When She Woke (18 page)

“What happened at the center, Hannah? Daddy said they kicked you out.”

“Actually I left before they had the chance to.”

“Was it awful?”

“It was unspeakable.”

Becca put the bowl down in front of Hannah and sat across from her, studying her with a worried expression. “I wondered. Your letters didn’t sound like you.” She reached across the table and gave Hannah’s hand a squeeze. “You’ve gotten so thin.”

Hannah studied their two hands, so alike in shape, and now so blatantly mismatched. “And red, don’t forget red,” she said.

“Can you bear it?” Becca asked softly.

Hannah pulled her hand from her sister’s and gestured toward her eye. “Can you? And don’t tell me you tripped and fell.”

“It isn’t like you think,” Becca said. “Cole’s never hit me before, he’s not like that.” She shook her head. “It’s this men’s group he belongs to, it’s changed him. He’s angry all the time, and he’s always going out late at night. Twice I’ve found blood on his clothes the next day.”

Hannah felt the hairs on the back of her neck rising. “What does he say about it?”

“Nothing. He doesn’t talk about it, and I don’t dare ask him.” Becca paused, bit her lip.

“Tell me, Becca.”

“A few days ago I found something, in his jacket pocket.”

“What?”

“A ring. I’ve never seen him wear it, he must put it on after he goes out.”

“What is it? What’s on this ring?”

Becca’s eyes, frightened and despairing, lifted to Hannah’s. “A clenched hand, pierced by a bloody spike,” she whispered. “I think Cole’s joined the Fist.”

Hannah’s body went cold. The Fist of Christ was the most brutal and feared vigilante group in Texas, known to be responsible for the deaths of dozens of Chromes and the beating and torture of hundreds more. The Fist was made up of independent cells of five called Hands. The members wore flesh-colored rubber masks. Each struck a single blow with whatever weapon he chose to use: a boot or a brass-knuckled fist, a club, a knife, a gun. Each had the power when his turn came to maim, kill or let live, at his sole discretion. The only evidence they left behind was that symbol, branded or lasered into the flesh of their victims. Few of the Fist’s members had ever been caught and even fewer convicted. The leaders had eluded capture, protected by the autonomy of the Hands and the fanatical loyalty of their members.

Hannah’s parents considered the Fist blasphemous thugs, as did Aidan; he’d spoken against them from the pulpit on more than one occasion. But she’d heard plenty of other people at church defend and even champion their activities, saying, “Somebody needs to take out the garbage.”

“You have to leave him,” Hannah said, knowing even as she spoke that Becca would refuse, and that even if she agreed, Cole would never let her go.

“I can’t.” Becca’s hand cupped the mound of her belly. “He’s the father of my children, Hannah. And I still love him.”

“How can you, knowing what he’s out there doing? How long are you going to keep washing the blood from his shirts?”

“He’s only been in it a couple of months. If I leave him, he’ll never stop.”

“The Fist tortures and kills people, Becca. People like me.”

“Cole hasn’t killed anyone.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can and I do.” Becca’s expression turned defiant. “My husband’s no murderer. Cole believes in the sanctity of life. If I stay with him, I can help him stop. I
do
help him. Some nights, he says he’s going out, and I . . . I change his mind.” Her face colored, and Hannah thought,
Yeah, I bet I know how,
and then was immediately contrite. When had she become so crude and cynical, and toward her sister of all people?

“And when little Cole and his sister come,” Becca went on, “Cole won’t want to be part of that ugliness anymore. He won’t need it anymore, not with his baby son and daughter at home.”

Knowing she’d never convince Becca otherwise, Hannah changed tacks. “Have you told Mama and Daddy?”

“No. You know Daddy, he’d be bound to say something, and I’m afraid of what might happen. Cole would never hurt him, but if the others found out he knew . . .” Becca trailed off and looked down at the table.

“Cole hurt
you.
What’s to keep him from doing it again?”

“He swore to me he wouldn’t.”

“Gee, that makes me feel so much better.”

“Hannah, he cried afterward, and I’ve never seen him cry before. And we’ve prayed on it together, every night since.”

“Praying on it?
That’s
your solution?” Hannah said.

