by E. A. Barres
“Mom, what are they going to do to her?” Kim asked, peering around Price.
“I’m curious about that too,” Cessy said.
“We’re not taking you that far away,” Temple replied. “Not far at all.”
Cessy knew it was destined to fail, but she didn’t see what she could do other than scramble to her feet and try to get the gun out of Temple’s hand. The burned man probably had one too, but it wasn’t out yet. Of course, Price had his gun out, and there was a chance he could accidentally fire and kill Deb or Kim.
She was absolutely fine imagining Deb with a bullet in her chest, but she couldn’t do that to Kim.
Even if, as irritated as she was, Cessy understood why Deb had done what she did. If she’d had a daughter, or anyone she cared about, she’d probably have double-crossed Deb to save them.
Anyone she cared about.
Chris’s memory slammed into her.
“Get her up, Seth,” Temple instructed the burned man. “Let’s get her out of here.”
Seth pushed away from the table and walked toward Cessy.
Walked between Cessy and Temple.
The best chance I’ll have, Cessy thought, is now.
Her legs tensed to rise.
“Wait a minute,” Price said. His voice brought the room to a halt. “Wait.”
“Levi?” Temple asked.
Price pushed himself to his feet and slowly backed away from Deb and Kim.
Cessy craned her neck to look at Deb.
Deb was pointing the .22 at Price.
Deb gestured toward Cessy with her other hand. “I’m taking her and my daughter, and we’re leaving.”
“Dammit, Levi!” Temple exclaimed. “How are you so useless?”
“I’m sorry,” Price told him helplessly.
“Deb, right? Your name’s Deb?” Temple asked, and waved dismissively at Price. “Just shoot him.”
“The gun’s not aimed at him,” Deb said. Cessy watched her shift her aim to Temple.
“Of course,” Temple sighed. “Of course.”
But he didn’t lower the gun aimed at Cessy.
“You do realize,” Temple said, “that we’re about to have a complete and total massacre.”
“If we do,” Deb replied, “you’ll be the first one shot.”
“Maybe,” Temple acknowledged. “Or maybe you’ll miss me. Have you ever fired a gun before?”
Deb didn’t reply.
“You’re not going to kill all three of us,” Temple said, “but you and Cessy will die. And so will Kim.”
“But you’ll die first,” Deb said resolutely.
“Maybe.”
“You’ll die first,” Deb repeated, and she walked over to Temple. Stood next to him, the gun inches from his head.
Every other gun was pointed at Cessy. It was not reassuring.
“Let’s look at this another way,” Temple said. “Right now you and your daughter can leave. You can leave, and as long as you stay silent about all this, no one will come after you. But if the three of you leave this house, you’re going to be hunted. And I have more capabilities to find you then you can imagine.”
“I know all that,” Deb said.
“What you don’t know is what we’ll do when we catch you. We won’t use a bullet. And you won’t die before Kim does.”
Cessy watched Deb carefully.
“Then come after us,” Deb said, “because the three of us are leaving together.”
CHAPTER
60
DEB AND CESSY stared at Kim through the windshield of Chris’s car, watched as she slept in the passenger seat.
“She’s tired,” Cessy said.
“She should be.”
They’d driven all night and much of the following day after leaving Temple’s house, without any idea of where to go. They thought about fleeing back to Virginia or somewhere deep in DC, but finally decided on Nicole’s suggestion of Chincoteague, Maryland. In the summer, Chincoteague crawled with tourists, and the harbor was filled with boats. But now, in winter, the town was desolate.
Even so, Cessy and Deb stayed outside of the small town and any outlying residential areas. They’d driven into the woods, taken a small road off the highway, and found a quiet camping area hidden by enough trees to effectively block the car from the road. A low stream was nearby, and dead leaves crackled underfoot. Circles of blackened stones, the remains of abandoned campfires, dotted the clearing.
“We can’t stay here forever,” Cessy said, still staring at Kim.
“I know.”
“And I have no idea where we can go next.” Cessy thought about Anthony Jenkins, the brief phone call she’d made to him earlier that day. He’d sounded so worried, so different in the way he spoke to her after helping her dump Barry’s body at the hospital. Distant.
Cessy could tell, without asking, that she couldn’t turn to him. Ever again.
“I guess maybe we could stay here,” Cessy went on. “Tell your daughter we’re forest people now.”
Deb smiled a little.
“Do you know how to catch fish or cook squirrels or really anything outside of a house?” Cessy asked.
“No.”
“Damn. Me neither.”
The women were quiet.
“Thanks for saving me,” Cessy said. “I mean, you also double-crossed me, but I’m glad you came through in the end.”
“I couldn’t leave you there,” Deb replied. “Couldn’t have lived with myself.” She ran her hands through her hair. The single-minded determination Cessy had noticed ever since Deb had aimed that gun remained. Something had changed inside her.
“But what are we going to do?” Deb asked.
Cessy didn’t have a good answer to that question.
* * *
Later that day, close to evening, Deb and Kim walked down to the stream. Winters had been warm in recent years, and they were comfortable in the light jackets they’d bought at a store on the drive down.
