Seek and Hide: A Novel (Haven Seekers) Read online

  Marcus straightened, breathed in, and knocked.

  2

  After a minute, he knocked again. The deadbolt gave a sliding click, and a lightless gap appeared in the door.

  “Jim, Karlyn.” His whisper seemed to echo. “It’s Marcus, let me in.”

  The door swung inward with a squeaking lack of caution.

  “Marcus?” Karlyn’s hand tugged at his sleeve, then shut the door behind him. “What’re you doing here? It’s three in the morning.”

  “I know,” Marcus said.

  Karlyn flipped on the light. She held a silver golf club over her shoulder, like a batter at ease. “It’s a putter.”

  “Yeah, I see it. Karlyn—”

  “It makes a great spur-of-the-moment weapon, especially combined with a purple belt in jujitsu.”

  “Right.” Marcus followed her into the small kitchen. “Karlyn—”

  “And I ought to use it on you. What could possibly be—”

  “They’ve got a search warrant for your house.”

  The hand holding the putter fell to her side. The club end thumped against the floor. “A …”

  Marcus nodded.

  Her eyes flickered around the room. “We’ve got to hide them—where else do we hide them? I won’t burn them or throw them away or— Or …”

  “I know,” he said. “Jim in bed?”

  “He won’t burn them, either.”

  The muscles in Marcus’s neck threatened to snap along with his patience. “I need to talk to him. And you. Come on.”

  Karlyn all but ran across the ranch house to the master bedroom. She didn’t bother to see if Marcus followed. Jim lay in bed, propped against the headboard, glaring at his walker against the far wall.

  “Karlyn,” Jim said, “I’m perfectly able to get the door my— Marcus?”

  “There’s a search warrant out on us, Jim.” Karlyn sat down on the other side of their bed, which was lower than most king-size beds to give Jim easier access. She scooted back against the headboard and drew her knees to her chin.

  “How do you know?”

  “Long story,” Marcus said. “I don’t know when they’ll come, but you’ve got to be ready.”

  “What do we do?” Jim said. “Everything’s already hidden as well as it can be.”

  What could they do? Oh. Of course. Marcus stepped farther into the room. “Give it to me. All of it, whatever you’ve got.”

  The pause spread around the room, tight with the war on their faces. They wanted to let Marcus do this. Yet they didn’t.

  “No,” Jim said.

  “You have to.”

  “It wouldn’t be right, Marcus.”

  “If you take anything illegal with you, you’ll be …” Karlyn’s voice barely whispered over her bent knees.

  Marcus paced the length of the bed and back again. “What? A criminal? We’re already criminals.”

  “The crimes are misdemeanors now. But if you do this, then …” She laced her long fingers together and turned them inside out, as if to wring the words she wanted from her hands.

  “Where is it? Just tell me.”

  “You’d be guilty of a felony. Of a lot of them.”

  Transporting illegal literature, removing evidence, obstructing the prevention of philosophical crime … Quite a damning list.

  “We can’t let you do this,” Jim said.

  “The warrant’s for your house. Not mine.”

  Fear and common sense were usually at odds in a decision, but together, they were powerful. Etched into Jim’s face was knowledge of what he should do, and fear that wanted to do it. He tried to run a hand through his hair, but it slumped back to his side. Multiple sclerosis had attacked more than his legs.

  “We’re grateful you came, but—”

  “Jim,” Marcus said.

  “My answer’s no.”

  Screw his answer. Marcus wasn’t leaving here without the Bibles. Where would Jim and Karlyn hide them? He searched the walls for a giveaway, but no, not in here. He headed for Jim’s study. More likely there than the kitchen.

  “Marcus,” Jim yelled after him.

  He knocked his knuckles against the paneled study walls. The sound thudded, nothing hollow behind it.

  “Stop it, Marcus,” Karlyn said behind him. “It’s our decision.”

  He took a few steps, knocked again. Still a dense, abrupt sound.

