Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers)

by Amanda G. Stevens

  About the time she contemplated asking him to pull over and let her throw up, Marcus turned onto a new road, slimmer than the last one, newer, or maybe less traveled. She never thought she’d consider anything made of gravel a smooth ride, but at least this was level. Wait a minute. … This wasn’t a road. It was a driveway.

  Marcus parked the truck behind a farmhouse whose wood siding had warped and peeled. The back porch drooped in the middle, and spider webs had replaced the glass in the door, woven into the spaces as if to ward off intrusion.

  He took the cap off, dug a flashlight and cigarette lighter from the glove box. “Got a mirror?”

  “Um, yeah. A little one.”

  “I need it.”

  She dug the square cosmetic mirror from her purse, and he snatched it from her hand.

  “Just the one?”

  “Yeah. … What’re you going to do with it?”

  He reached past her and wrenched off the sun visor with a snap. “Come on.”

  Aubrey shadowed him up the weathered steps but hesitated at the deck itself. The far left section had rotted and collapsed.

  “It’s stable. Just don’t walk over there.” Each word wielded a spike of impatience. He jerked a nod toward the missing boards.

  Aubrey tried to step forward without her full weight, then settled for placing her feet as close as possible to where he’d placed his. Marcus used body weight to turn the rusted doorknob. Inside, his flashlight beam punctured the darkness. The place was bare of furniture, but not of cats. A white-chested tabby and a bony calico blinked with green-glowing eyes and didn’t bother to flee.

  Only Marcus’s silhouette was visible between Aubrey and the flashlight beam as he shifted it from one hand to the other and removed his jacket and shirt. He pulled out his keys and worked the Swiss army knife from the ring.

  Surely he wasn’t planning what she thought. “You can’t.”

  Marcus barely spared her a glance. “Here. Hold the light in your mouth, and tilt the mirrors so I can see.”

  “Marcus, you can’t.”

  He yanked open the blade, and it gleamed silver in the flashlight beam. A blue flame clicked to life in his other hand. He submerged the edge of the knife in the flicker, glided it up and down until he was satisfied.

  “There has to be another way to do this,” Aubrey said.

  Marcus knelt on the pale tile floor and held the now blackened knife away from him so only air would touch it. “Find the place it went in. Point one mirror at it, and the other one at me. I’ll tell you when I can see.”

  “Maybe I should do it.”

  “No.”

  The floor gnashed cold and hard against Aubrey’s knees, and she clamped her teeth around the flashlight end. Dried blood smudged his right side, between two ribs, under the sturdy wing of his shoulder. After a minute of tilting the mirrors first one way, then another, Marcus finally nodded.

  “Good. Don’t move.”

  His back arched slightly, and his left hand reached across to press the sharp edge of the blade against his skin. The knife drew a reluctant red drip.

  “See it? The tracker?”

  “Uh …” she said around the flashlight. What would it look like? Surely she couldn’t miss it. But the slice in his skin revealed no secrets. “Uh-uh.”

  The knife pressed harder this time. His breathing amplified, and the flow of blood grew steady.

  This wasn’t a good idea. Blood without gloves, without bandages.

  “Aubrey. Hold still.”

  He angled the point of the knife, not the edge, toward the slice in his back.

  “Wait,” she said, but the tip sank in.

  His hand shook and dragged the knife in a dip between his ribs, then upward and out. A growl shoved through his teeth. Something clinked onto the floor. Marcus’s hand skimmed the tile as Aubrey angled the flashlight downward.

  “Here,” she said. Tiny nettles projected from the surface of a piece of bloody silver.

  Marcus took it, rolled it around his palm. “Where’s my shirt?”

  Aubrey swung the flashlight toward him and gasped. “Marcus, you’re bleeding.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “No, I mean you’re bleeding a lot. Oh, God, help.” Spotless white bone. It had to be a rib. Marcus flinched as she pressed the shirt to the wound. Warmth oozed against her hand.