The scornful remark shocked them both. Becca was staring at her as if she were an alien with a few too many tentacles, which, Hannah supposed, wasn’t that far from the truth. Not so long ago, she too would have turned to God for help as a matter of course, would have believed without question that He was interested enough in her one small life to intervene in it. She probed the place within herself where He used to reside and found an empty, ragged socket. Her faith—not just in His love, but in His existence— was gone.

“Oh Hannah, what’s happened to you?” Becca’s face was wet, but Hannah could muster no tears of her own, nor could she offer her sister any explanation. Not for this, not for any of it.

The pleasant baritone of the house computer spoke, startling them. “Cole is home,” it announced. They heard the sound of a car door slamming.

Becca jumped up, hands fluttering around her like swallows. “You have to leave. If he finds out you’ve been here I don’t know what he’ll do. Go out the back way and hide in the toolshed, and I’ll come to you when I can.”

Hannah was halfway down the hall when she heard the front door bang open. “Where is she?” Cole yelled. “I know she’s here.” A brief silence. “Answer me, Becca!”

Hannah halted. “I’m right here, Cole,” she said. The surprisingly calm sound of her voice bolstered her courage. She went to the threshold of the living room and met his furious glare. He was dressed for a cattle drive or a shootout, in a black felt cowboy hat, lizard boots and a belt buckle the size of a hubcap.

His eyes raked over her contemptuously, and then he turned his attention to Becca. “What’d I say to you about your sister, huh? What’d I say?”

“That, that she wasn’t welcome here,” Becca stammered.

“Was there any part of that you didn’t understand?”

“No, Cole.”

“Then why’d you let her in? Why’d you disobey me?”

“I let myself in,” Hannah said. “The back door was open.”

“You must both think I’m pretty stupid.”

“No, honey, of course not,” Becca said, in a splintered, desperate voice Hannah had never heard before. It filled her with rage. A person’s voice didn’t come to sound like that overnight, she thought. No, someone had to work on them for a while, with real persistence, to make them skip over unease, dismay and distress and leap so quickly to abject fear. Looking at the man who’d made her sister’s voice unrecognizable, Hannah felt the urge to do violence for the second time in a span of a few hours.

“I figured she’d come here,” Cole said. “And I figured you’d let her waltz right in. I put a sat alert on her the day she got out of the Chrome ward.”

Hannah kicked herself mentally. She’d forgotten about the nanotransmitters. All Chromes were implanted with them as a public safety measure. Anyone who did a simple search on her name could pinpoint her location and observe her movements via geosat. But it simply hadn’t occurred to her that Cole or anyone else she knew would be tracking her, much less that he would have put an alert on her. And it should have. By coming here, she’d put Becca in danger.

With effort, Hannah made her tone mild and earnest. “I just came to apologize to my sister. To ask her forgiveness for shaming her and the family. I thought I owed her that.”

“You haven’t asked for
my
forgiveness,” Cole said. He set his hat carefully on the coffee table, brim up, then moved behind Becca and pulled her to him, her back against his chest, his arm crossed protectively over her abdomen.

Hannah forced the words out. “I’m sorry for the shame my actions brought on you, Cole. Please forgive me.”

Without taking his eyes off Hannah, Cole put his mouth up against his wife’s ear. “Did you forgive her, Becca?”

Becca’s eyes were wide and uncertain: what was the right answer, the one that would defuse him? Finally, she said, “Yes, Cole, I did.”

His expression turned tender, and he kissed the top of her head. “Of course you did, baby,” he said, stroking her hair with his thick fingers. “I wouldn’t expect anything different from you.” Her eyes closed in relief, and she sagged slightly against him.

“My wife’s the most forgiving person I’ve ever known,” Cole said. His voice was thick with emotion, part of which, Hannah realized, was self-reproach. “It’s why I fell in love with her.” His hand traveled down to Becca’s bruised eye. He caressed the area beneath it gently with his thumb and then let his hand drop to his side.

He stepped out from behind her. His face hardened. “But me, I’m the opposite. There are just some things I can’t forgive. Some things don’t deserve to be forgiven.”

Becca’s eyes flew open. “Please, Cole—”

“Go wait in the other room, Becca. I want to speak with your sister alone.” When she didn’t move, he said, “Do as I say.”