  “Hey, Pit Bull. Open those teeth.” Her voice was closer now, just over his shoulder.

  The nickname wasn’t fair. It tried to soften him, and he couldn’t be soft with them in danger. His jaw clenched tighter, and his knuckles rapped the wall too hard. Ow.

  “Let it go.”

  Marcus turned on her, and she stepped back, a reflex. “You’ll come home believing you were guilty and the Bible’s dangerous. Or you’ll be all bruised and scarred and—hurt.”

  “The physical methods are rumors, and—”

  “What do you think they’ll do to Jim?”

  Her face scrunched into a struggle not to cry. She hid behind her hands, then lowered them. Her eyes had hardened. “After the search, you bring them back.”

  “It’d be safer to let me keep them.”

  “Safer for Jim and me. That’s the condition. I’ll give them to you if you promise to bring them back.”

  All Marcus could do for now was nod.

  Ten minutes later, he drove toward home with an opaque department store bag under the seat of his truck. Karlyn had insisted on layering dishtowels over the books. Jim had nearly fallen from bed, trying to reach his walker and stop them both. In taking the danger and the decision, Marcus had taken something else from Jim too, something he himself would never want to give up. But to make Jim and Karlyn safe, Marcus would do whatever he had to.

  What if the Christians arrested last night had given up everybody’s names? What if Jim and Karlyn were only the first warrant? No, Jason had said somebody saw them reading a Bible. He would’ve mentioned Christians betraying each other, a victory for the Constabulary.

  Tonight, Marcus had scored a victory against them. Maybe his group shouldn’t be limiting contact information. Had he never worked for Jim and Karlyn, he wouldn’t know where they lived. The simple upkeep and repairs that exhausted Jim had been just another project for Marcus until his last day on the job, when Karlyn had handed him his check, thanked him, and stared at him.

  “What do you worship?” she’d said.

  If that was her idea of subtlety, she ought to look the word up in a dictionary. Not that Marcus was big into dictionaries. The question could have been a trap, but he’d promised God he’d never deny Him, and that meant a complete answer, not a vague one. She was asking what he believed about Jesus. He searched his memory, the few parts of the Bible that he knew, and finally found something.

  “‘The Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world,’” he said. It was a verse the government-sanctioned Progressive United Version would have cut. According to the PUV, people were supposed to save themselves.

  Karlyn’s grin had lit her whole face. Soon after that, she and Jim invited him to the Table, where he discovered a family that wanted to add … him.

  He couldn’t warn the rest of them. Phone calls, texts—too risky. And he didn’t know where anyone else lived. His truck carried him and the towel-stuffed shopping bag homeward. God, You gave them to me. Don’t let the Constabulary take them.

  “Doesn’t it seem only right that what the Lord gives, He can take away? You have to open your hands, Marcus.”

  Almost two years since he’d last seen the man, Frank’s voice still echoed in Marcus’s brain at the oddest times, a hint of Indiana accent clinging to the vowels. Did Frank still believe that from inside prison? He’d die in re-education, forty-something years from now, an old man still a
sking guards and fellow prisoners and everyone else, “So, what do you believe about God?” and then preaching the Bible to them from memory.

  God hadn’t taken him away. The Constabulary had.

  With Bibles in his car, Marcus held to within three miles an hour of the speed limit and even braked for a late yellow light. He’d be on his way to re-education, and two Bibles—real Bibles, printed before the Constabulary’s revisions—would be destroyed, if a regular police officer smelled the aftermath of Jason Mayweather in his truck and decided to search it. Or maybe the smell was only a memory.

  He’d pass three liquor stores on the way home.

  The neon clock on his dash read 3:43. Lee might be asleep. He shouldn’t call. Well, maybe it would go to voice mail. He’d hold the phone to his ear and drive home without stopping. When she got a wordless voice mail in the morning and called him back, he could tell her the truth without shame.

  Speed-dial one. It rang twice.

  “Marcus.”

  “Oh, I hoped you’d be sleeping.”

  “Where are you?”

