Broken (11 page)

“There’ll be more coming in a little while. Wait till they get a look at you.”

She really isn’t there, she really never was there, she really can’t be, can she?

And then something snaps and something whispers inside of her and it’s the first time she’s heard a voice this distinct.

You need to get out of here, Laila
.

She needs to get out as soon as possible. Because this is going to end badly, and there is no hope outside of this house unless
she leaves now.

“Go to sleep.”

Laila jerks awake again and sits up and looks around the room.

“Who’s there?” she asks.

But it doesn’t respond.

Her head against the pillow, her eyes wide open, she thinks of the boat named
Precious
and of riding on Lake Michigan and she remembers how Tyler used to hold her hand.

She lies awake and thinks of this for a very long time.

•   •   •

Lex is sleeping in his car, his head leaning on his palm, when the grating at the door stirs him. His eyes open, but his mind
is slow to follow. The lights of the rest stop in front of him glow but don’t reveal anybody around. He glances out the window
at nothing but empty parking spaces.

The sound comes again. It’s like someone or something is brushing up against the car.

Then he hears the handle fumbling up and down. Someone is trying to get in his car.

He checks that the locks are secure.

Scanning all sides of his car, he doesn’t see anybody.

The handle keeps banging away, the intruder wanting in.

He starts his car and then slowly rolls down his window. He probably shouldn’t, but he wants to know who is doing this.

He peers over his window but doesn’t see anybody.

“Who’s there?”

Then he hears footsteps scampering away. Light, steady, fast.

Lex opens the door and steps out but can barely feel his legs from sitting so long.

He doesn’t see anybody as he moves around the car.

Nobody.

Not a sound or a sight.

Then something comes from behind him. Something high and light.

A creepy little laugh.

He turns around but doesn’t see anybody. It’s warm outside, and the back of his shirt is damp with sweat. It’s late—maybe
close to midnight.

“Hello?”

He hears cicadas droning away in the nearby woods, an occasional semi on the freeway he’s alongside. The Kentucky night is
humid, the sky clear.

He thinks of another night more than a decade ago. Another hot summer night when he found himself in a car waiting.

“Not now,” he tells himself.

He gets in the car and quickly pulls away. Time to keep looking.

Even if he doesn’t really know what he’ll do once he finds her.

Sometimes, in my dreams, you are there. In a desert, flat and dry and endless, I see your shape. A figure walking toward me.
Walking toward me with water. And I’m so scared and I shake and yet you come up to me and hold my hand and tell me it’s going
to be okay. And I stop shaking and I look into your eyes but they look just like mine. It terrifies me.

Because the eyes start to bleed.

And then I see that they’re empty holes.

Y
ou had a young lady spend the night here last night.”

“Why yes.”

“Any idea where she might have went?”

“No.”

James looks down at the bob of a hairdo and the smile caked in wrinkles. The woman tries to look out past him to the parking
lot, but he moves to prevent her.

“Can I have a look where she stayed last night?”

“Is something wrong?”

He looks at the woman. He examines the eyes. Then he releases a smile and extends his hands.

“No, nothing wrong. It’s just—Laila is a dear friend. And we’re planning a getaway. I want it to be a surprise. But I have
a feeling she’s trying to plan a surprise on me.”

“How romantic.”

“Yes. Well, she’s really the romantic one. I’m just trying to keep up with her.”

“She didn’t mention anything about that this morning at breakfast.”

“Did she mention anything—anything that might be helpful?”

“No. Just that she was passing by.” The woman stops and smiles. “And to tell anybody that might come looking for her that
they can just forget about her. That she’s long gone.”

James realizes the old woman is a far better actor than he is. He no longer carries the forced smile on his face. “Let me
see her room.”

“Well, I still have to—”

“I want to see it now.”

“Okay,” she says. “Follow me.”

There is nothing in the room that’s been left behind. Nothing of interest. Even though James knows he’s not going to lose
her, he still wants to know where she’s headed.

The more information he knows, the better it will be when he reaches her.

“You have a phone in here?” he eventually asks.

“No.”

“Do you remember—did she use your phone at all?”

“Why would she do that?”

“Just answer the question.”

“No.”

“What about a cell phone. Did you see one on her? Did you see her use one?”

“She had very little on her.”

He sighs and curses and looks around the room.

“Why are you looking for her?” the old woman asks.

“Did she take her car when she left?”

“She sure didn’t leave it here. Hey—what do you want with her?”

James just ignores her and heads back downstairs.

When he gets in the car, he dials the phone.

“That was useless. Utterly useless like this whole trip.”

But he listens to the instructions and says yeah a few times and it all sounds so easy. Just like everything. Everything was
supposed to be so easy, but Laila didn’t take the bait when she was supposed to.

“I’m done chasing and playing games,” he says in the phone. “When I catch up to her, I’m through with all this. This was supposed
to be easy. She was supposed to be easy. If I find her, I’m going to make it easy again.”

•   •   •

Laila has been driving since the morning. She passed the exits for Nashville half an hour ago and finally decides she’s driven
far enough to stop. More than anything, she wants to get out of the car and rest. She’s driving west, but beyond that doesn’t
have any idea where she’s going.

She finds a fast-food restaurant and barely eats a chicken sandwich. She sits outside and warms herself in the sun. It feels
good against her bare arms and legs. Her feet are bare, and she reminds herself that she needs to purchase something besides
sandals, which aren’t the best to drive or walk around in. This makes her think of other things she needs, but then she glances
at the car and knows it holds everything she owns. They could bury her with all her possessions. And maybe that’s the way
life should be.

The Honda CR-V still has the new-car smell inside it. She purchased it in Greenville just a month ago, just as she was thinking
her life was moving ahead. Perhaps not moving. But she was standing up on her own two legs and finally ready to start moving.
All before the past showed up on her doorstep.