“I can’t believe I slept for that long,” Kim said. “And I still feel tired.”
“I’m so tired that I feel like I’ll always feel tired,” Deb said. “Like right after your father passed. Like nothing will ever be the same, including completely relaxing. Like there’s a tension that will never leave.”
Kim sat on the ground.
Deb sat next to her.
“But it will go away,” Deb went on. She could hear that parental, advice-giving tone in her voice, and it bothered her. But she felt like this was important. “It’ll go away just like that other pain did. Once we get out of this and time has passed, we’ll recover. I promise you.”
Kim rested her head against her mother’s shoulder.
A gray shape stepped through the shadows on the other side of the stream.
Kim and Deb froze.
The shadow walked out, detached from the darkness. A pony. It lowered its head to drink from the still stream.
“It must not see us,” Deb said.
“Or it’s just so used to people,” Kim replied.
“It’s cute.”
The pony kept drinking. Deb and Kim looked to see if there were any others. But this one was on its own.
“Remember when we went horseback riding at the Grand Canyon?” Deb asked. “That whole white water rafting trip that started at the dude ranch?”
“Oh yeah, that was fun! I mean, it was a rough ride, and I’m pretty sure that horse took my virginity, but it was fun.”
Deb laughed.
“It’s weird when they gallop,” Kim said.
“What do you mean? Scary?”
“It’s just … you have control when the horses are trotting along, you know? Seems like you can make it do anything you want. Like it’s some sort of cool bike or car. And then a horse gallops, and all that control is gone. You’re not in charge anymore.”
Deb watched the pony drink. It lifted its front right hoof, tapped the ground twice before setting it back down.
“A horse could do anything it wanted and you’d be completely powerless,” Kim went on. “It’s scary.”
The pony finishing drinking, wandered back into shadows, disappeared.
“I’m sorry that I got you into this,” Deb said. “I didn’t know it would go this far. When I found out about your father, I wanted to find out everything I could. And there was a point where I thought maybe what I was doing was dangerous, but I kept going forward. I didn’t think anything bad would happen to you and me.”
“Mom, you don’t have to keep saying you’re sorry. I get it.”
Deb looked at her daughter. Kim was staring at the water, her face untroubled.
She’s not worried, Deb thought. She’s too young to understand how bad this is.
“So that guy’s in love with you or something?”
“Looks like it,” Deb said.
“Gross. I mean, not gross because of you.”
“I get it.”
A car engine cut through the silence. They turned and saw Cessy driving back to the campsite.
“Wonder what snacks she got?” Kim asked. “I’m not sure 7-11 carried everything on our shopping list.”
“It was pretty extensive,” Deb agreed. She and Kim headed up to the car to see what Cessy bought. Ideally, Deb thought, she’d been able to find water, bread, and some types of meat and fruit.
And also a temporary cell phone.
CHAPTER
61
LEVI DIDN’T LIKE how closely Seth was standing behind him.
And he wasn’t thrilled with how Temple was berating him.
“Tell me again,” Temple said, sitting behind the desk in his satellite office, “how that housewife got the jump on you?”
“She leaned over to whisper something,” Levi said, nerves hollowing his voice, “and I saw it pointed at me.”
“What’d you think she was going to whisper? I love you, Levi?”
It took Levi a moment. “Maybe?”
Temple closed his eyes, rubbed his forehead. Levi turned and looked at Seth. Seth looked back at him and shrugged.
The gesture made Levi feel a bit better. There was still a good chance Seth was going to kill him, but it seemed less likely given the shrug. It was a shared moment.
Had to count for something.
Levi smiled at Seth. Seth ignored him.
Oh well.
Temple lifted his head, gazed at his cousin. Picked up a pencil.
“Aren’t you going to put out an APB?” Levi asked.
“They can’t be caught and taken in anymore. They’re three witnesses who can describe all of us and have seen the inside of my house. And Seth’s house, if the daughter somehow remembers where she was. Any lawyer would sense something’s not right. So would any cop.”
“Are you going to try to kill me?”
Temple looked longingly at the pencil. “Oh goodness, Levi, I really want to. You have no idea. You’re like an itch that would go away if I just let myself scratch it. Mediocrity is your height.”
That rustling inside him. The killer stirring, jostling, like a wild animal having nightmares.
Levi didn’t think he could kill both Seth and Temple, but he was ready to try.
His phone buzzed.
He pulled it out of his pocket, looked at the number.
“Oh, sorry, excuse me,” Temple said. “Do you need to take that?”
Levi shook his head, slid the phone back into his pocket.
“Get out of here,” Temple told him. “Let me think about what to do next.”
Levi did as his cousin wanted. Left Temple and Seth in the office, stepped into the hall, immediately checked his phone. Saw the number, dialed it back.
“Hello?”
Levi knew the voice.
“Deb?” he asked.
“Hey, Levi,” she said, sounding small, uncertain. “Can you meet with me?”
CHAPTER
62
“THIS IDEA,” CESSY told Deb again, “is terrible.”
