by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The first sign of trouble came, not from Aiden River, but from Chicago.
Kaufman and Flores hadn’t made a squeak in the weeks since Chris had spotted Flores outside Harrison’s hospital. He’d kept a low profile ever since, but he was getting cabin fever.
A week after Tireus and Denegar left for the Aiden River, he went to sleep in Lael, woke up in Chicago, and decided he’d had just about enough of this house arrest business. He left a note for Mike and headed out on foot. He had to stop putting this life on hold while he lived the one in Lael. He had to get a job, start writing again, something.
He spent the afternoon in a cybercafé, trying to dig up anything he could find on Faolan Mactalde. But, by the end of the day, he’d come up with basically zilch. The few articles he’d uncovered, written by the good doctor, were filled with psychobabble and evasive doublespeak—all of which might have sounded impressive if he hadn’t personally seen the other side of the mental wall.
He took a taxi back to Mike’s neighborhood and stared out the window as the streetlights washed over him one after another.
He needed to see his dad. But that thought choked his heart. His real dad—his worn-out, sad, alcoholic dad—was once again an open wound. In Lael, Chris could pretend he was whole again as he sat around the hearth with a full family, all of them happy and smiling save for the underlying tension of his new strangeness to them. He could look at his father, and his father could look back. Strong, merry, powerful, and honest. That was the father that might have been. That was the father he could pretend he’d always had, so long as he didn’t ever have to see the other one again.
And yet he needed to. He needed to do . . . what? Apologize? He shook his head, and the old black hole of anger pulled at him. Apologize for what? Paul was the one who had ruined both their lives, not him.
So he kept putting it off.
The other thing he needed to do was stop wasting time. In Lael, he and Allara and Quinnon spent every minute racing the clock to prepare for the day when the war would need him—or, even more ominous, when the world would need him.
The weather was growing slowly, almost infinitesimally, more erratic. The heat of summer had almost completely vanished. Every day dawned cloudy, and every day the clouds darkened. People in the streets stared at the skies and muttered, but most of them shrugged it off. Weather was weather. You should have seen the storms we had on this lake when I was a lad . . . If any of them guessed the true cause, they didn’t seem to be sharing their conclusions. Or, at any rate, their rumors had yet to spread to the palace hill.
But none of that changed the fact that something had to be done about it, and Chris was probably the person who was supposed to do it.
About ten blocks from Mike’s house, the taxi meter reached the amount of cash he had on him, so he paid the driver, and started hiking down the sidewalk. His breath turned to blue smoke beneath the lights.
A car passed him, headed the same direction, and he glanced up. The glare of its headlights struck a truck parked across the street from Mike’s.
He stopped short.
It was a black truck, same as the one he’d seen on the North Shore the day Kaufman had shot at him. A man sat outlined in the driver’s seat. Mactalde’s bodyguard.
His heart rate sped up. He backpedaled, praying the man hadn’t already seen him. But no flicker of movement from the cab indicated Kaufman was preparing to give chase.
This wasn’t good. Mike would still be at the radio station, until after his late show, so Kaufman couldn’t have gotten to him. Assuming he wanted to get to anybody besides Chris. Chris turned the fenced corner and kept going until he reached the shadow of an overgrown willow.
There was no way Chris could go home now. And, with his cell phone in Lael, he couldn’t even give Mike a heads up until he could find a pay phone. His heart pounded, and he turned around and broke into a jog. With no phone, no credit card, and no cash, he had no way of getting transportation or a room for the night. Even if he got a call through, Mike couldn’t come get him without the risk of being tailed.
He’d have to get ahold of somebody else. He definitely wasn’t calling his dad. By this late in the evening, he’d be too sozzled to drive. And that left Brooke.
__________
Brooke’s silver Land Rover turned onto the circular drive at Sherman Park, and the doors unlocked with a pop.
Chris opened the passenger door and climbed into the seat. “Did you call Mike?”
She grinned. “Don’t I even get a hello?”
“Brooke.” He was in no mood for her oblivious cheerfulness. “Did you call him?” If Mike got hurt because of him, he would never forgive himself. He’d made more than his share of stupid decisions in his life, but not calling the cops on Kaufman, just to save his own hide, was beginning to look like a worst.
Her smile faded a little. “Sure. I left a message with the manager at the station. Told Mike not to go home until you’d talked to him.” She put the car back into gear and circled the drive to merge with traffic. “So what’s going on?”
“Can I borrow your phone?”
