Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers)

by Amanda G. Stevens

  Confusion burrowed into her face for only a second before vanishing along with every other expression. She stared at him from behind a mask of ice, thicker and colder than he’d ever seen before.

  “Sam thought I knew. Kirk told him, a long time ago.”

  No flicker, nothing at all in her eyes.

  “I don’t know why you didn’t tell me, but … I know now.”

  She blinked, once.

  “Lee? I—I had to say …” He stepped nearer. Her shoulders stiffened. He stood still. “I’m here. To help you.”

  “I do not require help.”

  “It’s okay. To let me.”

  Lee turned her back and widened the space between them. Her stride was fluid as always, but her shoulders were rigid.

  “Lee.”

  She laced her fingers behind her back, squeezed until the knuckles whitened. “I want you to leave.”

  He wouldn’t desert her. No matter what she thought she wanted right now.

  “Marcus. I said leave.”

  He shook his head. “I’m here now.”

  “I don’t want you here.”

  “It’s okay. You can talk to me about it.”

  Did she think if she kept her back turned long enough, he’d slip out the door and leave her alone with all that the monsters had done? Marcus crossed the room, approached her from the side.

  “Lee. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here. I’m—”

  “You are an intruder. Nothing more.”

  Her words punched the breath from his body. But she didn’t believe that. She’d harbored this secret for too many years, wasn’t ready to open up all at once. That was all. “You don’t have to talk. I’ll just—just be here.”

  If she’d only look at him, if she’d only—but his words weren’t enough, couldn’t break through her ice, couldn’t pull her up from it. His left hand lifted slowly, fully in her sight. He settled it onto her shoulder.

  She hit him across his face, an open-handed slap.

  His hand fell to his side. She paused for eye contact. He couldn’t move. She backhanded the other side of his face.

  An ache started in his chest.

  The ice in her eyes promised to stare him down until daybreak if he dared to stay. His feet dragged backward.

  Lee … He couldn’t think.

  His face stung. He blinked hard, stepped outside, closed the door behind him.

  He climbed into the truck. A tear trickled down his cheek, warm as it left his eye, cool as it dripped over the heat from Lee’s hand. He lowered his forehead to the cold steering wheel. He tried to talk to her, inside his head, the words he hadn’t been able to hold. But even inside now, the words were gone. Everything was gone but a rawness he couldn’t ease, a shortness of his breath. The tear dropped onto his thigh.

  He was so … No, he wasn’t … He was … so …

  Thirsty.

  39

  Aubrey had never owned a dog, but she couldn’t miss Indy’s attempt at communication. From the kitchen, her whines and barks overlapped around her panting. Thud. Great, she was ramming her head against the window now.

  Elliott slept in the center of the bed, undisturbed by the dog’s racket. Aubrey pulled the covers down to the foot of the bed so that he lay on only the flat sheet, as safe as a crib. Then she swung her feet to the floor and barreled toward the noise.

  “Okay, dog, this had better be good.”

  Indy’s nails scrambled against the wooden sill. Her front paws dropped to the floor, and her head bumped Aubrey’s leg. Then she barked and reared up to the window sill again. The yard lay beneath a quiet blanket that had finally stopped falling. The trees wore layers of lace.

  Someone was out there.

  Aubrey dropped to her knees next to the dog and peered over the window sill, her gaze level with Indy’s.

  A dark figure sat in the abundant white, knees half bent, back against the maple tree. A man. From here, he could be any man, but Indy made Aubrey’s decision. If that were anyone other than Marcus, the dog would be growling death threats, not crying with worry. Aubrey went to the laundry room for her tennis shoes and the black coat, then stepped outside.

  She should’ve tugged on some jeans, too. The cold gnawed through her pajama bottoms. Snow tried to invade her shoes. Under the tree, Marcus didn’t move. If he was hurt, she was going to shake his snow-caked shoulders until some common sense snapped into his head.

  She stopped beside him. Was he asleep? “Marcus.”

