Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers)

by Amanda G. Stevens

  Behind him came a burst of static, then a radio voice whose words he couldn’t make out. One of the agents quietly spoke back.

  Maybe Jason’s drunken memory lapse was an undercover role, and the guy really held his liquor like a rock. Or maybe the father with eleven Bibles behind his walls cut a deal so his kids could go back to their sandbox. The bruise on Marcus’s face had transitioned from blue and purple to purple and yellow. The man would recognize him in a lineup.

  Instinct veered him off course. Heading to the front of the store might look like fleeing. He turned a corner and faced the cabinet hardware display … and a young female shopper.

  She was a few years younger than Lee, shorter and curvier and bearing a brown leather purse over one shoulder. Not the first woman her age he’d observed in a home-improvement store, but they did tend to stand out, especially when they shopped alone. Maybe she was holiday shopping.

  He’d kill a minute or two here, then head out. Plenty of cabinet pulls to gaze at. Actually, those were similar to the Vitales’ cabinet knobs. Satin nickel finish, rope edge, thirty millimeter. He’d ask before buying, of course. Belinda might want a change. But good to know they were here if he needed them.

  The woman to his left hadn’t moved. She didn’t even seem to breathe. Her head should tip from one product to another. Her fingers should graze over display knobs. Women shoppers touched everything in the store—light fixtures, flooring, countertops—as though feel were the most important gauge of quality. Marcus angled his body to face her.

  Her hand was shaking.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  She jolted. Her eyes caught him, unable to mask a shimmering fear. “I am, yes, but thanks for asking.”

  She stood before the display like a soldier before a firing squad … or a Christian before a squad of Constabulary agents.

  He couldn’t ask, but he didn’t have to. The two agents weren’t here for the sale on bathroom hardware. Or for him. He took a deliberate breath, and the scent of raw construction eased the strain in his neck.

  “Having trouble finding something?” Marcus said.

  “No trouble.” No eye contact, either.

  “Okay.” She couldn’t really expect him to leave her here, frozen and alone. “You need to hide in here, or get out?”

  She pivoted to face him as if he could be some dangerous animal she had to keep in sight. Maybe he was wrong about the Constabulary agents. But if somebody else threatened her, why try to blend in here when she could go to the front of the store and ask for help? Not that battered women always did the sensible thing.

  “I’m perfectly fine, thanks. I just needed some—um—”

  “Kitchen tiles?”

  “Tiles, yes.” She turned back to the display.

  “Then you need to go five aisles that way.” Marcus pointed.

  She bit her bottom lip. “Go away.”

  “No.”

  “I’m—”

  “You’re scared of somebody. And this”—he jerked an arm at the display—“isn’t hiding.”

  “I’m not scared.”

  “Is it your boyfriend?”

  Her mouth opened, closed, and opened. “Can you get me out of here? Without being seen?”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “I mean, by … anybody.”

  The seesaw of his thoughts crashed down with certainty. But if he mentioned the two uniformed agents, she’d deny it and close up again. To get her out of this, he had to pretend to believe her.

  “Stay here,” he said. “And … here. Read this.” He grabbed a cabinet knob from the rack and handed it to her. Tiny text covered the plastic bag: contents, installation suggestions, warnings not to let your three-year-old eat this bag.

  Her forehead wrinkled.

  “Look like a shopper,” he said. “In case somebody else walks by.”

  “Oh. Right. Okay.”

  Marcus walked to one end of the aisle. He gazed down the main walkway as though searching the hanging signs for something specific. He turned enough to lower his eyes and capture a view of the shoppers.

  Gray uniforms, straight ahead, half the store away. Their heads turned. Their eyes roved. In minutes, they’d reach him. He rounded the corner, sprinted down the empty neighboring aisle, and re-entered the previous aisle from the opposite end. The woman jumped, startled.

  “Come on,” he said. He shoved the sanding screens into her hands. Then he headed toward the front of the store, toward ground the agents had already covered. He swung the blue-lidded bucket of mud from his right hand.

  Wait a minute.

  He turned, and her forehead almost hit his chin. She jerked back.

  “How many?” he said.

  “What?”

  They didn’t have time for pretense. “Two? Four? Six?”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “They’re in uniform. One’s got kind of red hair. The other one’s a little taller than me. Are they the only ones you’ve seen?”

  “You know what? I think I’ll deal with this myself.”

  Her wooden steps backward would send her right into their path. Marcus dropped the sanding screens to seize her arm. He should pull her along behind him. “I can’t avoid them if I don’t know they’re here.”

  “Like I said, I’ll—”

  “If I’m one of them, you’re already made.”

  The next three seconds nearly killed his patience. Her hazel eyes stared into his. She stopped trying to free her arm. “I don’t know for sure, but I think there’s only two.”

  Marcus resumed his path toward the front. Right angles down aisles took him and the woman gradually east. Less traffic at that exit, and usually no greeter. The agents had probably given employees a description of their prey.

  “Where’s your car?” he said.

