by Rachel Caine
People can be really shitty.
I can't help but imagine what our house by Stillhouse Lake might look like now, if people took out their anger on it instead of us. It makes my chest get tight and my stomach boil. I roll over on my side and angrily punch the cheap pillow into better shape. "Who do you think that text was from?"
"Dad," he says. I don't miss the slight inflection, the tiny hitch, but I don't know what it means. Anger? Fear? Longing? Probably all those things. I know something my mom probably doesn't: that Connor doesn't really, really get why Dad is a monster. I mean, he does, but he was seven when our lives spun out; he remembers a father who was sometimes awesome to him, and he misses that. I was older. And I'm a girl. I see things differently. "Guess now she's going to go after him." Now I hear a different intonation. One that I recognize.
So I dig. "Makes you mad, doesn't it?"
"Like it doesn't you? She's going to dump us like strays," he says. This time, the cold, flat tone isn't subtle at all. "Probably with Grandma."
"You like staying with Grandma," I say. I'm trying to be upbeat about it. "She makes us cookies and those popcorn balls you like. It's not exactly torture." I'm horrified the second the word drops off my lips, but it's too late. I'm angry with myself, a searing red flash that sizzles in my nerves like they've turned into firecracker fuses. In the next second I'm back in a cabin high up in the hills, being dragged down into a basement. Locked in a tiny little cell not much bigger than a coffin, along with my brother.
I know my mom wonders what happened to us in that basement. Connor and I haven't talked about it, and I don't know when, or if, we will. She'll try to make us, sooner or later.
I just want to be able to close my eyes and not see that winch and the wire noose that dangled from it, and those knives and hammers and saws glinting on the pegboard mounted on the walls. That room outside the cell looked just like my dad's garage workshop--the pictures I've seen of it, anyway. I know what happened there. I know what could have happened to us, in Lancel Graham's replica dungeon.
Most of all, I wish I could forget the stupid rug. Somehow, Graham found an exact replica of my dad's rug. Well, it was really my rug, because it was one of my first memories: a soft spiral-braided rug in pastel greens and blues. I loved that rug. I would lie facedown on it and scoot around on the floor, and Mom and Dad would laugh, and Mom would pick me up and slide the rug back in place by the door, and it was love, that stupid rug.
One day when I was about five, the rug disappeared from the spot in the hall, and Dad put a new one there. It was fine, I guess. It had a nonskid back, so nobody would go sliding around on it. He told us he'd thrown the other one away.
But on the day that our lives ended, the day Dad became a monster, that rug, my rug, was on the garage floor, right under the winch and the noose and the swinging body of a dead woman. He'd taken a piece of my life and made it part of something awful.
Seeing one just like it in Lancel Graham's horror basement broke something in me. When I close my eyes at night, that's what I see. My rug, made into a nightmare.
I wonder what Connor sees. Maybe that's why he doesn't sleep. When you sleep, you give up the choice to control memory.
Connor hasn't responded to my torture gaffe, so I stumble on. "You seriously want to go with Mom if she's hunting Dad?"
"She acts like we can't take care of ourselves," he says. "We can."
I agree that I can, but I'm also old enough to face the ugly truth about our dad and what he can do. I don't want to have to fight him. The whole idea hurts, and it terrifies me. But I also don't want to be left on my own with Connor, responsible for keeping both of us safe. I almost want Grandma, even if her cookies are kind of terrible and her popcorn balls too sticky. Even if she treats us like we're toddlers.
I shift the blame. "Mom's never going to let us fight him. You know that."
"So off to Grandma's house we go. Like Dad can't guess that."
I shrug, but in the dark I know he can't see me. "Grandma's moved and changed her name, too. It'll be just for a while, anyway. Like a vacation."
It's eerie how Connor doesn't move, doesn't shift. I never hear so much as a rustle of those stiff motel sheets from him. Just a voice in the dark. "Yeah," he says. "Like a vacation. And what if Mom never comes back for us? What if he comes back for us? Do you think about that?"
I open my mouth to confidently tell him that's never going to happen, but I can't. I can't get it out of my mouth, because I'm old enough to know that Mom isn't immortal, or all-powerful, and that good doesn't always win. And I know--Connor knows--that our dad is incredibly dangerous.
