CHAPTER 2
Present Day
Darkness. Mist. Both cold and hot. Strange lights, and no sounds except the faintest hoo-hoo of a train whistle.
He was floating. He was motionless. He swam. He sank. He begged. He was mute.
He was nowhere. And everywhere. Alone. And in a sea of people, all with open mouths jabbering in silence.
Time had no meaning; it was a concept he could barely grasp. When up was down, and down was up, days switched with decades and years with minutes. He had been here forever…or wasn’t here at all.
Where here was, he did not know.
How he would get out—or if it was even possible—he did not know either.
He knew only one thing: He couldn’t stop screaming.
“Forget it, Julia. I’m not doing it.”
Julia Harrington, the owner of Extrasensory Agents, didn’t seem fazed by Derek’s refusal. Sitting at the head of the conference table, around which sat the four other agents who worked for her—including him—she merely sat back in her chair, crossed her arms in front of her, half-smiled, and raised one eyebrow.
Derek knew that intransigent look and posture. What Julia couldn’t get with a smile and a wisecrack, she would try to with sheer guts and determination. Well, she wasn’t going to get her way this time. No way was he taking the assignment she wanted to give him. “I mean it.”
“You have to.”
“No, I don’t,” he snapped. “I’ve never said no to a job before, but I am saying no to this.”
Julia’s smile tightened. Her jaw, always a little stubborn, jutted. “Do you want to tell that poor woman we’re not going to help her find out what really happened to her brother?”
He blew out a hard breath between his teeth, muttering, “Send somebody else.”
“No-one else can help in this case.”
He glanced across the table at Olivia, a pretty blonde. She offered him a commiserating look. “You know I would. I’d love to be able to go undercover and work one last big, scary case before I go on maternity leave this summer. But I wouldn’t be much use in this one.”
True. Aside from the fact that none of them wanted fragile Olivia working in the field, where she might be in danger during the seventh month of her pregnancy, there was nothing she could do anyway. According to what Julia had told them about this case, there was no body. Olivia’s strange ability only worked if there were remains for her to touch, in which case she could share the last few minutes of that person’s life.
Of course, she wasn’t using that ability anymore, anyway, not since her new husband had urged her to quit. Every time she had done it, seeing and hearing what the deceased had, she’d also felt each agonizing second of it, a piece of her soul being bitten away each time. If he’d been Gabe Cooper, he’d have demanded she stop. Now that she was pregnant—a development that had surprised them all, including, it seemed, Olivia—it was even more impossible for her to use her dark gift. For all she knew, the baby could be hurt as well.
But Olivia’s weird ability wasn’t her only skill. She had another ace up her sleeve. She, like Julia, had a connection to someone in the afterlife. The ghost of a former local detective, Cooper’s own late partner, was a big help on some cases.
She read his mind. “There’s not much Ty and I could do without having some idea what happened to the boy.” She glanced at Julia. “If there were, Morgan could probably….”
Julia frowned, her lips pursing.
“Something wrong with Mr. Perfect?” Derek asked, his annoyance fading. Once, when he’d been sleeping with her, it had infuriated him that Julia had shut herself off from all other men in the world because she was still in love with a dead guy—Morgan Raines. Now that they’d agreed they could only ever be friends, he simply pitied her. “Did he bail on you to climb that stairway to heaven?” Or ride the highway to hell, which was where Derek thought he deserved to go for stringing-along a beautiful, vibrant, living woman for all these years.
“Don’t change the subject,” Julia said. “You have to do this. Doctor Lincoln is right—something funky is going on at that school.” She pulled out a case file, thin, clean and unmarked, ready to be filled with notes and clues. “I’ve printed out info on other missing boys.”
“How many?” asked Aidan McConnell, who had solved their last missing teens’ case. He had a soft spot for kids, though he and his girlfriend Lexie had none of their own.
“Too many,” Julia replied, her voice falling. “Derek, you’re the only one who can go undercover at the Fenton Academy to try to get to the bottom of this.”
“Aidan’s perfect for it,” Derek snapped. “He looks like a professor.”
“My undercover days are over. With the recent Remington trial, and the release of my book on the Granville case, the media has been glued to me. I don’t think a rigid academy for wealthy, troubled youth is going to hire somebody in the spotlight for being a psychic.”
Shit. That was true.
Not giving up, Derek looked over at Mick, the last member of the team. The guy grinned, his good humor really annoying this morning. “Sorry, dude. Ten-day cruise starts Sunday.”
“You can reschedule it.”
“We’ve rescheduled twice already. If I try it again, Gypsy told me she’d yank off my gloves and shove a hundred pieces of chewed gum onto my hands.”
Julia butted in, “Besides, the designer leather gloves he always wears wouldn’t be easy to explain to a bunch of curious teens.”
