“You can’t glue it back together.”
She hurled the jar into the sink, and it shattered. “Fine.”
“Natalia …”
She crossed the kitchen, snatched up his keys, and offered them on an open palm. “Is this what you really want?”
No. Of course not. Clay fought for a deep breath. He dried his hands on the pale-green towel. Behind him, the keys rang against each other as Natalia shoved them back onto the rack. Her steps retreated down the hall, and a door shut.
Lord, I can’t do this. Clay stalked to the back door, then into the garage. He shut the door behind him.
Crossing the garage left him breathing like a marathoner, smothering on the feelings that bubbled up as soon as he could be alone with them. He straddled the bike and gripped the handlebars.
His brain resumed working for the first time since he’d heard the thump of his daughter throwing herself from the Jeep. The Constabulary had her ID, and they would come here to interview her parents. A year ago, they would have come at a decent hour, likely dinnertime, when they could be more sure of catching interviewees at home. These days, rumor said they enjoyed showing up at random times. Just because they could. They could knock on the door right now.
They would question him. About his daughter. About their household beliefs.
Or maybe they wouldn’t question at all. Maybe they’d simply inform him that his daughter was in their custody.
Clay bent forward over the bike but couldn’t relieve the stomachache. “Lord, what are You doing?”
Minutes streamed away. Somehow sitting astride the bike held a hollow comfort. He wouldn’t start it. He wouldn’t ride it off into the predawn. These days, he was a man who stayed, and Natalia knew that. She was scared, that’s all.
When his gut eased and his brain settled, he trudged inside. Silence tried to push him into the garage again, but he shoved back.
“Nat.” He walked through the kitchen, the living room, the den, their bedroom. “Nat?”
Only after he’d searched every other room in the house did he admit that he’d known her location the whole time. He pushed Khloe’s door open.
Natalia lay stretched out on the bed, hands curled around Khloe’s sketchpad as it rested on her chest, staring at Khloe’s gallery on the far wall. Pencil sketches, mostly people. Mostly strangers. An elderly woman she’d watched in the park. Twin boys chasing each other through the mall playground. But Violet’s profile hung there too. And Clay’s favorite sketch of all, Natalia pulling cookies from the oven.
She flinched as Clay stepped into view. Her head turned toward him. “You’re still here.”
Clay pressed his back against the door trim. “I was in the garage.”
“Oh.” She pushed herself up, reached over the edge of the bed, and set the sketchpad on the carpet.
“We need a plan, Nat, for when they come tonight, or tomorrow. What to say, and … you know.”
Stiffness infused her as he spoke. She drew her knees up and huddled in the center of the bed. The nod barely came.
“I … Nat, I …” I know this is my fault. I know I’m helpless to fix it.
“I need to know now. What are you going to do?”
“Do?”
Her green eyes wouldn’t rise to his. The rigid curl of her body pushed his mind toward the old panic. Two paths formed inside him. Leave or stay. He stepped into the room, across the indigo carpet. He sat on the edge of the bed, and Natalia’s eyes remained on the lavender quilt.
“I’m going to find our daughter,” he said. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
When his arms enveloped her, she didn’t pull away, didn’t shove at his chest, didn’t impale him with verbal spears. She crumbled against him. She grasped the buttons of his shirt. He breathed in her mango shampoo, and his lips found rest in her hair. Lord, You’d better help us. Soon.
11
This mission was worth the possibility of Khloe’s outrage. It was worth crawling under a stranger’s deck and hunkering on a blue plastic tarp while rain dripped between the boards into her hair. But possibly nothing was worth a close encounter with the largest spider Violet had ever seen. She cringed against the house siding and tried to squelch the whimper between her fingers.
“Smash it, Khloe.”
“With what, my bare hands?”
Violet shut her eyes against the spider’s nearness. Its web hung just feet away. It’s not on you. She could reason as long as she couldn’t see the thing.
“Okay, Violet. Keep your eyes closed and scoot back along the side of the house.”
Violet shuffled backward on her knees, off the tarp, hands squishing in layers of moist leaves that must have been gathering for a decade. Her head collided with a support beam.
“Ouch.”
“Don’t look yet.”
A dull smack, then another that crinkled the tarp.
“He’s smashed now. You’re okay.”
Violet’s eyes opened and found the lifeless black blob at the edge of the tarp. She shuddered. “Um, thanks, sorry, I …”
“Freak out? Like that’s news to me.” Khloe slid her wedge back on. “If I’d known the future, I would’ve worn better shoes.”
The moisture from the ground had begun to seep through Violet’s jeans. She ducked the beam this time and crawled back to the tarp, although her hair was already dripping. She touched the phone in her pocket. Damp but not soaked.
She had noted their shelter’s address as they sneaked through the front yard to the back. She’d text it as soon as Khloe surrendered to her drooping eyelids. When the con-cops arrived, Violet would feign shock and, once they were separated for questioning, defend Khloe the best she could. They’d owe her for her service.
Right.
She shivered as the rain continued to drip down her back. “If I’d known the future, I would have brought a jacket with a hood. And an umbrella.”
