Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers)

by Amanda G. Stevens

  “I talked to Karlyn the day she and Jim were arrested,” she said.

  Their faces were two masks of professionalism. Young nodded. “What did you talk about?”

  “We were going to a baby shower. She invited me, I agreed to go.”

  Another nod. “And?”

  “She mentioned there would be cheesecake.”

  “That’s all you talked about?”

  “We weren’t on the phone very long.”

  Revelation sprang over Agent Young’s face, patronizing, unreal. “What interrupted you?”

  Aubrey’s mouth turned to bedrock, and her pulse thumped a warning. How close were they to the question they couldn’t answer? How close was she to betraying her friend?

  “She said someone was at the door, and she had to let them in.”

  “Did she mention who it was?”

  Aubrey nodded. This question was harmless. “Con-cops.”

  Partyka smirked at the colloquialism. “Did she say anything else?”

  “She hung up before I could say good-bye.”

  “Miss Weston—”

  A mewling sound, kittenlike from a room away, raised both agents’ eyebrows. Aubrey’s arms prickled as their focus shifted from her friends to her child.

  “Meal time?” Young said.

  She had to satisfy them somehow, right now, convince them to leave, but before she could open her mouth, an indignant wail burst from the bedroom.

  “Hey, by all means, see to the kid,” Young said. “We’re in no hurry here.”

  “He’s not hungry,” Aubrey said.

  Partyka crossed his arms and tipped his head back to look down at her. “Whatever he is, get him quiet, and then we’ll continue.”

  Aubrey tried to rise on solid legs, like a mother lion, confident of her strength to protect her offspring. But she headed down the hallway toward Elliott with knees of mush. Why was she going to him at all? Complaining alone for a little while wouldn’t hurt him.

  She picked Elliott up under his arms. The soft bundle of him dangled contentedly before her, kicked out a random foot. Had she come to quiet him, to shift the con-cops’ focus elsewhere? Or had she come because a con-cop had told her to? Maybe a person never escaped brainwashing, even nine months later.

  “Hello, baby boy.” Elliott’s diaper was still clean, and he didn’t need to be fed. She could take him into the living room with her, subject him to the eyes of the agents. Or she could set him back into the crib and hope he didn’t howl anew at her departure.

  “How old is he again?”

  Aubrey spun toward the door. Her arms clasped Elliott closer.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Agent Young leaned against the door frame as if he’d stood there a hundred times.

  “Karlyn didn’t say anything important on the phone.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me what she did say, so we can head on out of here and check you off our list.”

  Yes. Tell them. Get them away from Elliott. But when Aubrey’s mouth opened, a mutiny spewed out. “Jim didn’t attack those agents.”

  Young’s amiability cooled by several degrees. “That’s not what I asked you.”

  “He couldn’t have, and you know it. And if you had to make that up, then it means you didn’t have any reason to arrest them but you arrested them anyway.”

  “If you don’t answer the original question, I can detain you. Right now.”

  They shouldn’t detain her. They should arrest her. I’m a Christian, and I’ll never deny my Jesus again.

  Elliott. She couldn’t lose him. They must not be allowed to own him, to raise him, to scare him or hurt him. Or kill him.

  “She said everything would be okay,” Aubrey said. “That was all.”

  “And what did she mean by that?”

  Understanding tunneled inside her. Karlyn’s groundless reassurance was as cryptic to them as it was to Aubrey. Here, they wanted information. And here, Aubrey had none to give. She didn’t have to betray her friends to save her baby. She could breathe again.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “You can’t explain to me how a person guilty of multiple misdemeanors would find Constabulary agents at her door with a search warrant, and not react in fear at all?”

  “I’m—sure she was. Scared.”

  “You know, and I know, that she wasn’t. She didn’t believe we would find any reasons to apprehend her, or her husband.”

  “Maybe there weren’t any reasons.”

  Agent Young narrowed his eyes. Elliott squirmed against her chest, and she relaxed her stifling hold.

  “We have another theory,” Young said. “She and her husband knew about the search beforehand. And once the evidence they removed is discovered and linked to them, they’ll be guilty of a felony.”

  “How would they know about the search?”

  “That’s the question of the hour.”

  “Well, I don’t know the answer.”

  Agent Young knew that she knew that he knew. She was telling the truth, and no further information could be maneuvered from her. The pause between them was an open one, because in this matter, Aubrey had nothing to hide.

  He stood to his full height, apart from the doorway, and nodded and walked back to the living room. Aubrey followed him with Elliott tucked in one arm. The baby cackled and waved from the shoulders, as if his elbow joints were still undiscovered country.

  Both agents had risen and were heading for the door.

  “Thanks for your time, Miss Weston.” Agent Partyka backed the words with a sincere snarl.

  Aubrey opened the door for them and tried not to lean against it.

  “One thing to keep in mind,” Young said, one foot in the foyer and one still planted in her house like a weed. “If you happen to hear anything useful, we’ll expect you to notify us.”

  She nodded. Of course, they expected it.

  “Failing to do so would be obstruction, which is a felony.”

  She nodded again.

  “Have a nice day, Miss Weston,” Partyka said.

