“Marcus.”
“Yeah.”
“Talk.”
“I am. It’s okay. You got scared of something. We’re home, you want to go inside?”
“Marcus,” she said. Her hands unclenched, cupped in front of her mouth. Relief flooded him in a dizzying wave. She knew she was hyperventilating. The flashback was over.
He kept talking for another few minutes while she worked to calm her breathing. Finally, her hands fell into her lap, and she met his eyes.
“Was … it … dark?”
He shook his head. “The guy at the gas station. You remember anything?”
Her expression shouted a sudden yes. “I thought …”
“You said it wasn’t—he wasn’t—”
“I thought … he was … at first.”
Marcus swallowed. “Why?”
“It was … something … the … the smell.” Her hands opened in front of her, one clean, one smeared with ice cream and chocolate. She scrubbed it against her black pants. Her breaths began to snag on each other.
“Lee. Hey. Stop.” He grabbed her slim wrist before he could think not to. She pulled away. She stared at her fudge-stained fingers while Marcus scoured his memory. “What smell? Was it … was it his cologne?”
Her hands clenched and withdrew against her body.
Marcus’s gut was a tight, sick ball. His thoughts were splintering into images he had to squash. Quickly. Before he drove back to that gas station and his bare hands committed murder.
“Lee. Are you sure? It wasn’t him?”
“No tattoo.”
On the attacker’s wrist, a staring eye in red ink. The only glimpse she’d gotten before he nearly suffocated her with the black hood. Marcus hadn’t even looked for the tattoo. He tried to gulp calmness from the truck’s heated air. More than one man wore that cologne. No justice. Not today.
Lee looked toward her house. “Inside?”
“Sure,” he said.
He opened the door for her and offered his arm. Come on, Lee. It’s okay this time. She sidestepped him. Even up the two garage stairs, her shaking legs made each step alone. Marcus shadowed her, ready if she stumbled, but not too close.
At the door, her trembling hands jostled her keys. She couldn’t find the right one. Marcus let her try for several seconds, then held out his hand. She went still, stared at him as if he could be a stranger, and finally let the keys fall into his palm.
She’d marked the head of her house key with a stripe of green Sharpie marker. Marcus unlocked the door and motioned her in ahead of him. She didn’t move.
“It’s okay. You’re home. We’ll turn on every light in the house.”
She stepped inside, then turned sharply. Keeping him out. She shook her head.
“What?” he said.
“You need to go.”
The words were a hard, hollowing punch to his gut. A barrier sprang up between his brain and his tongue. He shook his head.
“Please,” Lee said.
“What if it happens again? You could need a doctor.”
“It won’t.”
“Because it’s not dark? It wasn’t dark before.”
“I simply need some time to myself. I’ll be fine.” Her hand crept to the doorknob.
Their gazes clung. Let me in, Lee. He waited. A long minute. She stared back, the gray lakes of her eyes washed in weariness. The door inched forward. Marcus’s hand shot up, stopped it with a dull slap of palm against wood, but didn’t push it back.
“I would like to …” Lee shuddered.
What? … Oh. “Take your time. I’ll wait.”
She darted a glance over her shoulder and rubbed her chocolate-stained palm against her thigh.
“Lee. Hey. Look at me.”
She didn’t. Heck, this wasn’t her, except it had been twice before. After the power outage, the first time he’d seen one of her panic attacks. And years before that, when she’d finally told him everything about her and then stood up from their park bench as if the only thing left was to part ways forever.
“I did lie to you before, when I implied you were … the reason. I wanted to rectify that.”
He braced a hand on the door trim. “Go take a shower.”
Surprise widened her eyes, probably that he remembered what she’d needed after the blackout. As if he could forget.
“It’s okay. I’ll stay out here. You can lock the door, if you need to.”
“I won’t force you to wait in my garage while I—”
“You’re not forcing me. Come open the door when you’re ready.”
“Go home, Marcus. Please.”
He shook his head and dropped his hand. Lee shut the door with a sigh, inches from his face. The deadbolt slid into place. Marcus paced until the lava cooled from his veins, until the pounding outrage in his skull muted to a throb he could ignore. She was inside right now trying to get clean, as if that monster’s dirtiness had transferred to her. The quiet of the garage magnified Marcus’s growl.
An hour passed. The deadbolt clicked. The door opened. Lee stood in sweat pants and a hoodie, both so big they hardly touched her. She held a blanket around her shoulders. When Marcus stepped inside, she didn’t flinch or look away, but no warmth resided in her eyes. This was an easy Lee mode to recognize. Coping and cold.
You’d think by now she’d give up on that one. She should know he couldn’t be repelled by glares. Or panic attacks. Or, well, anything.
Marcus locked the door and let her lead him to the living room. They each switched on a lamp. She picked a book from her shelf and curled up in her chair. He sat on the couch opposite her, clicked the TV on and surfed, volume low. Hopefully some channel was playing a Spielberg movie.
If they talked at all, it would be about the book or the movie. Eventually, he’d drive home. Tomorrow would come and go. And moments from tonight would stay cocooned in knowing silence. Marcus leaned his head back and closed his eyes. This was Lee to him, and him to Lee. The place safe enough for silence.
