Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers)

by Amanda G. Stevens

  When the radio voice began its loop, tension released its grip on the air. In local news, Jason was still squashing the story of Elliott’s disappearance. Maybe Lee really was safe, but he needed some way to guarantee that. His brain pawed for ideas. He should ask Aubrey to help him load the table into his truck, then leave now for Chuck and Belinda’s. He needed the wind in his windows while the road’s yellow lines added up, mile on mile. He needed a way to protect Lee, and a way to protect Aubrey, something she’d agree to. As she scrubbed the sink—did she do that every day?—Marcus’s phone vibrated. He picked it up from the table. Lee.

  “Hi,” he said. Wasn’t she working?

  “Hello. Two of my coworkers have a bet, and I told them you could settle it.”

  “Okay …”

  “I’m weary of listening to them.”

  “Sure,” he said, picturing it now. His mouth curved.

  “Did Grace Kelly star in Vertigo?”

  “Kim Novak.”

  Her voice distanced from the phone. “Kim Novak.” The cheer and the moan reached Marcus’s ears with equal volume. No wonder Lee had decided to end the debate.

  Questions filled his mouth, but he couldn’t ask them. Had she noticed any strange cars near her house this morning? Had anybody eyed her too long in a hospital corridor?

  “Thank you for sharing your expertise,” Lee said.

  “Sure. How’s work going?”

  “My coworkers’ propensity for drama has been the greatest challenge of the day.” Laughter reached Marcus through the phone.

  Good. If she’d noticed anything suspicious, she’d have found a way to tell him.

  “I’ve never seen this film,” she said. “It could be intriguing, given their description.”

  Lee and Vertigo? “I could bring it over. But you’ll hate it.”

  “Why? It sounds like an intelligent film.”

  “You’ll hate everybody in it.”

  “Let me judge that. And I still have sundae ingredients.”

  Well, no turning that down. “Tomorrow? Around seven?”

  “Fine.”

  “Okay,” he said, and she hung up.

  Aubrey had migrated to the living room. She sat at one end of the couch. Elliott drank from a bottle swirled in green and blue dinosaurs.

  “Aubrey, could you—”

  The doorbell froze every muscle in his body and widened Aubrey’s eyes. He barreled to the front door’s spy hole. Indy beat him there, loudly promising to dismember whoever had the nerve to invade her porch. The glimpse of a graying head and an artificially blonde one made him sigh. Chuck and Belinda. Ignorant and harmless. He darted back to Aubrey.

  “Bedroom closet.”

  Before the second word, she sprang to her feet, keeping the bottle to Elliott’s lips. She vanished into his room and shut the door. The car seat and boxes of diapers already hid there. A few cans of formula might lurk in a cabinet, but Chuck and Belinda had no reason to ransack his kitchen. After this, though, nothing could remain in an obvious place. They could have been agents.

  “Down.” He half raised his arm and snapped it to his side. Indy yipped the last word, then sat. Marcus swallowed, opened the door, and feigned surprise. “Hi.”

  “We were in the area, sugar, and we wondered how you were going to load up our big old table by yourself. And Chuck remembered your address, from when he came by to look at that other furniture. My heavens, that’s a big dog.”

  Belinda marched past him, and her husband followed.

  Chuck glanced back as Marcus locked the door. “Figured it’d be okay to drop in.”

  “It’s okay,” Marcus said. It would be, if his closet were empty. He followed his guests. Indy cast him a pricked-ear look of question, then padded along behind him. He wouldn’t be out of her sight as long as the intruders stuck around.

  “I could make you some coffee,” Belinda said.

  “Pearl, the man can make his own coffee in his own kitchen.”

  She sniffed the air like a Pomeranian trying to be a bloodhound. “But you’ve already got some gourmet blend brewing.”

  “Yeah.” Marcus jerked a nod toward the steaming carafe.

  “This place looks spotless, Marcus. Why, it’s clean enough to suspect a woman’s influence, I think.” She laughed.

  “Now you’ve gone and embarrassed him,” Chuck said.