  He pulled away. “Not now.”

  “You should’ve let me do it! You couldn’t see well enough. Why didn’t you let me help you?”

  “Aubrey.” He took the shirt from her quaking hands and stood. “We have to go.”

  “Right. To get you some help.”

  Marcus struggled a moment to raise his right arm but soon got the soiled shirt over his head and shoved his arms into the sleeves. “This thing needs to keep moving.”

  The tracker. As long as it traveled, the con-cops would chase it. A purring tabby sneaked into the flashlight’s circle, or maybe it had been standing there for a while.

  “The cat,” Aubrey said.

  Marcus looked down at it, his forehead creased with a frown.

  “It has a collar.”

  “Oh,” he said and crouched, one hand shooting out. The cat skipped backward into the darkness with a hiss. Aubrey aimed the flashlight and joined the chase. If it escaped the house, they’d never find it. After a few minutes, they managed to block it into a corner. Aubrey hoisted it up in one hand, and stinging claws gouged her arm.

  “Got any gum?” Marcus said.

  “There’s some in my purse, in the truck. I’ll be right back.”

  While she chewed two minty sticks into a moist blob, Marcus’s knife dug a depression inside the leather collar. He stuck the silver ball into it, then sealed it with the gum.

  “That animal will be cleaning itself for a year,” Aubrey said.

  “Here.” He all but shoved it at her. “Hold onto it.”

  They left nothing in the house but a few drops of blood, which Aubrey tried to scuff away with her shoe but merely smudged across the tile. Back in the truck, Marcus took the road at an uncomfortable but less lethal speed. Aubrey released the cat onto the seat between them, and it clung with panicked claws. Marcus turned off his phone and turned on the radio.

  “How’d you know about that place?” Aubrey said when the weather report began.

  “I’ve got some clients that live farther down the road. I noticed the house, and it looked vacant, so I walked around the property a little. Old houses are better. More brick and wood and … Anyway, it’s been open for the last couple months. There’s nothing inside, but still, whoever owns it should lock it up.”

  Had Marcus ever used so many words at once? “So was this a one-time thing? Or are you a pathological trespasser?”

  His mouth quirked. “Well, we had a picnic on the porch. Me and Lee. We were out driving and I wanted to show it to her, and then we realized, why not eat right here?”

  Aubrey laughed. “Sure, why not.”

  He might have kept talking if not for the radio. “In local news, the fugitive who MPC agents nearly apprehended earlier this week may not have gone as far as they thought. Aubrey Weston was spotted on foot this evening, south of the M-59 expressway. An anonymous source speculates she may be aided by an unidentified man. Details are sketchy at this time, including the description of this possible accomplice—Caucasian male, medium height.”

  “Accomplice,” Aubrey said. “Like we robbed a bank or something.”

  Marcus’s scowl was louder than words.

  “On the bright side, they haven’t ID’d you. We can go to a hospital and get you stitched up.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll stay in the car. You can check yourself in. We’ll have a story put together by the time you get there.”

  “No hospi
tal,” Marcus said, refusing Aubrey even a glance.

  Too many people? “Fine. One of those walk-in clinics, then.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I saw your rib cage, Marcus. You’re not going to magically stop bleeding.”

  He wrenched the truck to the shoulder and braked. “Open your door.”

  “You think I’ll get out now, while you’re all sliced open?”

  “Aubrey. Let the cat out.”

  “Oh,” she said. The moment her door swung outward, the cat streaked over her lap and outside. It disappeared from the headlights’ range in seconds. When she slammed the door, Marcus resumed driving. The minutes dragged along. Five, now ten, now twelve, now twenty-three. The high-beam headlights bounced off a deer’s luminous eyes, but the truck maintained its speed. The dirt road bent and straightened and collided with its narrower cousins. The dark stain on Marcus’s jacket crept outward.

  “Marcus,” she said, when biting her tongue one more time might amputate it.

