In Seconds

by Brenda Novak

  “Neither is the guy he busted out with,” Virgil continued.

  “What was he in for?”

  “Dealing.”

  “What’s going on?” Rex murmured.

  Vivian raised a finger to tell him to give her a little longer.

  “Is something wrong, Mommy?” Mia had stopped dancing and was looking concerned.

  She covered the mouthpiece. “No, honey, it’s fine. It’s just…business stuff.”

  “The purses?”

  “Yeah.”

  Rex gave Mia’s ponytail a playful tug. “How about you show me your room? Then Jake can show me his.”

  “I don’t wanna show you mine,” Jake said. “It has these stupid bears painted on the wall.”

  “You have something against bears?” he teased.

  “You should see ’em. They’re for babies!”

  “Let’s take a look.” Tossing Mia over one shoulder, Rex prodded Jake to lead the way.

  “Hey, put me down!” Mia squealed, even though it was quite apparent that she loved being right where she was.

  Their voices dimmed as they passed through the living room. After they were gone, Vivian carried the phone to the table, where she sank into a chair. “It’s not easy to break out of prison. Maybe a level one, but…level three? Where were the C.O.s?”

  “In the tower, where they were supposed to be. Some of The Crew created a disturbance while others blocked the closest tower’s line of sight, and Ink and his cell mate slipped out in the confusion.”

  “What do you make of the escape?”

  “It could be a coincidence that Horse has recently been talking tough, but…”

  “You don’t think so.” Neither did she. Not anymore. All that unease she’d been denying, that was intuition, warning her that her life was about to change.

  “No. No one’s seen Ink. Unless it was a quick pass-through, he hasn’t shown up in L.A. Rex would’ve heard about it if he had. Rex was just there.”

  Virgil didn’t add that Rex was there “partying with old friends,” but Vivian knew what he meant.

  “He heard what Horse has been saying, right?” he went on. “Stands to reason he would’ve heard about Ink, too. This is bigger news.”

  “Ink scares me.” Vivian would never forget Colorado, how he’d attempted to kill her and her children. How close he’d come to succeeding. To her, he represented everything evil and depraved.

  “Rex is with you now. That makes me feel better.”

  She lowered her voice. “He can’t stay here, Virgil.”

  “Why not?”

  Because she didn’t want to fall prey to old habits. They’d gained some distance from the heartbreak that’d taken such a toll on them both. She couldn’t survive a relapse, didn’t want to watch Rex suffer any more, either. “He’s using again.”

  “He says he isn’t.”

  “Then it’s alcohol. It’s…something. You should see him.”

  “It’s only been two weeks since he was here, Laurel.”

  “Add two weeks of sleepless nights to that and you might have some idea. He’s lost a lot of weight during the past year, maybe thirty pounds. And he wasn’t heavy to begin with.”

  “I know. We need to get him some counseling.”

  Judging by his voice, Virgil felt out of his depth—and so did she. No one could change Rex’s life if he wasn’t willing to fight the good fight, and she didn’t get the feeling he’d make that kind of commitment.

  Hearing a sudden noise, Vivian glanced up. Rex was standing in the doorway, staring at her with an inscrutable expression. He’d heard some, if not all, of what she’d said about him.

  “Okay, well, Rex and I will talk about it,” she said into the phone.

  “Keep me posted,” Virgil responded.

  “Virgil.” She stopped her brother before he could hang up. “They could be coming after you and Peyton instead, you know.”

  “I’ve thought of that.”

  “You’re not worried?”

  “I’m worried, but like I said, if I know Ink, he’s going to want to kill you first.”

  Dimly, she realized how different their conversations must be from those of normal people. “Why?”

  “Because his revenge won’t be complete unless I know about it.”

  A dial tone sounded in her ear; Virgil was gone.

  Although she didn’t look up again, Vivian could feel the weight of Rex’s gaze as she returned the phone to its base. “Where are the kids?”

  “Setting up a game I promised to play if they gave me a few minutes to speak with you.”

  Feeling guilty that she’d even thought he might’ve let her location slip, she turned to face him. “Ink busted out of prison.”

  He didn’t seem all that surprised, and yet she didn’t get the impression he’d already known. “Nice.”

  “But…he couldn’t find us.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  It was what she wanted to believe. That they were safe. That they could continue with what they’d created since the last move. That Pat’s murder was unrelated. “No.”

  After crossing to the opposite counter, he refilled his coffee. “There are too many ways to narrow it down.”

  “But I’ve been so careful.”

  “How careful?”

  “Very careful.”

  He arched an eyebrow at her. “Have you reached out to anyone from your former life?”

  She couldn’t quite claim that. “You’re the only one I’ve called from here.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  His hand trembled as he lifted his cup. She wished she hadn’t noticed it. She couldn’t deal with seeing him like this, not in addition to everything else. “Okay…yes. I’ve called others. But—”

  “What phone did you use?”

  How was he still functioning? She’d never met anyone whose body could take such abuse. She’d bet he hadn’t been lucid since he left New York. “A pay phone. There are several in town.” She preferred to leave it at that, but her guilty conscience dragged out the detail she’d been hoping to ignore. “And…once, just once, I used the phone at the Golden Griddle.”

