Secret Hearts

by Radclyffe

  Randy laughed. “I think I’m somewhere in the Catskills.”

  Kip squeezed her eyes closed. “Check the map app on your phone. It’ll tell you where you are and text me the screen shot. It’ll take me a couple hours to get there.”

  “How’s the old man?”

  “Like he always is.”

  “How much trouble am I in?”

  “I don’t know, Randy. What the hell have you done?” She looked over her shoulder just to be sure she was still alone. Her phone wasn’t tapped, as near she could tell, but she didn’t want to have this conversation where anyone could use what Randy was about to say against him. That’s why they had lawyers, and he at least deserved the degree of protection the law said he was entitled to.

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Well, you need to figure it out, because one way or the other, you’re going to have to talk to the police when we get back.”

  “I was kinda hoping you could take care of that.”

  “I’m not a fucking magician,” Kip said wearily. “This time you’ll have to do the explaining yourself.”

  “You’ll be there, right?” His voice suddenly seemed smaller and younger.

  Kip flashed back to all the times he’d come running to her for comfort and help, the lost little boy who’d never grown up. She’d always been his hero. “Your text just came through. Don’t go anywhere. I’ve got the address. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Thanks, sis.” His laughter echoed hollowly. “I always knew I could count on you.”

  “Right.” Randy rang off and Kip was left with the phone in her hand, staring at the angry sea, filled with frustration and regret.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Randy’s hidey-hole turned out to be a roadside motel off the interstate an hour out of New York City and twenty minutes from the rehab center. Randy and the girl hadn’t run very far before they’d stopped to celebrate. Kip pulled into a long, narrow, potholed lot ringed with scraggy pines a little after midnight and sat with the engine idling, scanning the generic twenty-unit, single-story building that looked like any of the thousands of others she’d passed in her life. A battered pickup truck, a mud-splattered Volvo station wagon with a bumper sticker featuring a school soccer team, and a low-end sedan were the only vehicles parked in front of the faceless doors. Most units were dark. Light spilled out of a grimy plate-glass window in the far end unit where a flickering red neon sign spelled out the word Office. She didn’t see anything that suggested the place was being watched and finally parked in the corner of the lot beneath a wooden utility pole with a burned-out bulb that cast a small circle of shadow. She texted Randy. What unit are you in?

  When he didn’t answer her text after two minutes, she called his number. Her call went to voice mail. Hell. He’d either let his phone battery run down or he was sleeping. Or stoned. She wasn’t going to draw attention to them by asking at the office if a young woman or couple had recently checked in. She kept calling and he finally answered, his voice hoarse and his words slurred.

  “Yeah?”

  “Randy, it’s me. What unit are you in?”

  “Uh. I don’t know. I haven’t been outside.”

  Right. They’d have to do this the hard way. “Is there a light on in your room?”

  “The TV. No lights.”

  “Okay, go turn on the closest light and I’ll tell you if I can see it.” She watched the small windows beside the doors for any flicker of illumination.

  “Yeah, okay,” Randy muttered. “I just did it.”

  “Okay, I’ve got you. Number twelve. I’ll be there in a second. Be ready to go.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she muttered, but he’d already gone.

  He answered the door wearing jeans a size too large and a rumpled T-shirt with the logo of some band she didn’t recognize. The ill-fitting clothes looked like they’d been slept in more than one night, which they undoubtedly had. His hair was tousled, his face creased, and in the faint yellow light from the bedside table lamp, his hazy eyes barely focused.

  “Do you have your stuff?” Kip didn’t try to hide her impatience or her disappointment. He’d squandered whatever benefit he’d gained from rehab—worse than wasted his time and everyone else’s since he’d managed to get tangled up with a staff member in who knew what kind of trouble. Her anger was fueled by heartsick disillusionment and bone-deep fear of what lay ahead for him. This time she could not, would not, rescue him. She had come to get him to be sure he was delivered safely to the authorities. She didn’t trust him to go on his own and wasn’t sure he’d go with anyone else. The last thing she wanted was for him to run and make matters worse, or get himself hurt in the process.

  “I didn’t exactly have luggage with me,” Randy scoffed. “And I dumped the prison uniform as soon as I was out of there.” He looked down at himself. “Lucy brought me the clothes.”

  Kip examined his bare feet. “Did she bring you shoes?”

  He grinned, and for an instant an image of the bright, winning little boy he’d once been shone through. “I had them. They’re around here someplace.” He ran his hand through his hair like she’d seen him do countless mornings when she’d go in to wake him up for school. He turned in a slow circle and grunted. “There they are.”

  “Grab them and…is that your backpack?”

  Looking confused, he followed her gaze to the army green bag hidden half under the lopsided bureau and shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Grab it and let’s go, then.”

  “Okay. Yeah. I guess we have to go home, huh?” His voice held a hopeful note.

  “Randy, where else would we go? You have to get this mess straightened out, and you have to get yourself straightened out. It’s on you this time.”

  “I just wanted out of there,” he said.

  “And you couldn’t have waited another, what, five weeks to complete the program? You had to escape in the middle of the night like a jailbreak?”