“And a smoothie to go.”
“Naturally.”
They’d discovered a small cooler half buried in leaves, crammed full of bottled water and protein bars. But despite crouching there for a few hours, neither of them was hungry.
“I don’t know how I can be sleepy and wet at the same time, but I’m getting there.” Khloe leaned against the side of the house and tipped her head back.
Yes. Fall asleep. “Well, it’s like four in the morning, and we’ve probably spent all our adrenaline.”
“Yeah.”
The pattering rain on the leaves of a nearby maple tree filled the next few minutes. At last, Khloe’s lips parted in slumber. She looked even younger now.
Violet tugged the phone from her pocket and tapped the screen. 11317 Joshua Dr. Under the deck.
If she hit Send, and if Khloe somehow did decipher the truth … The possibility tightened Violet’s breath. Khloe was the one person in the world who’d always wanted her. But now Austin did too—in a completely different way. In a way that made Violet want back, a way that made love songs seem less cheesy. Success in this mission would fill his eyes with respect. Maybe he’d even realize she was adult enough to love him.
The scales tipped back and forth, Khloe on one side and Austin on the other. But when Violet added the weight of duty, of morality, to the scale … it crashed down on Austin’s side.
She hit Send. Pocketed the phone. And waited.
In less than ten minutes, a quiet scratch came from the lattice to Violet’s left. Khloe had been the one to find the section that could be tugged off and pulled back on from the inside. How did the Constabulary agents know where that opening was, and why the stealth? Unless … this was Clay.
The lattice popped off, and a man’s silhouette filled the space. Not wiry Clay—this man’s shoulders were almost too broad to fit through the opening. The dark obscured his features, but he jer
ked a beckoning gesture, so he must be able to see them. Then he disappeared. He couldn’t be Constabulary. He’d gotten here too fast.
Khloe still slumped against the siding, eyes closed. Violet nudged her chilled arm, and she yelped.
The man’s bulk blocked the space again. “Shh!”
He must be a resistance member. A terrorist. This was the kind of man who would strap on a bomb, stroll into a shopping mall with it, and set it off.
Khloe shivered and gaped at him.
“Come on.” The man’s whisper barely reached them over the drumming rain.
No, no, no. The mission had been over. Bust this house and go home. Violet couldn’t go further. Couldn’t follow this man and pretend to be like him, couldn’t let him take Khloe.
“Who are you?” Khloe whispered, about three times more loudly than he had.
“Come on. No time.”
“My dad’s going to come here to get us, as soon as it’s safe to come. He—” She scrambled back as the man dropped to his knees and pushed his way through the opening in the lattice.
“That’s not. How this works.” His words seemed to come in pieces, one-two punches to the air. “Nobody comes here. Just me.”
“B-but …”
“And if your dad told you to come here, then he knows you’ll be taken somewhere safe.”
Khloe’s lips pressed together, uncertainty and hope clashing in her eyes. Somewhere safe from re-education. That’s what she was hearing, and if she had to hang out with Christians in that “somewhere,” then she would.
Violet pressed a hand to her pocketed phone. Austin, what have I gotten myself into? But if this guy thought she and Khloe were Christians like him, hiding … They’d be safe then. Christians didn’t hurt each other.
Maybe this shelter wasn’t the end of the mission. Maybe Violet was supposed to play a part, dig for information, truly infiltrate the resistance network. The concept sent a tremor all the way to her fingertips.
The man’s gaze shifted to Violet and stayed on her, studying, waiting.
Khloe’s hand circled her wrist and pressed her cold charm bracelet against her skin. “Vi, I think we should go with him.”
Not breaking eye contact with the man, Violet nodded. I’ll go with you, all right. And then I’ll turn you in.
He backed from the opening and vanished again. Violet stuck her head outside, not expecting the rain to feel so wet. After all, she already was. She crawled forward and stood up. She sensed Khloe trailing behind her.
“Follow,” the man said quietly. “No talking.”
Without waiting for even a nod, he set out through the rain at a clip that forced Khloe to trot. She slid once on the wet grass, and Violet caught her arm.
“Jerk,” Khloe whispered to the man’s back, but he led at too far a distance to hear her. He zigzagged them through yards and down sidewalks. The path seemed random, but he moved too intentionally for that. In only a minute, he had robbed Violet of all directional bearings. She knew east only by the watery sunrise that winked around rainclouds.
In about five minutes, they reached a red pickup truck. The man opened the passenger door and motioned them inside. Khloe slid to the middle without hesitation. Hand on the inside door grip, Violet froze. She darted a glance over her shoulder. The man’s face held no kindness, no smile, only an earnestness that burned like a torch behind his brown eyes. He looked ready to shove her inside.
She hoisted herself into the truck and pulled the heavy door shut.
After a few silent minutes of driving, the man pulled into the parking lot of a vacant strip plaza. Violet’s mouth turned to sawdust. Her hand crept to the door handle. Without looking down, she reached for the lock button.
He parked the car but left it running. “Anything electronic on you?”
“No,” Violet said.