  No reply, no glance. She was as acknowledged as the beaten, dusty floor mats.

  “You’re staining the back of the seat.”

  A sigh leaked from his lips. “Check under your seat.”

  “For what?”

  “A rag. Or something.”

  Now he told her? She scrounged behind her feet, and the borrowed coat pulled tight across her shoulders. Her fingers found … well, something, but to call it a rag was flattery. The tattered cloth had mopped up a lot in its lifetime, including grease, sawdust, and was that wood stain?

  Marcus reached for it.

  “You can’t put this on a wound. It’ll get infected.”

  “I’m not. Give it to me.”

  She surrendered the thing that had probably been white about five years ago. Marcus jammed it between the seat and his jacket, both of which appeared slick with moisture. Germs could still find their way from the cloth to the gash on his back.

  Twenty silent minutes later, he nodded at the floor. “Get down. So nobody sees you. I have to stop at the next light.”

  “Stop for what?”

  “Gas.”

  Was now really the time for this? She glanced at the gas gauge. Low fuel.

  No way. What if they’d run out, on some dirt road in the dark? She released her seat belt with a click and crouched between the seat and the dashboard, knees to her chest. Minutes later, Marcus pulled up to pump 8, the furthest from the store’s windows. He pulled out a credit card, new and shiny.

  “Shouldn’t you pay cash?” Aubrey said.

  “If they haven’t ID’d me, the credit card’s safer than being seen inside. They might have a sketch on the news by now.”

  “And if they have ID’d you?”

  He shrugged. “It won’t matter.”

  True. They’d be screwed regardless of how he paid. “You can’t go out there. Your jacket’s too bloody now, and your shirt has to be worse.”

  Marcus twisted to look. “It’s dark. Nobody’ll see from a distance.”

  “You’ll be standing under very bright lights.”

  “I mean the jacket. And I can’t sit here talking to myself.” He half glared, then got out of the truck.

  His face had paled in stages as he drove. Right now, he was about the shade of cheap copy paper. Without medical help, sooner or later, he’d drive them off the road. Calling 911 was out. She couldn’t slide into the driver’s seat and refuse to move, either. She couldn’t even sit up. And trying to talk some common sense into him would be as effective as singing to Elliott. If she’d ascertained anything about Marcus, it was that he listened to no one.

  Except.

  Her hand snaked upward to the cup holder, and her fingers curled around his cell phone. Lee. The woman had named his dog. He would listen to her.

  22

  The back of Marcus’s head was barely visible from Aubrey’s handicapped vantage point. She monitored his position as the phone powered up to brighten her little nook against the passenger door.

  Contact list. She typed an L. Surely Marcus’s list was as prosaic as he was. If it resembled Mary-Beth’s—“Dumpling” for her boyfriend and “Random Chick” for her sister—Aubrey’s scheme was sunk.

  One L. Thank You, God, thank You, thank You. Lee.

  The line rang twice, followed by a calm voice. “Marcus.”

  “Um, no, but don’t hang up, I’m, um, a friend.” No click, no dial tone. A good sign. “This is Lee?”

  “Yes. Is he hurt?”

  “He won’t go to the hospital, and I’m hoping you can talk some sense into him before he passes out.”

  “Can you describe the injury?” No panic. No reaction at all, really. At least she wasn’t one of those stereotypically dramatic women.

  “There’s a gash in his back. It’s bleeding. I need you to tell him to swallow his pride and get some stitches.”

  “How long has he been bleeding?”

  “Look, Lee, let me give him the phone, and you—”

  “I’m a nurse. How long?”

  A nurse. Oh, that man needed his neck wrung. “Almost an hour.”

  “Give him the phone.”

  Marcus shifted from Aubrey’s line of sight and withdrew the pump nozzle with a muffled thunk. Seconds later, the gas cap clicked.

  “Just a second,” Aubrey said. “He’s coming.”

