They're Gone

by E. A. Barres

  “You really think that’ll work?”

  “It’s the only option we have. I can’t think of anything else that truly guarantees our safety.”

  “Can I talk to Rebecca? Can I visit her?”

  “After I talk to Levi. I want to make sure we’re safe before we step too far out into the world. Does that make sense?”

  Kim looked down at her hands, her empty palms, as if she was wishing something could fill them. “Yeah, I just miss her, is all.”

  Deb felt a stab of empathy at that, a reminder of what it was like to be desperately in love. “I promise you’ll be able to talk to her soon.”

  “She probably thinks I’m crazy.”

  “Just tell her I’m crazy. Blame it on me.”

  “Good idea.”

  Kim smiled. Deb smiled back. The sensation felt foreign to her, but nice.

  “We’re going to be okay,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  43

  WHAT I SHOULD do, Price thought, as he paid for a 7-11 hot dog wrapped in tin foil, is keep driving. Just head west until they can’t find me anymore. Or north or south or east.

  Anywhere but here.

  But he walked back to his car, sat inside, opened his hot dog. And knew he wasn’t going to drive away.

  For one thing, and Price knew how stupid this was, how irresponsibly, hopelessly dumb … he didn’t want to leave Deb.

  There was no chance she’d ever trust him again, and he understood that. But what he couldn’t believe, as he bit into his hot dog and tasted the swirl of packed meat and coarse bread and ketchup and mustard, was that her feelings for him were gone.

  It didn’t seem possible, given how deeply he’d cared about Deb, how much of a figure she’d been in his mind. He thought about her so often that he imagined she could actually feel his thoughts, his feelings like echoes pushing toward her.

  He remembered their hands touching.

  He should have wrapped his fingers around hers, leaned over and held her, told her how deeply his feelings really ran. A kiss would have explained everything, shown his intensity. Deb likely wouldn’t have pulled away, not until a few moments had passed. And that was all he needed. Just a few moments.

  He wanted to talk to Deb again; he needed to. Before the burned man and Temple got their hands on her. He needed to tell her to run, and to run with him. He could keep her safe, but she’d have to trust him. Price imagined the scene in his head, him pacing in front of Deb as she looked up at him. Taking out his gun and saying something like, “If anyone comes after you, they have to get through me.” He liked that image, kept it in his mind until he realized he was smiling blankly out the windshield and people were watching.

  He took another bite out of the hot dog.

  Would Deb trust him again? Probably not. Especially if he had Seth with him, all quiet and disfigured and murderous. The burned man wasn’t exactly the type to put someone at ease. Levi certainly didn’t feel relaxed when he was with Seth, especially now that Seth had the green light to kill him whenever he wanted.

  That definitely didn’t put him at ease.

  He was just happy that the burned man wasn’t with him now, that Seth had agreed to let him hunt on his own. That surprised Price, given the potential that he’d run. But he also realized the reasoning behind Seth’s decision. Seth figured he could track him down easily enough.

  Price finished off the rest of the hot dog and threw the wrapper onto the passenger seat.

  Started the car, pulled out of the parking lot, headed down the dark highway.

  He was going to have to kill Deb.

  In some ways, this was better. Better that he do it than Seth, that Deb’s last look be at him rather than into Seth’s cold eyes and scarred face. If Price was the one to kill her, at least he could explain to her again how he felt before she died, tell her how much she meant to him, how he’d broken into her house and watched her while she slept. How he’d never taken advantage of her. How he’d risked his life just to tell her the truth about himself.

  And she’d tell him she’d loved him too. Just to get him to stop.

  It might not be the truth, but it’d be enough.

  Price was so lost in his thoughts that he barely realized he was driving. Driving was secondary to him, something his subconscious mind handled while he thought about Deb. Ever since he’d first spoken to her, his mind had functioned this way. As if the real world was shadowed, and the truth was in his thoughts.

  Two hours later Price parked in front of a large house just outside of Annapolis. The house was in a quiet neighborhood, spaced far from its neighbor. That was one way you could tell this was an expensive area. Seemed like the trend in the DC/MD/VA triangle was to jam houses and condos together as close as possible. Wealth was measured in distance.

  The only thing that would save him now would be to do what Temple wanted. It was inevitable, to be honest. Eventually Deb would have to die, and so would Kim. He’d known it the moment he’d shown Deb the videos of her house. Her reactions had never been close to his—Deb had been surprised, dismayed, even disappointed. Never felt what he’d felt.

  Price slid into the seat, glanced around the dark, quiet neighborhood, thought about Deb some more. Unzipped his pants.

  When he was done, he cleaned himself up with the hot dog wrapper and threw it out the window. And kept watching Rebecca Blake’s house.

  It was hard not to doze off for a few minutes, especially after he’d finished masturbating, so he opened the glove compartment and pulled out a warm energy drink. Opened it and drank deeply.

  And turned his attention back to Rebecca’s house.

  She was his only lead. Price had nowhere else to turn, no other ideas on who to follow. After she hadn’t shown up at the dorm, Seth had assumed following her was a waste of time, but Price thought she had potential.

