He met her eyes, earnest. “Then Austin and Violet would be waiting instead. Without medicine for that woman.”
More convolutions. More circumstances for Marcus to credit to God. Lee crossed the carpet and picked up the bottle, and the pills rattled inside. Too few. Enough to keep Debra from developing a kidney infection? Probably. If she took them all.
“Lee,” Marcus said. “It’s the right thing.”
“There is no right thing.”
She strolled next door. Set the pills on Debra’s nightstand, endured the woman’s grateful tears, and promised to follow up tonight. Fled to the gym minutes later and worked until sweat poured down her back, until her lungs guzzled the air, until her muscles quivered. Until for one betraying second, she forgot everything but the power and proficiency of her own body. Then she left the machines behind and returned upstairs.
31
The driver of the truck was short, probably in his mid-forties, and called himself Graham, which might or might not have been his real name. Austin wouldn’t give his name in the guy’s position, but who knew. Graham wasn’t a talker and didn’t protest when Austin turned on the radio. In the middle seat, Violet sat like a fireplace poker, more rigid with every passing mile.
Austin tapped her arm. She gave him a questioning look.
No way to say this out of Graham’s hearing. “You okay?”
“Sure,” she said.
“I didn’t think about it before, but we can, um, switch places if that would be better.”
“Why would that … oh.” She shuddered. “That. No, I’m good. Thanks, though.”
Graham didn’t even glance in their direction.
If she rebuffed once more, Austin would let it go. “You’re tense, that’s all.”
“Well, yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “Either I’m going to be free today, or I’m going to be arrested today.”
Right, of course. He’d better guard his comments, or Graham might suspect something was off. Austin should feel tenser, anyway. Not as if he had nothing at stake here. But an odd serenity cloaked him, as if he’d gone back to second grade and put on the green Safe Coat.
The sun crept past noon and inched toward the west. Songs on the oldies station began and ended. Austin rotated his mostly healed ankle. Maybe he should try to start some small talk, but then Graham might ask about him, what he’d done before, and how could Austin lie with Violet sitting here, her eyes open windows that might stray to his bag? How would Graham react to his badge, his gun?
How would Texans react? The gun wouldn’t faze them, from what he knew. They were one of the only states that hadn’t established a federal program to recycle firearms. But the badge …
As the sun was dipping low enough to cause a glare on the car’s bumper ahead of them, a sign came into view. Texas Border 10 Miles.
Violet pulled her knees into her chest. “Almost there.”
“I never lost anyone at the border yet,” Graham said. “Danny knows his work. He’ll get us in and out.”
“I guess I shouldn’t sit like I’m watching a movie and the intense, awful part just started.” She lowered her feet to the floor and sighed.
The lanes to customs, or whatever they were calling it, were all at a dead stop. Austin shot a look at Graham, who shrugged.
“Pretty normal.”
“For this time of day?”
“For any time.”
When the row of booths appeared ahead, a mile and an hour later, Graham shut off the radio and peered forward. “Yup, that’s him, sixth line from the left, just like he said.”
The border guard checked out the entire truck, asking each of them several questions about their trip, work in their home state (Austin said he was a student), and their upcoming stay in Texas. Finally he snapped on a pair of latex gloves, stood between his booth and their bags (blocking them from a camera?), and asked them to show him the contents. Well, this was it. Austin unzipped his sports bag and let the guard tug the opening wider and sift through it. He didn’t lift any of the items out and didn’t blink at Austin’s sidearm. He didn’t open the wallet, and Austin sighed.
Violet’s hands trembled as she handed over her bag.
And no wonder.
The guard didn’t react to the leather book buried under her clothes. Austin tried not to, either. But really, Violet? Really?
No one spoke until the guard handed Violet’s bag back and waved them through. The lanes funneled and merged back onto the interstate, and in a mile, green signs welcomed them to Texas.
“Did we make it?” Violet whispered.
“Sure thing.” Graham sighed, then grinned. “Welcome to Texas, folks.”
“Omigosh.” She rubbed her thumb over her wrist and stared out the windshield as another sign passed: Drive Friendly, the Texas Way. “Oh. My gosh.”
“I’ll take you into Burkburnett. It’s a few minutes off the expressway.”
“That’s fine,” Austin said.
He let out a sigh. Texas. Here he was. Jason couldn’t touch him. He reached into his sports bag and pulled out the Ziploc holding his phone and a screwdriver to reassemble it.
“Oh!” Violet fished out her phone. “Here, after yours is back together.”
“This should only take a minute.” But each bump in the road jarred the tiny pieces until Austin sighed and set the screwdriver on his thigh. “Okay, maybe this should wait.”
“We’re almost there,” Graham said. “That’s our exit up ahead.”
“Do you bring everyone to Burkburnett?” Violet shoved her phone back into her bag.
“We have a few towns in rotation.”
Alarm widened Violet’s eyes. “You can’t rotate us, or we won’t be with Lee and Marcus.”
“I know, Tatum told me. I’ll bring them here, too.” Graham took the exit.
