Protocol did not exist for this situation. Clay lifted the baby carrier into his arms and held it out like a postal delivery. Just sign here for your new bundle of joy. What he really needed was a stork suit.
The man took the carrier, took the child, and a strange twinge passed through Clay’s chest. He was transferring guardianship of a child from one home to another as if he knew where this child belonged.
The man set the carrier onto the mudroom floor. Clay handed him the base and diaper bag, and he set them down inside as well. He leaned down to cup Elliott’s soft shoe in his hand, then turned back to Clay and smiled, ignoring a moth that fluttered past his head into the house.
“We’re on schedule, leaving tomorrow morning around six. No one will ever know he was here.”
Clay scrambled to decipher the subtext that, as Marcus, he should clearly know. Leaving tomorrow … a stack of boxes in the garage … Clay peered over the man’s shoulder as surreptitiously as he could. The mudroom was empty. Not even a rack of coat pegs hung from the walls.
They’re moving. And taking this child with them.
Before the pause could loiter, Clay smiled. “Perfect.”
“Thank you for everything you’ve done. We’re so happy to give him a home.”
What would Marcus say? A question Clay never expected to ask himself. “I know you’ll take care of him.”
“We surely will, sir. Thank you.”
Clay nodded. Escape now. Before his ignorance exposed itself and destroyed this entire operation. “Good luck.”
A nod, a smile, and at last a closed door. Clay dashed the several steps to the Jeep and fled. No more of this. Pretending to be someone else, wrenching kids from place to place like some omnipotent social worker. That baby’s father might still be searching. No, surely Marcus had attempted to find him. A vague queasiness knotted Clay’s stomach. What he’d just done …
In the rearview mirror, green lights rotated.
Run.
As if there was any point. But he had to try. The Constabulary squad car gained fast, rode his bumper, and … passed him. It rocketed down the road. Cars ahead had already pulled over. Clay’s hand slipped on the wheel as he jerked the Jeep to the gravel shoulder.
“What was that, God? A warning? Or are You just cracking up from Your heavenly throne right now?” He leaned back against the headrest and swallowed hard. The air in the Jeep suddenly tasted sour. “Okay, whatever it was, I got the message.”
7
Khloe leaned across the Jeep’s backseat to whisper in Violet’s ear. “I seriously owe you.”
Violet shrugged. Her stomach was balled so tightly, she could barely sit up straight. She felt like Jekyll and Hyde. Her Jekyll half wanted to march into this terrorist church and text the address to the Constabulary. Her Hyde half wanted to confess to the Hansens. Or maybe dash off into the night.
Clay parallel-parked on the left side of the street and turned off the ignition. Silence seized them all, him and Natalia in the front seat, Violet and Khloe in the back.
“Okay,” he said. “Everybody out.”
Violet hopped down to the blacktop and held back as she shut her door, but the noise still sounded too loud. She jumped as Khloe’s door slammed.
“Oops,” Khloe whispered.
“Shh!” That was Natalia.
They followed Clay single file across the empty street, over to the next block. Violet brought up the rear of their stiff and silent parade. Unseen traffic passed a few streets over, a muted whir, normal people driving to and from legal destinations. Violet glanced back in the direction of the main road, just in time to glimpse a white flicker in the clouds above the horizon. Then another. No thunder, though.
Khloe appeared at her side. “Heat lightning.”
“The air got cooler on the way here,” Violet said. “Maybe it’s a storm.”
“Nah, just looks like one.”
Ahead of them, Natalia beckoned with a quick, taut motion. They jogged a few steps until they caught up.
This street, Apple Lane, dead-ended into a main road a few hundred feet ahead. Clay had brought them in the back way. They hadn’t left the residential neighborhood, but a few of the houses on the left appeared to be used for businesses. Sweet Serenity Massage Therapy, read the sign in one front yard. The next, hung from the porch awning, read Debra’s Salon. Clay veered toward the final house, up a redbrick walkway to the door. A black-lettered whitewashed sign stretched above the doorway: J’s Little Country Store.
The Christians met here?
He knocked on the door, then glanced over his shoulder. His smile caught the streetlight. Right, because he thought he was helping them find the truth or something.
Violet turned a circle in search of the house number. There, the mailbox: 5682 Apple Lane. She dug into her purse for the phone.
The door cracked open, but no light shone from inside. A female whisper seeped into the night. “He prepares a table.”
“Before us,” Clay whispered back.
“In the presence.”
“Of our enemies.”
The door eased open further, still without spilling a bit of light. Clay slipped through the opening into the blackness, and Natalia followed him.
Austin’s voice yelled in Violet’s head. “Do not go inside.”
Khloe tossed a glance over her shoulder: Don’t leave me.
“Come on in, Violet,” Clay whispered from inside.
She had to. She scaled the two steps up into the black lair. She’d find a way to leave as soon as she sent the text: 5682 Apple Lane.
The door sealed behind her, and she was lost in a cocoon of darkness and scent. This country store sold candles. Lots of them. A warm hand slid into hers.
“Dad says be careful not to bump into stuff.”
