They're Gone

by E. A. Barres

  “I want to be that person,” Rebecca said. “The person studying for law school and not worried about anything else. Definitely not in this situation. I know that might be selfish, and I’m sorry. I am.”

  There was something Kim wanted to say. There were a thousand things she wanted to say.

  “But I love you,” Kim said.

  “I love you too,” Rebecca told her. “But not enough.”

  CHAPTER

  46

  PRICE SAT UP straight in his seat as Kim pushed through the doors of the convenience mart.

  Kim.

  He hadn’t been able to see inside the store after Rebecca had gone inside, had no idea she’d even been meeting someone. Price had assumed she was making a stop on her trip somewhere else.

  But she’d gone to meet Kim.

  His hunch had paid off.

  Price started his car and followed Kim as she walked down Route 1. She was walking fast, distracted. He probably could have driven right beside her without her noticing.

  He felt the killer waking up. Whispering how easy it would be to pull her into his car. So dark, and traffic was sparse. He could pull over, hop out, grab Kim from behind, and throw her into the backseat like a bag of garbage. Punch her in the face until she was unconscious. Tie her wrists and ankles and gag her mouth. Take her wherever he wanted for whatever he needed. He’d done it before.

  He slowed, veered toward the curb.

  But this wasn’t the time.

  Price picked up his phone from the passenger seat, thought about calling Seth. Decided to wait until he had more information.

  Kim turned the corner and headed through a nearly empty parking lot to a dingy motel. She looked around again, walked to one of the doors, pulled out her key, and pushed it into the lock.

  The light inside the room flooded on, and the door swung open.

  He saw Deb.

  It was only for a moment. Deb’s hair was wild and her expression distraught. She grabbed her daughter by the arm, yanked her inside, slammed the door shut.

  Price felt like his guts were being tied into a knot.

  He realized his hands were gripping the wheel, and did his best to relax them.

  He had to run to the motel room, grab Deb, run off with her.

  Price was standing outside the car when he came to his senses.

  He thought about Temple.

  And he thought about Seth.

  Price reluctantly climbed back inside, pulled out his phone.

  * * *

  Across the street, sitting in Chris’s Civic, Cessy and Chris watched Kim walk back to her motel room. Saw Deb angrily usher her inside.

  And, to their surprise, saw a man step out of a sedan and stare at the motel room.

  “Well,” Cessy said. “Shit.”

  “I could go for a burger,” Chris put in.

  Cessy ignored him.

  Levi Price.

  Price chewed a knuckle and got back into his car. Cessy stared at the car intently, waiting to see if he got back out.

  But Price stayed in his car. After about ten minutes, the taillights glowed, and he drove off.

  Cessy and Chris followed him.

  CHAPTER

  47

  KIM HAD NEVER seen her mom so angry.

  “Of all the dumb things you could have done, you snuck out to see your girlfriend?”

  “No one saw us. No one even knows we’re here.”

  “You don’t know that!” Deb walked over to the curtains, peered outside through the slit between the curtain and the wall. “How’d you even get in touch with her?”

  “I texted her.”

  “You’ve been texting her? They can track your texts!”

  “Christ, Mom, this isn’t the movies. No one’s tracking my texts. They’d need … a warrant or something.”

  “Did you give Rebecca the motel name and room number? Does she know where you’re staying?”

  “I just told her to meet me at the little convenience store down the street.”

  Deb sat on the edge of the bed, rubbed her eyes. “Jesus.”

  “Mom, it was fine.”

  “It’s not fine, Kim. You need to be more careful than this.”

  “Well, I don’t think I’m going to see Rebecca again, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

  Deb caught the pain in her daughter’s voice, the tears behind her words. Despite her fear, empathy rustled inside her.

  Her daughter wouldn’t even be in this situation if it wasn’t for her.

  “We need to leave,” Deb said, her voice slow as she tried to steady it. “We need to leave, and then we can figure out everything else. We need to find somewhere else to stay.”