  The two agents crossed the foyer, let themselves out the main doors, and disappeared across the parking lot. Aubrey closed and bolted the door as if a lock could keep the Constabulary out. She wobbled to the couch and sank down on a cushion. Her body rocked back and forth. This rhythm calmed Elliott on colicky nights but couldn’t calm Aubrey now. She held him to her chest and imagined Karlyn, an unsheltered flower, broken when she refused to bend.

  “You’re going to make it, Salmon.”

  “I’m not,” Aubrey whispered. “And neither are you.”

  6

  Pointless, that’s what this was. Marcus should’ve stuck to his first answer when Keith called with that wheedling whine. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d hung up on the guy in the last fifteen years. Then Jason’s voice yelled in the background, “Nobody’s driving me, I know my way home,” and Marcus imagined other words tumbling out of the same drunk mouth that had warned him about Jim and Karlyn. God could be offering another chance to protect the family.

  But after Marcus dropped Keith off, Jason’s words had dried up. He slouched against the truck window and stared forward and didn’t say anything. Marcus’s playing taxi wouldn’t rescue anybody tonight. He’d only bailed out two drunken idiots.

  “Had this thing with names when I was a kid,” Jason said to the windshield.

  Then again.

  “Probably ’cause of mine. I looked them up on the Internet, where they came from and everything, you know? Learned some weird crap.”

  No, this wasn’t helpful information, but at least he was talking. “You’ve got a weird name?”

  “Not really. Mayweather. Of course, kids can tweak that in a lot of stupid ways. I hated it, so I ran an Internet search on my n
ame.” The hyena’s laugh was more subdued now. “Then I looked up all their names and lectured them when they made fun of mine. Believe it or not, most of them got bored and walked away.”

  Please say something useful. But interrupting might shut him up.

  “Lecturing doesn’t work on everybody, though. Some bullies just wanna be bullies.”

  “Yeah,” Marcus said.

  “Bullies like the Christians still out there, you know?”

  So he got into the Constabulary because kids at school made fun of his name.

  “They hide their hate lit from us, but it doesn’t hide what they do with it. And it doesn’t hide them. Sooner or later, I find them out.”

  Jason’s head turned, and his beer-flavored breath hit Marcus’s face. His eyes fixed on Marcus as if … as if he knew.

  Marcus’s jaw turned to concrete. Jason knew about the Coles, that Marcus had tried to save them. Had he threatened the information from them? More than threatened?

  Jason’s chin tilted up. “You believe in God?”

  Not the expected question, but this one was no less a razor wire. Marcus worked his mouth till he could swallow again. “Yeah.”

  Jason nodded and looked back out the window at the guardrail that skimmed past.

  No more questions? Maybe that one was random, had no connection to the Coles. Maybe Jason was too drunk to probe into what Marcus believed about God.

  “How’s work, Jason?”

  “Just two streets away this time.”

  What?

  “Sometimes it’s unnerving, you know? How close they can be hiding to your own house.”

  Icicles ran a relay up and down Marcus’s spine. Another chance.

  “I pass this house every day I go to work, and every day I come home. When we got the tip and I saw the street, I couldn’t believe it. And tricky, too, making a parked surveillance car blend in when the house is hanging on the edge of this hill, sideways to face the whole intersection—I swear it looks like somebody dropped it right out of the sky and left it where it landed.”

  Adrenaline spurted through Marcus’s body. He could find this house. “Must be frustrating.”

  “Got ’em good now, though. Weed them right out of there, out of my neighborhood, away from my kids, get them behind bars where they belong.”

  Strangers would have no reason to trust Marcus. Well, he’d have to make them. Part of the job.

  “Hey, don’t miss my street, man.”

  Marcus braked hard and made the turn.

  “You ever heard of a blinker?”

  Marcus shrugged. Jason didn’t say another word till they stood side by side on his porch.

  “Watch this.” Jason drew back his fist to pound his own door.

  It opened, and he nearly gave his wife a bloody nose.

  “What’re you standing there for? I was going to knock.”

  Pamela nodded. “That’s why I’m standing here. The kids are asleep.”

  “Oh.” He turned to Marcus. “Wanna meet them?”

  “When they’re awake,” Marcus said.

  “Go on into the house, Jase,” Pamela said with a wave of her bejeweled fingers. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “G’night,” he tossed over his shoulder at Marcus. He shut the door with enough force to wake his neighbors, not to mention his kids.

  “Well,” Marcus said before any silence could build between him and Jason’s wife. “Good night.”

  “This is the second time in a week you’ve brought my husband home.”

  “Yeah.” Did she want an apology for not leaving him to sleep it off?

  “I do appreciate it.”

  If he’d been doing this out of kindness, maybe the words wouldn’t have jammed behind his teeth. He mustered a shrug.

  “But I know what you think of Jason.” Then her words fell like dominoes. “You think he’s a party animal, a loudmouth, and a belligerent fool, and when he’s drinking, that’s exactly what he is. But you think that’s all he is, and you’re wrong.”