  “Oh, I haven’t, either.”

  “Sure you have, look at his face.”

  “Sugar, that’s a compliment. Most men can’t even see the dirt, much less clean it up.”

  God, they’re so ignorant. Thank You. “Well,” Marcus said.

  “I’ll change the subject, how’s that?” Belinda said. The radio news, still on the same loop, repeated the latest statistics of Constabulary success, despite the uncooperative 52 percent. She shook her head. “They sure know how to make it sound good, running off with people’s freedom.”

  “It’s their job to make it sound good,” Chuck said.

  “I’d resign, then.” Her glower at the radio seemed to blame the knobs and speakers. “If I couldn’t make a difference, I’d resign.”

  “Yup, you would.”

  They didn’t know what they were saying. Marcus wished they’d go back to their kitchen remarks.

  “The folks who stand up to them, I wish I could shake their hands,” Belinda said. “Makes me want to do something myself.”

  “Enough.” Chuck thrust a thumb into his belt loop.

  “Marcus isn’t going to turn me in, Chuck, not with all his own illegal philosophies.”

  “I know that,” Chuck said to Marcus, and the thumb yanked the belt loop. “I’m just saying.”

  “Yeah,” Marcus said.

  “Well, then, do you mind?” Belinda shut off the radio, then patted his kitchen table. “Did you make this, too?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  She ambled toward the living room. Marcus’s neck tightened in defiance of Aubrey’s massage. Did Belinda plan to give herself a complete tour?

  “The end table and all this in here?” She waved at the table in the center of the room, at the TV stand.

  Marcus nodded.

  “What a talent.”

  “You wouldn’t know it from Belinda,” Chuck said, “but we’ve got a mile-long to-do list today, so let’s load up that table.”

  “Sure.” Marcus led him to the garage.

  Chuck stood in the truck bed and guided the table into a careful tilt, then leveled it, while Marcus hefted most of the weight from the garage floor. He couldn’t have managed the task by himself, not given the annoying condition of his back, and not without damaging the table. And if he’d enlisted Aubrey’s help, Chuck would have asked him how he’d loaded the table alone.

  Reborn caution settled onto his shoulders. Aubrey could not exist. In any way whatsoever.

  “You sure this thing’s solid?” Chuck said after Marcus checked and rechecked each rope knot.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d hate for you to lose it after all the work you did.”

  “I won’t lose it.”

  “She’s really looking forward to getting her dining room all set for the holidays. She talks about it every day.”

  Marcus nodded.

  “Better go get her. She’ll be ogling every piece of furniture you’ve got.” Chuck grinned.

  Marcus forced a smile and followed him back … to the empty kitchen. And the empty living room. She really was showing herself the entire house.

  “Probably in the bathroom,” Chuck said. “You know how women are past fifty or so. Then again, maybe you don’t, but she’ll be right back.”

  Marcus refilled his coffee mug and paced. God, don’t let her be exploring.

  36

  Breathe. Don’t hold him too tig
htly, or he’ll cry. Let him squirm a little, but keep the nipple in his mouth. Oh, Jesus, please, please, I don’t know who’s there, but please, blind them, keep them away from this closet door. Make them as deaf as my baby—my breathing is so loud right now.

  Stone had replaced Marcus’s jaw. His eyes had blazed with something she couldn’t name, not fear but not relief, either. Had his look through the peephole shown him uniforms the color of smoke? Agent Young and Agent Partyka?

  She knelt in a closet next to a stack of diapers. This wasn’t hiding.

  Oh, God. Oh, God.

  Elliott writhed in her arms, kicked and flailed. One soft hand thumped against the wall. Aubrey bent over him and gulped her breaths, held onto each one as if it were her last before a dive into a million miles of water. Her son’s head turned to one side. He spit out the nipple. No, no no no, Elliott, no—

  He whimpered, half a lungful of sound, half frustrated with his gasping, sweating mother. She shoved the nipple back between his gums. He arched his back and spit it out again, and the protest used more air this time, more noise, more frustration.

  The doorknob turned.

