The illogical side of terror wanted to blame her for their arrival. They clearly had listened in on her and Karlyn’s conversation, had probably listened in on many of Karlyn’s conversations over the last few weeks. Neither she nor Karlyn had said anything incriminating, except … Forgiven? Karlyn hadn’t specified God as the forgiver, but had it been enough? Or had association with Aubrey put Karlyn on the potential Christians list?
The phone was still beeping. Aubrey pressed the End button.
Oh, not Karlyn. Why had she sounded so inanely confident, as if she might not be arrested in the next few minutes?
The phone dropped into the cradle of its own weight, and Aubrey shuffled over to her fussing baby boy. It wasn’t feeding time, but she nursed him anyway. Tears boiled over in her eyes and left marks like rain drops in his fine blond hair. She could not bear this role reversal. Karlyn had spent three weeks believing Aubrey was gone forever, but Aubrey would spend the rest of her life … knowing. Karlyn would never give in.
4
Marcus drove one-handed while the other hand kneaded his neck. He hadn’t had a headache in days, so he couldn’t complain. Besides, country driving was the best relief for a headache. Never mind the conventional wisdom about dark, quiet rooms. Blacktop spread a path in front of him, and fresh air rushed into the windows. Birds balanced on wires. Brown fields waited for winter’s covering and spring’s planting. He braked for a doe that bounded across the road about a quarter mile ahead, then coasted forward. The ten dining room chairs in the truck bed might not survive a collision with wildlife. Marcus had never damaged a piece of furniture in nine years of business. A streak he didn’t want to end.
Out his window, the sun trailed streamers of pink and red as it headed toward the horizon. Wispy clouds twisted over the dusky blue in front of him. God had put some beautiful things in the world, but nothing beat the sky. Especially when it rolled with storm clouds the color of Lee’s eyes.
After another few minutes, he turned right toward the Vitale house. Their dirt road was pocked with more dips and holes than he could avoid. The first mile of road passed only three houses. At the fourth, Marcus pulled up the crooked rope of driveway, backed his truck close to the porch, and walked around to the backyard. The Vitale property bordered on a forest a couple hundred yards from the house. A kidney-shaped pond occupied about one third of the yard space.
The house must strike awe in any first-time visitor. Marcus still paused sometimes to appreciate its vastness, girded halfway with a wraparound porch. It was even bigger inside. The layout included obsolete passageways and rooms behind rooms, which had housed the original owner’s servants. The basement’s tunnel surfaced out in the woods. The Vitales had owned it longer than Marcus had been alive, raised four kids here who now all lived out of state.
Belinda had told him last time he rang the front doorbell that he no longer counted as a guest and should knock on the back glass door. Marcus crossed the dusk-cloaked deck and triggered the porch lights. The sudden white flood made him squint. Ouch. He rapped on the glass. Soon the curtain was pulled away, and Chuck slid the door aside. His Italian complexion made his grin look whiter.
“Hey, Marcus. Come on in.” Chuck nearly shook Marcus’s hand off, a habit he’d taught his wife in their decades of marriage. Or maybe Belinda had taught it to him. He beckoned Marcus to follow and lumbered to the living room.
“The chairs are in the truck,” Marcus said.
“We’ll go get them in a minute. We’re your last job of the day, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Marcus.” Belinda’s Kentucky twang always sounded stronger when she said his name, but that was probably in his head. She rushed down the winding staircase in her typical stayed-home-all-day wardrobe—calf-length pink housecoat and oversized slippers. One hand grabbed onto his and pumped his entire arm, then yanked him toward her.
“Oh, never mind handshakes.” She stood head and shoulders shorter, but her hug engulfed him along with her vanilla perfume.
“Hi, Belinda.”
“You have time for coffee? There’s some brewing.”
“I can’t stay long.”
“You can stay a little while. ’Sides, I have that hazelnut creamer you like.”
