Escape from Eden (19 page)

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Edenton is not the kind of place that goes unnoticed here,” he said. “Many people know of it. But you’re in my truck, so answer my question, or we won’t take you to San Sebastian. Tell me why you are not in Edenton.”

“We—” I shot a look at Gabriel, hoping for help, but realized he didn’t understand what we were saying. I guessed his fancy prep school didn’t teach Spanish.

The man shook his head in disgust, slapping a hand on the seat with a shot of fury. “Why,” he asked in thick English, “are you not in Edenton?”

“We escaped,” Gabriel said with a shrug.

The woman gasped. The man’s expression changed from virtuous anger to wondrous fear.

“Escaped?” he said with surprise.

“Edenton is not what it seems, sir,” I said, grabbing the rear window’s frame and ducking my head so I could see the other side of his face in the rearview mirror. “It’s a dangerous place. The Reverend is cruel and, well, dangerous. We’re going to San Sebastian to talk to the police.”

“We are?” Gabriel asked.

Shushing Gabriel, I switched back to Spanish, and said to the man, “There are people there who need help. The Reverend is doing horrible, twisted things to his Flock.”

The man slid a glance at the woman, who looked away, blinking back tears. He faced the steering wheel. In the mirror I could see exasperation flicker in his eyes.

Did they need more convincing? “I can cite examples, sir,” I said. “The other night in Edenton, the Rev—”

“Do not say another word to us about Edenton,” he snapped and shifted the truck into drive.

The drive to San Sebastian rattled my teeth and bones and mind. By the time we reached the city, exhaustion and worry dragged me further down into the bed of the pickup. The lights lining the streets and outside the shops shone so brightly I had to squint to see the details along the sidewalks.

The storefronts were painted vibrant colors, tropical fruit colors: just-picked shades of green, sun-ripened yellows and oranges. Wires were strung above the street and hung between the buildings, delivering electricity in an intricate web. Small motorcycles buzzed by the pickup truck, leaving trails of choking smoke. Stray dogs, and the occasional scrawny chicken, wove through the legs of pedestrians along the busy street.

The truck came to an abrupt halt. My head hit the cab behind me on the ricochet. Pain lanced my skull and I reached back to rub it away.

“Get out,” the man said in English and without ceremony. “You tell no one who drove you into the city.”

“We don’t even know your name,” Gabriel said as he hopped from the truck bed. He stretched out a hand for me. I accepted it and followed him down onto the sidewalk.

“The police station is one block away.” The man pointed out the truck window down the street. “Around the corner to the right.”

The woman in the passenger’s seat kept her face turned away, but I saw her reflection in the truck’s side mirror. She worried her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger, her eyes darting from person to person on the street. She whispered something in Spanish I couldn’t make out over the street noise.

With a curt nod, the man steered the truck into traffic and it rumbled away from us, tearing down the street, almost sideswiping a couple on a teetering motorcycle. Pedestrians jumped back onto the curb as the pickup swung around a corner.

“He’s charming,” Gabriel said.

“Well, he did bring us here,” I said, and started up the sidewalk.

The city smelled like grilled meat and hot tar, open-air cooking fires billowing out storefronts. I tried to ignore the gnawing pain in my stomach. I’d guessed it was an aftereffect of the drugs, or the stress, or the impeding sense of doom hanging over me.

“Wonder why he didn’t want the police to know who brought us.”

Gabriel walked beside me with a self-confidence that belied his bedraggled appearance. I couldn’t tell which of us was drawing more stares from passersby.

He said, “Maybe he’s in trouble with the cops or maybe he’s paranoid. Who knows. Everyone has crazy in them. Earth is the mental institution of the universe.”

I stopped and swung him a confused look.

“It’s a quote … I heard. Somewhere.” He fidgeted with his shirtsleeves, trying to shove them further up his arms. “Hey, look, we don’t have to go to the cops, you know. Cops aren’t always,” he paused, “on my side of things.”

“Your side of things? What do you mean?” I dropped my voice. “Are you talking about when you told me you were a murder—”

“Ricci,” he snapped. “Look, forget I said anything about cops.” He snagged my arm and dodged people as we hustled up the street. “We’ll go. We’ll get it over with. They’ll help us and everything will be cool, right?” He answered his own question. “Right. It will.” His voice tightened when he addressed me. “But don’t bring that up while we’re in the station, got it?”