  “What?”

  She repeated it, louder, and he scowled. “What’s the Golden Griddle?”

  “A restaurant in town. They serve breakfast.”

  “Shit.”

  “You’re not going to get mad, are you? Because that would be ironic. As a matter of fact, I think that would be about as ironic as anything I’ve ever heard, considering what you’ve done to yourself since we broke up.”

  He gave her a look that warned her away from the subject but didn’t respond to that statement. Instead, he asked, “Why that phone?”

  “Because it seemed safe. My friend Leah works there. She asked me to help get her car into the shop, but when I showed up to follow her over, she wasn’t quite ready. So I sat in the back while she cleaned. The kids were with a woman who’s become a surrogate grandmother to them, the restaurant was closed and the phone was right there. I liked the privacy, the chance to say something that couldn’t be overheard by Jake and Mia or people on the street. This is such a small town.”

  He blew out a sigh and leaned against the counter. “Who’d you call?”

  She was embarrassed to admit this. If he’d been Virgil, she couldn’t have brought herself to tell him. Because she’d called the one person she shouldn’t even want to talk to—someone she often claimed she didn’t want to talk to. “My mother.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she added, “But if The Crew traces the call, it won’t matter. It’s a restaurant.”

  He shook his head. “Babe, a restaurant in Pineview, Montana. Population one thousand or less. If Ink comes here, you don’t think he’ll be able to find you?”

  Of course he would. So where were all the justifications she’d used the day she’d called? “As far as he’d know, I was just passing through.”

  “Not if you made
calls from that restaurant over a period of time.”

  “I didn’t! I called only once.”

  He stared through the window, at her backyard. Maybe he was noticing Myles’s yard, too, and how they adjoined each other without so much as a fence to separate them. “Actually, I’m betting even the location of the pay phones would be traceable. If you called from this area code in December and then again in…I don’t know…May, that would make anyone believe you’ve settled down.”

  She’d thought of that. But she’d been so lonely, so unwilling to lose everything from her past, that she’d convinced herself the chances of The Crew finding out about those calls were too slim to worry about.

  “And what did you say to your mother? What does she know?”

  “Not much. Anyway, she wouldn’t sell us out. Not again.”

  His eyes jerked back to her. “Bullshit.”

  “When Virgil went to prison, she was choosing between her brother, who’d been trying to help her, and her son. She feels terrible about what happened.”

  “As if that could make up for destroying Virgil’s life! And, to a certain extent, yours.” He sipped his coffee. “You’ve forgiven her?”

  Not completely, but she was too busy playing devil’s advocate to explain. “What good would it do to hold a grudge? It’d just isolate me further. People make mistakes, right?”

  He lowered his voice. “And they tend to make the same ones over and over.”

  There was no point in arguing with that. He was the perfect example.

  “So what do we do?”

  “Will this grandma figure you mentioned be willing to watch Jake and Mia for a few hours?”

  She rubbed her eyes. “What day is it?” She’d lost track of time.

  “Friday.”

  “She should be. She doesn’t have to work.”

  “Give her a call and see. Then we’ll head to a neighboring town and use a pay phone to reach Ellen.”

  “Why do we need to go a neighboring town? The entire state has the same area code.”

  “In case they can trace the phone, farther would be better. Anything that extends their search parameters will help.”

  “And what do we say to my mother once we reach her?”

  Straightening, he poured the rest of his coffee down the drain. “We ask if anyone’s contacted her looking for you, and hope to hell she tells the truth.”

  14

  Rex wasn’t sure he could do this. He’d just spent two weeks in self-imposed exile from the rest of the world, lying in the empty bathtub of a cheap motel room in Los Angeles, so he’d be close to the toilet, sweating and shaking and feeling like he was going to die. He knew going off drugs with no one else around was a dangerous way to detox. He could’ve had a grand mal seizure or some other serious complication. But he couldn’t afford a clinic, and there was no way to taper off OxyContin. Not on his own. One high only led to the next. And he didn’t want to burden anyone. As far as he was concerned, he’d gotten himself into this mess; he needed to get himself out.

  “You’re ill. You should see a doctor.” Laurel, or Vivian, as everyone else around here knew her, sat in the passenger seat. She’d been silent for the duration of the drive, all thirty minutes of it, but she’d been studying him. He could tell she’d wanted to say something almost since they left.

  “I’m fine.” He’d insisted on driving, but he wasn’t anywhere close to fine. He’d been crazy to show his face in Pineview. He wouldn’t have if he’d felt he had any other choice. Besides, by the time he made the decision to come here, he’d been starting to feel better for periods of time. He’d been able to come out of the bathroom and lie on the bed to watch TV. At that point, he’d believed the determination that’d kept him clean for ten days would enable him to soldier on.

  But OxyContin still had a strong hold on him. His hands trembled, bouts of nausea threatened to bring up what little he’d forced himself to eat for breakfast and his craving for the euphoria he remembered so well overwhelmed him when he least expected it. There were moments when he felt certain he’d go mad if he didn’t find a source.