  His eyes rose to meet hers, the usual fire in them banked to barely a glow.

  “You’re sitting in four inches of snow.”

  “Get away from me.”

  Delirious? She hunkered down and captured his hand, and her breath snagged at its icy stiffness. “Come on, let’s go in the house and get warm.”

  “Not cold.”

  “I’m cold, and I’m not going in without you.”

  Aubrey shuffled with bent knees around to his other side and planted herself in front of his face. Her foot bumped something half submerged in snow. Marcus’s hand pinned it down before she could touch it. Glass. A bottle. Clear, rectangular. Empty far below the neck. She didn’t have much experience with alcohol, but she knew the hard stuff when she saw it.

  “You’re … drunk?” she said.

  “I don’t get drunk.”

  “But why, why would you—”

  “Go in the house.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you. Come inside, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  The heat of his glare barely reached her through the veil in his eyes.

  “I won’t go away until you come inside.”

  He lurched to his feet, and she extended an arm to steady him, but he didn’t need it. He didn’t falter even when he bent to retrieve the bottle, but he couldn’t grasp it.

  “You don’t need that,” Aubrey said.

  He straightened. “This wasn’t a test.”

  What? “I’ll bring it in for you. Your hands are too cold to pick it up.”

  “Don’t pour it out.”

  The cold of the glass bit into her hand. She turned it upside-down, and the last half of the amber liquid gushed onto the snow.

  “I said this wasn’t a test, don’t pour it out!”

  He tore the bottle from her hand with a force that dragged her several steps forward. He hurled it against the trunk of the maple. Glass shattered into spears that lost themselves in the snow. Marcus whirled and charged into her space. His glare now was like an assault.

  “Did you wait until you got home?” Aubrey’s words stopped his advance. “Or did you start on that in the car, drinking and driving in the first blizzard of the year?”

  He stormed past her, and his arm shoved into hers. The collision didn’t seem intentional, but he ignored her stagger. He was headed for the house. Thank You, God—but her prayer broke off as she realized she wouldn’t reach the door before he could slam it and lock her outside.

  He didn’t. She followed him in and closed the door. Indy rushed him, but he flinched from her anxious tongue. Snow drifted from his jacket, his hair, all over the rug as his feet dragged back and forth. Every inch of his jeans was soaked through. Wet white powder encrusted his shoes.

  “Marcus,” Aubrey said. Get him warm now, deal with his stupidity later.

  Did he not hear her?

  “Hey.” She crossed the kitchen toward him.

  He thrust out an open hand without facing her. “Don’t.”

  “You have to take that stuff off. I know you don’t feel cold, but you are.”

  “Shut up.”

  She tugged an earlobe and waited for him to stop pacing, but he didn’t seem inclined to do anything else. “If I get you some clothes, will you change?”

  He whirled on her, and the menacin
g fire licked behind his eyes again. His dog pushed her head into his hand, and Marcus’s fist clipped under her chin and snapped her panting jaws together. Indy yelped and slunk backward, away from him. Marcus blinked. His hand uncurled. He stared at his dog, and his eyes lost their last bit of light.

  “Marcus?” Aubrey said.

  His gaze rose to her. “I’m drunk.”

  Aubrey nodded.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Will you please put on something dry? If you get hypothermia, I’m going to have to wake Lee up in the—”

  He stepped back. “Okay. Clothes.”

  He trudged to his room, and after a heartbeat of hesitation, Indy plodded after him and slipped through the half-open door. Aubrey waited.

  What would possess him to intoxicate himself? He was too dependable for this. He hadn’t gone out with some friends and had a few too many beers. He’d purchased a bottle of whiskey and drunk it straight, alone under a tree.

  He remained in his room. She tiptoed to the door. He’d had enough time to change. Catching her spying might set him off again, but he might have collapsed from cold. Aubrey pressed against the door frame and peered around it.

