Take and Give

by Amanda G. Stevens

  He pulled to the side and put the car in park. What was the worst that could happen right now?

  Do you really want to go there?

  Jason stopped at his window and gestured, and Austin rolled down the window. “Sir, all I want to do is—”

  “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “Does Hansen know your car?”

  Austin shook his head.

  “Come on. We’re going for a drive.”

  Boss or not, this guy needed a lesson in boundaries. Austin wasn’t a teenager, and he wasn’t on duty. “No, sir.”

  Jason crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels. “You go with me today, or you’re out of a job tomorrow.”

  Not the time to test whether Jason could follow through with that. Austin stepped out of his car and hung his keys on a belt loop of his jeans. Frayed slim cuts to go with his red V-neck sweater and black bomber jacket that Violet liked to wear whenever they had gone to a concert together, which hadn’t been often enough. He looked like a college kid, a civilian, nothing intimidating about him. And he’d proved he wouldn’t barge in on Clay Hansen waving his badge around. No reason not to trust him with this.

  Jason slid behind the wheel, and Austin opened the SUV’s passenger door. He could handle himself. He was armed, after all.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the office. Something I want you to see.”

  Fine. Austin slid into the seat and shut the door too hard. The clean upholstery smell mingled with the scent of cinnamon gum. “I know the terms of Hansen’s deal, Jason. Unconditional amnesty.”

  “It’s right there in your voice, kid.”

  “What?”

  Jason pulled into traffic, and his right eyebrow twitched. “Disdain.”

  “Maybe you’re projecting your experience with other agents.” Or maybe not.

  “You remember what I said about lying to me?”

  Austin shifted against the passenger window as Jason made a left turn. Yeah, he was headed back to the admin building. He was also shooting Austin glances like darts.

  “I’m not sure I agree with unconditional amnesty, no matter what the case. But especially not this case.”

  “Of course, not this case.”

  “Jason, if something happened to Reese Cabrera-Hill, if she vanished, would you pursue every option of finding her?”

  Jason shrugged.

  “You would, not only because she’s an innocent person but because she’s worked with you, worked for you to further your mission. Well, what about Violet? She put herself in harm’s way for us, and then maybe real harm comes to her, and we wash our hands. That guy knows more than he wants to tell me, and I can’t even have a street-clothes conversation with him.”

  By the time his rant dried up, his pulse was pounding a warning. Jason didn’t respond for long minutes—not the longest of Austin’s life, of course, but enough time for his heartbeat to level. Enough time to convince himself he’d be jobless tomorrow.

  “That’s why we’re going back to the office,” Jason said.

  So you can hold your hand out for my badge and gun in official surroundings.

  They didn’t break the quiet for the rest of the drive.

  Jason took the correct road, then drove past the building. Austin’s frown was met with a shrug.

  “You said we were going to—”

  “Clarification. The property behind the office.”

  Austin pressed his lips together and watched out the passenger window. Jason turned left and then left again, a right angle that took them down a cracked residential street. They were behind Constabulary property—state property, one long row of skinny public housing projects. Had anyone ever lived here? One house appeared half-naked, tar paper exposed to the elements. The rest were finished with white siding, black shingles and black doors, empty copies of copies somehow both new and worn, run down not by careless occupants but by weather and time. Between the houses and the street sprawled one boundless front yard. The grass stood two feet tall, still mostly green and long since conquered by weeds and some pink wildflower.

  Jason parked in front of the houses—no, in front of a particular house, as if they weren’t all the same. Austin followed him up the driveway, stepping around knee-high nettle plants that sprouted from the cracks. Where … what … why …? Nothing made it out of his mouth, though, as he trailed Jason past the garage and around, behind the house. A long-lost metal lawn chair wedged the back door shut. The doorknob had been removed.

  “Jason?”

  Jason pushed the lawn chair aside and opened the door. Did he own this place? He glanced back at Austin, and light from the lowering sun brightened the blue of his eyes.