  By the time she paused, Marcus’s breathing had stalled. “When you’re drinking, you’re no good to anybody. And you’re always drinking.” Mom couldn’t have known he’d prove her right so fast.

  Pamela’s gaze dropped to her stockinged feet, then rose again. “You have no right to judge him.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  Marcus nodded. Some men drank at parties and wrecked their cars. And some men drank every day and killed their mothers.

  “Then thank you.”

  Another nod was all he managed.

  “Good night, I guess,” she said.

  Yeah. Get out of here. “Good night.”

  “Two streets over” was surprisingly unhelpful in a maze of a subdivision like this one. The surveillance car probably still kept watch over this house, wherever it was. Driving under the speed limit to peer at both sides of the street would look suspicious. Given the time, so would parking the car and searching on foot. Maybe he’d missed the house. Maybe Jason’s description was exaggerated by alcohol.

  There it was.

  He didn’t brake as he passed the one-level piece of awkward architecture that looked down on the rest of the neighborhood from a sudden hill. Left where it landed—not a bad description. The porch looked ready to slide down into the street. Marcus made a right and parked between two houses.

  Removing the material evidence against them wouldn’t be enough. He had to get them to leave. Now. Well, first he had to get them to open the door. He stepped down from his truck and into the damp autumn night.

  His body itched to leave the sidewalk. A passing car could easily spear him in its headlights. Decaying leaves crunched, dried and brittle, under his feet. He crossed the street and approached the house on the hill from an angle. Its back porch light beckoned, orange through the tinted fixture.

  The brisk wind tried to make his eyes water. He swiped a hand under them. Not now, he had to see. No cars were parked on the street within three houses of this one. If agents watched, they’d holed up in somebody’s driveway.

  Marcus abandoned the sidewalk, slipped alongside the hill, and scurried up the incline into the backyard. A tire swing rocked in the wind, roped to an apple tree. He nearly slipped on a rotting apple, still round enough to roll under his shoe. Beside the porch sprawled a covered sandbox. Its plastic turtle head stared Marcus down with bulging eyes.

  He reached the porch light as a brown moth fluttered into it and clung to the glass. Marcus lifted the brass door knocker…

  If they didn’t believe him, they might call the police.

  Marcus would die in a cage, just like Frank. It was inevitable, though he didn’t know how he knew that. Any day could be his last outside. Today could be.

  He could walk away now, but of course he wouldn’t. These strangers were his family as much as Jim and Karlyn were.

  His hand shook as he lowered the door knocker firmly. Once, twice, three times.

  Had he known this morning what he’d be doing now, he’d have driven west for hours, until he hit Lake Michigan. Wide open, endless water. Gritty sand under bare feet. And Lee. A picnic with Lee on the beach. She’d hunch into a roomy sweatshirt, and the breeze would toss her hair into her eyes. She’d glare at the autumn clouds over the water and point out the “absurdity” of spending a day at a Michigan beach in the last week of November. Maybe he’d have told her. Last day, Lee. I wanted big space. In fact, maybe he’d have told her everything and lost himself in selfishness. And I wanted to see you one more time, and let’s watch the sun set on the beach, and could I hold you?

  What would she say? If they’d never see each other again, if it didn’t have to mean anything to her, would it be okay for his arms to feel her for just one day?

  Nobody answered the d
oor. Marcus knocked again. In a minute, it swung open, and light flowed from inside to make him squint.

  The bearded man on the doorstep eyed him and frowned. “I don’t know you.”

  “No,” Marcus said. “But I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “Good night.” He disappeared behind the door, and it swung forward, about to turn to smoke Marcus’s only chance.

  Marcus blocked the door with one leg and one arm. “They’ve got a warrant.”

  The man’s face reappeared. The pressure on the door vanished. His dark eyes seemed to absorb Marcus, the way tar absorbed heat.

  “Who?” the man finally said, as if he didn’t know.

  Marcus’s whisper seemed to travel too far. “Constabulary. You have to leave. Now.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “I’m not one of them. This isn’t a trap. And even if you destroy the evidence, they can take you in anyway.”

  The man rubbed his nose, glanced toward the sandbox. “Where’d you get this stuff? Somebody’s been yanking your chain. There’s no reason they would come here.”

  The guy might as well be clutching a well-fingered script. What To Say When Somebody “Warns” You About the Constabulary. Marcus’s feet grew roots that took hold within the porch concrete. This family wouldn’t be safe till the man believed him.

  “Time to move on, buddy,” the man said.

  “They’ll take your children.”

  A storm cloud gathered over his face. “Game over. Get off my porch.”

  “I’m not Constabulary,” Marcus said. “I’m a Christian.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed in a moment of consideration, then—

  Knuckles drove into Marcus’s nose. He staggered back, wet warmth oozing from one nostril. Blunt throbbing radiated through his face from the center outward. The man dragged him from the edge of the porch before he could pitch backward into the sandbox. Adrenaline recaptured Marcus’s tattered senses. His arm broke the man’s hold from underneath, and he stepped back.

  The man didn’t attack again. “Won’t work here, dirtbag.”

  “They don’t know I’m here.”

  “Better get your Christian butt off my property then, before I call them on you.”