  She fast-walked alongside him. “The employee lot, almost behind the building.”

  Smart. “Theirs must be unmarked.”

  “Maybe, but there was a squad car earlier. It hit a car behind me.”

  A Constabulary agent hit a car? The east exit appeared ahead of them, and only a few customers cluttered their way. No gray uniforms, and no orange employee aprons. But a vise still squeezed his neck.

  “They know your car,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah, they know it. They were tailing me. And then they called those two in.”

  Time for clarification on that later. He and the woman could step through those automatic doors and get shoved against the building and handcuffed. She wasn’t safe till she was at least away from here. At best, she had a safe place to go.

  Did the description include her khakis and pink shirt? Marcus gestured her to stop and set the bucket on the floor. He stripped off his jacket and handed it to her, probably futile but better than nothing.

  “Put it on.”

  She shrugged into the jacket and resumed walking only when he did. He swallowed a sigh. The jacket’s sleeves fell past her fingers. As if reading his thoughts, she pushed them up to wrist level.

  Her pink shirt still showed through the jacket’s opening. “Zip it up.”

  Again, she complied without comment.

  “Wait,” he said, and they halted two steps before the end of the aisle. Marcus stepped out into the open checkout area and wandered to an impulse-shopper display before one checkout line. He tugged a blister pack of batteries from a rack and searched the vicinity while pretending to scan the rest of the display. The agents weren’t here. If they had followed the same general path as before, they were now on the other side of the store.

  Marcus replaced the batteries and half turned to catch the woman’s gaze. He tilted his head toward the doors. She pointed at herself, then at the door, her eyebrows arches of question. Marcus gave half a nod.

  S
he was at his side in a few seconds. He rested a hand on her shoulder and guided her to his left. When they stepped through the doors, he would block her from the camera mounted above this side of the door, but that was only one. She’d still show up on the feed from the parking lot. Well, maybe the teenage cashier with the comb-over had meant it last week when he said the cameras were never turned on.

  “If I get back in my car, they’re going to follow me again,” she said.

  “You’re not getting back in your car.”

  “Then … what are we doing?”

  “I’ll take you where you need to go.”

  Marcus angled his face as they passed through the door, revealing nothing but the back of his neck and his hat’s faded Red Wings logo. They walked outside freely. The wind whipped her hair around her face, long, loose curls the color of oak stain. If only his jacket had a hood. He could hope the cameras were off, but he couldn’t assume they were. He kept his hand on her shoulder as they crossed the parking lot to his truck. If they thought she was alone, maybe his presence would throw them when they looked at the security footage later—or if they were looking at it now. You never knew with the Constabulary.

  “I don’t have anywhere to go,” the woman said. “They’re already watching my parents’ house, my work … and my best friend’s already …”

  Her steps lagged. Marcus propelled her forward. He’d get her into the truck, out of here, and then … What then?

  “So … we ought to part ways.” Wind or desperation brought tears to her eyes.

  “I could drive you … away. To Ohio, if you want.”

  “No.”

  “At least you’d be dealing with a different Constabulary, one that doesn’t know you.”

  “Well, this one took my son. I’m not going anywhere without him.”

  Did they drag him screaming like a kidnapping victim? Had he even realized what was happening? She wasn’t old enough for a kid more than a few years old, unless she’d had him as a teenager. Marcus shepherded her to the passenger side of his truck. He opened the door and offered her a hand up, as much for courtesy as for appearances. The cab was a step up for Lee, and this woman stood several inches shorter, not much past five feet.

  Her gaze welded to his hand, and she shivered inside his jacket.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Her hand was chilled silk in his as she gripped the door frame to slide inside. Marcus shut the door and kept a leisurely pace as he got behind the wheel.

  Rather than wait for a green left-turn arrow, Marcus left this parking lot for the larger one beside it. A right turn here would save time, depending on their destination. Wherever it was.

  He pulled into traffic when he shouldn’t have and accelerated quickly. The car behind him still had to brake. “So they tailed you, you lost them, and you hid in a store.”

  She swiveled in the seat to watch him drive. “I thought I should do the last thing they’d expect. Not that it worked. They found me again pretty much right away.”

  “Does your car have GPS?”

  A grin without a smile darkened her eyes. “My car doesn’t even have AC most of the time.”

  “Then how’d they find it?”

  “How should I know?”

  His hands squeezed the wheel as his mind sorted options. They could have tagged her car weeks ago, been trailing her all this time, but it seemed melodramatic, even for the Constabulary. Somehow, though, they’d gotten an instant location on it. Or … they’d followed something other than the car.

  “You have a cell phone,” he said.

  Her forehead scrunched at the significance in his voice. “Pretty much the whole country—”

  “Take out the battery.”

  “You think—?”

  “Now.”

  She pawed through her purse and snatched up the phone. An intersection lay a hundred feet in front of him. The light turned yellow.

  “Wait,” Marcus said.