Coffee never hurt. “A little while. After we bring in the chairs.”
While Chuck accompanied him to his truck, Belinda stood as the designated door-holder.
“You could’ve lost them on the way here,” Chuck said.
You couldn’t “lose” furniture from a truck bed unless you were an idiot. The tailgate pressed into Marcus’s hands as he lowered it. He raised a foot to the edge of the bumper, then jumped up into the springy bed. “They’re secure.”
“You sure?”
Marcus nodded and handed each chair down to Chuck, watchful not to scrape them against the tailgate. The cherry wood was new and sturdy, smooth in his grip.
Belinda held open the screen door, and Chuck and Marcus carried the chairs past her, two by two, into the dining room. In a few minutes, they lined one wall. What would Chuck and Belinda do with ten chairs? People would sit in them, of course, to eat at the table Marcus was crafting. But ten chairs were a lot to fill.
“Oh, Chuck.” Belinda clung to her husband’s arm. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
“I’ll have the table done as soon as I can,” Marcus said. “Do you want those pictures back?”
“I don’t need them now, not with the real thing here in my dining room.”
Soon the three of them sat at the kitchen bar. The latest news murmured from the radio under the counter. Marcus kept himself tuned to every few words and sipped from a mug on the verge of overflow.
“You still make the best coffee,” he said to Belinda.
“Thank you, sugar. That’s high praise coming from the Coffee Enthusiast of the Century.”
Enthusiast. In his case, a euphemism. This was his tenth cup today, and the night was newborn. He took another sip, his hands enclosing the ceramic warmth.
“… local couple, James and Karlyn Cole of—”
The words pulled a fire alarm in Marcus’s head. Belinda’s latest bird-watching adventure morphed from calming small talk to obnoxious ramble. He squelched the impulse to glance at the radio, to ask her to turn it up, to hush her altogether.
“Pending further evidence, both may be charged with a philosophical misdemeanor. At this time, they have been detained for resisting a search warrant. Once inside the home, MPC agents were physically prevented from conducting their search.”
A vise clamped onto his neck. Jim and Karlyn’s Bibles lay behind the false back of the only bookcase he owned, but it hadn’t done any good. Marcus hadn’t protected his family.
Again.
The rancid bitterness of an old memory pushed up into his throat. He shoved it away, but another one took its place. Newer family, newer loss. Frank’s wife Kay meeting him at the door with swollen, sleepless eyes.
“They took him, Marcus.”
A voice in the present cut into the memory, underscored by interview static. “Both suspects became belligerent, and Mr. Cole physically struck out at one of the agents. It took two others to restrain him.”
This story would never find the television. That would require a visual of Jim Cole and his walker. If they wanted a convincing lie, they should have emphasized Karlyn’s putter and purple belt.
“Marcus? Did we lose you?”
Um. “You saw a kestrel.”
“That’s what I said,” Belinda said. “A couple minutes ago. I’m talking about the Cooper’s hawk now.”
Did she really expect him to care about some bird right now? Marcus’s thumb rubbed the handle of his mug, then pushed it a few inches across the dappled brown countertop.
“You know those people on the radio?” Chuck said.
“Yea
h.” Marcus raised his eyes to Belinda’s worry-crinkled face.
Her fingers brushed his sleeve. “You’re being careful, aren’t you?”
Careful? What did that even mean in this situation? They knew he wouldn’t deny his faith. But he wasn’t shouting it from a busy intersection, either. He wasn’t a preacher like Frank. He was just living, and people who got to know him usually figured his faith out for themselves. He drained his coffee mug.
“I think of you every time there’s a Constabulary story on the news,” Belinda said. “Worried it might be you until I hear the names.”
Marcus pushed back the barstool and stood up. “I should go.”
“You don’t have to. We’ve got nothing going on.”
“Maybe he’s got work to do,” Chuck said.
“Is it that kitchen you told me about? When you’re done, you can work on mine.” Belinda hugged Chuck’s arm.