She glances at the car.

“Alabaster Silver Metallic,” she says.

It can’t be called just silver. Of course not. Now paint colors for cars had three-word definitions. But silver is silver.

She thinks of what’s in the car. The only things she really cares
about are the photos she’s carried with her since leaving Brady, their meaning continuing to grow as the years go by. In
New York she had several thousand shots that she left in an instant. Many of them her, many of them her with the beautiful
people, with celebrities and friends. She had photo albums and framed shots and magazine covers and pictures shot by the big-name
photographers. But none of those meant anything. Not like the dozen or so she still had—some of them folded, some of them
blurry, some of them really bad outtakes. The other shots were all part of the fallacy and the façade. But these pictures
were real.

For a moment Laila thinks of the pictures she left behind in Chicago. Those were left for a different reason. Different but
the same.

The pictures she still has are all that matter. They are a piece of life reminding her of her humanity.

And along with those pictures, she has the handgun Kyle’s cousin loaned to her. It’s hers now. One day she’ll send Kyle some
money for it.

She scans the parking lot and sees a family going into the Wendy’s. The father and mother hold the hands of the two-year-old
girl. Laila watches this and knows there is some meaningful and melancholy thought attached to this image somewhere deep inside
her, but she has managed to keep it down in the hidden well far underneath the grime and the gunk in the seeping waters of
yesterday. There is no emotion swelling inside of her. She knows what the picture is and what it could mean. To her it’s just
a picture of another life and another existence. The same way that family might look at a fashion magazine and see an image
that is real but which is a pure fantasy, a delusion, a fairy tale.

The fantasy and fairy tale do exist. But they come with a price.

She glances at her watch and isn’t sure why. It’s not the time that bothers her. It’s the nagging feeling that if she stays
still for too long, someone will catch up to her. So she gets back in the SUV encased in Alabaster Silver Metallic paint and
starts it up.

It’s just a moment.

A second in the span of twenty-seven years.

Back on the road, she switches to the left lane and rolls to a stop at a red light. As she waits to drive down the street
a hundred yards or so and turn onto the exit to the interstate, she glances at the car next to her.

And sees him.

The face of death. With blood still on it. The same lifeless, soulless eyes staring at her. The gashes still there from her
nails. His teeth smiling. His hand waving.

Laila turns around and then looks again at the car next to her. It’s him. It’s the pale figure of Connor resting behind a
wheel waving and leering at her.

She jams her foot on the gas and heads out without looking.

A car horn blares next to her as a vehicle veers out of the intersection to avoid her.

She continues ahead and looks in her mirror to see the car.

But she can’t see it.

On the interstate, driving ninety miles an hour, she tries to slow down her breathing. She puts a hand on her chest and can
feel the beating.

She shakes her head and tries to wave this off.

She didn’t just see that.

She imagined it just like the other things she’s imagined.

Yet she continues to look in her mirror at the cars she passes and at the seat behind her.

Just in case.

•   •   •

“Is this Kyle Ewing?”

“Yeah.”

“Kyle, my name is Lex Torres. I’m Laila’s brother.”

There is silence, and Lex asks if he’s still there.

“What’s this about?”

“I got some information from the bank that said you recently saw Laila.”

“Who told you that?”

“I’m just looking for my sister. She called me yesterday and sounded like she was in trouble.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Is there a chance we could just talk?”

“No.”

“That was quick.”

“Why do you want to talk?”

“I just want to see if you know anything about where she might be.”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“Is she in trouble?”

“How do I know this is really her brother?”

“If we meet, I can prove it to you.”

“I bet you can.”

“No, look, I’m serious,” Lex says.

“I just—I don’t know anything about her, okay? She works at the bank. That’s all I know. And she was supposed to come in to
work today, and she didn’t. Did you try her apartment?”

“Yes. Nobody’s there.”

“Well, then you can wait for her. I’m sure she’ll be coming back anytime.”

Lex listens to the silence that follows and clicks off his cell.

Getting to this point was really easy, a lot easier than Lex thought it would be. He tracked the number she had called him
from to her apartment, where he spoke to the manager. The guy let him into her apartment, but they didn’t find much. It looked
like she had taken off with the few things she brought here. Besides discovering that she worked at the bank, Lex didn’t gain
any more insight on where Laila might be or why she was in Greenville in the first place.

The people at the bank had offered no other clues except for a
name—Kyle Ewing. Now, waiting in darkness in Laila’s apartment, Lex tries to picture his sister here. There’s an empty smell
to this place, as if there were no meals cooked here, no visitors let in, no pets running around, no life lived. The manager
said she had paid in advance for a year, yet it doesn’t look like this place has been occupied for even a month.

“What are you running from?” he asks as he stares at the blank walls in the blank bedroom.

There are some clothes still here. Outfits that don’t seem to fit her, or more like common outfits that don’t seem natural
on someone so uncommon, but he guesses they’re for work. The other things are even less revealing than what he found in Chicago.
Some books from the library, none of which have any significance: a little booklet on Greenville, a couple books on New Orleans,
a few novels. He doesn’t find any fashion magazines or other signs from that life.

The alarm clock looks like it might have been bought at a Wal-Mart for ten bucks. The same goes for the iron on the creaky
wood floor.

The phone in the apartment rings, and he picks it up. He listens for a moment and doesn’t hear a voice. Rather he hears a
grinding drone. It seems to get louder as he listens, so he clicks off the line. There is no caller ID on the phone.

Lex checks his cell, then walks out of the bedroom, needing to get out of this place for a moment.

As he walks he hears something behind him.

It sounds like laughter.

The same laughter he heard back at the rest stop.