  He’d have to kidnap her, force her to tell him what she knew, and kill her. Or have Seth kill her. Probably better to take her to Seth and Temple to prove to them that he was serious.

  And then Price saw her.

  Rebecca was walking out of her house. She closed and locked the front door behind her.

  She climbed into her car, a black BMW. The taillights reddened.

  She drove right by him.

  Fortunately, his seat was still down, and it was the middle of the night, so Rebecca didn’t see him. Price’s head felt like it was on fire. He had no idea where Rebecca was going, but she was making this easy for him. No matter where she went, chances were there wouldn’t be very many people around at this time of night.

  He followed her.

  CHAPTER

  44

  “HONESTLY,” CESSY ASKED Chris, “how long are they going to stay in that motel room?”

  Chris shrugged.

  She and Chris had been watching the motel for the past three days, waiting to see if Deb and Kim emerged, if someone suspicious came by. Quite a few suspicious people had shown up at the motel, but no one stopped by their room, aside from occasional deliveries of pizzas or sandwiches. Most of the rooms around them were occupied by men, checking in alone, and then a woman coming by and leaving within an hour.

  “I had no idea there was this many prostitutes in Northern Virginia,” Cessy observed.

  “Anywhere there’s men,” Chris replied, “there’s prostitutes.”

  Cessy considered that.

  “That’s pretty astute,” she told her brother.

  “I don’t even know what that means,” he replied cheerfully.

  “Astute?”

  “No clue!” Chris happily stared out the windshield.

  Cessy regarded him, realized she was smiling. Yes, Chris had his issues—which, Cessy knew, was the nicest possible way to term a psychopath—but there was something in him that she deeply, desperately loved. Something innocent to him, bright-eyed, wide-eyed.

  Something that could be saved.

  Cessy wondered if that was how their mother had felt toward
him, if that was why she’d always favored him. If their mother had seen that vulnerability in him, despite everything.

  Cessy had yet to want a child during her twenty-three years, but she’d always imagined herself a mother someday. She often remembered the way their own mother used to come home before prostitution drained her, her face softening as she walked inside, turning cute with her and Chris, cooking, flirtatiously talking on the phone, gossiping with girlfriends in an excited mix of Spanish and English. Cessy had loved that about her, loved how she was able to be two different people so easily: simultaneously young and old; mature, but only reluctantly. Cessy and Chris had been bodies she breathed life into.

  “You think mom favored you?” she asked Chris.

  “I always thought she favored you.”

  “You did?”

  “She let you do whatever you wanted. Treated you like a friend. She babied me. Made me feel like I had two moms, you and her.”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  Chris shrugged.

  “You really felt like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s so weird to me.”

  “We all see things differently. Even the same things.”

  Cessy stared at her brother.

  “I really need you to learn what astute means.”

  The door to Deb’s motel room swung open.

  Kim emerged.

  “Check that out.” Chris pointed at Deb’s daughter as she nervously glanced around, hurried away from the motel room.

  “I see her.”

  Kim walked down the street, turned at the corner.

  “Maybe she’s going to get something to eat?” Chris guessed.

  “At one in the morning?”

  “I mean, I’m hungry. I could eat. Do you want to eat?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to follow her?” Chris asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Cessy said. “Her mom’s who they want. We stay with her. Wait to see if she leaves, or if they show up.”

  They watched Kim walk away.

  CHAPTER

  45

  KIM OPENED THE motel door slowly, careful not to wake her mom. She stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

  It had taken three days for Rebecca to finally answer one of her texts, for the two of them to have anything close to a conversation. Three days where Kim’s heart felt like a thin branch on the verge of snapping. She walked through the night, arms crossed over herself in both cold and worry, and headed to the gas station down the street. Slipped in her earbuds and played music from her phone.

  One of her favorites, a song Rebecca had introduced her to, “Shoulda Known” by the rap group Atmosphere. A song about the dangerous drug-like intoxication of love, the senseless slip into someone else. Heavy, dangerous bass—a plea to action from the damned lost in the dark.

  “Lost in the rush don’t know what to do …”

  Even at one in the morning, cars sped down Route 1. The sides of the street were broken-down strip malls, old restaurants, and stores no one would ever enter—random electronics, mattresses, carpets. Kim headed down the road, ignored the beeps of a couple of cars as they passed, driven by men who slowed to gawk at her.

  She stepped into a gas station’s convenience mart.

  Her mom would kill her if she woke and found the note Kim had left, a note explaining that she’d gone to meet Rebecca somewhere nearby and would be right back. She’d never seen her mom like this, so broken and terrified, not even right after her dad died. There had been a sadness in her mom then, a sadness deep and life-changing, but not accompanied by fear.

  Now fear consumed her mom, so much so that Kim felt her own foundations were shaking.

  She really needed Rebecca.

  Kim turned off the music, pulled the earbuds out.

  She didn’t see anyone in the convenience mart except for the cashier, a tall, thin, dark-skinned man who looked up at her and smiled. She smiled back briefly, hopefully enough to be friendly, but not enough to encourage conversation.