  Her eyes shot him more confusion, but she cupped the phone in one hand and waited. He braked and swung a hard right as yellow climbed to red. He jammed the gas pedal. Not yet, his intentions would be too obvious. Wait … a long plaza zipped past on the left, then a medical building … wait.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She held down a button long enough to trigger the good-bye tone, then popped the battery from the back. Marcus turned left into the next driveway, made a tight loop, and pulled back into traffic, back the way they’d come. He gunned the truck through another late yellow to take them past the light where they’d just turned. All this was futile, though, if they were tracking her. Her body. Lee’s voice unfurled in his head, recounting every detail of the patient she’d seen a few months ago, in a hospital room guarded by Constabulary agents.

  “The person may feel only a twinge as the device enters and think nothing else of it. They intend you to continue with normal life while being monitored.”

  No matter how Marcus asked, this question would sound crazy. “Have you gotten close enough to them to get shot with something?”

  “Um … I’m not shot.”

  “With a tracking … thing. I don’t think it feels like getting shot. You might not notice.”

  “I’m pretty sure I would.”

  Except that most people didn’t know about the trackers. But for now, he’d have to take her word.

  Her eyes drilled into the side of his face for a long moment. “I’m Aubrey.”

  “Marcus,” he said.

  “Marcus, you just committed a felony.”

  “Just?”

  Based on her tight smile, she must think he was making light of this. “I’m wanted by the con-cops.”

  “Yeah.” And … con-cops? She might be younger than he thought, based on her choice of slang.

  “Thank you for your help.”

  The taut muscles of his neck barely allowed the nod.

  “But you’re going to want to let me out of the car now. I’m kind of dangerous company.” She faced forward again, and her hand poised on the door handle as if he’d pull over and throw her out.

  “Where’ll you go?” he said.

  She looked out the window at the myriad stores flashing by. The speedometer read ten miles over. He eased off the gas.

  Finally, an answer leaked from her, faint, beaten drips of words. “I don’t know yet. I have to make a plan … to find my son.”

  “But where’ll you stay? While you plan?”

  “I …”

  She couldn’t sleep outside somewhere in subfreezing weather. “You can’t use credit cards. Or an ATM. How much cash have you got?”

  “I … eleven dollars and some change.”

  “Eleven dollars.”

  “And some change.” She barely reached a whisper now.

  His wallet held about forty bucks, but that wouldn’t even get her one night in a hotel. Sure, he could use his own credit card. But if the Constabulary watched her home, her parents’ home, and her workplace, they’d done some digging. They would know to search the hotels. She needed to stay somewhere they could never guess, somewhere without any connection to Aubrey before … this moment.

  No wonder he’d been subconsciously heading southeast.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay what?”

  “I’ll hide you.”

  Aubrey bit her lip.

  “You don’t have a lot of choices right now.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “No, you don’t.” He turned right and merged onto the highway, the path home. She needed help. His help. He’d have to earn her trust.

  14

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Aubrey said, but that must be a lie. She knew absolutely nothing about this man. Getting into his truck had to be one of the stupidest, most d
esperate choices of her life. True, a con-cop undercover would have delivered her straight to Young and Partyka, but her brain suddenly reminded her of other ways a man could endanger a woman. She could see the headlines now. “Serial Rapist Found His Victims in Home-Improvement Stores.” “Police Nab ‘Handyman Killer’ after Victim Aubrey Weston Found In …”

  Marcus removed his Red Wings cap and tossed it onto the dashboard, ignoring a flattened section in the short brown ripples of his hair. The bruise under his left eye looked deeper without the cap’s shadow. He drove in silence.

  “Are you a Christian?” The words popped from her mouth.

  He nodded with barely a glance at her.

  “Oh, that was convincing,” she said.

  “Well, I can’t prove it.”

  Actually … his simplicity was convincing. Maybe he was for real. Father God, is this Your doing? Guilt stole her breath. After she denied Him, God had provided her with a job to feed herself and her newborn. Half an hour ago, she’d considered denying Him for the second time, yet He’d still sent her a haven in the form of this stranger. She burrowed against the leather seat and breathed in the wooded scent from Marcus’s jacket.

  “Okay,” she said quietly.

  His shoulders caved slightly. He actually seemed to care what she chose to do.

  “But once I know how to get Elliott back, I’ll be leaving.” As if she could go for a walk and trip over the knowledge.

  “I’ll help you,” he said.

  “How?”

  His hands shifted on the wheel, big and knob-knuckled. “I don’t know yet.”

  “What happened to your face?” Her trivial question seemed to surprise him less than it surprised her.

  “A ladder hit me.”

  “It looks like it hurts.”

  “I’m okay.”

  She didn’t deserve the gift of this man’s willingness. “Thank you for offering to help, but you shouldn’t get involved.”

  “Too late now.”

  She’d thought his voice deep at first, but it wasn’t very. More like … solid, each word an arrow that knew where it headed. And clipped. The syllables never lingered.

  “Those two agents,” he said. “You know them?”