She pouted and nodded to where the phone leaned inside the drink holder. “You are so exasperating sometimes. You never want to tell me anything. You act like I’m out to get you half the time.” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “When have I ever not tried to help you?”
“I’m sorry I’m exasperating, and I’m sorry I don’t tell you anything.” Small white lie there. He punched in Mike’s cell number. “It’s not personal, and it never has been. I just don’t—” The phone started to ring, and he broke off.
She finished for him. “Trust me.”
“That’s not it.” Actually, it was. But telling her that would be like kicking an adoring puppy.
Mike picked up. “Hey, kiddo. What’s up with this crazy message from our crazy friend?”
“It’s me,” Chris said.
“Oh, the crazy friend himself. Look, I’m hungry and beat. So talk fast because I want to go home.”
“You can’t go home.” He took a breath. “You know that guy who was shooting at me? He’s got your place staked out.”
Brooke nearly drove off the road. “What?”
Chris reached instinctively to steady the wheel. She straightened the car back out and gaped at him.
On the other end of the line, Mike echoed her question, “What’s going on? Where are you?”
“With Brooke. Everyone’s fine. He didn’t see either of us.”
“And now you’re going to call the cops, right? ’Cause if you won’t, I will.”
“Yes. We’re going there now.” He glanced at Brooke, and she obediently hit her blinker.
“And then what?” Mike’s mood sounded liked it was somewhere near the crossroads of disbelief, frustration, and borderline fear.
“And then Brooke’s dropping me at a hotel. And I think you better find one for the night as well.”
“And what about Pluto?” Mike’s voice bit deep on the bass end.
“I’ll get the cops to feed him when they drop by to check it out.” Chris dug around for the right thing to say. Unfortunately, at this point, he was fresh out of right things. “Mike, I’m sorry.”
Mike heaved an exhale. “I don’t know what you’re mixed up in, but do me a favor and . . . don’t do it again.” He hung up.
Chris flipped the phone shut and dropped it back into the drink holder. So much for making good use of his time today. Although if he’d been at home this afternoon, Kaufman might well have plugged him already.
Brooke shot him several glances. “You are okay, right?”
“Just peachy.” He rubbed the back of his head. If he’d been at Réon Couteau instead of Glen Arden, would he have been able to see this coming in the lake? “I’m sorry I got you involved in this.”
“That’s all right.” She gave a little shrug. “It’s scary, of course. But it’s also kind of
exciting.” She glanced at him again. “You don’t really want to go to the cops, do you?”
“What else am I supposed to do? There’s no way I’m letting you or Mike get hurt just because I don’t want to talk to the police.”
She shook her hair back from her face and stared at the ribbon of lights that filled the road ahead. “How about I make you a deal? I’ll talk to the cops. I’ll tell them I went by Mike’s earlier and saw this creepy guy breaking into his house.”
“I don’t know that he broke in.”
She waved him off. “Doesn’t matter. That’ll get somebody out there. The point is you won’t have to talk to them.”
He chewed on that. As far as it went, it sounded pretty good. “And what do you get out of this?”
“You tell me what’s going on?” The lift of her eyebrows was hopeful.
He fiddled with the heater vent. “That’s a long story.”
“And unless I’m much mistaken, the next chapter seems to be unfolding in Mercy General Hospital. With a leading actor by the name of . . . Harrison Garnett?”
“Where’d you hear that?” He hadn’t told her Harrison’s name.
“I told you I have contacts.” She sounded as smug as she looked. “I asked around about that shooting.”
“You really need to stay out of this. You’re wading into water about five feet over your head.”
“I’m a reporter!”
“No. You’re not.”
She careened onto the shoulder, car horns blaring behind her.
He braced both hands against the dash. “Hey!”
She braked hard and slammed the gear into neutral. “I am going to be a reporter.” This time the pout was paired with a determined knit in her forehead. “Chris.” She licked her lips. “You could have been shot. We could all be shot, for that matter. So tell me the truth. Was the bullet that got Harrison Garnett meant for you?”
“It’s complicated.”
She crossed her arms. “If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, fine. Maybe I don’t want to be your private chauffeur. You can walk to the cops.”
“Brooke . . .” Maybe it had been a mistake to call her in the first place. “Look—”
“No, you look. You tell me what the deal is, or you can forget it. If you can’t trust me enough to tell me—”
“What about you trusting me?” He glared. “That road goes two ways.”
She leaned against the door. “Yeah, but I’m driving right now. Tell me or not.”
He hesitated. Brooke wasn’t Mike. She had the best of intentions but not the sense to keep her nose in her own business.