So I finally say, "If he does find us, we get away from him. Or we stop him, any way we can."
"Promise?" His voice suddenly sounds his age. Only eleven. Too young to deal with this. I forget how young he is, sometimes. I'm nearly fifteen. It's a big gap, and we've always babied my little brother.
"Yeah, doofus, I promise. We're going to be okay."
He lets out a long, slow breath that's almost a sigh. "All right," he says. "You and me, then. Together."
"Always," I tell him.
He doesn't say anything else. I can hear Mom talking in a low voice to someone outside; I think it's Sam Cade. I listen to the soft blur of their voices, and after a while I hear that Connor's breathing has deepened and slowed, and I think he's finally, really asleep.
That means I can sleep, too.
Mom surprises us at oh-my-God in the morning with doughnuts and cartons of milk; she and Sam are already up and dressed, and they have coffee. I ask for some. I get shut down. Connor doesn't bother. He drinks his milk and mine, when I pass it to him while Mom isn't looking.
She surprises us when she tells us she's not sending us off to Grandma, all the way up the coast. Instead, she's sending us back to Norton. Not home, but close. And I can't help but feel a little relieved, and at the same time a little anxious, too. Being almost home seems dangerous in a whole lot of ways . . . not so much because Dad would find us, but because I immediately realize it means I can't really go home, to our old house. To my room. Being so close and not home? That's kind of worse. Worse still: Dahlia. I can't talk to her. Can't text her. Can't even let her know I'm there. That's the definition of suck.
But I don't tell Mom that.
Connor perks up a little when he realizes that instead of weeks with Grandma, he gets to hang out with Javier Esparza, who is a quietly awesome badass. His presence always feels strong and reassuring, and I don't doubt he can defend us. Connor needs a guy to bond with. He and Sam Cade got close, but I know Sam's got his own battles. He's going with my mom, no question about that.
So we'll be staying at Mr. Esparza's cabin, which he sometimes shares with Norton police officer Kezia Claremont. Also a quiet badass. They're totally sleeping together, which I guess we're not supposed to know. I approve of Kezia, though. It also means we have twice the firepower protecting us. I know Mom's doing it for that reason, but I'm still glad, for Connor's sake. I hope having Mr. Esparza around might break him out of his rigid silence.
Packing isn't much of a problem. We've been running for so long, Connor and I are both pros at throwing our stuff in bags and being ready to go in moments. Actually, Connor doesn't even have to do that. He packed early, while I was still asleep. We keep score on things like that, and he silently points to his bag to let me know he wins. Again. He's got his nose in a book already, which is his way of blocking out any attempts to converse. Plus, he loves books.
I wish we had that in common. I make the promise to myself, again, to borrow some from him.
We're in the car and navigating traffic on a foggy highway half an hour from the moment Mom sets the doughnuts down.
I doze, mostly, with my headphones blocking out the nonconversation. Mom and Sam are being very quiet. Connor's turning pages. I amuse myself by making a new playlist: SONGS TO KICK ASS AND TAKE NAMES. It's a boring drive, and the pounding rhythm of the music makes me want to
go for a run. Maybe Mr. Esparza will let me do that when we get to his cabin, though I kind of doubt it; we're under house arrest, again, hiding from all the boogeymen in the shadows--not just of the real world of Dad and his friends, but all the amped-up Internet trolls. One pic, and somebody will paste me all over Reddit and 4chan again, and things will get very, very bad, very fast.
So probably no run.
We drive for a couple of hours, then stop at a big-box store, where Sam buys four new disposable phones; I'm temporarily thrilled to discover he had to buy real smartphones, even though they're still kind of clunky. No flip phones available. These are plain black, nothing special. We unshell them in the car and trade numbers. We're all used to this by now. Mom liked to buy me and Connor different colors of phones, just so we wouldn't get them mixed up, but Sam didn't think of that; all four phones are the same. Mom confiscates mine and Connor's and does her Mom thing, which locks off all the Internet functions before she gives them back and disables as much as she can. Normal course of business. She's never wanted us to see the flood of ugliness out there about Dad, and about us.