“Of course I won’t—ouch!” I twisted my arm out of his grip. “What is the matter with you?”

“You want an alphabetical list?”

A few moments later, we pushed our way through the police station’s glass doors, the large star-shaped shield painted on the glass obscuring our view of the lobby until we stepped inside. A man in a black button-down shirt with a stern, hard face stood at a counter and looked up as a beep sounded, broadcasting our entrance. His eyes widened as he took in our torn clothes and soot-smeared faces.

I approached the counter and quietly, carefully, tried explaining our situation. As I spoke, my gaze swept over the people behind him. A sleepy-eyed man sat next to a wide, paper-filled desk with his wrist handcuffed to the arm of the chair. A few others huddled around a bright, glowing screen, pointing to it while stealing glances my way. A younger-looking man, with a few days’ growth of beard and a loose navy-colored tie dangling from his collar, watched us with an interest that sharpened my nerves.

When I said the name Edenton to the police officer at the counter, he took a step back. His expression grew guarded.

“One moment,” he said, picking up a phone and mumbling into it.

“What’s going on?” Gabriel whispered.

“I’m not sure,” I replied, unable to hear what the man was saying.

After a minute or so, the police officer hung up and eyed us warily. I knew how we appeared—two kids who looked like they’d hiked the length of the Amazon in their Sunday Best. But, to my growing disappointment, I didn’t see sympathy in anyone’s eyes.

A woman walked out from a steel door connected to the lobby. She was dressed in a stark white shirt and gray pants with a gun slung at her hip. At the sight of the gun so close to me, I had to snap my thoughts away from Juanita. The woman’s hair was forced back from her face in a severe braid, but even pulled back so tightly it didn’t straighten the kink from her scalp. She approached us with a cruel determination that caused my stomach to sink.

“You must leave,” she said in accented English. She spoke just softly enough for no one else to hear. “We cannot help you.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Edenton is not our jurisdiction. Now, leave. Please.”

“But—” I started.

“You can’t do this,” Gabriel snapped. “We’re teenagers. Underage. We have no place to go. Don’t you have some legal obligation to help us? You swore to uphold the law. If we were back in the States—”

“You are not in the States,” the woman said, pointing a long finger in Gabriel’s face. Her nails were chewed and ragged. “And, as I said, we cannot help you. Leave. Now.” She dropped her hand and with the tips of her fingers, she grazed the gun at her hip before letting her hand rest at her side.

I tugged on Gabriel’s arm. “Let’s go.”

But he stood there, eyes locked on hers, silently challenging her threat.

“Gabriel, let’s go,” I repeated and managed to drag him though the doors under the suspicious gazes of all the people in the station.

We walked a block on the hectic sidewalk without speaking. My mind ran with panicky thoughts, one leading to the next like a runaway train. We had nothing. No money, no help, no way to get back to Edenton even if we wanted to. And there was no way in hell I was going back there if I couldn’t walk back out with Max. The chances of that seemed slim—or more likely impossible. My shoulder slammed into someone rushing by and I muttered an apology in Spanish.

“We should find the hospital,” I said to Gabriel, snagging his wrist. “Get to Juanita.”

He slouched, looking tired beyond his years, and gently guided me to a niche in one of the buildings. “Why are we so sure Thaddeus brought her here? She could be anywhere.”

Or nowhere. I shoved the thought away.

Gabriel continued, “What happens if we see Thaddeus at the hospital? Do you think he’s just going to let us walk out the door with her?”

“I know, but we have to do some—”

“A guy is following us,” Gabriel said, eyes trained just beyond my shoulder.

He shoved me into the crowd again. I navigated around an older woman carrying overstuffed plastic bags and tried to throw a casual glance over my shoulder. The sidewalk behind us was filled with too much chaos, too much for me to even process. It melted away into a blurred mass.

“I don’t see anyone,” I said.

“I recognize him. He was in the police station, sitting at a desk.”

“Why would he be following us? The police won’t help us. No one will help us.” My feet ached; the skin on my legs was shredded from the underbrush in the jungle and stung. My head pounded and my stomach stirred. I wasn’t sure how much more my body, and soul, could take tonight.