Khloe tugged her along, and Violet followed, almost stepping on Khloe’s heels. They must have crossed the whole length of the house by now, or maybe the darkness made the seconds feel like minutes. Ahead of her, someone opened a door. She was tugged forward again, into a warmth that suggested this room was usually closed off from the air conditioning.
“Careful—stairs,” Khloe said, a second before Violet would have pitched to her death. She gripped a wooden railing and descended one silent carpeted step at a time until Khloe’s heels clicked on tile.
Someone flipped a switch, and a bare bulb overhead flooded the room with light. The basement was a storage room piled with boxes, some still sealed with packing tape, others with open flaps poking upward. People clustered, seven including her. Too many for the space in the center of the room, connected to the stairs by a narrow cleared path.
“Welcome, Clay’s guests.” An older woman, fifty or so, beamed at them. “I’m Janelle.”
Aunt Natalia stepped forward, prodded by decorum as always. “Natalia. It’s a pleasure to finally meet all of you.”
Violet pulled her stare away from Natalia’s convincing smile. “I’m Violet.”
“Khloe, with a K,” Khloe said.
“Say, brother.” A young guy with dyed-black hair and an eyebrow piercing stepped forward. “Thought you only had one kid.”
Clay laughed as if the guy had made a joke. As if he’d talked to this twenty-something man too many times to count … which he probably had. His rolling stride met the younger man halfway, and he shook the outstretched hand with that signature Uncle Clay, life-is-awesome grin. He was as comfortable as Violet had ever seen him anywhere.
“Violet’s my adopted niece—Khloe’s best friend. I could practically claim her on my tax return.”
Not much of an exaggeration, especially during the summer.
“Aha,” the man said. “Glad to have you all. I’m Phil, and my beautiful bride is Felice.”
Felice couldn’t be more than a few years older than Violet. “Our teac
her isn’t here tonight. He broke his ankle and still isn’t getting around very well, but we’re praying for him.”
Because of course, they prayed to God. Maybe even to the same God that Violet prayed to, just … differently.
Janelle invited everyone to sit in a circle on the floor, and Violet braced herself for a creepy chant, or a tirade against the government, or whispered plans to bomb a daycare center. But the group continued their small talk: the latest blockbuster movie, Tigers’ box scores, Phil and Felice’s new neighbors and their yappy dog. Apparently, no teacher meant no lesson.
Maybe a sliver of her wanted an extremist lesson. Knowledge of their beliefs would help her steer clear, maybe even help her know when to report someone else and when to shrug off their spiritual ideas as misguided but harmless. Austin would protest that, but he couldn’t guarantee she’d never be in a similar situation again.
Just send the text.
She would. In a minute.
Her patience paid off about ten minutes later, when Janelle dug into her purse and brought out a leather-bound book with gold-edged pages. Smaller than the one hiding on top of Clay’s bookshelf, and burgundy.
Clay gave a small gasp. “Janelle …”
“I thought we could read from it tonight, take turns, you know? I was going to write out verses on some paper, like Abe does, but I decided to bring all the verses.”
“But we never …” Clay’s voice faded into a sigh. Phil and Felice gazed at the book with some mix of fear and reverence.
Send the text. Violet’s fingers curled around the faux leather handle of her purse, and its fraying edge dug into her palm. If they caught her, what would they do to her?
“Let’s pass it around and read some of our favorite verses.” Janelle flipped through the book as if she knew the exact page number she sought.
“Oh, awesome.” Felice actually clapped her hands.
Violet slid her hand into an inner pocket and tugged out her phone. From inside her purse, with a glance downward, she started a new text message. Brought up the number Austin had given her.
Next to her, Khloe pulled her own phone from her pocket. Surely she wasn’t texting her current activity to anyone. No, the intermittent movement of her thumbs didn’t look like a text. Violet slanted her gaze at the phone. Pinball.
Did Khloe think Violet was doing the same thing? Demonstrating boredom and disrespect for these people? Khloe, this is serious stuff.
From Khloe’s other side, Natalia’s hand darted to the phone and snatched it away. She reached up behind her and set it on an empty shelf, in full view of the whole group. Then she did the same with Khloe’s pink clutch purse.
Khloe’s mouth rounded in protest, then snapped shut.
“‘Thomas said to him,’” Janelle was reading, “‘“Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”’”
Oh, Violet knew this. Rick had read it a few weeks ago. “Jesus said to him, ‘Within you are the way, and the truth, and the life. Within you is access to the Father.’”
Janelle’s words didn’t match Rick’s voice in her head. “‘Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”’”
Of course, this Bible was different. But it didn’t sound … well, it didn’t sound the way she’d expected.
Whatever. Details didn’t matter. Not here, not tonight. Violet’s mission mattered.
5682 Apple Lane. J’s Little Country Store.
She pressed a final key. Message sent.
8
Forcing them to come might have harmed his cause. Beside Clay, Natalia maintained an interested pose, sitting with her typical model posture and meeting everyone’s eyes in turn. But her arm made the barest contact with his, and its rigidness betrayed her. She was scared or angry; he’d know which if he could face her for a second and read her eyes.
