“Friend of mine,” Sam tells me. He’s honest with us, or at least, as honest as he thinks he can be. That’s something I really like about him.
“Why are you talking to the FBI? He is FBI, right?”
“Because they’re tracking your dad,” he says. “And also, we need to understand something about Absalom. I’m hoping that the FBI might have more information.”
I know about Absalom, and I frown. “Why?”
“Because Absalom might have someone else besides Graham to send after us,” he says, after a glance at Mom to confirm it’s okay to tell me about that. “And they might have traced us this far. Which is why we’re using new phones now.”
Mom finally chimes in. “Absalom could be a group, not just a person. If so, they could be helping your dad stay hidden, while also working to find us for him.”
“If there’s danger, why are you taking us back to Norton? Why can’t we just stay with you?” Connor asks. He lowers his book but keeps the place with a finger between the pages.
“Seriously?” Mom is trying to sound amused, but she just sounds grim. “You know the last thing I’m going to do is take you anywhere near trouble. My job is to keep you away from it. Besides, this has been hard enough on you already. You both need to be somewhere safe, and you need rest.”
And you don’t? I think it, but I don’t say it, which is weird for me. Instead, I say, “You don’t have to go, you know. The cops are chasing him. So is the FBI. Why can’t you just stay with us?”
Mom takes her time with the answer. I wonder if she even understands it herself.
“Sweetheart, I know your father,” Mom says. “If I’m out in the open, it means he might do something stupid and expose himself to come after me. And that means he gets caught faster, and fewer people get hurt. But I can’t take that risk if you’re with me. Understand?”
Sam again says nothing. I’m watching his hands on the steering wheel. He’s pretty good at covering up what he thinks and feels, but not that good, because I see the slight whitening of his knuckles.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “I get it. You’re bait.” I fiddle with my iPod but don’t put the headphones back in. “Are you going to kill him?” I don’t know what I want to hear.
“No, sweetie,” Mom says. But I don’t hear any conviction behind it. I know that Sam wants to put a bullet in Dad’s head. Maybe more than one. And I get it. I get that Dad is a monster who needs to be slayed.
But Dad is also a memory to me. A strong, warm figure tucking me into bed and placing a kiss on my forehead. A laughing man whirling me around in the sun. A father kissing my boo-boo finger and making it better. A giant shadow scooping me up off that soft braided rug and folding me in warm, protective arms.
I look away, out the window, and I don’t argue with any of it. Thinking about my father, both as the monster and the man, makes me feel short of breath and sick, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. No, that’s a lie: I know I’m supposed to hate him. Mom does. Sam does. Everybody does, and they’re right.
But he’s my dad.
Connor and I don’t talk about this—not ever—but I know he feels this, too . . . the way it pulls and rips inside to try to match up these two very different things. I think about that colorful old rug again, a piece of home inside a monster’s den. I can’t decide if that was him trying to still be Dad, or if the monster was all there ever was, and Dad was a mask he wore to mock us.
Maybe it’s both. Or neither. It’s exhausting, and I put the music back on and try to drown it all out.
I sleep for a while. When I wake up, we’re close. Sam turns the car off the main freeway and onto smaller state highways, and we glide through a dozen small towns before the turnoff comes for Norton, and Stillhouse Lake. I watch that buckshot-riddled old sign glide by with a pain deep in my stomach. I want to jump out of the car and run down that road, run straight for home and throw myself into my bed and pull the covers over my head.
We avoid heading into Norton proper and instead take a side road off into the deeper woods. It’s mostly mud and ruts, and bumpy; even Connor finds it too hard to read with all the jolts, and he slides a bookmark in place with a stubborn sigh of frustration. We go maybe half a mile and then loop around a broad turn to come up to a small, old, neatly maintained cabin surrounded by high iron fencing.
Javier Esparza is sitting on the porch. He’s at least a dozen years older than I am, if not more; he’s dressed in a khaki-green T-shirt and dark jeans, and he looks more like a soldier than people in uniform. As he stands up, I see that he’s got a shotgun in easy reach. He’s also wearing a semiautomatic handgun in a holster on his belt—more obvious than the way my mom wears hers, in a shoulder rig currently concealed under her leather jacket. He’s also got a big killer of a dog—a rottweiler—lying panting at his feet.
As Mr. Esparza stands up, so does the dog, all muscle and attention focused right on us.
Mom gets out of the car first, and I see Mr. Esparza relax slightly. He looks down at the dog and says something in Spanish, and the dog sinks back down. Peaceful, but still watching. “Hey, Gwen,” he says to my mother, coming forward to open the gate. “Any trouble?”
“Nothing,” she says.
“Nobody following?”
“Nope,” says Sam as he exits the driver’s side of the car. “Not behind or ahead. And no drones.”
I shoot a raised-eyebrow look at my brother across the trunk of the car as we’re getting out and mouth, Drones? I say, “Are we living in a stupid spy movie now?”
“Nope,” Connor says without even a trace of a smile. “It’s a horror movie.”
I swallow my smart-ass comeback and go to the trunk to grab my bag. Connor takes his. The open trunk lid is momentarily hiding us from the adults, so I say quickly, “Are you okay? For real?”
My brother freezes for a second, like a visual stutter, then looks over at me. His eyes are clear. He doesn’t look upset. He doesn’t look anything, really. “No,” he says. “And you’re not, either, so stop trying to be in charge.”
“I am in charge,” I tell him loftily, but he’s hit me for sure with that one. I ignore him, because that’s the best thing I can do right now, and walk over to stand next to Mom. I’m watching the dog, who’s watching me. They can smell fear. I’ve had a bone-hurting dread of big, loud, angry dogs since one lunged at me when I was four.
I decide to stare him down.
Connor, stepping up, pokes me in the back. Hard. I wince and glare over my shoulder, and he says, “Dogs don’t like that. Stop glaring at him.”
“What are you now, the Dog Whisperer?”