  “Hey, I did everything they wanted me to do. I was a good boy. But I’d had enough talking.” He kicked into the unlaced sneakers. “You have no idea how boring that place was.”

  “That’s the problem, Randy. You’re not a boy anymore.” Shaking her head, she watched her brother slowly gather his scant belongings. He wasn’t a boy anymore, and they both had to accept that. She couldn’t keep standing between him and trouble. She loved him, but she wasn’t helping him.

  She texted her father while she leaned against the closed door. I have Randy. We’re going to the nearest police station.

  She’d just reached the car when her phone vibrated.

  Bring him home. Attorneys will handle it from here.

  “So what now?” Randy asked as he dropped into the front seat.

  “We’re going home.” Kip slid behind the wheel and tucked her phone away. She backed up and turned toward the highway. “Then you’re going to talk to—”

  A police cruiser, lights flashing, pulled into the parking lot, blocking the exit. Ten seconds later a second and then a third patrol car pulled up.

  “Fuck,” Kip whispered. A cold hand clamped around her heart and squeezed so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe. She slammed on the brakes and sat blinking into the bright lights shining through the windshield. She slipped her phone out and quickly replied to her father’s last text. Staties just stopped us.

  Randy jolted upright beside her. “What the fuck?”

  “Police. Just stay where you are, don’t say anything.”

  “Damn Lucy,” Randy snarled.

  Kip cut him a look. “What are you talking about?”

  “If she hadn’t left me here with no wheels, I’d be safe in the city by now.”

  Kip didn’t bother pointing out if Randy hadn’t left the rehab center with Lucy, he wouldn’t be in this situation at all. And if these officers were here for Randy, she would bet Lucy had done more than walk out on him and leave him stranded. She�
��d probably been picked up herself and used him as a bargaining chip. “Just keep quiet and do as they say.”

  Two officers got out of the closest vehicle, their black forms silhouetted against the blinding lights in a gut-churning déjà vu of her first arrest. Kip broke out into a clammy sweat. She rolled down her window before the officer reached her, her wallet already in her hand.

  “License and registration, please.” The male state trooper’s face was obscured in shadow, a blank void of power and intimidation.

  Kip handed the items out the window and returned both hands to the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. Another officer walked around to Randy’s side of the car, stopping a few feet back from his door. She tapped on Randy’s window, calling for him to step out of the vehicle.

  “Would you step out of the vehicle, please,” the officer said after a moment.

  “Yes.” Kip swallowed. “My brother and I were on our way to the police station. We’re happy to cooperate.”

  “Please just step out of the car,” the officer repeated.

  “Yes, sir. Randy, get out of the car.”

  “What? Why? They can’t just—”

  “Just do it.”

  Kip stood next to the open driver’s side door while Randy fumbled with his door and finally exited. He slouched against the side of the vehicle as the second officer ordered, “Put your hands on top of the car.”

  Kip watched, her pulse pounding in her throat. Randy didn’t move.

  “Randy,” Kip said sharply, “do what the officer says right now.”

  He looked over the top of the vehicle at her, his eyes fear filled, but he put his hands where he was told. Kip gritted her teeth while the officer beside her shone his Maglite around inside the vehicle. “What’s in the backpack?”

  Kip pictured the bag Randy had tossed at his feet when they’d gotten in the car. “Clothes.”

  He continued to stare. “That doesn’t look like clothes to me.”

  Before she could reply, he grasped her wrist and snapped a cuff onto it. Across the top of the car she saw the other officer doing the same with Randy. The eerie tableau of the last time she and Randy had been together replayed as she stumbled numbly toward the nearest cruiser, a foreign hand pushing between her shoulder blades, a palm on the back of her neck directing her into the backseat. She sank down in the dark and closed her eyes, the red glow from the light bars the perfect backdrop to the familiar nightmare.

  *

  The county jail was unwelcomingly similar to the one in Manhattan, although cleaner and less populated in the middle of the night. The officers were no less formal and no more polite, but so far they’d skipped the booking procedure and left Kip in a holding cell. She’d been allowed to call her father, but she hadn’t seen Randy and no one would tell her where he was.

  “Don’t say anything,” her father said. “They have no grounds to hold you.”

  “All right.” She knew better than to ask him for information while she was in custody and might still be questioned. The less she knew right now, the better, but being helpless was a suffocating cloud choking her every breath. She had to trust he would send an attorney to sort things out. All she could do was wait.

  Kip sat up on the side of the narrow cot, with its familiar coarse cotton sheet and thin wool blanket, and stared at the bars. She had fervently prayed never to be locked into another small, dank, soulless room again, and here she was. Alone, and though she knew it wasn’t true, abandoned. She couldn’t even tell if she was under arrest. Occasionally a low murmur of voices filtered down the hall, presumably from other cells, but mostly it was quiet. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck even though the cell was cool.