  “Back home?”

  “Another motel.”

  “I thought you said we could go back home.”

  “I know I did. I know.” Deb tightly held her hands together. “I just need to think. I’m not sure what to do right now.” She stood and paced back and forth, talking largely to herself. “I know that Levi is going to be looking for us. I know he’s going to have questions about who shot at him the other night. He needs to know he can trust me. They have to be looking for us everywhere, don’t they? If we go home right now, then they’ll find us, but maybe we can end this, maybe we can let them know that they can trust us, promise them whatever they want if they just let us be free …”

  “Mom?”

  Deb stopped and looked at her daughter.

  “I’m sorry,” Kim said brokenly. “I just really wanted to see her.”

  Part of Deb still wanted to yell at Kim, wanted to shake her, even strike her. But there was that other part, the complex parenting mired in love and anxiety, that led her to sit next to Kim, open her arms, and draw her daughter toward her.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll be okay.”

  Kim was crying.

  “Everything’s so fucked,” Kim said. “I know I shouldn’t have gone out, I know how scared you were, but I had to see her. And she told me she doesn’t want to be with me anymore. She’s too scared. She doesn’t care enough. She’s too scared.”

  Deb held her.

  Watched the door and let her daughter grieve.

  CHAPTER

  48

  DEB STARED OUT the window while Kim finished drying her hair in the bathroom. Near noon, the parking lot was half full. She recognized some of the cars, old paint-worn sedans and a dented tan pickup truck that hadn’t left its spot since they’d checked in three days ago. Deb didn’t see anything unusual. No one milling around. The lot, empty of people.

  “Got everything?” she called out to Kim.

  “I didn’t bring anything.”

  Deb checked under the bed to make sure they weren’t leaving something behind. Kim was right; they hadn’t brought much, aside from what they’d been carrying. And her clothes felt stale and gross. No matter how thoroughly she showered, Deb’s body still didn’t feel clean after three days of being cooped up in this room.

  And she wasn’t looking forward to moving to another motel. She’d hoped they could return home, return to their house and their lives and normalcy. Explain to Levi that there was no point in him pursuing her; no romance, no threat of exposure. Promise him that the reason for Grant’s death would never leave her lips.

  But Kim’s meeting with Rebecca had scared her, brought back that sense of panic. Deb wanted to hide for a few more days. Wanted to let her breathing slow.

  Deb had thought nothing could be worse than the grief she’d felt after Grant’s murder. And yet, now she wanted to return to that state, to the time when her life had been nothing but loss. Because at least there had been a path to recovery, something to follow, even if she couldn’t see it.

  But ever since Levi Price and the Castillos and the gun shots in that dark house, the path had been lost.

  Deb opened the motel room door, expecting bright winter sunlight.

  Shadows covered her.

  A hand clamped over
Deb’s mouth, pushed her back into the room. Two men stepped inside, left the door open behind them. A gun was pointed in her direction. Deb heard loud breathing from someone.

  Levi Price and another man.

  Levi looked different. Tired, even a bit sad.

  The other man’s face was hidden behind sunglasses and a baseball cap.

  “Levi?” Deb asked.

  She bumped into Kim’s body behind her.

  Deb hadn’t realized she was backing up.

  Something strange with Levi’s face. His mouth was tight, but his eyes were soft.

  “Deb, you’re going to need to come with us. You and your daughter.”

  “Why?” Her throat was so dry that the word came out rough.

  “We need to talk to you.”

  “No.”

  Levi’s voice, lower. Insistent. “Come on, Deb.”

  The man with Levi walked past Deb. Grabbed Kim by her hair. She cried out. Deb reached to him and Levi pulled her away.

  Kim struggled, hands flailing. She knocked the baseball cap off the other man’s head, knocked his sunglasses off. Looked at him and screamed, and his hand pressed down over her mouth, silenced her. The man turned and glared at Deb.

