Kindred Spirit - Noah Harris Page 0,52

snorted. “Yeah, I know. I was thinking about that too.”

Jacob cocked his head. “What?”

Levi sighed. “I’m not saying I believe you, or instead, that I believe what you said is true, but I do believe you believe it.”

“That’s a really polite way of putting it.”

Levi ignored him. “But it’s got me thinking. Especially with the way those guys outside the motel looked.”

“Like feds,” Jacob said.

“Right. I’m wondering…”

Jacob frowned. “Wondering what Levi? You’re leaving me in the dark here.”

Levi sighed. “There was something…”

The man looked up, nodded, and then returned his gaze to Jacob.

“And it might be why we’re neck-deep in shit right now.”

Jacob held his gaze, seeing the fear in Levi’s face, the worry. He knew a haunted look when he saw one, Jacob had had it on his face before. Whatever was on Levi’s mind was a heavy story, and the telling would be a hard thing.

So he said the only thing he could.

“Tell me.”

Levi

Levi took a deep breath, finding it didn’t do much to steady his nerves. He’d tried desperately not to think too hard about the memory he’d brought up, let alone actually speak about it aloud. Even Lou knew better than to bring it up, knowing Levi preferred to separate himself from the events of that day as much as possible.

You don’t have to talk about it, Levi. You can just tell him something happened, and that’s it.

Levi smiled gratefully but shook his head. “No, that’s not enough. Because I think it was them.”

That doesn’t mean you have to tell him.

Maybe not, but it felt right to Levi. Somewhere along the way, he’d decided he was going to trust Jacob. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment, and it sure hadn’t happened consciously. But somewhere in the past several hours, he found he could believe Jacob, confide in him, and know that they would get through whatever happened together. If that also happened to involve him telling the story of one of the worst days of his life, then so be it.

“It was a handful of years ago,” Levi began, knowing Jacob was waiting patiently. “We’d been staying in Georgia. Lou started getting antsy and wanted us to leave. I put it off because I thought he was being paranoid.”

He should have listened. Maybe they would have avoided the whole thing if Levi had left the moment Lou began to suggest it. Stubborn as he was, desperate for any semblance of normalcy, Levi had stayed.

“It took him pointing out the people watching us wherever I went that finally got me to go. Packed what little I could and took off in the dead of night. I thought we were safe, that we’d made a clean getaway. Turns out they had been waiting for me to make a move.”

Jacob clasped his hands together, as though restraining himself. “They’d been showing themselves to you. Trying to push you to run.”

Levi nodded. “I thought that too...after. They wanted me to get away from other people, where they could get me without anyone seeing. Just when I thought we were clear, out in a backwoods part of an interstate, they came for us.”

The car he’d had at the time hadn’t been the most reliable thing, and its headlights were barely brighter than a few candles stuck together. He’d been driving along, only for the entire road to suddenly light up like a stadium. Vehicles, government issue from the looks of it, had pulled out from the trees ahead of him, and it was only seconds until more of them appeared behind.

“Looked like federal agents, even did that bossy shouting thing you see on TV, telling me to get out of the car, hands up, all of it. But Lou...Lou had heard them talking while I figured out how I was going to get out of it. Turns out, as soon as they had me down on the ground, they were just going to…”

Levi shook his head, miming a gun with his hand and then pulling the trigger at the side of his head. Forget murder. It would have been an execution. Levi had been struggling to get out of the car when Lou had told him. Levi’s entire body had gone cold, breaking out in a cold sweat as he’d realized just how trapped and alone they really were. Just how doomed they were.

Until Lou had told him to stay down and let him take care of it.

Levi gripped his thighs, steadying himself. “That was when I learned just how strong