by Rachel Caine
It takes the better part of an hour before the glow of the fire is completely out, and then the night is lit only by the still-burning strobes of the emergency vehicles and flaring headlights. All the different sources paint everything a semiconsistent purple, with pops of blues and reds out of sequence. I keep my eyes closed after a while, and so I'm surprised when the door beside me is yanked open. I straighten up fast and realize I'm looking at a young, slender African American man in an ill-fitting paramedic's uniform. "Ma'am," he says, and his Georgia accent is already in full force. "I need to check you over. Can you walk for me over to the ambulance?"
"Sure," I tell him, getting out of the SUV with a little burst of relief. No escape required, after all. At least, not yet. Another paramedic is guiding Sam, and we end up perched together on the step of the ambulance as we're checked out. Sam is diagnosed with a mild concussion and cracked ribs; he's tagged for transport to the hospital. My headache earns me the same privilege, but no way do I want to leave our bags behind in Mike Lustig's SUV, or rob us of getaway transportation. I decline. While they put Sam in the ambulance, I move our stuff back to our own rented vehicle, which is thankfully pulled far enough off to the side that I can back it around the blockage.
I'm halfway out when Mike Lustig steps into my path, and I have to brake hard to avoid giving him a bumper kiss; once I'm stopped, he steps around to my driver's side door and taps on the window. I roll it down. "I'm heading for the hospital," I tell him. "And I'll wait there."
"Fine," he tells me. "You two need to be right about this. You ready?" His gaze tells me I'd better be. I nod. "Don't leave the hospital. I'll be there soon as I can."
I nod, and then I back up and turn to follow the ambulance down the winding mountain road, away from the ashes of what we'd hoped to discover.
The first thing I do, once the doctors have checked me, is sit down and call Javier, even though it's now nearly five in the morning. I don't tell him about the fire, or the near miss. I just tell him we're okay. He can tell we're at a hospital, though thankfully he doesn't ask many questions, and I don't have to lie.
"How are they?" I ask him. I've woken Javier up, and I feel bad about it, but hearing his voice is an immense relief. "Are they adjusting?"
"I don't know yet," he says, which is honest. He's keeping his voice down, and I hear the rustle of clothes and footsteps. I imagine him putting on a coat and stepping out onto his porch, because I hear the slight hiss of wind over the phone speaker, and the creak of wood as he sits down on the chair he keeps there. "Jesus, it's freezing tonight. The kids are fine, but I can't say they're happy. It's setting in on them that you're in danger. Lanny's dying to get out of the house. Connor just . . . reads. Is that normal?"
"More or less," I say. "Tell them I love them, will you?"
"Sure." He hesitates for a few seconds, and then he yawns. It's contagious, and I do, too, and realize how exhausted I am, again. "You're not okay, Gwen. I can tell."
"I'm okay enough."
"You coming back soon?"
"I don't know," I tell him softly. "I'm trying."
When I hang up, I find my chest is tight, my throat sore with unshed tears.
Eight long ER hours later, Sam's injuries have been confirmed as cracked ribs and a minor concussion. I've been warned my head will hurt like a son of a bitch for about a day (and it already does, despite a generous application of over-the-counter painkillers). By the time Sam's ribs have been wrapped and we've been relieved of payments we can't afford, we find three beefy white men in uniform waiting for us in the hallway. They're virtually identical, all with the blocky build of guys whose glory days came as high school linebackers; they've all got buzz cuts and tans that end at their collars and cuffs. Mike Lustig, in his FBI body armor and badge and blackness, stands apart, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. In the better light here, he has a long, friendly sort of face, one that seems prone to breaking into ironic smiles more than angry frowns.
Can't say the same for the Georgia bulldogs. They all look impassive at best, outright antagonistic at worst.
"Mr. Cade? Mrs. Royal?"
"It's Ms.," I automatically correct, and then I take in that he's called me by my old name. "Not Royal. My name is Gwen Proctor."
"My info says Gina Royal," the spokesman says, with a grim little twist of his lips that I don't mistake for a smile. "You come with me, Miz."