“I don’t have anything else,” Deb said resolutely. “Do you?”
Kim and Cessy glanced at each other.
“I thought you said something about us becoming forest people?” Kim asked.
“Right?” Cessy asked drily.
Deb smiled, but it was a small smile. “Temple will find us. And when he does, we won’t have anything to offer him. But if I can get Levi on my side, then maybe that will help.”
“He’s sick, mom,” Kim told her. “Sick and obsessed. You’re not going to be safe with him.”
Deb knew her daughter was right.
And part of her was happy with her daughter’s insight. It made Deb feel that, no matter what happened to her, Kim would be okay.
“What are you going to offer him?” Cessy asked. “You going to marry him or something?”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“You’re not going to double-cross me again, right?” Cessy asked.
Deb shrugged. “I don’t see how I could make that promise.”
“Shit.” Cessy crossed her arms over her chest, stared moodily into the dark. It was near nighttime, and without the lights of a prominent city nearby, the forest quickly turned pitch black. “When’s he going to be here?”
“He said tomorrow morning.”
“So why do you want us to leave now?” Kim asked.
Deb didn’t respond.
“Because she doesn’t trust him,” Cessy answered for her. “And she wants to make sure you’re far away from here.”
Kim turned toward Deb.
Deb looked away. “I don’t know what else to do. I don’t. We can’t go to the cops and we can’t run. The only hope we have is that someone from their side might help us out. If that’s the only chance we have, then it’s a chance we have to take.”
“You really need to come up with a better plan,” Cessy said.
“Do you have one?” Deb asked.
“Is time travel a thing? Because …”
“I’m not leaving you,” Kim said, her voice thick. “And I can’t believe you’d ask me to. After we lost Dad, you think I’d risk losing you too?”
“Levi won’t hurt me,” Deb said, more decisively than she felt. “He won’t. But I don’t know what he’d do to you two.”
Kim kept her arms crossed tightly over her chest, turned, and walked away.
“Keep an eye on her,” Deb told Cessy.
“Yeah, I will. But stay safe because I’m not going to raise her or anything.” Cessy paused. “I can’t afford the two-bedroom apartments in my building.”
“If something happens to me,” Deb said, “then help Kim find my friend Nicole Boxer. Nicole can take care of her.”
The thought seemed right to Deb. Nicole had been alone for so long, and she knew Kim so well … Nicole becoming Kim’s new mother seemed natural.
“Nicole Boxer,” Cessy repeated.
“She’s my best friend. She can help Kim out.”
“Okay.”
“Really?”
“Sure. After all, I owe you. You saved my life.” Cessy thought about it. “Well, you put my life in jeopardy and then saved it. But still.”
“Thank you.”
The two women stared into the darkness.
“How are you doing?” Deb asked. “About Chris?”
Deb wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. Cessy hadn’t said anything about her brother.
But she didn’t want to let the other woman suffer without offering to listen. And Deb knew Cessy was suffering. The moments of taut silence, the distraction, the long rubbing of her eyes that came from more than stress and exhaustion.
“I don’t know how I’m doing,” Cessy said.
Again, silence.
“When Hector died,” she went on, “I really didn’t care. Not that much.”
“Why not?”
“Hector wasn’t a good man.”
Deb listened, grateful that the dark hid her surprised reaction. She felt
that it was always right to grieve when someone dies, regardless of the kind of person that man or woman had been.
“But it’s different with Chris?” she asked, tentatively.
“Chris was just as bad,” Cessy said moodily. “I was just on the right side of his bad side. He hurt a lot of people. That’s why I left home. Why I moved here from Arizona.”
Deb wasn’t sure of what to say. Fortunately, Cessy kept talking.
“I knew he was going to die. Not just die. Get killed. Get killed or taken to prison. No other choice.”
A sound. They turned and watched Kim head into the car, where the three of them had slept last night. The car’s interior light flicked on, suddenly illuminating the car and the forest around it, and then snapped off as she closed the door.
“She’s mad at me,” Deb remarked.
“She should be. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
Deb didn’t want to think about that. “Do you feel like you could have helped Chris?”
“No,” Cessy said flatly. And then, “Maybe. I don’t know. It was how he saw the world. He was a killer.”
“Still, though …”
Cessy didn’t let Deb finish her thought. “These men are all murderers,” she said. “They’re all evil. You understand that, right? You believe that, right?”
“They killed my husband. Of course I do.”
“And they’ll do the same to you and your daughter. You want to give this Levi guy a choice. I’m telling you, I’m warning you …” Cessy turned toward her, and Deb felt like she could feel the other woman’s eyes in the dark. “I know how he’s going to choose.”
CHAPTER
63
DEB’S COURAGE FLAGGED immediately after Kim and Cessy drove off.
She felt Levi coming. Could sense his car speeding to the woods like there was some sort of connection between the two of them, a connection Levi had made that she had no choice but to follow. He wanted her too much for her to escape.
The night was warm, but Deb still rubbed her arms and paced. Sometimes she used the flashlight to peer into the woods, but generally kept it off. She worried about draining the batteries, being trapped in darkness.