“No more remodeling, Pearl.” Chuck’s use of her middle name seemed to soften the scowl.
“We’ll get back with you, Marcus. This kitchen’s as old as my youngest, and he’s thirty now.”
They’d already forgotten the radio. “Okay.”
“Regardless, I’ll be finding you something else to do, since you’re the only one who doesn’t take my coffee for granted.”
They both accompanied him to the back sliding door. Belinda gave him a sideways hug.
“Our door’s always open to you, sugar.”
“I know.”
“Be seeing you.” Chuck offered a half wave, half salute. And a wink. “She’ll get her way about that kitchen, sure enough. Always does about stuff like that, you know.”
Marcus nodded and headed to his truck. If he stayed on this porch one more minute, he would ask these people if they coped with the world by pretending it didn’t exist.
“Thanks again for the chairs,” Chuck called before he shut the door. “Your work’s not half bad.”
Marcus didn’t turn to acknowledge that. He’d be gone before they realized what might be bothering him.
An hour later, he was running. Arms pumped, calves flexed and extended. Feet pounded, pounded, pounded, and legs drove him forward, down the unlit park path, past shadowed trees and fencing and weed-ruled grass. Run. Fast. Hard. Miles, maybe four now, maybe five. Just run, make the lungs work harder. Make the muscles want to quit and then don’t let them.
He didn’t stop until his body forced him to.
Then he bent double on the path, hands gripping knees, the wind in his ears replaced by long, controlled gasps. The sweat coursed down his back between his shoulder blades, soaked his shirt at the chest.
God.
God was here with him, while he grappled for air and answers.
“What could I have done?”
He’d done nothing for Frank. Nothing at all. He’d known the man burned for the truth of the Bible, for other people’s need to know the truth. He’d known that one day someone would report Frank when he tried to convince them of that truth. He hadn’t known it would happen so soon, a few months after Frank presented the truth to him. And he hadn’t known a single thing he could do to stop it.
For Jim and Karlyn, it was supposed to be different.
What was being done to them now? How was the Constabulary trying to “crack” them? Was Jason in charge of the process? Marcus cradled his head as anger escalated the throbbing even more than the run had. Don’t feel it, fix it. But he wasn’t any less helpless today against the Constabulary than he’d been yesterday, the week before, six years ago when the Supreme Court had established a state-by-state agency to deal with “philosophical crime,” or almost three years ago when he’d committed his head and his heart to the truth Frank showed him from the pages of an illegal Bible.
Reality battered like an unstoppable flood. Marcus was one man. They were many, and they were armed in every way.
“God,” he said. “I won’t let them do this. Not anymore. Help me stop them.”
He hadn’t found the way yet, but there had to be one.
5
Surely Elliott was awake by now. Aubrey headed toward her bedroom and tried to imagine the silence that immersed him. But how could she when she’d never experienced it herself, and when he was so … normal? His smile caused laughter from the elderly ladies who wandered stores without ever adding an item to their shopping carts. Before she’d had Elliott, Aubrey never knew how many of these ladies existed. Sometimes they seemed to trundle from every direction to greet him. Aubrey didn’t bother to tell them that their goo-goo’s and gah-gah’s hit his auditory nerve and died there.
She leaned over the crib prepared for his shiny gaze. Instead, she stared down at his back.
“Elliott, you did it. You rolled over.”
He wriggled and rocked. Aubrey raced to the kitchen, unplugged her cell phone from the wall charger, and dashed back to her room.
“Say cheese, baby boy.” The phone clicked and captured. “Hey, it only looks like another picture of you lying on your tummy. It’s really the aftermath of a stupendous feat.”
She saved the picture, opened her contacts list, and skipped to K. Karlyn must know about this. Immediately.