  How long this time? Another night, half a day? Time lost all meaning when all she could hear was the beating of her own heart and the echoes of despair. She’d told the first officer she had been taking her brother to the authorities, but she had no idea if he’d cared or mentioned it to anyone. How had the police even known they were there? And why was she in a cell? Because she’d been with Randy, who she wasn’t even sure had committed a crime? Signing himself out of the rehab center was stupid, but not criminal. She remembered the green knapsack she hadn’t even thought to check, and her stomach plummeted. If Randy had been carrying the missing drugs, they were both in trouble.

  Two hours later, a female officer in a tan trooper’s uniform with a large ring of jangling keys opened her cell door.

  “Come with me,” the officer said. “You can collect your things.”

  Kip stared. “I can leave?”

  “You’re being released.”

  “What about Randy? Randolph Kensington, my brother?”

  The trooper shook her head. “I don’t know anything about him.” She gave Kip a long look. “Just be glad you’re getting out.”

  Kip didn’t argue. All she wanted was out of that cell, out of that corridor, out of the building with its nightmares lurking in every corner. She didn’t see anyone when she signed the forms and collected her belongings. They kept her keys because her vehicle had been impounded. If their father’s attorney was around somewhere, he was probably with Randy. That was fine with her. She’d had enough of everyone related to the legal profession. She probably ought to call her father, but no matter what was happening right now, she couldn’t change it. She’d done the best she could for her brother. She’d tried, all her life.

  Fifteen minutes later she was standing outside an hour before dawn with nowhere to go and no way to get there.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Jordan was already awake when the phone rang. She hadn’t slept much, her dreams fragmented and anxious. Every time she twisted awake, she thought about Kip, thought about calling her, and knew instinctively she shouldn’t. Kip was trying to protect her, trying to do the right thing, and as much as she disagreed with how Kip was going about it, she couldn’t stay angry.

  On the second ring, she rolled over and grabbed the phone. Relief, like a long-awaited kiss, rolled through her. Finally, she saw the readout she needed to see. “Kip? Are you all right?”

  “Not really,” Kip said, sounding more exhausted than Jordan had ever heard her.

  “Where are you? Are you hurt?”

  “No, but I’m stranded outside a police station in Westchester.” Kip read off the address to her. “I know it’s crazy of me to ask you, but could you come and get me?”

  Jordan was already out of bed, scrambling for her pants. “Of course. Yes. You’re at the police station? Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I will be as soon as I get out of here.”

  “I’m on my way.” Jordan grabbed keys and her bag.

  “There’s a Denny’s I can see maybe a half a mile down the road from here. I’ll go there and wait for you.”

  “Be careful, all right? I’ll be there. Just…be careful.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Kip,” Jordan said softly, “shut up.”

  Kip’s laughter was a little weak, but she sounded more like herself. “Okay, I’ll do that.”

  *

  At six in the morning, the Denny’s parking lot hosted a smattering of pickup trucks, several eighteen-wheelers idling off to the side, and a few cars. She pulled the truck into an empty slot close to the front doors and hurried inside. Kip slouched in a booth at the far end of the diner, looking worse than Jordan had ever seen her, even after a night with little sleep tending the generators and coaxing the seedlings through the late frost. She wore only a light windbreaker, a rumpled button-down-collar shirt, and jeans. The shadows under her eyes were almost as dark as her carelessly ruffled hair. She gripped the coffee mug between two hands and stared straight ahead, as if watching some movie playing inside her head. Her gaze flickered up as Jordan approached and recognition slowly sparked a light in her eyes. Jordan slid into the booth opposite her and reached for her hand.

  “First, tell me you’re not hurt.”

  Kip nodded, swallowing,
her words feeling like sandpaper in a dry throat. “I’m in one piece. Thank you for coming.”

  “I could almost be angry at you for saying that, but you get a pass this time because you look like you had a rough night.”

  Kip laughed bitterly. “You could say that.”

  Jordan stroked the top of Kip’s hand, wishing she could gather her up right that instant and take away the pain that rode so hard in her eyes. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Kip closed her eyes and nodded. “My brother went missing from a rehab center near here and I came to pick him up when he called me. The police were looking for him too, and we both ended up at the station. He’s still there.”

  “They let you go?”

  “Yeah. Either he or my father’s lawyers convinced them I had nothing to do with this latest escapade.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jordan said. “That sounds horrible.”

  “Not something I wanted to do again, that’s for certain.” Kip shuddered.

  “Do you need anything? Some food? More coffee?”

  “All I really need right now is you.”

  Despite her resolve to keep some kind of sane distance, Jordan couldn’t turn away from the raw need in Kip’s voice. “I came as quickly as I could. Now you’re coming home with me.”

  “I don’t have any right to ask for that,” Kip said quietly.

  “You have more right than you know, but now is not the time to talk about it. Come on, I’m taking you home.”

  Kip got wearily to her feet. “You have no idea how good that sounds.”

  Jordan drove through the increasingly heavy morning traffic as Kip rode silently beside her, her head back and her eyes closed. Jordan would’ve thought she was sleeping if she hadn’t been holding her hand. Tension radiated through Kip’s grip. Her fingers were icy despite the heater going full blast. Jordan recognized the numb cold that followed shock and pain. Time would help, but so would someone to remind Kip she wasn’t alone. Jordan was that someone, and trying to tell herself anything different would just be a lie.