“Your phone, stupidhead.”
Violet elbowed Khloe, but not hard enough for the man to see.
He held his hand out, palm up.
“You drove us over here to steal my phone?” Violet shrank against the truck door.
“You can keep the phone. I need the battery and the card.”
No way.
“Duh, Violet.” Khloe elbowed back. “They could be tracking it. You want the con-cops to find us?”
“I’ll turn it off.”
The man rubbed his neck with one hand. “They’d still be able to track it. I can’t take you any farther. Until you give me the phone.”
“I’ll take it apart and keep the pieces.”
“No.”
“Omygosh, Vi.” Khloe shoved her hand into the pocket of Violet’s jeans.
Heat surged into Violet’s face, not embarrassment but a sudden desire to slap her best friend. She pushed at Khloe’s wrist and shrank back until she collided with the truck door. She must have other options. She didn’t have to give this man her only way to call for help.
“This is my job. Keeping you safe.”
Either she pretended to trust him or she triggered his suspicion, which would be a lot more dangerous. Or she abandoned her mission and Khloe and took off across the parking lot. Not an option.
She willed her hand not to tremble as she relinquished the phone. The man worked for several minutes, first removing the phone’s silicon case, then producing a tiny screwdriver from the glove box. His hands were quick and sure, and soon her phone was in three pieces. He returned only the lightless shell. The rest he shoved into a Ziploc bag, also grabbed from the glove box. He fetched out a black marker and scrawled her name on the bag, then pocketed it.
“Wait here.” Mindless of the rain, he scrounged through the truck bed and got back into the cab with a black wand about a foot long, yellow letters proclaiming the brand as well as the function. Handheld Metal Detector.
“You’re kidding.” For the first time since the man had shown up, Khloe’s voice quivered.
“You could have a tracker under your skin. They’re getting more common.”
That couldn’t be true. He skimmed the wand a few inches over their bodies, without a chink in his matter-of-fact expression. He resumed driving only after stowing the wand back in the truck bed.
When Khloe shivered, he stripped off his rain-spattered green jacket and handed it to Khloe. “Here. It’s dry inside.”
Khloe spread it over her shoulders. “Thanks. We were under there for hours.”
He nodded as if he knew, but how could he? They’d had contact with no one. Well, the owner of the house had walked out onto the deck once, in that first hour after they’d crawled under it. They hadn’t been able to discern anything about the person except white shoe soles and a slight shuffle. But maybe he or she had been able to see them.
Khloe huddled closer to share the cover, but Violet couldn’t drape herself in this criminal’s coat. She sat up straight against the truck seat and crossed her arms. The man didn’t seem to notice.
“You said your dad was coming to get you,” he said. “I need to know what happened, the details.”
And Khloe told him. Even the details. Even her plan to hide until after the con-cops interviewed her parents, until things settled down when they couldn’t locate her.
“You said they have your ID.” He signaled a turn and veered onto an entrance ramp. The highway sign said they were headed north. Good to note, since his truck didn’t have a compass.
“They do, but in a few days, I’m sure they’ll have more dangerous people to hunt than us.”
“Where’s your church?”
“It’s, um, in a storeroom, and—”
“The country store? On Apple?”
“Yeah, that one.”
Quiet thickened, seemed to heat the air. The man’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Who … do you know who got away?”
And who didn’t? The de
speration in what he didn’t ask hung there, though he obviously tried not to show it. He knew those people. Violet continued to face the windshield but sneaked a glance at him as she spoke.
“I don’t know about Phil and Felice. I know they arrested Janelle.”
His left hand latched onto his neck and squeezed. A long minute passed while he drove one-handed.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Anybody else—that you know for sure? Who’s your dad?”
“Clay Hansen,” Khloe said.
His eyes darted over them as if seeing them for the first time. “I thought he just had one daughter.”
“I’m his daughter. Khloe, with a K. Violet’s my friend. She just came with us to church. Are we allowed to ask your name?”
“Marcus.”
Violet forced herself to look fully at him, this terrorist who was also a person, a man with a name. A man who believed he was doing the right thing.
“Marcus what?” Khloe said.
He shook his head, but he had a last name too. A life, a job, friends, family. Maybe his parents had filled his mind with lies since he was old enough to read.
She turned her head to stare out the rain-smeared window. Dear God, please use me to help him.
“Well, anyway, Marcus.” Khloe shifted beside her. “If you could help us hide for just a little while, that would be perfect.”
“The Constabulary won’t stop looking for you. I’ll get you back to your parents. But it’ll take time.”
Time to gather evidence. Her mission glittered anew. She’d done the right thing, after all. Was still doing it, shivering here in this truck, across from a terrorist. A person.
“Violet?”
She jerked her attention back to Marcus. “Sorry. Wandering mind.”
“Your parents. They weren’t at the meeting.”
“They’re not …” Come on, play the part. You can do this. “They’re not Christians. They’d turn me in, if they found out I was one.” There, see? Not even a lie.
“Would Clay take you in?”
Wait … would he? Khloe was already nodding. “Of course.”
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