Unfortunately, however, his choices were slipping away.
“All right, fine,” he said. “This guy who’s tailing me, he worked for Mactalde. I saw him there at Mactalde’s house the day before he disappeared.”
She uncrossed her arms and leaned forward. “And you think he’s the one who kidnapped or killed Mactalde?”
“No. I think Mactalde hired Kaufman to kill me and this other guy, Flores, to kill Harrison.”
“Kaufman?” That seemed to catch her off guard. She sat back and chewed on her lip.
“You know him?”
“Mmm, maybe. I’ll have to investigate it.”
“No, don’t investigate it.” He gave her shoulder a little shake. “I mean it. I would hate myself for the rest of my life if something happened to you because of me.”
Her smile bloomed. “That’s sweet.”
“I am not trying to be sweet here. I wish you’d . . .” He looked out his window, then back. “I wish you’d stop reading things into what I say. I don’t mean to be unkind, but what I wish is that you could get over this crush, or whatever it is, you’ve had on me since we were kids.”
The smile faded. She turned away.
“I’m sorry.” He touched her shoulder again. “I want to trust you. I see you all the time, almost as much as I see Mike. We should be friends, good friends. But I need you to stand back and be sensible. About us, about everything.”
She’d always bruised easily. That was the only reason he’d never said any of this before, no matter how exasperated she made him. But right now this was bigger than just her feelings. For once in her life, she needed to hear the truth, and she needed to believe it.
“Please, Brooke.”
A car zipped past, so close it rocked the Land Rover.
She reached for the gear. “I’ll take you to a hotel.” Her voice sounded both wobbly and resolute. “You can use my credit card, so the room won’t be under your name. And I’ll take care of everything at the police station. I won’t even mention you.”
“Thank you.” He waited while she put the car back into drive and pulled into traffic. “And you won’t investigate any further? You’ll promise me you’ll stay out of it?”
After a long hesitation, she looked over at him. “I have a question, and you need to answer it. How can everything have gone haywire all of a sudden? Mike told me about the letter and the dreams you’ve been having. I guess that’s why you went to the psychologist, right? So then the psychologist disappears, some guy gets shot, and now you’re on the run, and you refuse to talk to the police about any of it. It’s all nuts.”
“I know.” And she didn’t understand the half of it. He stared at the blur of headlights. Rain misted the windshield.
She flipped on the windshield wipers. “Even the weather isn’t normal!”
And that was his fault too. He cleared his throat. “If that’s the question you wanted to ask, I don’t have an answer.”
“No.” She straightened from hunching over the wheel. “That’s not my question. My question is—do you know what happened to Mactalde?”
He hesitated. She knew him well enough to recognize in a second if he was lying, but if he didn’t tell her something, she’d start digging like a dog after a bone on the other side of a wire fence. Right now, he wasn’t in a position to be alienating allies. Especially an ally who was paying for his hotel room.
“Yes, I know what happened.”
“Then what was it?”
“He’s not dead. Let’s just leave it at that.”
Her jaw dropped. “You are involved with his disappearance!”
“C’mon. You think I killed him? Is that it, huh?”
“Did you?”
“No.”
She turned into a hotel parking lot and braked in front of the entrance. “Just tell me whether or not he’s safe.”
“He’s safe. He left of his own free will. And as far as I know he has no intention of coming back. Do you think I’d take advantage of your trust?”
“I don’t know.” She got out of the car. Before slamming the door, she stuck her head inside. “But I do trust you, even if you don’t trust me.”
Fifteen minutes later, she returned with his card key and room number. “Here.” She shoved the key into his hands. “You will try to stay safe, won’t you?”
“Yeah, I’ll try.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door to the spitting rain. “Thanks, Brooke. I’m sorry, about everything.”
She shrugged. “That’s all I ever really wanted to do for you, you know.”
“I know. Thank you.”
He climbed out and stood in the parking lot while she drove away. Then he turned his coat collar up and trudged into the hotel. His room was on the third floor—a stale-smelling single. He chucked his coat in the chair, kicked off his shoes, and lay back against the headboard. Sleep was already tugging at his eyes. Lael was calling. Any minute now, he’d fall awake and find . . .
. . .a ray of light slamming against his eyelids.
Muttering filtered into his hearing, and something poked his arm. “Chris—Chris—”
He dragged his eyes open and found himself in his bed at Glen Arden.
Parry stood in the gap in the bed curtains. Trepidation twisted his pocked face. “Her ladyship told me to wake you. The battle at Aiden River has started. You
have to leave.”