  “This buddy called me around one, there was this party and everybody was …”

  “You went to a party? With alcohol?”

  “Some idiot drove his car through the garage door. I helped get him out.”

  When his words stalled, she didn’t interrogate. He inhaled the silence that waited without pushing.

  “And then the guy was going to drive home, and Keith was too drunk to drive him or stop him from driving, and by then everybody else had left, so … I couldn’t let him drive. Anyway. Now I’m on my way home.”

  “And how are you?” The warmth in her voice seeped inside him and blunted the claws of his thirst.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Of course. Now. How are you?”

  Eight years, ten months, thirteen days. Fourteen tomorrow. He tried not to swallow the phantom taste, but his throat contracted anyway. “I could use some coffee. But I’m okay.”

  “Nearing home?”

  “Getting there.”

  “Are you passing anywhere significant?”

  “One store down. Two to go.”

  “All right, then we’ll talk.”

  “Lee, it’s four in the morning.”

  “You drive fast.”

  A chuckle pushed through the gratitude that surged in his chest. But she needed to sleep. If he told her he was okay, she’d believe him. Not true of the early days. Lies used to spurt from his mouth without a thought, when booze was the topic. But he’d earned trust back, and she had to be tired, and …

  “Marcus?”

  “I was going to tell you to go to sleep.”

  “If I do, will you get home all right?” Lee’s voice held more caution now. Knowing.

  “Probably. I just …” He sighed.

  “Then what should we discuss?”

  “Um.” He tried to roll his shoulders, but his neck felt like a steel rod. “How was work? Got a story?”

  The pause evolved into hesitant silence. Lee needed to talk about something, but she hadn’t decided if she wanted to.

  “What happened?” He probably already knew. His hand constricted around the phone.

  “One of my ER patients was a victim of …”

  Rape. He wouldn’t make her say it. “Is she okay?”

  “A vertebra in her neck was fractured when he drove her head into a wall. And she is unlikely to have children.”

  The needles in his shoulders barely registered compared to the knot in his gut.

  “She could have been paralyzed.” Lee’s voice had become a flat-line of facts. “She told me she didn’t know him. She was lying.”

  Words weren’t enough. Silence wasn’t, either, but he was better at that. He drove with the phone to his ear and listened to Lee’s soft breathing. He passed the next liquor store, then the last one. He breathed deeply and imagined coffee and the smell of Lee’s flowery shampoo. Finally, he pulled into his garage and sat in the dim glow of the overhead light. After a minute, it turned off. Time to go inside.

  “Are you okay?” he said as he let himself into the house.

  “I believe so. You?”

  “I’m home.”

  Before he could free his key from the door, a clatter of toenails rushed toward him. Indy licked the back of his hand. Her tail lashed the air, swished across the wood floor when he motioned her to sit. Her tongue lapped between his fingers.

  “Indy says hi,” he said.

  “Hello to Indy. And thank you for calling me.”

  He pictured her, curled against the arm of the couch, swallowed in fleece lounge pants and a size-large hoodie. Maybe her black hair was poking out around her face, damp from a shower. Maybe she’d plugged her ear buds into her phone and sat with her slim wrists crossed over her knees.

  “Thanks for talking, and listening, and … knowing.”

  A smile returned to her voice. “You’re welcome.”

  The call ended. Marcus lowered the phone. They didn’t need to say good-bye.

  3

  Sometimes, Aubrey would like a best friend who took no for an answer. She shifted the phone between her shoulder and ear to turn the crank on the old infant swing. “I’d rather not, Karlyn, really.”

  “Come on, girl.” Karlyn’s voice carried concern that she tried to mask as lighthearted persuasion. “I refuse to go alone to a baby shower for someone I barely know. And I hate to not go and make it look like I don’t want to get to know her.”

  “I’ve never even met her.” Aubrey set the swing in motion, and Elliott’s pink smile opened wide in a soundless cackle. “You like that, baby boy?”

  “Love it,” Karlyn said.