I slide the phone into my pocket, plug my headphones into my iPod, and crank up the music. I am jamming to Florence + The Machine when I realize that Sam hasn't started the car. He's got a slip of paper out, and he's entering a phone number into his own device, then making a call.
I move my headphones out of my ear and pause the music in midwail to listen.
"Yes, hi, is Agent Lustig available?" Sam listens for a few seconds. "Okay. Can I leave a message for him? Ask him to call Sam Cade. He'll know the name. Here's my number . . ." He reads it off to her from the package. "Ask him to call me soon as he's able. He'll know what it's regarding. Thanks."
He hangs up and starts the car, and as we pull out onto the road and drive on, I realize he's not planning to share with the class. So I take one for the team. "Who's Agent Lustig?"
"Friend of mine," Sam tells me. He's honest with us, or at least, as honest as he thinks he can be. That's something I really like about him.
"Why are you talking to the FBI? He is FBI, right?"
"Because they're tracking your dad," he says. "And also, we need to understand something about Absalom. I'm hoping that the FBI might have more information."
I know about Absalom, and I frown. "Why?"
"Because Absalom might have someone else besides Graham to send after us," he says, after a glance at Mom to confirm it's okay to tell me about that. "And they might have traced us this far. Which is why we're using new phones now."
Mom finally chimes in. "Absalom could be a group, not just a person. If so, they could be helping your dad stay hidden, while also working to find us for him."
"If there's danger, why are you taking us back to Norton? Why can't we just stay with you?" Connor asks. He lowers his book but keeps the place with a finger between the pages.
"Seriously?" Mom is trying to sound amused, but she just sounds grim. "You know the last thing I'm going to do is take you anywhere near trouble. My job is to keep you away from it. Besides, this has been hard enough on you already. You both need to be somewhere safe, and you need rest."
And you don't? I think it, but I don't say it, which is weird for me. Instead, I say, "You don't have to go, you know. The cops are chasing him. So is the FBI. Why can't you just stay with us?"
Mom takes her time with the answer. I wonder if she even understands it herself.
"Sweetheart, I know your father," Mom says. "If I'm out in the open, it means he might do something stupid and expose himself to come after me. And that means he gets caught faster, and fewer people get hurt. But I can't take that risk if you're with me. Understand?"
Sam again says nothing. I'm watching his hands on the steering wheel. He's pretty good at covering up what he thinks and feels, but not that good, because I see the slight whitening of his knuckles.
"Yeah," I say softly. "I get it. You're bait." I fiddle with my iPod but don't put the headphones back in. "Are you going to kill him?" I don't know what I want to hear.
"No, sweetie," Mom says. But I don't hear any conviction behind it. I know that Sam wants to put a bullet in Dad's head. Maybe more than one. And I get it. I get that Dad is a monster who needs to be slayed.
But Dad is also a memory to me. A strong, warm figure tucking me into bed and placing a kiss on my forehead. A laughing man whirling me around in the sun. A father kissing my boo-boo finger and making it better. A giant shadow scooping me up off that soft braided rug and folding me in warm, protective arms.
I look away, out the window, and I don't argue with any of it. Thinking about my father, both as the monster and the man, makes me feel short of breath and sick, and I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. No, that's a lie: I know I'm supposed to hate him. Mom does. Sam does. Everybody does, and they're right.
But he's my dad.
Connor and I don't talk about this--not ever--but I know he feels this, too . . . the way it pulls and rips inside to try to match up these two very different things. I think about that colorful old rug again, a piece of home inside a monster's den. I can't decide if that was him trying to still be Dad, or if the monster was all there ever was, and Dad was a mask he wore to mock us.
Maybe it's both. Or neither. It's exhausting, and I put the music back on and try to drown it all out.
I sleep for a while. When I wake up, we're close. Sam turns the car off the main freeway and onto smaller state highways, and we glide through a dozen small towns before the turnoff comes for Norton, and Stillhouse Lake. I watch that buckshot-riddled old sign glide by with a pain deep in my stomach. I want to jump out of the car and run down that road, run straight for home and throw myself into my bed and pull the covers over my head.