  He should’ve kept himself sequestered until he’d recovered—or at least maintained a safe distance from Laurel. Facing her and all the feelings she dredged up compounded the difficulty of what he was going through, made it even more hellish. The regret, the guilt, the longing—they all worked as triggers. They were the very emotions he’d hoped to escape by taking OxyContin in the first place.

  But someone had to come to Pineview to protect her, and he knew it couldn’t be Virgil. Virgil had a family now. Peyton was just about to give birth to their second child. So Virgil needed to stay in New York, run his business and take care of those he loved. Rex had already screwed up so badly, he didn’t have anything left to save. Except Laurel. Whether they were together now or not, she’d been the best thing in his life to date.

  “You want me to drive?” she asked for the third time.

  “No.” Perspiration caused his T-shirt to stick to him despite the air-conditioning blowing from the vents. He hoped she wouldn’t notice. He had enough other things to worry about. Like the cramping in his stomach. It felt as if someone was tearing his organs out with an ice pick, but stopping wouldn’t ease the pain. Nothing would. It was just there, and he didn’t know how long it would last. Going to a hospital wouldn’t help. All they could do was monitor him. And he refused to be put out of commission now, especially when there was no remedy except determination and time.

  “Don’t push yourself if you’re not up to it.”

  He wanted to be able to do this much. He hated that she was seeing him at his absolute worst. But he couldn’t have delayed his visit, not without leaving her at risk. As much as she didn’t want to believe The Crew had found her, he trusted Mona Lindberg, the friend who’d told him otherwise, mostly because she had no reason to lie.

  Laurel slid on a pair of sunglasses. Unfortunately, he couldn’t hide his eyes as easily. He’d left his shades at a hamburger stand somewhere in the middle of Missouri during his cross-country motorcycle odyssey from New York to Los Angeles. It was on that odyssey that he’d made the decision to turn his life around. Foreboding had ridden with him for those first few days, telling him that if he went back to L.A. and didn’t give up the OxyContin, he’d either fall in with the men he hated or others who were just as bad. If someone didn’t kill him along the way… If he didn’t give it up, he’d lose the only relationships that really mattered—his friendship with Virgil, Virgil’s wife and Laurel.

  “Can we talk about what happened in L.A.?” she asked.

  She wanted details about his stay there, but he wasn’t interested in providing them. The past two weeks were nothing more than a painful blur. “What do you want to know?”

  “Why would you go back there? You know what they’ll do if they find you.”

  “That isn’t true for every member of The Crew. Just certain ones.”

  “Any of them could try and impress Horse by bringing him your head on a platter.”

  “I was willing to risk it.” When he’d started out, he’d sort of hoped the trip would end that way, that he’d go out with a bang instead of wasting away on dope.

  “For what? What’d you do while you were there?”

  He hadn’t been partying quite as much as she assumed. But he wasn’t going to say that. He couldn’t cope with her skepticism. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to clean himself up. “Nothing, really.”

  “You had to be doing something. You were gone for fourteen days, and you wouldn’t even pick up your phone.”

  He clenched his jaw against another cramp, had to wait until it passed before he could answer. “I already explained that.”

  “You didn’t explain why you couldn’t use someone else’s phone.”

  And he wasn’t going to. “Let it go.”

  “You were that strung out?”

  She had no idea what he’d been through, how hard he wa
s trying, but he couldn’t fault her for her disgust. He was just as disgusted with himself. “I guess so.”

  “Who were you with? You don’t know anybody there except Crew.”

  “I grew up in L.A. Trust me, I know plenty of people.” None of whom were very good for him, which was why he hadn’t looked many of them up.

  “So you renewed friendships from the past.”

  “That’s right.”

  “If you weren’t socializing with your old gang buddies, how’d you find out they know where I’m living?”

  “From Mona. I told you when we talked last night.”

  “Shady’s girlfriend.”

  “Ex-girlfriend. They broke up before he died.”

  “Are you sure she’s not holding a grudge for how he died?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And yet she still hangs out with his buddies.”

  Thanks to drugs, she probably always would. “The Crew keeps her supplied.”

  That was why he’d tracked her down. He knew Mona would be able to replace the pills he’d thrown away or, failing that, get him some heroin. He also knew she’d be willing. So he’d contacted her sister, who was in the phone book, and her sister had put him in touch with Mona.

  But he hadn’t taken the drugs she brought. Seeing what her addiction had done to her was too much of a jolt. He didn’t want to be like her. Instead of succumbing, he’d flushed the pills down the toilet and crawled back into the tub to suffer some more.

  “But if they find out she told you, they’ll kill her,” Laurel said.

  “I did her a favor once, okay? She felt like she owed me.”

  When Laurel closed the air-conditioning vent closest to her, he considered turning off the AC. It wasn’t so hot that he needed to run it. But the cool air distracted him from his misery just enough that he could drive another mile and then another. Right now, that was the best he could do.

  “What kind of favor did you do for her?” she asked.

  “It’s not important.”

  “I want to know.”

  “I gave her a ride once. That’s all.”

  The way she watched him suggested she could tell there was more to it. “You helped her even though it put you at risk?”