  God, save me, oh please, God help me God help me God help me.

  A female silhouette, widest at the hips. She leaned in, flipped the light switch, and gasped.

  “Oh, my.” The voice lilted with Southern vowels. No uniform. Jeans and an apricot sweater.

  Nothing to say, nothing to do, nowhere to hide or run.

  “Does Marcus know you’re—oh, I’m guessing he does. Stand up, you can come on out. I’m Belinda. You don’t need to hide from me.”

  No words were safe. Elliott wriggled and swiveled his head away from the bottle and wailed.

  In seconds, Marcus erupted through the bedroom doorway. Belinda absorbed his glare and barely withered.

  “Now, Marcus, I wasn’t snooping. I heard that baby fussing through the furnace vent. It’s right smack between the bathroom and the closet.”

  “You need to go,” Marcus said.

  “Sugar,” Belinda said to Aubrey, “is it Constabulary y’all are hiding from? It is, isn’t it?”

  “Now.” Marcus stepped forward as if he would he forcibly remove her from his house, this woman with shining eyes and a grandmotherly heart and determination to soothe the nightmare.

  An older man stepped through the doorway behind him, about Marcus’s size minus the shoulders, plus a hint of extra belly. “What the—?”

  “He’s harboring people,” Belinda said. “Long-term, if there’s more baby supplies around here than what’s in that closet.”

  “It’s not long-term,” Aubrey said. Marcus flicked a scorching glare toward her, though he had to see she’d only tried to minimize this. As if anything could.

  The man stared, first at Aubrey, then at Elliott. The unkind astonishment in his eyes and the burning in Marcus’s propped Aubrey to her feet.

  “I’m sorry.” The words inched out of her mouth toward the rock Marcus had become.

  He shook his head and addressed the strangers. “Leave.”

  “Marcus,” Belinda said. “You don’t really think we’d turn you in.”

  “Now.”

  The man stepped around Marcus and hooked a thumb in his belt loop. “You’re that Weston woman.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Oh, come on. You match the description, and you’ve got a baby.”

  The couple turned to gape at Marcus, suddenly similar in their shock.

  “The kid’s with the Constabulary,” the man said. “What’d you do, kidnap him back?”

  “Now, Chuck, don’t go making accu—”

  “I’ll make whatever I want to. Besides he’s not denying—”

  “Leave.” Marcus’s voice clipped their prattle short.

  Silence. Aubrey’s eyes drew the line from Marcus’s gaze to Chuck’s. An inane image of an Old West shootout flashed through her head. This wasn’t funny. Maybe she was closer to hysterics than she thought.

  Chuck’s beefy hand roosted on his wife’s back and nudged her toward the door. Belinda gazed over her shoulder with a compassion that nearly flattened Aubrey.

  “However you got here, sugar, you take care, and the little one, too.”

  Thank you, Aubrey tried to say, but her lips were too stiff.

  “And when your time’s up here, if you need a place, we’ve got plenty of room.”

  Marcus herded Chuck and Belinda from the room. The wall didn’t let Aubrey collapse, so she slid down its cool smoothness until she sat on the floor. Don’t drop Elliott.

  Minutes later, Marcus returned. “They’re gone.”

  Aubrey couldn’t nod any more than she could speak.

  “Here.” His hand offered support for her to stand.

  If she couldn’t nod, did he really think she could reach for his hand?

  “Aubrey?”

  “I think … I need … a minute.”

  He dropped to his knees. “You’re shaking.”

  “Next time … tell me it’s not con-cops.”

  “Oh.”

  “A couple more words, that’s all I needed. ‘Bedroom closet, but you’re not going to be arrested, not in the next ten seconds, anyway.’”

  His left hand gripped his neck. The fingers rubbed and clenched, but he was fine. Aubrey was learning his signals, not that she’d ever tell him how obvious he was. Holding his neck was a habit. Digging his knuckles in was a reaction to pain.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s over,” she said. “But it’s not. He’s going to report us.”

  “No.”

  “He was appalled.”

  “That’s just Chuck.”