They’d passed the welcome signs less than ten minutes ago. Austin rolled the screwdriver under his finger. “What’s the next closest destination?”
“Kearby, about a hundred miles south.”
“Would you be willing to take us all there?”
Graham thought about it a moment, then shrugged. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Thanks.”
Violet crinkled her face at him, but he shouldn’t explain in front of Graham, even if the man did seem to be safe and helpful. Instinct was loud, though—settling five minutes from the border wasn’t the safest option for a resistance leader.
Violet dug into her bag and withdrew the Bible. She held it on her knees and laid her hands side by side on the cover.
A sour taste filled Austin’s mouth. Why did her having a Bible make him so …? Upset wasn’t the word for it. He wanted to throw the thing out the window. When Violet set it in the center of the dashboard, he grabbed it and put it back on her lap.
“Don’t, Austin.”
“Why do you want it up there?” His voice was more a growl. Graham shot him a brow-furrowed look.
“B-because. Anybody can drive by and see it and not arrest me or take it away from me.”
“It don’t bother me.” Graham shrugged and took the entrance ramp back to the interstate.
“Never mind,” she said quietly. “It’s okay.”
They drove drenched in a silence like kerosene. Violet kept the Bible on her lap. Austin stared out the passenger window. He needed to calm down. She hadn’t done anything. She was a free Christian, of course she wanted to express that, and she was Violet, not some violent head case. Why was his chest so tight?
He waited for his body to get over it, ease up. He waited over an hour. Maybe he was reacting to more stressors than that stupid book. Graham took the exit to Kearby and turned onto East Third Street, and still, Austin couldn’t relax.
“I usually drop folks at Grace Bible Church,” Graham said. “They’re runni
ng a shelter, and I know you’ve had some losses along your way. They’ll be able to help you.”
“That would be awesome,” Violet said.
“No.”
Both she and Graham looked at him, Graham with half-raised eyebrows.
Violet folded her arms. “You know we can’t afford a hotel.”
Austin ground his teeth against the tingling heat in his hands, the only warning his body ever gave him before—no, he had to get control, now. “Violet, I’d like to get out here. Walk around town. Okay?”
Her arms dropped to her sides. Her eyes widened, and he concentrated on them, green and guiltless, but the lava still pulsed in his veins. Did she see?
She turned to Graham, and the smile lifted her voice. “Could you tell us where the church is, so we can head there later?”
“Well, sure, if you want.” Graham turned down a residential street and stopped in the middle of it. “If you walk about three miles south, you’ll hit Hayes. Make a right, you can’t miss it. Tan-colored brick building, big sign out front, on the corner of Hayes and Third.”
“Thank you so much.”
Austin threw the truck door open and pulled back before it bounced on its hinges. He hopped down and stood in the street. Run. No, he had to wait for Violet. She shouldn’t be around you right now. She would be alone without him, in a strange … well, country. All these thoughts could form in his mind, cogent and reasonable, but none of them cooled the need to throw something breakable.
Violet’s voice filtered to him as she climbed down from the truck with both their bags in her hands. “We’ll be totally fine. I’d like to walk around too. Thanks, Graham, you’re amazing.”
Graham said something. The sound of tires on blacktop faded. Austin clenched and unclenched his fists.
“What’s wrong with you?” Violet said quietly.
I wish I knew. He huffed. “I’m going to jog for a minute. Stay here.”
“Seriously? You’re going to leave me standing in the middle of the street? I can jog too, you know.”
“No, I—” Red blinded him. He stalked down the street. Have to move.
“Oh,” she said behind him, and then her tennis shoes slapped the pavement, one pace behind him.
A vacant storefront sprawled half a mile down, backed by a parking lot. He jogged across it, not intending to stop, but … there. A whole pile of broken concrete, some slabs, some fist-sized chunks or smaller. He stooped down and picked up a piece and hurled it back at the pile. It broke in half. Take that. He scooped up one half and hurled it again. And that. Again. Again. Again. Until the remainders were pebbles too small to shatter. He found another chunk and threw it, too, counting this time to slow his heartbeat and flush the heat from his body. One, two, three … five, six, seven … twelve, thirteen fourteen … This piece didn’t break like the other one. Stop now. You need to stop. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, one for every year he’d lived. He dropped to his knees in front of the cement mound, able to think again, able to act on thoughts instead of … What’s wrong with me? Why do I get like this?
Violet knelt beside him. “Can I … help?”
He scrubbed at his face. Ow. Crumbs of cement stuck to his hands.
“You don’t want to be here, do you? You hate this. I mean, of course you would. You’re a con-cop.”
“Not anymore, clearly.” Shoot, he hadn’t meant to bite her head off.
She stretched her legs to the front and sat on her bag. Oh … she’d carried his, too. Nice going, loser. Had he really been that out of it?
Her right foot nudged the rock heap. “You’d be in Michigan still, with your job and your family and everything. If you hadn’t rescued him.”
“I’d also be working for a psychopath, and Brenner would be dead by now.”
