Liz woke him at four in the morning with the news that Kimberly was gone.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Walked out of my house wearing my clothes, that kind of gone.”
He sat up, moving to push the covers back but catching nothing but air. He hadn’t even undressed, just gotten his shoes off before lying back on the bed and falling into a deep and troubled sleep.
“I heard her go out the side door and when I went to yell for her, she started running up the drive,” Liz said.
Barrett pulled on his shoes and went down the steps and outside. He couldn’t see anything but trees and shadows. The drive was a long winding path through the woods that led out to the rural, two-lane highway that ran between Camden and Augusta. There was never much traffic on it, and at this time of morning, it was completely silent.
He got into his car and started down the drive, figuring he’d have to gamble on turning east or west and guessing that she would have gone east, back toward the coast, when he came around a curve and she was pinned in the headlights. She was standing at the end of the driveway, trying to light a cigarette while staring at her phone. Her face was lit a ghostly blue from the screen. When he got out of the car, she looked back at him and wiped her eyes with the heel of the hand that held the cigarette, blotting fresh tears.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Got a ride coming. I know she doesn’t want me there, and I don’t want to be there either. Can’t sleep there, can’t sleep out at Little Spruce. I just need some friggin’ rest, Barrett. That’s all.”
“Where are you going to rest?”
She made a dismissive gesture. “I got a friend coming.”
“Who?”
“None of your damned business.”
He reached back through the open window and shut off the engine.
“I’ll wait with you, then.”
“I don’t need you to wait with me. Go on back to bed.” She was looking up the road uneasily. “I’ll call you tomorrow, tell you where I am.”
“No, thanks. You called me all the way back from Montana. Remember that? I’d rather know where you are. I don’t have time to waste finding you.”
Headlights interrupted them, winding up the road from below. They were both silent as the car approached—an old Saturn that sounded like a steam locomotive. The car pulled up beside them, the window slid down, and a voice from inside said, “Yo, Kimmy, who’s your friend?”
It was a young white kid with a thin beard tracing his jaw, most of his face hidden by the shadows from his Red Sox cap, but Barrett knew the car. The last time he’d seen its driver, he’d been fighting for breath on the floor of the Harpoon.
Barrett leaned down so Ronnie Lord could see his face.
“Aw, shit,” Ronnie said. “What are you doing to me, Kimmy?”
“Where are you taking her, Ronnie?” Barrett said.
“I’m not taking her anywhere. This is bullshit. This is entrapment, man. You had her text me—that’s not legal. That’s not…nothing you find is legal.” He was already putting the car in park, prepared for the inevitable search.
“It’s your lucky night, Ronnie. If you tell me the truth, you get to drive out of here with no searches. Where were you taking her?”
“Nowhere. Seriously. I was just…” He wet his lips, studied Barrett, and decided that honesty was the lowest-risk option. “I was dropping off for her, man. She hit me with this address, and I was dropping off what she needed. I don’t know what you’re asking about, where I was taking her, all that. I’m not a damn cabdriver.”
“Of course not. It’s legal to drive a taxi.” Barrett stepped back from the window and smacked the Saturn’s door. “Get out of here. I’d dump whatever shit you’ve got, though. Cops can hear you coming from Belfast to Bangor. And, Ronnie? If I learn that you told anybody about where you stopped tonight—”
“Nah, nah, nah.” He held up his hands, the picture of innocence. “I don’t remember a thing, bro.”
“Go home, Ronnie.”
Ronnie Lord shifted the car back into drive. The exhaust clattered like a sawmill and he pulled away. Barrett watched his taillights disappear, and when he turned to look at Kimberly, he saw Liz standing in the driveway behind her.
“That was Ronnie Lord?” she said. “At my home in the middle of the night?”
“Yes,” Barrett said, feeling a building rage like distant thunder. “Kimberly needed a package. Strange, considering she told me she’s been clean.”
“I have been clean! But then you took me to the pond and made me remember it again, and now all I can see is them! I close my eyes and I see the way the blood bubbled up in all that plastic and how it got caught in his mouth when he tried to breathe! I just wanted something to make it go away.”
“We’re leaving now,” Barrett said. He was hearing Kimberly but it was Liz’s voice that resonated with him—a drug dealer had pulled up to her driveway in the middle of the night, and it was, ultimately, Barrett who’d allowed that. “Pick a destination, Kimberly. Pick a bus station, pick Ronnie’s basement, I don’t give a shit. But you are leaving.”
“Take me to Mémère’s, I guess.”
“Fine.”
“I don’t know if she’ll even open the door for me.”
“I guess we’ll find out,” Barrett said, suddenly exhausted. He went around the car and pulled the passenger door open and waited. Kimberly finally walked over to it. Just before she climbed inside, she stopped and looked back at Liz.
“Miss Street? I’m sorry. I just…I just needed to make it stop for a little while, that was all. If you’d seen the same things I did, you’d understand.”
She ducked into the car without waiting for a response.