  “Okay.” Jason twitched a smile. “Come on in.”

  Even without electricity, the place was lit well by the many windows on this side of the main level. Austin shoved his hands into his jacket pockets; of course, the heat wasn’t on either. They walked on ivory carpet through the living room, mostly pristine, but a few dirt smears betrayed a former trespasser. At the kitchen threshold, an odd stench hung in the air.

  Austin followed further, to the door of a closet or something. A regular door with a regular doorknob … that locked from outside. A shudder gripped him.

  “Okay,” Jason said and unlocked the door.

  The smell came from inside, heavy and rotten, and just as Austin’s brain identified it—sweat, urine, human grime—his gaze cleared Jason’s shoulder. The floor of this tiny room was the same pale tile as that of the kitchen and littered with empty foil wrappers. In one corner sat a deep plastic bucket. In the other slouched a man.

  Back to the wall. Legs half-bent in front of him. Body sagged forward, chin on his chest. Without the wall behind him, he’d collapse to one side. So motionless he could be dead, except for the quiet, wheezing breaths. But as the fading light slanted into his prison, the man lifted his head. Not an empty gaze. The brown eyes, dull with pain and bright with fever, focused on Jason.

  Jason stared back. “Kid, I’d love to watch you poke at Hansen, unearth that girl’s hiding place … But see, I can’t let you.”

  Austin tried to follow, tried to think past revulsion. What did this man have to do with …? Wait a minute.

  “Marcus Brenner? Jason, this is Marcus Brenner?”

  The man’s gaze, emotionless but aware, traveled to Austin’s.

  Brown hair curled past the collar of the T-shirt that was probably red when clean. His beard was scruffy, his elbows and knees and wrists and jaw all too sharp. His khaki shorts gaped away from his waist.

  “How long have you … had him?”

  “I never didn’t have him.” Jason stepped further into the pantry. He turned his back on his prisoner because Brenner couldn’t move, much less attack or escape. “Four months, he’s been here. While all of them—including you, kid—thought I couldn’t catch him. Other than Tisdale, who thinks I killed him.”

  Jason aimed the smirk down at Brenner, and the man met his eyes.

  “Uh …” Stay calm. Don’t challenge him. Live another day. The survival litany flooded him, the vivid color of memory including his own blood, but this wasn’t his father. This was Jason.

  “Which has actually turned out pretty convenient. Guy doesn’t cross you when he thinks you’re capable of murder.”

  Aren’t you? Austin breathed in and leveled his voice. “What’re you going to do with him?”

  “Fair question.”

  The room wasn’t meant to hold three people, but Austin stepped inside. No fear. Agree with him. His head pounded.

  “I thought he’d be dead by now, but …” Jason paced one step away and met the wall, then pivoted back. “Guess that’s not how it’s going to go.”

  “But isn’t this a risk? Why not put a bullet in his hea
d?”

  “Right, but … not yet.”

  Austin’s stomach knotted. He forced a deep breath of the urine-choked air. What are you going to do about this? Nothing. Because he couldn’t. Look at the man. Brenner was already dead.

  “I’ve had this in the back of my head since we started working together more. Really, your hounding me about Hansen, that was the push I needed.”

  “I … Jason, I don’t know if I’m following you.”

  “You need to know I get my guy.”

  “So you’ll … hold him in here until he starves?”

  “Oh.”

  Jason reached to his inside coat pocket, and every nerve in Austin’s body jolted. Gun—No … granola bar in a foil wrapper. Jason tossed it on the ground at Brenner’s feet.

  “I make sure he gets one every day or two, when I can get over here. And water sometimes, though I didn’t bring any today.”

  Jason wasn’t this person. Jason was logical and noble in his goals for re-education, for Constabulary success. He followed the law.

  Do something.

  “Thank you for … trusting me, sir.”