I glance at Mike Lustig. He shrugs. "I got no dog in this fight," he says. "Go on."
Sam and I exchange a quick look, and I nod to let him know it's fine. I don't know if it's fine, but there's no point, and no benefit, to staging a war here in the hallway. I walk with the officer around the corner to a quiet waiting room, and he gestures me to a corner seat. It's the farthest one from the exit, but I automatically calculate the ways out, just for practice. Agent Lustig hasn't followed us.
Interestingly, the officer excuses himself almost immediately and shuts the door. I check my watch and start counting. I expect he'll let me cool my heels for at least an hour. It's standard technique. The more off balance and tired a subject is, the better the chances of a slipup.
Georgia's playbook clearly says two hours are the optimum, because it's nearly three when the officer returns. He squeezes himself into the chair next to me, too close for comfort. I imagine he means to intimidate. It just annoys me. If he really knows who I am, then surely he understands I have a whole different scale of intimidation. He smells like sweat and smoke, which means he was up at the cabin, or what's left of it. There's a small stained area on his left sleeve that looks like old blood, and now that I've seen it, I can't quite look away. Did he get it helping someone? Or punching someone? Though sometimes, you have to punch one person to help another.
"So," I say to him, "Officer--"
"Turner, ma'am."
"Officer Turner, was calling me by a dead name a power play, or just a mistake?"
He leans back with a creak of plastic, and he considers me with the expressionless eyes of someone who's been in law enforcement for years. He's considering which approach to take: bully, or country-boy charm. Neither will work, but it's a little interesting to watch his internal debate.
He decides to go with country-boy charm, and when he speaks again, his voice is warmer, with a touch more drawl, and he's even managed a bashful smile. "I admit, ma'am, I thought that might throw you off balance. I apologize if I upset you. Mind if we start over?"
"Sure," I tell him, with a smile every bit as false. "What can I do for you, Officer Turner?"
"I just need you to start from the beginning and tell me how you came to be up there around that cabin, ma'am. How you got the idea to go up there, what happened, that sort of thing."
I sigh. "I don't suppose I could coax a cup of coffee out of you for it, could I?"
He falls for it, though only to the extent of going to the hallway, motioning to someone, and presumably ordering up my caffeine. He's all smiles when he comes back. I summon up one in answer, though I'm not feeling it. "Now," he says, settling in again, "you were saying?"
I toy with just answering I wasn't, and asking for a lawyer; I'm still not sure I don't really need one. The evidence can read a lot of ways, and neither Sam nor I planned on having to answer these questions. So I say, "Mind if I ask one question first?"
He considers, then nods. "Go ahead."
"Did you find any bodies in there?"
More considering, and then a slow shake of his head. "Can't rightly say. So what exactly brought you up to that cabin, Ms. Proctor?" He's allowed to lie to me, of course. It's a time-honored tradition in interrogations, although I haven't yet been advised of my rights. Which is telling.
I stick to my story, the first part of which is true: that we were hoping to discover some information about someone who was helping my ex-husband evade capture. That gets an eyebrow raise, but no comment. It's exactly what Sam's going to say. We've already determined that truth is our best defense, up to a point .
. . any other explanation is going to invite suspicion, with my obviously sinister ex in the background. I tell him about the open door and how we cautiously ventured inside. Just as I rehearsed it.
"And what did you find?"
"Nothing," I lie, easy as breathing. I'm not giving up what we brought out of there. "We didn't have time."
"You just . . . went on in?"
"The door was open," I say blandly. "We thought he might have been hurt or in trouble."
"Never crossed your mind a guy like that might shoot you dead for walking in on him?"
I shrug. Don't answer. Stupidity isn't a crime. He has nothing to coax out of that, except the fact that both Sam and I were armed, of course. But legally. Trespassing is a thin charge, at best. He won't bother, unless he thinks he can pin something bigger on top of it.
Officer Turner alters his body language into let's-be-frank. For him, it involves leaning forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, and tenting his big hands together. "Ms. Proctor," he says, "right now, local officers in Tennessee are going through your house up there at Stillhouse Lake, looking for anything that links you to your ex-husband. Your phone records are being analyzed. We know you went to see him before he broke out. You got something you want to get off your chest now, before those results come to light? Might do you some good."