Aubrey’s thumb froze on the call button. The phone slid from her hand and glanced off the edge of the night stand. A new nick appeared in the walnut veneer, so she could walk past it every day and remember forgetting the loss of Karlyn. God, what’s happening to her, to Jim? They were hungry by now. Exhausted. Scared. Wondering if they’d ever see each other again, if the person they loved most was being mistreated.
Aubrey reached for the fallen phone with a trembling hand. When the con-cops stole a person, she ceased to be a person. She became a flower in a windstorm. She could bow herself to the grass until the wind believed it had won, and then spring back up, stripped of petals but alive to grow again. Or she could stiffen against the storm until it snapped off her head.
Bzzzz.
Her apartment’s obnoxious version of a doorbell. Mom? She usually called ahead, but who else would be stopping by right now?
Elliott was safe in his crib, so she snatched her keys from the kitchen rack—no, the door couldn’t swing shut on its own, but just in case. She headed for the foyer. She never let someone into her building without knowing who it was, and the speaker system hadn’t worked since she’d lived here. The main door was only feet from her own, but by the time she’d stepped out of her apartment, the buzzer droned again. Aubrey faced the foyer’s tall glass doors … and froze.
Two men, pinstriped suits, close-cropped hair. Two sets of eyes noting that she’d turned to porcelain.
Constabulary agents. They’d waited a whole day to pounce. How was she supposed to get through this—
This interview. That’s all it was. An interview about Jim and Karlyn, not about her, not about old crimes.
Was she trying to comfort herself with that fact?
Aubrey crossed the foyer to the door, opened it for them, returned their smiles. At least, one of them smiled. The other seemed to try, but the result was more a sneer, a potential snarl though his eyes weren’t unkind. Maybe his teeth and lips simply didn’t match well.
Maybe she should try to curb the terror that made her analyze trivia.
“Aubrey Weston.” Not a question, of course.
She cleared her throat of any residual sand particles. “How can I help you?”
“Agents Young and Partyka, MPC.” Badges hung suspended from their hands, then disappeared with polish inside their jackets. “We won’t take up too much of your time, ma’am. Just have to ask you a few questions.”
“Go ahead.”
“May we come in?”
No! “I guess that’s fine.”
Stilted seconds later, Aubrey had walked them through the foyer into her house. Her. House. She squared her
shoulders and motioned them to sit on her sofa. The tweed cushions collided with their somber suits, either of which probably cost more than this couch brand new.
“We’ll get right to the point, Miss Weston …” Partyka said, sneering. Maybe it was an intimidation tactic, as if he needed one. Surely he’d read her file.
“Please,” she said when he failed to follow through with his statement.
“You’re acquainted with James and Karlyn Cole?” Agent Young spread long hands like doilies over his knees.
“I am, yes.”
“You know they were apprehended earlier this week?”
“It was on the news.”
“How long have you known Mr. and Mrs. Cole?”
A control question. They would already know the answer. A test, to see if she dared lie to them about something they could verify. An icebreaker, to lull her into believing all the questions would be this simple, this safe.
“Karlyn, about seven years,” she said. “Jim, only a couple.”
“And would you characterize your relationship as a close one?”
“I talk to Karlyn a lot.”
Young’s hands folded together in front of him while his eyes remained on her. “When was the last time you spoke to Mrs. Cole?”
“I don’t remember the time exactly.”
Partyka’s lips pulled back further, exposing his teeth like a dominant wolf. He had to know he was doing that. “Miss Weston, I’m going to give you one warning, because you’re not an uncooperative person, not anymore. But if you’re thinking right now about getting out of these questions, or fudging the answers to them, that would be a very serious crime.”
They wouldn’t ask her if she’d relapsed into her original philosophy, not randomly during an interview about two other subjects. They wouldn’t arrest her. They wouldn’t steal her baby or hurt him. Logic told her all these things. But memory argued they could do whatever they wanted.
She should stand up and tell them that she was a Christian, that she’d never stopped being one.
Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers) Page 3