  “Part of telling you was simple necessity. Hansen knows enough about the details to be dangerous. I can’t have him thinking we’re reneging on the deal. But really, you earned this information, kid.” He tilted his head and turned to Brenner, who was still watching him. “See, Brenner, I give what’s earned. You want all this to end, just say the word.”

  The silence stretched out while the two of them stared each other down. Fever glittered in Brenner’s eyes, but he didn’t blink.

  “Come on, man,” Jason whispered. “Say. It.”

  Whatever “it” was, Jason’s hands had begun to tremble at his sides. Austin backed up to the doorway. “Jason, maybe he’s too sick to talk.”

  “He can talk when he wants to. But I’ll make it easy. Just nod, man. You’re wrong about God. This room proves it. You’re ready to give it all up. Nod, and I’ll count it as the answer.”

  Brenner’s inhale was slow, shallow, but deliberate. His voice rasped. “No.”

  Jason rammed the toe of his boot into the man’s ribs.

  Brenner’s gasp broke into a cough, and he bent forward, one hand clenching the hem of his shorts.

  Austin surged a step forward and froze. How many times had Jason done this over the last four months and what are you going to do about it, Austin? The room faded around him, but the sounds didn’t. Jason kicked the man twice more while heat washed through Austin’s limbs. He had to stop this, had to fight Jason, had to defend that man helpless on the floor—had to defend himself, had to stop lying helpless on the floor.

  It’s not me, I’m not getting hurt.

  But someone else was and he was doing nothing and Jason—

  Jason was the kind of man who threw children into walls.

  He stepped back. Brenner now curled on his side, fists balled, arms tight against his chest. The noise of breathing, of coughing while trying to breathe, filled the small space. Jason nodded, motioned Austin out of the room ahead of him, and locked the door.

  7

  Austin’s thumb trembled on the phone’s touch screen. Contacts. Esther. The phone rang five times before going to voicemail. “It’s Esther D, hey, don’t leave a message ’cause I don’t listen to them, but when I see your missed call I’ll call you back, unless I don’t know your number.”

  Austin hung up and redialed.

  “Dude, really, we were going to call you right back.”

  His hands steadied. “Hey, Livvy. Since when does Esther let you touch her phone?”

  Olivia’s grin traveled through the line. “Since her hands are all sticky with cookie dough and she saw it was just you. We’re making double chocolate chip. You should come over.”

  The kid knew a pause would follow that, but she always found some reason to say it. Austin leaned back against the couch. He glared at his bookshelf across the room and tried to formulate an answer.

  “Dad’s not home,” Olivia whispered.

  Always a good thing, but better tonight. His dad’s voice kept merging with the sounds of Marcus Brenner being kicked in the ribs. “What’re you going to do about it, Austin? You going to cry or hit back?” That man’s voice in the background of Olivia’s might put Austin’s fist through a wall right now. He rose from the couch and paced the geometric design on the rug, phone held between ear and shoulder. Chill out. He rotated his free arm.

  “I can’t tonight, Livvy, so eat my share of the cookies.”

  “Oh, for sure.”

  “What’s up with you? Haven’t talked in a while.” Might as well verbalize the fault now so they could move on, not that Olivia would find fault in the first place.

  “It’s okay, I know you’re busy and stuff. You arrest anybody this week?”

  No matter how many times Austin clarified the entry-level nature of his job, Olivia and Esther imagined him breaking down the doors of illegal church meetings, confiscating and burning old Bibles, leading apprehended Christians through the doors of their first re-education session. He couldn’t grin at their glamorization tonight.

  “Not this week. How’s math?”

  “I got an eighty-seven on the unit test last week.”

  “Eighty-seven’s good, Liv. Did the mnemonics help?”

  “Kind of. When I could remember them.”

  The chuckle shook his chest.

  “What if I text you next time he’s working late? Will you come for dinner? You could stay for like an hour or two, and be gone before he got home.”