Amateur. I went through years of this, from interrogators far better--and worse--than he is. I gaze at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then I say, "I hate Melvin Royal. He's hunting me, Officer Turner. Do you know how that feels? Do you really think I want to help him? Because if you stand me in front of him and give me a gun, I will not hesitate to put a goddamn bullet in that man's head."
I mean every word of it, with an intensity that takes even my own breath away.
Turner slowly leans back, hands smoothing flat against his thighs. He's got those lightless, merciless eyes that all cops seem to share, the ones that are constantly taking in everything and giving back nothing. For all his awkwardly folksy manner, he's a shark.
There's a knock at the door, and Turner gets up to retrieve two flimsy cups. He hands one to me, and I gratefully wrap cold hands around it. The coffee is a crime in itself, but at least it's warm, and it cuts the astringent hospital smell. This place stinks of fear and despair and boredom, of unwashed people whose body odor has soaked into the couches. There's a tiny, sad little play area in the corner for kids. It's currently deserted, but I think of Lanny and Connor, only ten and seven when a car smashed into Melvin's garage and revealed his horrors to the world. In my gut, they'll always be that age. That vulnerable, shattered age.
"You want to tell me what was in that basement?" I ask Turner, cutting my eyes suddenly to him. It startles him a little. "Because our guy didn't want anybody to see it. Whatever it was."
"It's pretty well destroyed," he tells me. "Ain't nobody going to get down there to take a good look for a while. Going to be hours before it's safe. We might still find bodies."
I hope not, too. Desperately. I nod, then drink the rest of my coffee in a thirsty rush. "Right. Well, I'm going to go now. Thanks for the coffee." He stands up with me, blocking my way. I stare at him and slowly allow the corners of my lips to curl, just a little. "Unless you'd like to arrest me . . . ?"
He's got nothing concrete, and he knows that. He's bluffing when he says, "Sit down, Ms. Proctor. We've got more to talk about."
I don't answer. I just walk toward him. At the last moment, he moves. Illegal detention wouldn't do him any favors, and he's smart enough to know I can't be buffaloed into thinking he's got cause. Yes, there's a burned-out cabin. Yes, I was inside. But there's ample evidence that the place had been booby-trapped, and I was lucky to escape alive, and they've got lots of tantalizing evidence to analyze that doesn't have anything to do with me and my maybe-but-not-provable illegal entry.
I don't break stride passing him. From behind me, he says, "We'll be talking, Mrs. Royal." That's just spite, and I don't dignify it by looking back at him. I keep going, and as soon as I pass the door frame, I feel a weight lifted. I take in a sharp breath, filtered by the fresh scent of the coffee I've just finished, and I dump the cup and go in search of where they've put Sam.
He's still closeted with another officer, and when I look around for Mike Lustig, he's nowhere to be found. I don't much like that. I don't like that he's abandoned us here to fend for ourselves. I find a seat and wait, watching the door and watching the clock hands crawl. Sam's conversation goes on at least twice as long as mine does, and it's nearly six when he finally appears. He doesn't look bothered, and he's finishing coffee. He downs the rest in a gulp and tosses the empty cup, then stops beside me. "You okay?" I ask him.
"Nothing I can't deal with," he says. There's a storm circling behind his eyes. I wonder what the cop said to him. Must not have been pleasant.
"Where's your friend Mike? Fat lot of good he did us."
"Yeah," Sam says. "He had to leave and go back to the scene."
"So what did he tell you, if he told you anything?"
"To go home," Sam says. "And forget this ever happened." Go back to Stillhouse Lake, I'm sure he means. Hunker down, guns at the ready, for my husband to come for us. But when I try to imagine that, I can't see us managing to defend ourselves. I see Melvin appearing, like some evil spirit, behind us. I see him killing Javier and Kezia. I see Sam dead on the floor.
I see me and my kids, alone against the darkness that is their father. And I am not confident that I can save them.
