The Runaways

Chapter 8

Hailey

Six hours of scrapes, shock, and sadness finally started to settle in.

My feet were cut up to the point where walking on my heels hardly made a difference in the pain. Liam wasn't concerned either way. He'd drag me by the hair until we reached wherever the hell we were headed.

He wrenched me into the communal portion of the house, and two men in their mid-twenties, both lean and dark haired, stepped away from their posts to speak with him.

God, they were scrawny. If these were the "others" Caleb mentioned earlier, I didn't have much to worry about—at least, I hoped I didn't.

        “Where the hell’ve you been Liam? Cillian and I’ve been waiting up for you and Caleb for nearly an hour.”

Liam ignored the questions of the broad-shouldered stranger and left me standing alone in the center of the room while he preoccupied himself in the kitchen.

        “I’m in no mood to chat, Marcus.”

He pulled an ice block out of the freezer and broke it apart in the sink.

        “To chat, Liam? Our youngest is plastered on every television in the tri-state, and you can’t be bothered to explain where you’ve been? I thought your man said no cops or press, the bureau’s practically out for Caleb!”

Liam stood with his back turned to Marcus, icing his injuries like they were his only concern. I hadn't been wrong about him being a monster, especially if this is how he dealt with people he seemed close to.

Marcus backed off from the bubbling tension between them and paced around the kitchen looking paler than pale. He was handsomely gaunt and clearly had done his fare share of nerve fraying before we showed up.

Marcus turned his attention to me and then glanced over to the empty space at my back. A thought paralyzed him briefly, like an old fear had darted across his consciousness before burning out. He shook it off before anyone else noticed.

       “Where’s Caleb?” he asked.

       “Can’t recall at the moment, Marcus. Memory’s a bit fuzzy.”

       “Cut the banter. He’s not safe by himself outside.”

        “He’ll turn up soon enough. Dogs always do,” Liam said.

Liam plunged his knife through the heart of the ice, and left it to thaw in the sink along with the conversation. Cillian stepped off the edge of his chair and sauntered into the kitchen.

I couldn't figure out exactly what it was about him that frightened me. Maybe the deliberately lazy way he dragged his feet across the floor, the stink of tobacco he trailed through the air, or the vacancy in his eyes, but I nearly fell backwards into Marcus just to put as much distance between us as I could.

Cillian glanced at me, very carefully, right out of the corner of his eyes when he passed. They were a cold, silver-blue—colder than he was, and he made sure I knew exactly how he felt about me being there. Contempt was only the half of it.

        “Done screwing around?” He said.

He was soft-spoken, but the somber lull of his voice was laced with threats.

        “Should I be?” Liam asked.

He threw his knife into the already splintered wood of the kitchen table.

        “This isn’t the time to be taking the piss, Liam," Cillian said, verging on a warning.

      “Blame the girl! I said she’d be a distraction. Couldn’t keep her hands to herself on the drive back, right lovely?”

He clicked his tongue at me from across the room. I picked up a mason jar from the nightstand next to me and threw it in his direction. He caught it and placed it down on the table.

        “See why I like her?”

He beamed at me with a mouth full of butcher’s knives.

        “I’d cut off my fingers before putting them anywhere near you,” I said.

        “I’ll do it for you, if you beg,” he said.

The strength in my legs seeped into the floor from the fear and my knees crashed against the worn wood. Everything went numb, so much so that it took Marcus wiping the soot and tears off my face for me to realize that I was crying.

His hands were calloused, careful, and almost kind—but only almost.

        “Never mind Liam, Hailey. If you’re smart you won’t speak to him again. Come with me.”

He pulled me to my feet and led me over to a tattered couch to sit. Liam kept his eyes on me from across the room.

        “Take it easy, love, I’d be a wreck too if I’d flown out of a truck!”

He broke out into a fit of laughter and Marcus had to reach out and stop me from leaving my seat.

        “Hailey, please.” He pleaded, his eyes a beseeching blue-grey like Caleb’s.

        “He’s still out there,” I whispered, terrified of the consequences of spilling Liam’s secrets.

        “The hell’ are you on about?” Cillian barked, his livewire temper sparking to life in his voice.

        “Caleb’s still out in the field,” I said.

My voice died away in my throat when Liam's eyes fell on me again. I’d never regretted telling the truth until I saw how it could hurt me. How he would hurt me.

Liam put his knife on the edge of his lips and signaled me to keep silent. Marcus stepped into the space between Liam and I and pleaded for answers I was hesitant to give.

        “Tell me what’s happened, Hailey. Please. I can’t keep you safe if you don’t.”

The gentle blush in his cheeks faded.

        “Liam left him out there—”

      “Careful lovely, wouldn’t want anything to happen to you on account of your words now would we?”

        “—he beat your brother half-dead this morning, dragged me here, —”

        “You watch that tongue or I’ll carve it clean outta your mouth.”

         “Liam, enough!” Marcus shouted.

        “—and left Caleb out there to burn.”

Cillian darted over to the window facing the cornfields and saw smoke billowing less than a mile down the road.

        “There’s ash in the air, Marcus. Whether she's twisting her stories or not, something's burning.”

Marcus’s face grayed. He took a moment to gather himself before speaking.

      “Has Liam raised a hand to you, Hailey?” he asked with more sincerity in his voice at that moment than my father ever managed.

        “Couldn’t keep his hands to himself the whole ride home.”

        “You shut your mouth!” Liam shouted across the room so loudly I shook from the violence in his voice. He slammed his chair to the ground, whipped around the kitchen table, and raced towards me. Cillian stepped out to block his path and grabbed Liam by the collar to stop him.

        “I hope for your sake you’re telling the truth little Anderson. You’d be wise to avoid making your father’s mistakes in this house,” Cillian warned.

Marcus took me by the shoulders and looked me square in the eyes, unaware that the front door of the slaughterhouse was shuddering open behind him.

        “If you’re lying Hailey, I can’t keep Liam away for long."

        “She's not.”

Marcus turned to see who'd answered and in came Caleb, bloodied, bruised, and standing rigid in the sunlight with an officer at his side.