  “You have to take me to Ohio, right away.”

  “Aubrey. If he had to, Chuck would take somebody in as fast as Belinda would. The rest is just what he does.”

  Elliott gurgled, and Aubrey dropped her eyes from Marcus’s. Maybe he was right. He didn’t seem to trust blindly. “I still have to get to Ohio.”

  Marcus stood and reached down again, and she grasped the warmth of his hand and hoisted herself up. The earthquake in her legs had stopped.

  “I’ve got to deliver that table,” he said. “And I’ll be out tonight.”

  “You’re avoiding the subject.”

  “No. Just … still finding another way.”

  What other way was there? But the stone wall was back, and Aubrey couldn’t move him.

  37

  Anywhere but a bar. His first step inside battered his senses—cigarette smoke, grease, sweat, babbling and laughing and arguing, a hockey game on the TV, bodies pressed too close until he broke through into a clear space. And alcohol, washing all of it.

  Lee’s eyes had apologized when she told him where Sam wanted to meet. Marcus had reassured her. He shouldn’t have. Sam had suggested it, not insisted. Marcus could have changed the location. But this was the safest of public places to exchange secrets. The noise level submerged your words until they dissolved forever. The low lighting hid you, if you wanted to be hidden. Everybody clutched his own purpose for being here, and if you ignored the other guy’s purpose, you didn’t exist. Besides, a few months ago, he could have handled this place without a problem. Had to make sure he still could.

  He held Lee’s description before him in his mind and scanned the bar. Tall, lean, black. Close-cropped, graying hair. Probably wearing a short-sleeved polo even in December. There. The corner table. Sam nodded to him. Lee must have shared Marcus’s description too.

  Marcus brushed between clusters of kids that shouldn’t be here. A paper banner hung from one of the booth tables, enormous red letters and a foaming mug graphic. “Happy 21, Alex!”

  He slid into Sam’s booth. This was the man who’d known Lee longer than he had, who managed the wealth
Kirk’s death had left her. This was a man Marcus could trust. But he still had to ask.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The man’s dark eyes sized Marcus up. His voice came deep as a movie preview voiceover. “From what I can tell, I’m saving your sorry hind parts.”

  Marcus didn’t have to see his own face to know what Sam could read there. The annoyance had to be printed across his forehead.

  “She warned me not to say it like that. Said if I wanted to help you, I had to turn it around, make it look like you were helping me.”

  Marcus’s hands fisted under the table.

  “But this is how I figure it.” Sam flattened both hands on the table, long, musician’s hands, lighter brown around the nails. “If I want you to trust me, I don’t spin things. So here it is. I told Lee about a month ago I was quitting, going back to finance. I’m the proverbial disillusioned soldier, seen too much to believe in the mission. Then two days ago, she says I can’t quit. My position’s too valuable, the information I can get to. And she tells me about you—that you’re trying to fight this, single-handedly. We’ll talk about your stupidity in a minute.”

  Marcus shifted forward.

  Sam lifted a hand, palm out, and his voice fell to a whisper. “I ask her what she wants, and she says, ‘I want Elliott Weston.’”

  The words left his mouth without any regard in the same tone he’d use to say, “This film is not yet rated.”

  “So you set it up,” Marcus said.

  “Not quite. First, I tried to talk her out of it. But—you already know this—any friend of Lee’s isn’t going to disregard her choices.”

  When her choices put her on the Constabulary’s Most Wanted list, they should be disregarded all over the place. Marcus should slug this idiot.

  “I don’t like how it worked out either, man,” Sam said.

  “You’re the one that worked it out.”

  “You’re the one that got her all hell-bent to do it.”

  Enough words. Sam was taller than he was, and the muscles of his arms ran tight as rope from wrist up into sleeves, but Marcus could take him. He swallowed the impulse. The whiskey-choked air was getting into him like a toxic smoke. Unrolling the tight, hidden coil of the worst in him. Sam was an ally, and he was right about at least one thing. Marcus had driven things to where they were now. If only he’d realized she’d go this far.