We avoid heading into Norton proper and instead take a side road off into the deeper woods. It's mostly mud and ruts, and bumpy; even Connor finds it too hard to read with all the jolts, and he slides a bookmark in place with a stubborn sigh of frustration. We go maybe half a mile and then loop around a broad turn to come up to a small, old, neatly maintained cabin surrounded by high iron fencing.
Javier Esparza is sitting on the porch. He's at least a dozen years older than I am, if not more; he's dressed in a khaki-green T-shirt and dark jeans, and he looks more like a soldier than people in uniform. As he stands up, I see that he's got a shotgun in easy reach. He's also wearing a semiautomatic handgun in a holster on his belt--more obvious than the way my mom wears hers, in a shoulder rig currently concealed under her leather jacket. He's also got a big killer of a dog--a rottweiler--lying panting at his feet.
As Mr. Esparza stands up, so does the dog, all muscle and attention focused right on us.
Mom gets out of the car first, and I see Mr. Esparza relax slightly. He looks down at the dog and says something in Spanish, and the dog sinks back down. Peaceful, but still watching. "Hey, Gwen," he says to my mother, coming forward to open the gate. "Any trouble?"
"Nothing," she says.
"Nobody following?"
"Nope," says Sam as he exits the driver's side of the car. "Not behind or ahead. And no drones."
I shoot a raised-eyebrow look at my brother across the trunk of the car as we're getting out and mouth, Drones? I say, "Are we living in a stupid spy movie now?"
"Nope," Connor says without even a trace of a smile. "It's a horror movie."
I swallow my smart-ass comeback and go to the trunk to grab my bag. Connor takes his. The open trunk lid is momentarily hiding us from the adults, so I say quickly, "Are you okay? For real?"
My brother freezes for a second, like a visual stutter, then looks over at me. His eyes are clear. He doesn't look upset. He doesn't look anything, really. "No," he says. "And you're not, either, so stop trying to be in charge."
"I am in charge," I tell him loftily, but he's hit me for sure with that one. I ignore him, because that's the best thing I can do right now, and walk over to stand next to Mom. I'm watching the dog, who's watching me.
They can smell fear. I've had a bone-hurting dread of big, loud, angry dogs since one lunged at me when I was four.
I decide to stare him down.
Connor, stepping up, pokes me in the back. Hard. I wince and glare over my shoulder, and he says, "Dogs don't like that. Stop glaring at him."
"What are you now, the Dog Whisperer?"
"Settle, you two," our mom says, and I throw an elbow back--silently--to make sure Connor knows to leave me alone. He dodges with the born ease of an annoying little brother. "Javier, thanks for doing this. I can't begin to tell you what it means to me. I only have three people in the world I'd trust with my kids right now, and you and Kez are on that list."
I still can't get over that she calls him Javier, just like that. Standing this close to him (even though that isn't particularly close), I can't imagine that. But I silently say it to myself to try it out. Javier. Sam's old enough to be my dad, and he's, well, Sam. Mr. Esparza is . . . different. He's cool. He's the kind of guy I know I ought to have a crush on, and maybe I did for half a second early on . . . but I don't anymore. That's easier since we're going to be living with him.
I don't like being off balance, so I do what comes naturally to me. I glower at Javier Esparza, as if I can't believe I'm being afflicted with him, let my hair hide half my face, and groan like my bag carries a million pounds of bricks. "Do we get bedrooms? Or do we have to sleep in the barn with the chickens or whatever?" When I'm feeling uncomfortable, I attack. It makes people step off and gives me time to find my way. I don't wait this time. I just charge straight for the porch, and I'm two steps into that when I remember the dog.
The dog who comes up from the wood floor like he's spring-loaded and fixes those big, scary eyes on me. I feel rather than hear his very low growl. I stop myself, suddenly very aware that I'm exposed. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Mr. Esparza hasn't moved, but now he slowly extends a hand to the dog, and the rumbling stops. The rottweiler licks his chops and sits, polite and panting again. I don't buy it, not for a second. "Maybe let me introduce you to Boot. Hey, Boot. Play nice."