turns toward the car, he raises a hand to cover a lopsided smirk. Unsure where the vision fell between premonition and imagination, he shook it off and turned to look at her.
"I have no idea. He's never done me wrong that I know of, and he doesn't tell me everything, but he tells me he doesn't tell me everything . . . ." He picked up her hand and kissed it. "And I don't tell you everything, either. It's the nature of the beast."
"That don't answer the question, baby. Do you trust him?"
Matt ran his fingers over hers, conscious of Jason watching them from the doorway to the church. "Six months ago? Hell, yeah. Yesterday, maybe. But not today. The order might not have come from him, but there's a good enough chance it did. And even if it didn't, if he's given a choice between him and me, I don't think loyalty would tie him down too hard."
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