  Deb’s knees weakened as she looked at his burnt face, the discolored layers of skin.

  Fear inside her, churning like an engine on the verge of overheating. Worse than fear—panic. She hadn’t been able to protect Kim. Deb had failed despite everything she’d done, despite trying to go to the police and leaving the Castillos and hiding in this motel room.

  Nothing had worked.

  And all the hope that had built inside her, the whispers of safety that came from the peace of the motel room, from seclusion, were overwhelmed.

  “This is Seth,” Levi said, indicating the burned man.

  “Please don’t take us,” Deb said. “We don’t have anything for you.”

  “Not my choice,” Levi told her.

  “You have a choice.” Deb heard the fear in her voice, the wobbling lack of control. Fear devouring her, her hands and legs shaking.

  “You have a choice,” Deb said again, not sure what she was saying, only knowing that everyone in the room had stopped and seemed to be listening to her, and she needed that. To have everyone, everything stop. To wait, just wait, before life irrevocably changed again, and she and Kim were helplessly dragged along. To stop violence from engulfing them the same way it had ripped Grant away.

  To find a direction to go in because now her path had vanished, and the light was gone, and Deb couldn’t see in the dark.

  CHAPTER

  49

  KIM’S HEAD HURT from where that man named Seth had pulled her hair, but the pain was secondary, distant in her mind.

  None of this seemed real.

  Kim watched her mom struggle with Levi, his arms wrapped around her waist, his strangely content expression in sharp contrast to the fear consuming her mother. Kim watched Seth turn away from her and toward the door in one smooth motion, the gun back in his hand.

  She wanted to scream for help, but Kim worried anything she did would make these men angrier, worried about forcing them to do something they weren’t yet planning. After all, there was still a chance for safety, still hope that the worst wouldn’t happen. Maybe Levi just wanted to talk with her mother, make sure one last time that she didn’t love him. Maybe Levi and Seth just needed a guarantee that whatever they were involved with would stay secret.

  Maybe it was one of hundreds of things that wouldn’t hurt them.

  “What’s wrong with your face?”

  At first, Kim thought the question came from her mother, but it didn’t sound like her mother’s voice.

  The question came from the doorway.

  The man from the other night, Chris Castillo, was standing in the entrance to the room. Holding a gun pointed at the floor.

  A shout, or something like a shout.

  Kim jumped. Her mother screamed.

  Kim had never heard her mother scream. She’d heard her cry, shout, laugh, shriek in surprise, but never the type of lost scream that sounded like it had been torn out of her.

  Chris stepped back, looked down at his shoulder, at the suddenly ripped cloth. Another shout, and Chris took a second step. His face changed expression, turned pained. He tried to lift the gun, but it fell from his fingers.

  Chris stumbled into the room, roughly pushed past Kim, sat on one of the twin beds. He lay down, breathing hard.

  The white bedspread beneath him turned red.

  Kim wanted to scream, wanted to make some sound, but it was as if the air had been knocked out of her.

  She turned toward her mother helplessly. Saw Levi pulling her mother, the two of them tripping, Levi falling into Seth, and the three of them sprawling onto the concrete outside.

  Her mother rose and stumbled back into the room, slammed the front door, locked it.

  “What’s happening?” Kim asked. Her voice was strangled and small, still scared to speak. As if saying something would make all of this real.

  As if this was a nightmare and there was a chance that if Kim stayed quiet, she’d wake.

  Otherwise, the nightmare would be real. Her life replaced by dreams, a change she hadn’t asked for.

  Like her father’s death.

  “Go into the bathroom,” her mother was telling her. “Lock the door.”

  Chris Castillo gasped on the bed behind her.

  This was her fault.

  That thought was a whisper in Kim’s ear, but it had been there ever since she saw Seth and Levi at the door. This was her fault for texting Rebecca and meeting her at the store and somehow revealing where she and her mother were hidden. Her fault for falling in love and believing that anything done out of love couldn’t have these consequences. Her fault for loving someone who didn’t love her back.