12
The day after Agent Young’s appearance at the office, Mary-Beth didn’t speak to Aubrey all morning. She left for lunch, then charged back in before Aubrey had a chance to lock the front door. “I’m sorry.”
Aubrey turned the lock and tried to shrug. “You didn’t mean anything.”
“All this stuff with Elliott—the last thing you need is time in re-education, away from him and work and everything.”
As if re-education were a governmental inconvenience, like jury duty or an IRS audit. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I might’ve thrown a huge, stupid curveball at your whole routine and schedule and life. And if you were serious about that—about not going along with them—”
“Did you think I was joking?”
Mary-Beth froze with one arm in the sleeve of her red peacoat.
“Look, Christians don’t bomb things or kill people or—” The words froze half formed on Aubrey’s lips. She couldn’t discuss this.
But Mary-Beth stood in front of her, dangling a coat sleeve and wearing lost confusion behind her eyes.
Aubrey felt a coward’s shiver and tried to abbreviate the truth. “Being a Christian means I believe in the Bible. The real Bible, not the PUV.”
“The PUV is the real Bible.”
“Oh, come on, Mary-Beth.” Aubrey sat down in a padded waiting room chair. “Does that make any sense? The Bible’s supposed to be from God, isn’t it?”
Mary-Beth nodded, tugged off her coat, and draped it over her crossed arms.
“But you think a bunch of elite academic people get to decide after all this time that the Bible’s screwed up, and they have to fix it?”
“The old ones are screwed up,” Mary-Beth said.
“So a thousand years ago, God looked
down at the translators of the originals and went, ‘Uh-oh, they’re biased and incompetent, I guess My message is ruined.’”
A pensive frown tugged at Mary-Beth’s face. “But you’re saying God’s a Person outside us, and that’s— Oh, I’ve got to go, meeting Dom next door for pizza. I wanted to apologize, that’s all. I don’t think you’re going to go kill someone, or anything, and I’d feel really bad if that con-cop heard me.”
“He probably didn’t.” The words had to be true, that’s all.
Mary-Beth’s lips curved into a ribbon of relief. “I bet you’re right. He would’ve said something if he’d heard me, right? So, um—forgiven?”
“Yeah, of course.” Aubrey headed toward the back kitchen and took her sandwich and apple from the fridge. Mary-Beth trailed her, shrugging into her coat.
“Thanks, Aubrey. And remember, I’m still buying you lunch. I was thinking Friday?”
“Sounds good.”
“Great. I’ll see you in an hour.”
“Enjoy your pizza.”
When the office’s back door closed on her babbling coworker, Aubrey leaned against the counter and closed her eyes.
She’d only tried to explain to Mary-Beth, tried to make her think. But accidental blabbing was no safer than deliberate reporting, and right now, Mary-Beth had no serious reason to keep quiet. She couldn’t know how the Constabulary procured compliance.
Over her head, the bulb too bright to look at, sharpening her shadow that stretched across the ivory tile.
Aubrey opened her eyes to the irritating, reassuring flicker of a fluorescent bulb well into its last days. If she worked through the stack of documents on the back cabinet, she could stay punched in through lunch. She chomped down on her apple and got to work.
Jeff Young’s paperwork leered from the top of the stack. She flipped through it, then settled all five pages into the scanner and clicked the green button on her screen.
“Did you hear her, or not?” Aubrey said to sheets as they whirred out the other side. She labeled and saved the scanned documents, then closed the computer window as if the face on his scanned license might answer her. A memory did instead—not Agent Young’s voice, but a voice from that sharply lit room, all glass windows with shut blinds.
“What are you waiting for, Aubrey? Fire and brimstone to finish me off? An earthquake to shake the walls down and set you free? Or a white knight, maybe? Brett’s already been released.”
“And they were singing, ‘Bye-bye, Miss American Pie …’”
Her mother’s ringtone. Aubrey hurried back to the kitchen and retrieved her phone from her purse. “Mom?”
“Aubrey—” The voice choked on a sob.
“Elliott. Is he okay?”
“They took him, honey.”
“Who—” Her whole body froze solid. Only a whisper managed to escape the ice. “Con-cops?”
“They barged in and took him. They said I could get him back after they approved our home with the state. I thought they’d already arrested you, the way they were talking. I had to warn you, in case they hadn’t. Aubrey, when they come for you, you have to tell them what they want to hear.”
“Like Brett did?” Like I did, nine months ago?
Her mother’s tears came louder over the line. “Don’t you want your son back?”
“Of course I—”
“If they take you a second time, they might never let you out, for the rest of your life.”
“Mom, you know I can’t.”
“Honey, you absolutely must cooperate with them. For us, for Elliott.”
She could. For Elliott, she could. Her body shook. Father God, they have my baby, those people have my baby. But she could lie again, and they would give him back, unhurt, if she acted now.
No. God saw her. She’d shamed Him once, maybe forfeited His forgiveness, but she would let the con-cops kill her before she denied Him again.