  Marcus knelt on the floor with his arms around his dog. Indy’s tail swished back and forth as if to erase what he’d done. She squirmed in his embrace and managed a few licks of his cheeks, and he hid his face in the fur of her shoulder.

  Elliott lay soft and asleep on the bed behind him, mere feet away from the sodden pile of his clothes. Aubrey stepped into the doorway and stood over Marcus.

  “Do you have a problem?” she said.

  He lifted his head.

  “A drinking problem, that you can only hide for a week?”

  He immersed his hands in Indy’s fur, then pulled them back and stood.

  “How often do you do this?”

  He swallowed.

  “Marcus, I have to know. How often?”

  He didn’t pace. He didn’t turn away. He didn’t grab his neck. “Eight years.”

  What …?

  “Ten months. Nineteen days.”

  Comprehension stole the anger she tried to hold onto. He didn’t do this every eight years. He hadn’t done it in eight years, almost nine. “What happened tonight?”

  He shook his head.

  “Don’t you have a—what’re they called, a sponsor? Didn’t you call him?”

  “I didn’t go through that.”

  “Then how did you quit?”

  He brushed past her, charged down the hallway and back into the kitchen, then stood still as if wondering where to go next.

  Trying to tug the story from him thread by thread would be useless right now. She should leave him to sleep away the haze and the anger. But her mind saw him fishtail his truck with an open bottle in the cup holder next to him, grabbing gulps at every red light, or maybe not waiting for that.

  Whatever made him toss her safety aside like this had to be horrible. “Did someone get arrested? Did someone get hurt?”

  Marcus’s arms rose to shield his face, like a child who thought no one could see him as long as he couldn’t see them. A chill slithered through Aubrey.

  “Marcus … who was it?” Not Lee, dear God. He can’t take that.

  “I’m no good to anybody.”

  “Of course you are. I’m sure you tried to—”

  “I didn’t.”

  Aubrey inhaled courage and stepped closer to him. “Is she …?”

  “Her heart. It stopped. And I didn’t help her. Because I’m drunk and no good to anybody.”

  The room closed in. Aubrey clung to the counter. “Oh, no. When? Where—?”

  “I heard them talking. If somebody called nine-one-one, they said. If somebody did something. She called my name. But I don’t come when I’m drunk. I don’t help her, I just drink and fall asleep and wake up and Mom’s dead.”

  Mom. Years ago, he’d said. So no one had died tonight. Relief bowed Aubrey toward the counter. Marcus folded over and collapsed to his knees on the rug in front of the sink. His arms cradled his head.

  “Everybody’s trying to help,” he whispered. “Saying sorry for your loss, saying they’re sad, too. Like we’ve got the same feelings. But I killed her. So the feelings are for everybody else. Not for me.”

  “Marcus, that was a long time ago, right?”

  “No family now. Nobody. Shouldn’t have them.”

  “Tonight. What happened tonight? You didn’t just fall off the wagon, something pushed you.”

  “Go away.”

  “Okay, you don’t have to tell me, but something obviously happened. Go see Lee and talk to—”

  He shuddered.

  “You’ve never told her about your—problem?”

  “She knows,” he barely said.

  “Then call her, first thing in the morning.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m an intruder. Nothing more.”

  “What?”

  “She won’t let me … She won’t even try to let me.”

  “Let you what?”

  He shook his head. His eyes were flat.

  “Can I do anything to help?”

  He slumped against the fridge and ducked his head to his knees. He pushed aside the hand Aubrey tried to rest on his shoulder. At last, she remembered her primary responsibility in this situation, and it wasn’t Marcus.

  She retreated to the bedroom, where Elliott hadn’t stirred. His pale downy hair slid through her fingers. A hurricane picked up speed inside her. Chuck and Belinda weren’t danger enough for Marcus’s taste. He had to court the attention of the cops, too. They could have connected him to one of his warning missions, could have found or fabricated sufficient evidence to interrogate him about his beliefs. Aubrey could have been asleep in this very bed with her son when the con-cops came to the door. She curled her body around Elliott’s and draped him with one arm. As if she could protect him from any of this.

