Unleashed

The solitary word tears through me like a rusty wire. Of course he’s never going away. I killed him. Took his life. Gazed into his eyes as he took his last breath. It’s impossible to hide from this. He’ll find me. Here. In Mexico. Wherever I go, he will go with me.

A sob strangles my throat and I look down unseeingly, rocking, staring into my lap, tugging my short hair back until my scalp stings. Gibberish, incoherent pleas flow from my lips, begging him to go, to leave me alone. I don’t know who I’m talking to. God maybe. If God still listens to the prayers of someone like me.

I relax my grip on my skull and look up. The dark shape is gone. Shadows bleed over the walls with the oncoming dawn. God. I laugh softly. Maybe I am losing my mind. Hallucinating. Either that or a ghost really is visiting me. Whatever the case, I’m pretty much in a world of suck.

Sean still sleeps, lost in dreams. Or even better—that great oblivion of sleep where even dreams can’t touch you. He’s totally unmired in the past, and I envy him that. Maybe resent it, too. Even though it’s not his fault.

I inhale, but the room feels too tight, the walls too close. The odor of my freshly dyed hair sears my nostrils. I slip from the bed and make my way down the narrow hall, my sock-clad feet treading silently on the floor, my palms skimming along the wall as I walk. I step past the smaller bedroom where Sabine sleeps. Gil snores from the couch.

At the front door, I squeeze my feet into my shoes and turn the doorknob, desperate to taste air and feel open space all around me. Careful not to wake anyone, I ease outside.

Cool twilight greets me. The cicadas go at it, a hypnotic drone that drapes over a thicker layer of silence. It’s this underlying silence that unnerves me. It throbs like something alive, pulsing over my skin. Through me. The kind of quiet that you never hear in the city. Or in the suburbs. That indefinable thing, that electric buzz, is missing. People.

I tuck the choppy-short strands of hair behind my ears, exposing them to the bite of cold. I shiver, choosing my steps carefully over the broken and rutted ground as I make my way to the lookout. A quick glance behind reveals the hulking shape of the trailer. It looks innocuous, grim, and desolate sitting on concrete blocks, the hardwood planks cracked and buckling in places. The harsh climate has taken its toll on the structure. It’s as battered as the landscape.

A coyote yips in the distance. Months ago the sound would have startled me and sent me running back for shelter. I would have been terrified of coming face-to-face with a wild animal, but I don’t worry anymore. There are worse things than beasts waiting in the dark. Things like me.

Wind tears at my hair as I lower myself down to the outcropping overlooking the river far below. The rough scrape of rock abrades my palms as I settle my weight. Sean has spent hours out here, his skin turning brown from observing the comings and goings in the valley below.

The faintest color tinges the sky, casting the dawn a murky blue. I hug my knees to my chest, wishing I’d brought a blanket with me. It’s cold in the mornings and at night.

I know that the temperature will spike once the sun rises and bakes the earth—and us inside the trailer. We have a couple of table fans, but they only seem to stir the hot air around. I should enjoy the chill while I have it.

The coyote is quiet now. It’s only the purr of cicadas over the silence as I squint into the darkness below, detecting the barest glint of water there, waiting for us to cross.

Suddenly a blanket is draped over my shoulders. I start a little, glancing up sharply. Sean sinks down beside me.

“You should tell someone when you’re leaving the trailer.”

I nod. He’s right, of course. We’re fugitives. They’re looking for us. Well, maybe not us specifically, but carriers. We can’t be the only ones out here hiding. Hoping to get across.

“Thank you.” I tighten my fingers around the edge of the blanket. The fabric helps ward off the chill, but I still shiver. Silence stretches between us as we stare out at the fading night.

Sean’s voice strokes over me. “You ready to leave here?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Maybe out there, on the other side, dead men won’t haunt me.

I feel his gaze on me. “What’s going on, Davy?”

I don’t pretend that I don’t understand his meaning. I tried that with Sabine, but I can’t do that with Sean. Not after all we’ve been through. I owe him more than that. And yet I don’t know how to explain it, either. Am I prepared to confess that I’m seeing ghosts? “I can’t shake off Mount Haven. What I did there.” It’s as close as I can come to articulating the fact that I murdered someone in cold blood. He knows it, of course, but that doesn’t mean I can say it aloud.

I turn and get caught up in his eyes. Their blue-gray glitters at me in the rising dawn, and I long for when those eyes used to make me feel all kinds of good. “It’ll pass,” he says.

I nod, wanting to believe that, wanting to find some happiness.

“Give it time,” he adds. “Things happen. Things that you think you’ll never get over. But you do. You move on. It gets better with time. You forget. Forgive. Whatever.” A long pause follows, like he’s thinking . . . remembering something. Probably that thing he’s forgiven himself for. “Life goes on and you go on with it.”

He sounds like he almost believes that. I study him, searching to see the crack in his expression that reveals he doesn’t—that he’s lying to himself. To me. It never comes. He’s reached some kind of peace inside himself. Desperate longing for that same peace fills me, spreading in a bitter ache through my chest.