And Elliott? Would she let them kill him, too?
“Aubrey?” Her mother’s voice quavered. “Please, honey. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Mom.” She swallowed. “Did you hear where they took him?”
“They didn’t say.”
“I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later.”
“Aubrey. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She closed the phone and shoved it into her purse. They knew where she worked. She sat here, a pathetic statue, a stationary target. She had to go. Somewhere.
Like where?
Her breath came in a sharp antirhythm as she turned on the answering machine, changed it to the lunch message, and scrawled a note promising a quick return. Leaving in a panic would trigger her boss’s suspicion. But a ruse was worthless. The con-cops knew her face, her car, her workplace, her house. They knew who watched her baby, and they must know now she had been warned. Letting Mom call her must be one more move in the strategy of their game.
Aubrey locked the door behind her and jogged to her car. The wind at her back pushed a parade of dead leaves over the blacktop toward her. She got into the car, turned the key, and took illogical pleasure in the click of the automatic locks. As if these locks were any more effective than the deadbolt on her apartment door, on her mother’s door.
She braked at the driveway to wait for traffic to clear. Right or left, it probably didn’t matter. Where could she go to hide from the Constabulary?
Where can I go to hide from Your presence?
“Father God,” she said. “I’m scared.”
The traffic cleared for a right turn, and she pulled out. Any of the cars behind her, in front of her, passing from the other direction—she was hemmed in by possible con-cops.
“I don’t know if You’re listening or not, and if You’re not, I don’t blame You, but please—not for me, for Elliot—please help me.”
Karlyn would have tried to help, but there was no one else on her entire list of friends and acquaintances. Not one, and she couldn’t blame them. Every friendship had its lines in the sand, and a felony charge was a universal line.
Nonstop checking out the cars in her mirrors threatened to distract her from the road. She had to focus, or she’d wreck her car and have only her legs to flee with. She tapped the brakes until she was no longer tailgating. She glanced in the mirrors again.
Dormant green lights topped a car, three behind hers. Trying to see her license plate, or knowing already who she was. Maybe they waited for her to speed along the dirt shoulder in panic, so they could add resisting arrest to her charges.
“Please don’t let them catch me,” she said. “Please, I have to get Elliott back.”
Her ramblings might qualify as a psalm, but she had no right to compose one. Space widened between the cars ahead. Aubrey accelerated with nowhere to go.
“You saved David from all his enemies. You can do anything.”
The cars behind her held their position for the next two miles, through several traffic lights, past plazas and gas stations and restaurants that bordered both sides of the windblown road. A squat blue vehicle directly behind her, then a longer red one, then smoke gray with green lights. This must be a game to the agent in that car. “Where Will the Cornered Suspect Go Next?”
Crash.
Aubrey jolted. She’d hit somebody. No. Her car was still moving. As was the SUV in front of her. In her rearview mirror, two halted vehicles faded to the far background: the con-cop car, and the red sedan that had braked without warning.
“Oh, God,” she said. “Did You do that?”
She had minutes to disappear. The agent would radio his position this very second, report the direction she was headed, send others to converge on her. If she could trade cars with somebody … but that solution would die young. She couldn’t use her credit cards, couldn’t show her face in public if they flagged her for a most-wanted news blur
b.
First things first. Disappear for now, figure out later how to disappear for good. And how to find Elliott. They expected her to flee somewhere familiar. Or maybe they expected her to drive until they stopped her. Maybe they would station cars at her aunt and uncle’s house, her grandmother’s. Maybe they would interview old friends from college.
She was tailgating again. As she braked, the SUV signaled for a left turn into a small plaza. Aubrey’s heart misplaced a beat.
They would not expect her to go shopping.
She signaled the turn as well and accelerated through the yellow arrow. She should enter a store to complete the act. Her choices sprawled in a line before her, stores of various sizes and specialties. Electronics was out. She’d probably step through the door as someone tested a home theater system with a news channel broadcasting her description. The shoe store and the bath-and-body store huddled between electronics and home improvement like two petite sisters holding hands. Those doors probably held jingling bells. Those buildings probably held helpful associates who would flock to her the moment she walked in.
She’d been inside a home-improvement store maybe three times in her life. They were vast, and in Aubrey’s experience, a person who wanted assistance had to search out the employees. She pulled around the building and found the employee parking, backed her car into a space framed by others, and headed for the store with hunched shoulders. She’d forgotten her jacket. Cold wind stung her cheeks and drew water from her eyes. She blinked it away. Any form of tears right now would undo her.
13
Marcus was headed for the checkout line, carrying sanding screens and a bucket of mud for work at Penny’s, when two men stepped into the main aisle, not a hundred feet in front of him. Badges beamed from the chests of their smoke-gray uniforms. Constabulary agents in a home-improvement store? They were after somebody.
They were after him.
Marcus meandered past and threw them the same superficial glance any innocent person would, before the bill of his hat cut them from his peripheral vision. He’d worn it to shield the black eye from double-takes, not to hide his face in general from the Constabulary. Well, whatever worked.
Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers) Page 8