  “Hello,” the man said in a thick accent Kim couldn’t place. “You good?”

  “I’m good.”

  The man didn’t reply, just smiled again and looked down at a magazine spread open over the counter. She heard another man talking to someone in a back storeroom. Tried not to let herself get distracted, and examined a spinning rack of sunglasses.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d say when Rebecca showed up. Their talk at the Silver Diner had been a disaster, mainly because her mom had been such a freak show.

  She’d texted Rebecca afterward, received no reply. Sent texts intermittently over a couple of days, staring at her phone for minutes afterward, waiting. Finally received a Hey.

  Things aren’t as bad as they sounded, Kim had texted, deciding to downplay the threat. My mom’s having a bad time.

  Rebecca’s reply:

  Ok

  Can I see you? Kim asked.

  Minutes passed.

  The wait was interminable to Kim.

  Yes

  Kim walked away from the sunglasses and headed to the back of the store, near the frozen food. Pulled out her phone and glanced at it, read through Rebecca’s texts again. It surprised Kim to see that she was the pursuer, and Rebecca, often reluctant. Kim had never been the aggressive one in a relationship. But Rebecca, despite her intelligence and confidence, had a shyness to her, a shyness Kim found alternately lovely and tiring.

  “Hey.”

  Rebecca’s voice came from behind her.

  Kim turned and saw her.

  Her heart turned to water.

  Rebecca wore jeans and a gray hoodie, and her hands were shoved in the hoodie’s front pocket. Her face bore a worried, hopeful expression. Kim knew her expression was the same.

  “Hey, you,” Kim said, and she embraced her girlfriend. There was a moment when the hug lasted, tightened in intimacy, and then Rebecca pulled back.

  They stood apart.

  Kim glanced to the front of the store. The cashier was still staring down at some magazine.

  “How’s your mom?” Rebecca asked.

  “She’s definitely doing better. It took a couple of days, but she’s calmed down.”

  “Are you guys safe?”

  Kim nodded. “I think so. My mom’s … like I said, she’s having a bad time.”

  “So what are you going to do now? Are you going back home?”

  Rebecca’s voice was tense, her questions rapid. Her cool confidence gone.

  “I’m not sure. My mom thinks she can figure stuff out. So we’ll probably go back home. I just don’t know when. We’ve spent the past couple of days holed up in a motel, watching TV.”

  “Mother–daughter bonding time?”

  “Right.”

  The two women were quiet again.

  Kim glanced back toward the front of the store. The clerk was typing something onto his phone, squinting down at the screen.

  “Why do you keep looking over there?” Rebecca asked.

  “I do?”

  “Yes.”

  Kim thought it best not to admit to her worry about someone coming in. “I’m just nervous seeing you, I guess.”

  “Why?”

  Kim felt weight in her shoulders when she shrugged. “Something doesn’t feel right between us. Something’s changed.”

  Rebecca took a moment. “I know.”

  Kim was surprised at how small her voice sounded when she spoke. “Did you … did you meet someone else?”

  “No.”

  Relief rushed through her. Kim felt like she could deal with anything but that. “Then what is it?”

  “It’s the way you keep looking around.”

  “Why?”

  “I can tell you’re scared.”

  “That’s not true.” Kim caught herself. “Well, okay, a little. I mean, mainly because my mom was so worried.”

  “She’s not the only one.”

  Rebecc
a refused to meet her eyes, but Kim could see the sadness in her face.

  “You’re scared.”

  “Terrified.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to be involved in this,” Rebecca said, her voice small. “I don’t want anyone after me.”

  “No one’s going to come after you. Look, some guys were blackmailing my dad, and then they …” Kim paused. “Once they find out my mom and I aren’t a problem, they’ll let us go.”

  Kim’s words, even as she said them, sounded fake to her ears. Naïve. Something she wanted to believe more than she actually did.

  But she didn’t take the words back despite how they sounded.

  She needed Rebecca to believe her.

  “You’re not taking this the way your mom did,” Rebecca said.

  “Like a freak show?”

  “Like it’s real.”

  An edginess had pushed through both their voices.

  “I am.”

  “Your mom was so scared the other day at that restaurant. Like she could die. I don’t want to be part of that.”

  “So you’re too afraid to stay with me?”

  Kim knew how her words sounded, like a taunt, a childish dare for Rebecca to ignore her concerns and stay with her out of pressure, but she didn’t care.

  She hadn’t thought, until now, that she could lose her over this.

  “You don’t need to leave me,” Kim urged her. “Things are going to be fine, and then you and I can go back to what we had. Please. I lost my dad, my mom’s going insane—I don’t want to lose you too.”

  Kim knew that she was using her dad’s death and her mother’s fear as a cheap ploy to get Rebecca to stay with her.

  She didn’t care.

  At that moment, she’d use anything she could.

  “It’s just, I just have so much going on right now,” Rebecca said quietly. “I’m doing really good in school, and I’m thinking about going to law school.”

  “You are?”

  Rebecca nodded, and now she met Kim’s eyes.