"We can't just give up," I say. "Let's take a look at what we got first. Will Lustig tell us what they find in the basement up there?"
"Maybe," Sam says, which doesn't fill me with enthusiasm. "I might have burned a bridge on that one. We'll see. No, don't apologize." I've already opened my mouth to do just that, and I shut it, fast. "I'd burn every bridge I ever built to get to Melvin. Understand that."
I wonder if he includes the bridge that we've so carefully built between the two of us. I think I understand Sam, most of the time. But when it comes to this . . . maybe I'm fooling myself. Maybe, despite everything he's done for me and my kids, despite the fact that I've allowed myself to be open and vulnerable around him, and he's shown every sign of appreciating that . . . maybe, ultimately, if it comes to a choice between me and getting to Melvin, he'll step over me to get a grip around my husband's throat.
Fair enough. I might just do the same thing. Probably best we don't discuss it.
There's a gauntlet of uniforms around, but we aren't blocked on our way out. Our car is still there in the lot, and still locked. Sam lets out a held breath as we turn onto the main road, and he accelerates--within the speed limit--heading south. "Right," he says. "Let's get the hell out of here. Where we headed?"
"Next town over," I tell him. "Let's stay local, but not right under their noses. Find us a motel." I start to say something midpriced, but then I stop myself. That's my natural inclination, but if Melvin's been alerted to this event, he and Absalom will be looking for us. It's a small pool of choices in this area. They'll try everything cheap and anonymous first. "Find us a bed-and-breakfast. Something off the beaten path."
He nods and tosses me a pamphlet. "Grabbed it from the gift shop in the hospital," he says. "Should be some ads in there."
6
CONNOR
Officer Graham told me, Never tell about this, and I haven't. Not because I don't know Officer Graham was a bad guy--I know that. He scared the hell out of us. He hurt us when he dragged us out of our house, too.
But I'll never tell because of what he gave me. I know Mom would take it away, and I'm not ready for that to happen.
I leave the phone Lancel Graham gave me turned off. I tried to use it back in the basement in that cabin where he was holding us, but there wasn't a signal. I turned it off and removed the battery when Mom found us because I didn't want it ringing, and I didn't want anybody tracking us with it.
I don't really know why I haven't just thro
wn it out, or buried it, or told someone I have it . . . except that it's mine.
Officer Graham said, This is from your dad, and it's just for you, Brady. Nobody else.
My dad sent me something, and even though I know I should get rid of it, I can't. It's the only thing I have from him. I sometimes imagine him standing in a store, looking at all the phones and choices, and finding one he thought I'd like. Maybe that's not what happened, but that's how I imagine it. That he cared. That he put some thought into it.
It's lucky that it looks almost like the cheap phone I already carry. They're both disposables, but I've learned to tell them apart by touch--the one Mom gave me feels a little rough under my fingers, and Dad's feels as smooth as glass. They use the same charger. I keep both of them charged up by putting one under the bed charging when I'm carrying the other one.
But I don't turn Dad's on. I just keep it off, with the battery in my pocket, ready to go.
I've just taken Dad's phone out of my pocket--not to use it, just look at it--when Lanny leans in the door of my room and says, "Hey, did you go in my room?"
I'm already feeling guilty, and the second I hear her voice it feels like there's a spotlight on me, bright white and very hot. I drop Dad's phone and watch as it spins across the floor and up against her foot. My mouth goes dry. I'm scared to death that she's going to immediately frown and say, This isn't your phone--where did you get it, and it'll all be over, and everybody will be mad that I didn't turn it over first thing, and they'll all give me those looks again. The ones that wonder if I'm really like him.
But all Lanny does is snort, say "Way to go, Butterfingers," and kick it back to me. I pick it up and jam it into my pocket. My hands are shaking. I shove Mom's phone, still on the charger, into the shadows under the bed with my foot. She hasn't seen it, I can tell. "Did you go in my room or what?"
"No," I tell her. "Why?"
"My door was open."
"Well, I didn't do it."
Lanny crosses her arms and looks at me with that frown that means she's not buying it. "Then why do you look guilty?"