  They deserved to see their brother, and he wanted to see them. He dropped back onto the couch and sighed. “Okay, you text me and I’ll come.”

  “And you have to make dinner. I want white pizza, and you can do your sauce for Mom and Esther.”

  “Deal. Let me talk to her.”

  The phone shifted hands with a blur of sound. “Hey, big bro.”

  “Just checking in, middle sis.”

  “We’re all clear.”

  If she ever said, “We’re perfectly fine,” he would know his father had done something, either to one of the girls or to Mom. But in the three and a half years since he’d left home, the code had never been used.

  A fourteen-year-old girl shouldn’t have to talk to her brother in code. She should be able to tell him, right in front of Mom, if things blew up. Shoot, Mom should call him herself. Like that would ever happen.

  “Austin?”

  “Sorry. I’m here.”

  “Olivia said you’ll come for dinner soon.”

  “I will, Esther. I promise.”

  “Ooh. I’m going to hold you to that on pain of … I know! If you don’t come to dinner within the next two weeks, you have to take me to a concert.”

  “As in, a not-real-music concert.”

  “Pop is the most popular form of music, Austin. For many reasons.”

  “Reasons such as the intellectual downfall of Western culture?” The grin split his face. Maybe he should fail to come to dinner.

  “You’re the world’s biggest snob, and you know it, and you like it about yourself. And that’s so totally pathetic.”

  “I’ll brave one of your boy bands if you’ll let me take you to a folk festival.”

  “Uhh …” In the background, the cookie sheet was slid from the oven. “I’ll think that over, okay? Come to dinner.”

  By the end of their conversation, Austin could breathe deeply again, but he still reached for his guitar. His fingers picked a Fleetwood Mac melody while he replayed his sisters’ voices and envisioned the house he grew up in, ten miles south, white and black with green shutters, a glow through the kitchen window and figures passing in front of it, Esther with that purple streak in her blonde hair and Olivia with her nearly black ponytail, both
of them wiping hands on their aprons and eating as much dough as cookies. Around the scene, Austin imagined an invisible cloak of safety.

  Maybe Dad would never hit another one of his kids. After all, he didn’t have to make a man out of Esther or Livvy. Or maybe gender had nothing to do with it, and the snake inside Dad reared up and struck only in Austin’s presence because of Austin.

  His fingers blended “Never Going Back Again” into “Landslide” into “The Chain,” and his mind blended Dad into Jason and what might happen tomorrow at work.

  It proved to be an odd day, except not really, when he thought about it. Putting him on paperwork duty was no doubt Jason’s subtle reminder that Austin didn’t control his own career or anything else. He set his jaw and got to work, exchanging grins and jokes with the data entry team and concealing the fact that he didn’t consider these “agents” really worthy of the title. Look at Agent Stiles, the guy working across the partition. Fifty-something, and before lunch, he’d told Austin about his job as a financial advisor before applying to the Constabulary.

  “I didn’t want a field post,” he said. “Even if I had, I’m too old to start work like that. But I wanted to join this cause, in whatever capacity I’d be useful.”

  And, okay, the guy was useful. Or at least, his photographic memory was.

  “What’re you doing over here, by the way?”

  Austin’s face heated. Nothing he came up with sounded true, including the truth. He’d have to paint himself as insubordinate or something. Probably Jason’s plan all along, to humiliate him. Jason’s not like that. Why was his brain still defending the man?

  “You’re Agent Mayweather’s new pet, right?” Agent Fitch tossed over the partition.

  Austin gritted his teeth. “No. I am a colleague, though.”

  Stiles’s gaze snapped up to his, as if seeing him for the first time. “Not his partner?”

  “Mayweather doesn’t do partners.”

  Stiles nodded. “You do learn fast. Jason put you down here? What’d you do?”

  “Nothing.” He knew better than to snap. That would only sharpen their curiosity. “And Mayweather had nothing to do with this.”