CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

We reached the middle of the strip of forest, which was so thin we could see the fields on either side. When I heard an almost soundless whoosh-whoosh, I looked up to see an owl passing overhead. It was huge, like the ones I’d seen in Cainsville a month ago, a pair that had ripped apart a raven. I found myself looking for a second one. I knew this couldn’t be the same owl, and I was sure they hunted alone. Yet when I looked, I saw another in a tree just ahead. The first lighted in the same one, and they sat there, watching us silently.

Oddly, seeing them seemed to calm me. Their unblinking gazes said to be alert and be safe. Stay watchful.

It took a moment for Ricky to notice them. When he did, he stopped.

“Now that’s creepy,” he said.

“Is it?”

He shivered. “Um, yeah.”

I guess we didn’t agree on everything. As we continued, he kept sneaking glances up at the owls, as if expecting them to dive-bomb us. It was cute, really. He’d just walked through a graveyard at night, accompanying me into a potential death trap, but what freaked him out was a pair of owls.

As we passed, they watched us go. Then they took off, flying overhead in the same direction we were heading.

“Hey, they’re leading the way,” I said as I pointed.

“To our deaths probably,” Ricky muttered. “They carry off children in the night, you know.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing we aren’t children. Where’d you hear that?”

“I used to read all that stuff when I was a kid. Every now and then it just pops up.”

“For me it’s omens. Someone stuffed them in my head, and they crop up at the most inconvenient times.”

“Yeah? Nothing about owls, then?”

“Only if it’s daytime. Although if you hear an owl hoot between houses, it means someone has lost her virginity. I think we’re okay there, too. And if a pregnant woman hears an owl, her child will be blessed. Again, we should be fine. At least, I hope so.”

“They didn’t hoot.”

“Excellent.”

He grinned back at me, and I returned the smile. I hadn’t planned to mention the omens, but as soon as the topic came up, I’d jumped on it, as if eager to unburden myself. When I’d confessed my mental library of superstitions to James, he’d thought it was adorable, in that slightly condescending way that made me wish I’d never opened my mouth. Ricky only said, “So I guess you won’t think my stories are so weird, huh?”

“I won’t.”

He returned to cutting the trail. He definitely must have better night vision than me, because he brought us out behind a building, where we could safely exit under cover of shadow.

We were behind a brick structure maybe half the size of the Gallaghers’ cabin. Tiny for a residence, but that’s what it looked like, one of at least a dozen squatting along a narrow road. Sterile brick boxes with barred windows and heavy doors. Cells more than homes. When I touched a brick, I shuddered.

“Can we agree this place is creepy?” Ricky whispered.

I nodded and pulled my hand back. “Macy said it wasn’t an army base, but that’s what it looks like.”

“Could be. We’re heading to the biggest building, right?”

“Yep. In the middle.”

He surveyed the landscape. Beyond the pillbox houses we could make out buildings a couple of stories tall. We stuck to shadows and silence as we made our way toward them.

I made notes of my surroundings, trying to arrange everything into a mental map. There’d been only one road leading in, but there were more here, laid out in a grid pattern. Like an army base or other “prepackaged” community. What else needed to be isolated like this? A prison? A commune? It seemed too open for the former and too industrial for the latter.

We were passing the last of the houselike buildings when I caught sight of words carved into the foundation. I touched Ricky’s arm to stop him as I bent to read. Someone had painstakingly etched a sentence into the concrete blocks.

There is no freedom from the prison of the mind.

I looked around at the tiny houses with no glass in the barred windows. With doors that could be locked from the outside.

I fought chills as I rose. We continued on, me following in Ricky’s tracks as we skirted a two-story building, circling until we could see around the front.

There was a car in the middle of the main road. The interior light was on, the passenger door open. Across the street stood a building that looked like a high school. A long three-story rectangle, saved from architectural obscurity by a tower rising an extra twenty feet over the main doors. On top of the tower was a cross with a broken arm. To the left, an empty flagpole groaned in the wind. There was a balcony on the front tower, half the railing missing.

Over the main doors, I could make out a sign, with letters big enough to read in the moonlight. Part of the first word was obscured, but I could see the rest. State Hospital.

“Hospital?” Ricky whispered. “Way out here? With cabins for patients?”

“It’s a mental hospital.”

“An asylum?”

I gazed around. Those locked box cabins wouldn’t exactly meet modern standards for mental care, but they weren’t cages, either. I took in the architecture. Early twentieth century. The rise of modern psychiatry, if I remembered my college classes. Not anyplace I’d want to stay but past the era of treating patients like animals.

“An early psychiatric institution,” I whispered. “Not Bedlam, but not up to today’s code.”

An experiment, it seemed, in a more humane way to treat the mentally ill. Still locking them up and keeping them away from normal folks, but giving them some sense of a community. Yet I remembered those words carved in stone, and a chill ran through me, as it hadn’t in the cemetery. That was death. Final and unavoidable. This . . . ?

There is no freedom from the prison of the mind.

I shook it off. Knowing the function of the compound helped, if only to keep my brain from whirring to solve the puzzle. Ricky motioned he was going to slip from the shelter of the building and take a look down the road. I stayed where I was and watched him as he crept along the wall. He moved three careful steps from it, staying in its shadow as he peered down the lane.

He scanned the collection of buildings. Then he gestured for me to wait as he set out, flush with the wall then crossing the gap to the next building with a few fluid steps, never pausing to check where he put his feet down, as if knowing they’d land silently. When he did pause, his gaze swept the road, his head moving slowly, deliberately.

He looks like he’s hunting.

Desire and fascination mingled unbidden as I watched him. Wind blustered past, and his blond hair whipped against his face, but he didn’t even seem to notice, just kept looking along the buildings. Then he returned to me.

“Someone’s down there,” he said. “Watching for us.”

“Third building across the road, right? I noticed a faint light.”

He shook his head. “Too obvious. That’s a decoy. Same as the building beside this one where the door’s cracked open. Both are staged. He’s in the one to the right of it. Second story. Left front corner room.”

“What’s the giveaway?”

“I drew him out, standing in the road like that. He knows you’re not alone now, which should put him on notice. If the girl’s over there”—he pointed at the three-story building—“he can’t get to her without us seeing. You can go look for her while I keep an eye on him.”

“Thank you.”

Keeping an eye on our mystery man didn’t mean staying where we were. There was no need, now that he’d spotted Ricky. So we darted to the car, using that for cover, before dashing to the three-story building across the road.

The open front door was plastered with more No Trespassing and Private Property signs, along with warnings that the building was in unsafe condition and trespassing could result in serious injury or death. Judging by the number of jimmy marks in the frame, the warnings hadn’t stopped urban explorers intent on taking a look.

The door opened into a reception room. It seemed tiny, given the size of the building. I guess they hadn’t expected many visitors. A counter extended across the room, with mail cubbies behind it. Bits of crumbled concrete and blown-in leaves littered the floor. My footsteps crunched across the debris as we walked.

I took out my phone, for both the flashlight and the directions I’d jotted down from Macy’s instructions.

“I need to go that way,” I said, pointing. There were doorways at either end of the reception area, the doors long gone.

“And I’ll go that way.” Ricky pointed opposite. “Upstairs, where I have a better vantage point. Can you stand watch while I do that? I’ll text when I’m in place.”

I nodded.

“Be careful in here,” he whispered. “Just because I know where the girl’s kidnapper is doesn’t mean he’s alone.”

“I know.”

It took Ricky a few minutes to get upstairs. Then he texted to say he could still see the guy, and I set out.