  “Oh, Marcus,” she whispered. “How could you?”

  The night felt endless. Again and again, she dozed, then woke to the scent of coffee. Once, the shatter of glass snapped her upright in bed, and Elliott squirmed and fussed at the interruption to his dream. Aubrey settled him on her chest, and the rhythm of his lungs evened and slowed.

  The crash hadn’t been loud enough for a window. Anyway, if Marcus decided to tear the house down brick by brick, she couldn’t stop him.

  Aubrey’s hand lifted and lowered with Elliott’s breathing for wide-awake hours. When she surrendered to the seeping sunrise and got out of bed, the kitchen held only Indy, stretched out under the table. Aubrey must have drifted again, long enough for Marcus to leave. The dog raised her nose like a toast. Aubrey knelt and stuck her head under the table. Indy sniffed the hand she extended, then favored it with one quick lick.

  “Good dog,” Aubrey whispered.

  While Elliott slept, secure in the car seat, Aubrey dusted and vacuumed. Rooms removed, the vibrations of the vacuum’s roar weren’t enough to wake him. She’d slogged through nearly a chapter of film facts by 7:30, when the lock turned. Had Marcus forgotten something? Was his post-bender state too miserable to work? Muted, indefinable sounds wafted from the kitchen. The door reopened, and the screen reshut. After a few minutes, he came back inside. When the kitchen puttering resumed, Aubrey tossed the book onto the couch and headed there.

  Lee stood before the open refrigerator. She wedged a pizza box between the top of the fridge and the first shelf. A back corner buckled, and Lee pulled the box out, set it on the counter, and opened it. Two slices remained, decorated with every meat topping Aubrey could think of. Lee fetched a plastic baggie from a drawer and slid the pizza inside, then returned it to the fridge.

  Three of her glass bowls clustered on the coun
ter, along with two casserole dishes and a foil-covered pie plate. Comfort food, of course, which meant Marcus had called her, after all. Good.

  Lee’s uninterested gaze flicked to Aubrey. Then she went back to her rearrangement of Marcus’s refrigerator. She condensed almost its whole contents to the top shelf and slid her first bowl onto the middle shelf.

  “Want some help?” Aubrey lifted a casserole dish to eye level. Lasagna. “Wow, still warm. Wait … you made all this stuff this morning? How much of it is from scratch?”

  Lee’s back didn’t turn. “All of it.”

  But no more than two hours had passed since he left. Even if he’d called Lee then, even if she owned five ovens, she’d lacked the time to prepare and cook this much food.

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate it right now,” Aubrey said. “I just don’t see how … I mean, you should be a TV chef or something.”

  Lee slanted her a chilly gaze. “Don’t be absurd.”

  Aubrey handed her a bowl, then another when Lee had tucked the first between two coffee creamers. “So he called you at six in the morning? Did he tell you what happened to him?”

  “You believe something happened to Marcus?”

  That remote tone almost convinced her Lee didn’t know. “You don’t have to cover for him. After all, I was here last night.”

  “Please elaborate.”

  “I don’t know the details of what upset him, but something did. Obviously.”

  “He said this?”

  He hadn’t called her. “He didn’t use words, of course, but he didn’t really need to. Drinking half a bottle of whiskey while sitting in a snowdrift pretty much said it all.”

  For an entire second, Lee froze. Her hands paused, half reaching toward Aubrey for a dish. Then her blankness hardened beyond steel. Lee took the dish and slid it onto the bottom shelf.

  “You’re mistaken. Marcus does not drink,” Lee said.

  “Not for the last eight years?”

  Lee shut the fridge.

  “He was drunk enough last night to tell me.”

  Lee scooped her keys off the counter. “I’m late for work.”

  “Lee, did you not hear a word I said? You have to do something. He could’ve wound up in the drunk tank and I could’ve wound up with the con-cops.”