He pulled in a breath of stagnant storeroom air and sighed. Khloe’s hostility was no secret to anyone in the room, not after the phone fiasco. Violet … What was in her head? She’d pulled her phone out first, but then she’d put it away. Maybe she was paying attention.
“Who else wants to read?” Janelle said.
“Pick me.” Phil grinned and shifted his seat on the cool tile.
They each passed the Bible along until it rested in Phil’s hands. His forehead crinkled as he searched, and the hoop in his left eyebrow stood at attention. “Here we go. This is from Isaiah. I love Messianic prophecies. They make you all in awe when you think about how many years this was before Jesus was born.”
Messianic prophecy? Really? Natalia needed to hear something simple, something easily applied to her. Okay, stop. The Bible’s the Bible, right? And he’d brought his family here to hear the Bible. Which he wasn’t even listening to. Focus.
“‘But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’”
Natalia’s discreet nudge conveyed her opinion of that passage. Clay elbowed her in return. Just listen.
“You want to read something, babe?” Phil held the Bible out to his wife still open, as if one wrong move could crumble it to dust.
“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Felice said.
Violet shifted her purse to her other side, out of Khloe’s reach, and slid her phone into the pocket of her jeans. Next to her, Khloe leaked irritation like a sieve. What, had she tried to use Violet’s phone after Nat took hers? Disappointment closed Clay’s eyes. I finally got them to come here. To hear the Bible. Wasn’t God supposed to act in this circumstance, somehow illuminate Himself?
“Maybe we could talk about what we’ve read so far,” Janelle said. “Does anybody want to say something or ask—?”
Bang-bang-bang.
The pounding on the door petrified Clay’s body like an ancient tree, living tissues turned to stone.
“MPC, open up!”
Instantly, they all ceased to be people, became instead a ball of panic winding ever more tightly into itself. Frozen to the floor. Rounded, darting eyes. Then whispers pinged off the cinder block walls.
“We should’ve moved the location months ago, when—”
“But how do they know we’re—?”
Keep speculating, imbeciles, until they kick in the door. Meanwhile, Clay would do what he did best.
Run.
He’d already sprung to his feet. Survival instinct. He zipped across the room and tore down the black curtain that blocked light from the tiny window near the basement ceiling. He pried at the window. Come on! It fell open and left a stripe of rust across his palms. His wife’s hand clutched the back of his shirt and trembled.
“Maybe they didn’t surround the building.” He interlaced his fingers and bent down to form a step.
Janelle’s voice filtered through the roar of adrenaline. “That’s right, hurry up, and don’t make a sound.”
Natalia’s tiny sandaled foot hopped into the cradle of his hands. She leveraged herself up into the window with both hands and shimmied her way into the night.
“J-Janelle?”
Felice’s shaky voice forced Clay to turn and look. Janelle had started up the stairs.
“Somebody’s got to keep them out,” Janelle whispered, “and I own the place.”
“You have to come with us!” Phil said aloud.
“Without a diversion, they’ll get us all. If I barricade the door, they’ll spend manpower breaking it down. You keep quiet until you’re a ways off.”
While they debated, Clay vaulted his daughter up and through the window. Run, baby. Find Mom and don’t stop running. The cops should have pounded on
the door again. Should have battered it in by now. But maybe only moments had passed in this haze. He swiveled to find the final person for whom he was responsible.
“Violet, come on.” Calm infused his voice, though his heart was trying to punch its way out of his chest.
Violet turned her saucer eyes on Janelle one last time, then stepped into Clay’s hands and nearly pitched forward as he heaved her upward. Clay shoved against the soles of her shoes, and she disappeared through the opening.
Bang-bang-bang. “Open up in there! MPC!”
In the center of the room, Phil and Felice clung to each other.
“Come on.” Clay beckoned them.
Felice’s blank eyes blinked. “We can’t just abandon Janelle to …”
No time. Janelle had reached the top of the stairs. They were all adults. Their safety wasn’t Clay’s job.
His slick palms gripped the window frame. He lifted himself up over the drawbridge of window and writhed into a rectangular opening that felt as big as a keyhole. His hands dug into parched grass and wispy soil. He braced his elbows in the dirt and twisted. Free.
A hand gripped his and dragged him up. Natalia. The girls hovered a few feet away. Voices drifted around the corner of the building on a storm-flavored breeze.
“They’ve got something up against the door.”
“Careful, could be wired to something.”
To flee, they had minutes. Maybe less. He motioned with one arm and dashed across the field behind the store. God must have provided the quilt of clouds that smothered moon and stars. Not that any of those agents would be looking away from Janelle right now. Clay glanced back once. Come on, keep up. The cushion of grass muted their hammering feet. Behind them, not quite reaching them, a weak light stretched across the field. Clay’s feet dragged, and he turned back to look. The entire store was lit now, and … Another light slithered around the corner of the building. Green. Rotating pattern. Constabulary squad car.
A bitter taste raked the back of his throat. He ran. The muted footsteps behind him pushed his own feet forward. What were the Constabulary doing here? Was it a planned bust?
Found and Lost Page 5