“Enough,” I said, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. I was done with all this. Sick of running. If someone was following us I was going to find out why.

“Ricci, are you crazy?” Gabriel said.

“No, Gabriel. I’m tired.”

Someone approached. He looked like a rough sketch of a man, all harried and darting lines, his face slowly coming into view. The man with the scruffy beard, the navy tie flapping over his shoulder, came toward us with a purposeful gait. When he stopped in front of us, his eyes scanned the people on the street before speaking.

“Is it true you’re from Edenton?” His voice was a harsh whisper.

“Why would I lie about that?” I said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the flatness from my tone.

“People lie for many reasons.” He searched the street, as if someone were following him. “Come, this way. We must talk.”

“We’re not going anywhere with you,” Gabriel said.

“But I am a police officer—”

“Yes, sir. I know,” Gabriel said with put-on politeness. “But I happen to be scared shitless of the police.”

“You have no reason to be afraid of me,” he said.

I resisted the urge to scream my frustration in the man’s face. Instead, I said, “That woman in there said the police won’t help us.”

“I can help you. I will help.”

“You will?” I said, not wanting that spark of hope igniting in my chest, not wanting the expectation that someone—a stranger at that—would help us.

The man waved for us to follow him down the sidewalk. “I can take you to others who will help you, too.” When he saw the doubt in our expressions, he urged us on. “Come, please. I won’t harm you. I only want to get you to a place away from here. The Reverend has too many eyes in this town.”

A jolt of alarm trembled through me at the thought. “Okay,” I said.

Gabriel snagged my wrist. “No, definitely not okay,” he said. “Will you give us a minute?” he asked the man. Not waiting for an answer, he pulled me away. “You don’t actually think we’re going with this guy, do you?”

“Why not? Without help what do we have? You heard him. The Reverend has people in town watching—which doesn’t surprise me now, based on how the police reacted. And you know Thaddeus is looking for us. Do you want to stay here and let them find us? We don’t exactly blend in.” I flipped the ragged edge of my dress. “Gabriel, if they catch us … ” I let the conclusion rattle around silently between us. Over Gabriel’s shoulder I saw the man bobbing from one foot to the other impatiently. “I’m going with him, with or without you. I have nothing to lose.”

“I have plenty to lose. I’m young and in my prime.” I could tell Gabriel wasn’t entirely serious from the half-defeated tone. He sighed. “But I won’t let you go alone.”

I placed my hand over his, which still held my other wrist, and gave it a squeeze. The gesture was just as unexpected to me as it was to him. Our eyes locked and something passed between us. A truer connection than we’d felt before. Something less like the lust from earlier at the party and more like trust.

Gabriel and I faced the man, who now looked at us with hope. I nodded consent, and we followed him to a small green car. In nervous silence, Gabriel and I ducked into the backseat, dread settling over me as if I were in a funeral procession. The car started up and we drove out of the city and into the night.

The air blowing in through the open car window grew cooler as we chugged up the mountain. Gabriel sat, long legs folded in front of him, cramped into the tight space and unfazed by the cold.

“He’s taking us pretty far into the country,” he whispered over the groaning of the small car’s struggling engine.

“Looks that way,” I said.

I glanced at the officer—Officer Santiago, as he’d introduced himself earlier. He was talking into a very small, flat phone asking the person on the other end for directions up the mountain.

“And how do you know he isn’t taking us someplace for, I don’t know, a ritualistic killing?”

“Oh, you mean a traditional Amazonian Pit Viper bloodletting? That’s strictly a rainy-season ritual.”

In the soft glow coming from the dash, I saw Gabriel force down a grin. I smiled back. It felt good, that moment of levity. But the nagging returned, that clawing at the back of my mind reminding me that feeling good was wrong, improper. Before I’d known what was happening, everything had changed. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was outside of Edenton. I had been running from Thaddeus and Edenton security guards with guns. Juanita had been shot. A sensation of numbness settled over me. It was too much to feel, too much to think about. As much as I hated my life in Edenton, I wasn’t sure how I could ever go back for Max. I’d never see Mama or Max again. I swallowed the lump in my throat.