Immortal Sea by Virginia Kantra Page B

was cool and implacable. “Get it, please.”
    “I’m not going to . . . We don’t need search dogs. Or psychics.” With relief, she heard the connection to Zack’s cell phone go through. But the call switched over instantly to voice mail. Her stomach hollowed.
    Emily’s sandals slapped as she ran upstairs. Upset, Liz thought.
    She swallowed her worry and anger, struggled to keep her voice calm. “Zack, this is Mom.”
    She left a message, flipped her phone shut. She needed to check on Em. But even as she headed for the hall, her daughter reappeared in the entrance to the living room, hugging a pillow to her waist.
    “Your brother’s?” Morgan asked.
    The little girl nodded.
    His smile this time was no cool curve of lips but something warm and genuine. Liz’s heart stuttered in her chest.
    “Good girl.” Morgan plucked the pillow from her small hands.
    Emily gazed up at him the way she had in the police station, like he was all the Disney princes and Anakin Sky-walker rolled into one.
    Liz watched him strip the case from Zack’s pillow, his movements swift and fluid, as if every second counted. “This is ridiculous. We’re on an island. He can’t go anywhere.”
    Morgan ignored her, folding the pillowcase, shoving it in a pocket.
    Liz set her jaw. “If anyone goes after him, it should be me.”
    “Where he has gone, you cannot follow.”
    “You know where he is?”
    “I have some idea.”
    Which was more than she had. At least in Chapel Hill, she’d known Zack’s few friends and his hangouts. Here, she was clueless. Doubts assailed her. She should never have moved them to Maine.
    “Then I’ll drive you,” she said.
    Zack was her son. Whatever mood had driven him from the house, whatever trouble he found, he was her responsibility.
    Morgan stalked to the door. “You stay here.”
    “But . . .”
    He glanced over his shoulder. “In case he comes back.”
    And before she could summon another argument, he was gone.
    She kept staring even after the front door closed behind him. She wasn’t Emily’s age anymore. She wasn’t looking for a prince to ride to her rescue, and she’d lost her belief in fairytale endings when Ben died. But inside her flickered the hope that this one time everything would turn out all right. With Morgan’s help. For Zack’s sake.
    Even if it meant Morgan was more firmly entrenched in their lives than she’d ever imagined or wanted him to be.

    Zachary glanced at his cell phone display, ignoring the blinking message icon. Almost nine, barely past sunset. Man, he couldn’t get over how dark it was here. He could see in the dark since . . . His mind shied from the thought. Well, he could see. Enough to avoid tripping over his feet on the crumbling edge of the road. But the lack of street-lights, headlights, made him feel even more alone.
    No city glow stained the horizon. Only red clouds marking where the sun went down and silver clouds veiling the moon. Nothing to do in this hick town but go to the beach— “Amazing the things one finds underwater,” don’t go there, don’t go there, don’t —or sit in his room jerking off.
    His mouth hung open. He couldn’t get air in his lungs. His chest was hot and tight.
    “She feeds you, clothes you, shelters you like a child.”
    But he didn’t feel like a child. He felt . . . The pressure in his chest built and pushed at his throat like a sob, like a scream.
    He walked faster along the broken road to escape it.
    Occasional lights pierced the dusk and his solitude, the pale flicker of a TV through a window, the yellow glow of a lamp. Real families secure in their homes, with mothers who didn’t drag you off to Bumfuck, Maine, and tell you to get a job, with fathers who didn’t die or show up sneering out of nowhere.
    A screen door creaked and slammed. Something thumped and was dragged rattling down a driveway.
    He didn’t want to see anybody. He couldn’t talk to anybody, not with the weight sitting on his chest,