  The doorknob rattled, the door shook as someone slammed against it.

  Her mother grabbed her shoulders and shook her.

  “Kim, now!”

  Kim hurried to the bathroom, not looking, not thinking. She closed the door behind her and locked it, and sank to her knees, forehead against the metal door handle, the handle cold against her skin. The chill rushed over her body.

  CHAPTER

  50

  WELL, CHRIS THOUGHT. Shit. This isn’t good.

  He could feel the bullet wounds torn into his stomach and shoulder, the bed beneath him; could vaguely feel wetness under him, but he didn’t seem able to move his arms or legs. It was hard; one of those things where, if he really wanted to, really wanted to give the effort, he could lift his arms and shake his feet. He just didn’t want to. Kind of like eating a bucket of fried chicken to the point where you were full, and then realizing there was one piece left. You could eat it, sure, but did you want to?

  A crashing sound from somewhere in front of him.

  “Get to the back!” a man shouted.

  If he really wanted to, Chris could raise his head and see the door. But he didn’t. He just wanted to lie in bed.

  He heard Deb screaming, and there was another smashing sound and the door must have flown open, because sunlight bathed the room. A shadow rushed past him, and Chris tried to reach out to grab it, but missed.

  And then he wasn’t sure if his hand had really reached out.

  Deb screamed, somewhere, and glass shattered. Strange that there were no sirens yet, but this probably wasn’t the kind of motel where people helped each other out.

  And this wasn’t the kind of thing people got involved in.

  “Can someone get me a doctor?” Chris asked, but no one seemed to hear him.

  He coughed, sat up, one hand over the wound in his stomach, the other on his shoulder. Deb and the burned man were gone. The room was empty. He stood, shakily walked to the front door, stared out into blinding sunlight.

  No, that wasn’t right.

  Chris hadn’t moved. He was still lying on his back, and Deb and that burned man
were screaming and shouting. He wondered why the burned man didn’t just shoot Deb.

  Didn’t seem fair that he’d been shot and Deb hadn’t.

  Chris wondered if he’d really asked for a doctor. Wondered if he actually could stand if he wanted.

  And he wondered where Cessy was.

  Chris thought maybe he was dying, and the idea of dying alone, while Cessy was somewhere out there, made him sad. Not scared, just sad. He’d really liked spending time with Cessy.

  It had been so nice to love.

  He had to keep breathing. He knew that. Just keep taking slow, deep breaths.

  He missed Cessy more than his stomach and shoulder hurt, missed her so much that tears burned his eyes—at least, he thought they did.

  Missed her in a way that would never end.

  CHAPTER

  51

  CESSY HEARD THE gunshots from the other side of the motel. She slid off the hood of Chris’s car and hurried across the parking lot, toward the sounds.

  Chris had told her he’d wanted to take a walk, stretch his legs. Told her he was tired of watching the street that led to the motel parking lot, waiting to see if anyone showed up.

  Gun shots hadn’t been a planned part of his stroll.

  Anxiety thrummed through Cessy as she ran, concern about Chris, about her plan, her assuredness suddenly in doubt. She knew Chris could take care of himself, but it was others she worried about. Fear that she should have restrained him, stopped him, that the murderous side of her brother—and maybe it was more than just a side—would be exposed and unleashed. That he’d bring hell to people, and Cessy had done nothing to prevent it. Nothing to spare the lives of the innocent people Chris would kill, if he hadn’t already. Their deaths would be her responsibility, and that responsibility tightened Cessy’s stomach like the ends of a hard knot pulled in opposite directions.

  The parking lot was on higher ground, and Cessy had to make her way down a small hill to reach the motel. She slipped, gathered herself before she fell, looked up, and saw Levi Price race around the side of the building and stop at a back window.