With an anguished glance at Hannah, Becca left. Hannah released a long breath and felt the bulk of her fear go with it. As long as Cole’s anger was directed at her, Becca was safe. As for Hannah herself, there was nothing this man could do to her that mattered.

“What is it you want to say to me, Cole? That if I ever come near Becca again, you’ll make me sorry? That you’ll kill me if you have to?”

He furrowed his forehead like a child trying to figure out a magic trick. “That’s right. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my wife.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that. When are you planning to move out?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Becca’s black eye. She told me she fell, but you and I both know that’s a lie.”

And there was the remorse again, flaring in Cole’s eyes before he covered it over with anger. A chink, and not an inconsiderable one.
Well,
Hannah thought,
let’s see how wide we can make it.

“Do you really want to be that guy, Cole? The guy who beats up his pregnant wife?”

Cole’s face was turning a dark, ugly red. “You listen to me—”

“At the shelter where I used to volunteer, they taught us that if a man hits a woman once, there’s a strong chance he’ll do it again. And after the second time, he almost never stops. He gets a taste for it, beats whoever he can—his wife, his kids. You going to knock Cole Jr. and his sister around too?”

“Shut your filthy red mouth,” he said, but Hannah could see that she’d shaken him, that his bluster was nothing but a cloak for his shame. “Who the hell are you to talk to me like that?”

“I’m a woman who’s destroyed two lives, one of them my own. And I’m telling you, it’s not a road you want to go down.”

A mistake—she knew it as soon as she’d said it. He closed the distance between them, looming over her. “Let me get this straight. You’re comparing me to you, a murdering slut who defiled God’s commandments and dishonored her family name. You’re saying you and I are alike. Well keep talking, and you’ll find out just how different we are. You’ve got no idea who you’re dealing with.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” Hannah said. “Who
am
I dealing with? Cole the loving husband and protector or Cole the wife-beater?”

“Shut up.”

He was a hair’s breadth away from hitting her; she could feel it in the tautness of his body, could smell it in the pungency of his sweat. But she could smell the fear in him too, not of her, but of himself, the man who’d hurt the woman he loved and might again.

Softly, Hannah said, “The real question, the one you need to ask yourself, is which Cole’s going to win out in the end?”

“Get out of my house,” he said, in a choked voice. “And don’t ever come near my wife again.”

Hannah went to the entryway, took her smelly poncho from the hook and put it on. As she opened the door, Cole said, “I’ll be watching.”

She locked eyes with him. “So will I. And I won’t hesitate to go to the police if you don’t keep your
fist,
” she said, with deliberate emphasis, “away from my sister.”

S
HE WALKED AIMLESSLY FOR CLOSE
to an hour, heedless of the rain. Her mind was racing, replaying the scene with Cole and wondering if she’d handled him right, if her gamble would pay off. Knowing that if it didn’t, Becca would suffer the consequences. She’d asked if Hannah could bear it, and she could, she could bear all of it—being a Red, losing Aidan, losing her faith—as long as she knew that her sister was alive and well. She could even endure never seeing Becca again, if that’s what it took to keep her safe. But if anything should happen to her . . .

Hannah stumbled on a rough patch of pavement and was jolted out of her head and back into her body. Her legs ached, and Becca’s loafers, which were too narrow, had rubbed blisters in half a dozen places. She was cold, thirsty, bone-tired. She needed a place to rest and gather her thoughts. More urgently, she needed a place to sleep tonight. But where could she go? Not home. Not to the 1Cs shelter; even if her pride allowed it, the Henleys must have already called the office to report her disgrace. Not to Gabrielle, tempting as the idea was. The police knew nothing of her involvement, and Hannah wouldn’t repay her kindness by endangering her through association. Hannah had a few girlfriends from high school, a few others from work and church. She pictured them opening their front doors to find her standing on their doorsteps: Rachel stiff and formal, mouth pursed in disapproval; Melody uncomfortable, nervous someone would see them together; Deb awkward and so, so sorry. No, the only friend who would truly welcome her was Kayla. But first, she had to find her.

Fortunately, Cole had given her the key: the Chrome tracking system. She wouldn’t even need a last name; a search would pull up the photos and criminal records of every Chrome named Kayla in the state of Texas. Geosat would do the rest. If Kayla was out of doors, Hannah would be able to see her walking down the street.