  Marcus ambled to the front of the truck as if his back weren’t sliced to the bone. The driver’s door opened.

  The cell phone was some kind of magnet. His eyes jumped there with uncanny immediacy. Then they ignited. “What—”

  She deposited the phone into the cup holder without closing it. “It’s for you.”

  Marcus leaned inside, snatched it up, and snapped it shut, then pulled himself into the truck and lost another degree of color. He started the truck and pulled into traffic. For the moment, he was too angry to faint. That didn’t make him okay. Aubrey reached for the phone.

  He grabbed it first. “It was off.”

  “I turned it on.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  She propelled herself back into the seat to face him at eye level. “I was thinking of the one person I could come up with that might get you to listen to reason, and I find out she’s a nurse. You’re bleeding all over the place, and she’s a nurse. You complete, absolute, utter idiot!”

  Marcus’s eyes forgot the road in front of him. They stared at her, blazing with disbelief and something else. The phone display lit up, and his hand convulsed around it. Incoming call.

  “No,” he said.

  “What did you expect me to do?” She tried to gentle the words, but they still grated. “This is stupid, Marcus, it’s completely stupid.”

  “She’s not—” His words were crushed by the clench of his jaw. “Not supposed to—”

  “To know what you’re doing, helping fugitives? She doesn’t. I asked her to talk you into getting some stitches. That’s all.”

  The phone vibrated in his hand. If his teeth gritted any harder, they would crack.

  “Pull over and talk to her.”

  “Shut up.” The phone darkened. “Did you tell her where we are?”

  “Of course not.”

  The truck veered into the next parking lot and jerked to a stop outside the spread of the lights, away from the lighted sign: Dr. Ralph Walton, DDS. Brightening Smiles since 1999.

  Marcus left the truck running and bent to scoop up the phone. He opened it and dialed, and Aubrey didn’t try to withhold her relieved sigh.

  “Don’t go to the house, I’m not there,” he said, then listened. “No … Leave. Right now.”

  In the pause, Marcus’s forehead furrowed, smoothed in comprehension, and then crinkled up again. His shoulders buckled. Lee said something that started with his nam
e, and he closed his eyes. Aubrey huddled on the floor and hugged her knees, suddenly no longer inclined to glare at him.

  “Lee, no,” he said. “Go home.”

  Again, silence, and Aubrey could read this one. Refusal.

  Marcus’s teeth refused to unlock for a long moment. When they did, they released a growling sigh. He closed the phone, dropped it into the cup holder without bothering to turn it off, and pulled out onto the road. If he was going to meet Lee, then mission accomplished. But given the resentment that radiated toward Aubrey from the taut lines of his body, from the sharp edges of his face, maybe she should have considered the mission’s cost.

  23

  The last thing he’d told Aubrey was to shut up, and she actually listened to him for about twenty minutes, while he drove as fast as he dared toward home. If he didn’t come, Lee wouldn’t go. Stupid ultimatum. The Constabulary might identify him, might show up at his house. Failing to report his criminal activities—and obviously from their conversation, she knew about them—made her a criminal too.

  The traffic light traded green for yellow. He should brake. He accelerated. God, You can’t let them take her.

  “Marcus?” Aubrey’s voice quavered. “Look, if you want to yell at me, go ahead.”

  He didn’t want to yell. He wanted a punching bag.

  “Would you say something, please?”

  He never should have left the phone in the truck. He never should have told Aubrey that Lee existed.

  The glowing yellow lines on the road blurred past. He ought to slow down before a cop pulled him over, but he couldn’t. His neighborhood finally came into view over a little hill in the road, and he jerked a nod toward the floor. Aubrey crouched down a minute before he made the right turn into his subdivision. The truck cab seemed to shrink. They could be watching.

  If they were, they’d found camouflage somewhere he couldn’t imagine. Lee was right. They didn’t know him. He was a profile masked by a baseball hat, not a name, not even a face.