  “Hey, multitasking mother over here.”

  “You still talk to him?”

  “Of course. I can’t not, I guess.”

  “Does he look at you?”

  “Sometimes.” If she walked into his field of vision first. Aubrey stifled the sigh because sighing was such a shallow expression, anyway. As if air shoved from her lungs could smooth away the barbed truth. She focused on the less world-tilting topic. “Who ever heard of bringing a guest to a baby shower?”

  “She knows I won’t know anybody. It was nice of her to offer.”

  “We can sit in our own little corner and chat, and ostracize everyone else.”

  “Well, that wasn’t my plan …”

  Of course not. Karlyn’s plan would include fluttering from table to table, meeting each woman there, and enthralling most of them with her genuine warmth. Nothing wrong with that, of course. If Aubrey possessed such a trait, she’d use it, too. She crossed her apartment living room, four steps on flattened ivory carpet. She sank onto the secondhand sofa and waved at her baby. That wasn’t language; it was only a wave. She’d never known before that hand motions and sign language were not the same.

  “I’m just trying to get my Salmon back,” Karlyn said quietly.

  Oh … that. Aubrey tried to smile away the sudden weight on her chest. “Maybe I got tired of being pegged as a fish.”

  “It was you. It still is. We just have to get you out of hibernation.”

  “Salmon migrate, Karlyn. They don’t hibernate.”

  “Will you come to the shower? Please?”

  Aubrey leaned into the hard back of the couch and closed her eyes. Her fingers rubbed a mindless motion into the cushion beside her, as if she could massage the gold and brown tweed into soft microfiber. Maybe she could go. Maybe it would be right to mingle, however clumsily. To prattle with the moms about first teeth and diaper brands, pedicures and new purses (not that she’d gotten either of those things lately). Maybe it wouldn’t be wrong to pretend she’d never lived three weeks of re-education.

  But wouldn’t she also have to pretend that she was
n’t a Christian? And wouldn’t that be wrong?

  “I guess I can’t make it any worse.” The words slipped out before she could swallow them, slick and sour.

  “Aubrey, listen to me. I don’t care what anybody says. You’re forgiven, girl. You. Are. Forgiven.”

  No. I’m not. But life should continue. Elliott deserved a socially functioning mother. Aubrey leaned forward, elbows on knees, and clutched the phone. “I get free cheesecake, right?”

  Karlyn’s soft sob caught in her laughter. “Goes without saying.”

  “Does the mom-to-be have a gift registry somewhere?”

  “You’re signing my card. That’s all you’re allowed to do.”

  “I’ll see if Mom can watch Elliott. But she can always watch Elliott.” Mom would adopt her grandson if she could. Get him away from his mother’s dangerous religious beliefs.

  “Fantastic. You’re going to make it, Salmon. And someday—” Karlyn broke off as a muted pounding came over the line.

  “What’s that noise?” Aubrey said.

  “Somebody doesn’t see the doorbell, I guess.”

  “You need to go?”

  “Hold on, I’m—” A gasp broke through the snap of rising blinds, faintly picked up by the phone.

  “Karlyn, who is it?”

  The second of silence felt eternal. “Con-cops.”

  Oh. No.

  “Aubrey, it’s okay.”

  Okay? Okay? “Okay?”

  “I have to go, I have to let them in, they’ve got a search warrant, but listen—it’s going to be fine, nothing’s going to happen. I’ll call you back when they’re gone. Everything’s fine.”

  “What are you—”

  “I can’t explain right now. I’ll call you back.”

  “Be careful,” Aubrey said, as if that would make a difference.

  “I will. Don’t worry.”

  The hand gripping the phone did not move from her ear, even when the dial tone turned to boisterous beeping. Don’t worry? What was Karlyn talking about? They were at the door with a search warrant. They might wear gray uniforms, their cars the same color and topped with single green lights. They might wear navy suits, their car unmarked, dark and nondescript. When they came to Aubrey’s door, she’d thought they were salespeople.