“So are you gonna tell me?”
“Yes.” He kept his face toward the window. “When I can.”
“When will that be?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you do know who has the files, right?”
“Yes. That only complicates matters, however.”
“Why?”
“I can’t explain.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
He thought about that. “Both. I’m very tired. And I need more information. I need things to be more…something. Multi-syllabic, starts with…starts with…” He let his head fall back against the seat. “I can’t even think of what it starts with.”
He seemed unusually vexed by his vocabulary hiccups. It was late, and his gears ground when he got tired, but he typically dealt with it matter-of-factly. Unlike tonight.
“D,” he finally said, his eyes closed. “It starts with D.”
“Detailed?”
He shook his head.
“Definite?”
“No.” He opened his eyes. “Wait. Yes. Definitive. I need more definitive information before I can make a decision.” Now he did look at me. “It’s for your own—”
“Don’t even say it.”
“But—”
“Do you remember what you made me promise? That I would always tell you the truth, even if it made you angry?”
“Of course I remember. But—”
“But nothing. I’m holding you to the same deal. You’re not behaving like yourself. You’re unwilling to get the police involved, which is exactly the opposite of your normal response. You were rude to Gabriella. Garrity too. And now you’re refusing to explain things to me, which I hate.”
He turned back to the window. “Tomorrow. I’ll explain what I can tomorrow. Once I’ve had some sleep.”
“Trey—”
“Please.”
I took the exit for Kennesaw. “All right. Sleep it is. But then you and I are having a long discussion.”
The nightmare started as it always did—with me bound and gagged in the trunk. I writhed and twisted, desperate to get free, but my body moved too slowly, like I was swimming in molasses. And then the darkness collapsed, and I strangled on my own tongue, and—
The hand on my shoulder was strong. I pulled away from it. “No!”
“Tai—”
“No!” I bolted upright. A light flared to my left, and I kicked myself away, feet tangling in the sheets.
The voice was steady and familiar. “Tai. Look at me.”
I looked. Trey sat beside me. I was panting and delirious, but I knew that Trey wasn’t in the trunk of the car, which meant that I wasn’t in the trunk of the car. Reality crept back like a slow-drip IV. I was numb, stuck with one foot in dreamscape, one in flesh and blood. I breathed heavily. The air was clean, not the hot rubbery stink of the trunk. Trey sat on my side of the bed, but did not touch me again.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I raked my hand through my hair. “I’m good now.”
His touch had brought me back, but he’d known better than to get too close. I’d have kicked and flailed, maybe hurting him, or myself, or both of us. Distance was the protocol. I knew this from all the times I’d roused him from some nocturnal horror. During the waking up, I couldn’t get too close. He sometimes swung out in panicked self-defense, and his punches were deadly. Mine were just punchy, but dangerous enough in close quarters.
Suddenly the bed felt too small, the room too close. I shoved the sheets aside and sat up. “Do you have any of those little herbal pills, the calming ones?”
“I do. Let me—”
“I know where they are.”
I pushed myself up and went to his overnight bag, rummaged around until I found the bottle. Chamomile and Avena sativa and other exotic pharmaceuticals. Then I went to the kitchen and came back with the Jack Daniels.
Trey shook his head. “That’s not—”
“—a good idea. I know.” I tipped two fingers into a glass. “But it’s an idea whose time has come.”
He frowned. “I was going to say that while alcohol isn’t contraindicated with that particular herbal combination, it won’t help the problem.”
“It’s helping well enough.”
What I really wanted was a cigarette. I suspected that I always would, that during any time of stress, the craving would kick up. There was no cigarette like a relapse cigarette, sweet as candy, soothing as cool fingers stroking my forehead. But I didn’t have any. So whiskey it was.
I plopped down next to him. “It’s always the trunk. The dock was where I thought I was going to die, but when I dream, it’s the trunk.”
“The trunk is where you were confined. You had choices on the dock. Not in the trunk.”
I sipped the liquor, feeling the warmth spread as I washed down the pills. He was right. Confinement pushed my panic button. I didn’t need my brother’s psychology degree to figure out the symbolic connections. I didn’t like being deprived of my own volition. And I didn’t like being kept in the dark.
Trey slid closer and put his hand between my shoulder blades, tender and tentative. I let it rest there. He’d come for me that night. I’d been practically catatonic on the deck, Jasper’s body only a few feet away, a steel-tipped arrow through his heart. Trey had been unable to pry the bloody rifle out of my hands, so he’d sat behind me and held me against his chest until the ambulance arrived. My official statement was that I didn’t know who’d killed Jasper. Trey knew better. And yet he’d said not one word about it. He’d let my lie stand.
Now I centered on his hand, solid and reassuring. I relaxed a little, leaned my head on his shoulder. I noticed then that he wore a tee shirt, and that he didn’t have the slightly fuzzy expression and sleep-mussed hair of a man snatched from slumber. I slid my hand to his side of the bed. It was cold.
“You were awake,” I said.
He nodded. This was unusual. Trey usually hit the sack at nine sharp. He needed sleep, lots of it, and when he slept, he slept deeply