Violet wrapped her arms around herself. “I wish you’d stop that.”
“What?”
“You never call him Marcus. He’s always Brenner, like he’s some case to you. Instead of a person. It’s like … I don’t know, like you think all of this is his fault.”
Whoa. Okay. He had to process this before he responded.
The overcast day had given no heat to the blacktop. Austin shivered as the chill sank into his knees and up his legs. He pushed to his feet, picked up his bag, and held out his hand. Violet took it but didn’t smile. They headed back to Third Street. South, Graham had said, about three miles.
“Austin?”
He waited for the anger to hit over her ridiculous conclusion, but he’d spent it all on some other stupid trigger he couldn’t even name. “I don’t consider any of this his fault.”
“Okay. Um, good.” Her voice fell, and she quickened her step to walk beside him as they reached the cement shoulder of Third. “I guess it’s stupid for me to think you guys could become …”
Friends? Yeah, that was stupid. He couldn’t answer it, so he reached for something he could answer. “He’s been Brenner to me for months. I wasn’t attaching any significance to it.”
“He was Brenner because he was a case. So in your head, he’s still a case.”
“I—okay, maybe so, but it isn’t because I hold him responsible for this whole …” He couldn’t think of a non-vulgar way to finish that sentence. “If I were going to blame someone besides Jason, it’d be Hansen, not Bre—not Marcus.”
Violet froze.
Austin kept walking a few strides, then turned back. “Violet?”
“H-Hansen?”
Crap. She was never supposed to know this. Clay Hansen had been like a father to her, and Austin had just blasted a shotgun-sized hole in her perception of the man.
“Austin, tell me. What about Clay, what did he do?”
He stepped closer as if he could absorb the tremors in her frame, in her voice. “The Constabulary told Clay that we had Khloe in custody. We thought we could get him to panic, betray himself somehow so we could make the arrest. He’d been one-hundred-percent reactionary thus far, so it seemed like a decent play. We didn’t have any idea where Khloe was. Where you were.”
“Of course not, because Marcus hid us. We were totally safe from you.”
Right. And with every we and every you, a canyon opened between him and Violet while they stood there, feet apart. A canyon that began to crack inside him, too, but Violet didn’t feel it. Not yet.
“So,” she whispered. “What did he do?”
“Clay shocked everybody, Violet. Jason Mayweather included. He came forward with a bargain.”
The blood drained from her face. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“He did, babe.”
“Don’t.”
He gritted his teeth. The old endearment had slipped out, but she might think he’d done it to manipulate. “Violet—”
“He gave you Marcus? Uncle Clay gave you Marcus?”
“He wanted his daughter back.”
She swayed. Her bag dropped to the pavement. Austin reached for her, but she stepped back and bent over, head in her arms. “Oh, God.”
Two words he hadn’t heard her use in the last week. She held that name as sacred now. But this wasn’t casual use. Violet was crying out to Someone she thought could hear her.
“Oh, dear God. Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Sorry?
Oh no.
“Violet, you had nothing to do with—”
“Shut up, I had everything to do with it. It was me, all of it was me. Marcus—oh, God, I am so sorry.”
Austin put his arms around her. For a long moment, she melted against him, clinging to the back of his shirt, her tears dampening his chest, and then she pushed him back.
“No. You—you’re still a con-cop.”
There it was, the crack inside her. The title he’d worn with pride, the slang his sisters had bestowed on
him with awe, skewered him. He didn’t breathe.
“I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. But I have to be by myself. I have to talk to Jesus about this.” She pushed past him and grabbed her bag.
“Violet. Wait.”
“Don’t follow me. I mean it. I’ll go to the church later, I promise, but I have to …” She sprinted away, and her golden hair streamed out behind her.
32
One dose of antibiotics wasn’t enough to fend off a kidney infection, but the lack of fever ten hours later remained an encouraging sign. Lee latched the leather medical bag and stood up.
“Thanks for coming by again.” Debra stood to see her out, though the door was only five paces away.
“I’ll check your temperature again in the morning.”
“Has Tatum given you a departure date yet?”
Lee stilled with her hand half-outstretched for the door handle. “I don’t believe we should discuss that.”
“I know someone left this morning, and someone else is leaving in a few days. I have to wait until Monday, she said. I was just wondering if you’d be the one leaving before me.”
“As I said—”
“It’s not idle curiosity, ma’am. What you’re doing for me—I know I could wind up in a hospital without your help, and from there … Anyway, I’d be willing to trade dates with you, if it’ll get you out sooner. You know, before the Stab search the place. I owe you.”
“You don’t.”
Debra looked down at her feet, then back at Lee. “If you change your mind, let me know.”
Lee gripped her bag and stepped into the hallway. “I’ll talk to you later.”
She let herself back into her own room and dropped the bag at the door. “Marcus, we …”
He wasn’t in bed.
He stood on the other side of the room, one hand curled around the old wooden molding halfway up the wall. He took a step forward, then another. Sweat dampened his hair into curling at his neck and temples. The corners of his mouth pinched downward.
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