“Hey, if you had to wear them all the time, you’d get the best gloves, too,” Tanner said.
Derek frowned, not liking to think about having the ability Mick did. Touching any random object and knowing the thoughts of all the people who’d touched it before? It would be awful, especially given where this assignment would take them. He inwardly cringed for Tanner at the thought; he’d be in hell if those gloves ever came off at that school.
Needing to continue the constant shit he threw at the unflappable guy, however, he merely said, “Well have fun on your cruise.” He added a smirk. “Can’t imagine a lot of people have been on a ship before.”
Impossible to rile, Mick’s smile remained in place. “It’s the maiden voyage.”
“Didja buy the cruiseline?”
“No, but if I do, I’ll be sure to give you a discount.”
Julia interrupted their snark. “Enough. Derek, you understand now, it has to be you.”
“Jesus Christ,” he snapped, leaning back in his chair. “I didn’t even graduate from high school.” Gram and Aunt Beth should have sent him off to a military school, but they’d been way too kind to do it. “Why would I want to go stay at a boarding school for juvenile delinquents?”
“Well, you were a bit of a delinquent yourself, right?”
He remained silent.
“How about because you’re the only one who can.” She put her hands on the folder and pushed it across the table toward him.
“As what? I can’t pose as a teacher. I don’t know geometry from geography, who crusaded where, or what Ernest Hemingway wrote. Nor do I care.”
“You are so full of shit,” Julia replied with a challenging stare.
She didn’t add, I’ve been in your place, I’ve seen your overloaded bookshelves.
Yeah, okay. He had a thing for reading, especially the classics. Call it the GED kid’s guide to going to college. But she wasn’t going to say anything else about it. Nobody else on staff knew about their fling a few years back; neither of them would want to explain how she knew what books were on the shelf in his place. So he merely growled under his breath.
Julia glanced at the wall clock. It was shaped like a werewolf, kitschy and weird, like a lot of things at the Extrasensory Agents office. Including the agents.
This doctor—sister of the missing kid—was coming in at ten a.m. Five minutes from now. Meaning he had about four minutes to keep arguing. “What would I do, go in as the custodian? Sweep floors for the dollar bills discarded by the rich kids?”
“You will not be going in as a custodian.”
He noted the will. Not a would. Like it was already a done-deal. Damn that Julia certainty. “Shop teacher?”
“What’s that?”
“Auto mechanics, repairs, metal work.”
Her brow went up. “At the Fenton Academy for Boys? Please. They don’t need that. They probably have professional mechanics to take care of the Ferraris back at the mansion while they’re incarcerated…I mean, educated.”
Wonderful. Just his kind of people.
She looked down, twisting a colorful bracelet on her wrist. “Um, they do, however, have what they call a Boot Camp session in the spring, a requirement for graduation. One last kick-in-the-butt to ensure the boys are ready to rejoin the real world.”
Derek gritted his teeth. He’d done his time in the Army and had no wish to revisit the memories. Nowhere safe to look, nowhere someone hadn’t died a horrible death. IED’s and gun battles and explosions and suicide bombers blowing people up.
Going into the military had been the worst decision he’d ever made. Considering he’d been patriotic, barely nineteen, and hadn’t much cared if he lived or died, it had seemed to make sense at the time. Wrong.
“I can’t do that,” he said, managing to keep his voice steady.
“It’s not an actual battlefield.” She knew his background, though he hadn’t told her what it had really been like for him. Still, knowing what he could do, she had to have a pretty good picture of it. Sitting up straight, her stiff shoulders saying he wasn’t going to like what came next, she added, “Olivia’s cousin’s office placed a call and recommended you. You’ve already got the job. You start on Monday.”
He definitely didn’t like what had come next. Olivia’s cousin was a senator. He didn’t know which woman to glare at first.
“It’s a perfect cover,” Olivia said, her cheeks a little pink.
He couldn’t be mad at her. Not when she was so pregnant. Not when she was the sweet one in their group. So he sent eyeball flames toward Julia. “I thought this wasn’t a military school.”
“It’s not. Again, this place is super-expensive and renowned. It caters to millionaires with punk sons. They spend buckets to get their precious boys an education under lock and key so they can forget about them and their troublemaking ways until they’re eighteen. Then they become Yale, Oxford or Harvard’s problems.”
He supposed with enough money, even the most rotten kids could get into those hallowed halls after they’d had their wild ways kicked out of them in a prep-school-for-juvies. He wondered what his co-workers would say if they knew he could’ve afforded it, too, if he’d given a shit. Nobody here knew how much money he’d inherited at eighteen, nor did they need to.
“They’ll realize I’m a plant the minute they do a background check.”
“They probably won’t, considering that place.” Julia shrugged. “If they do, you’re covered. I’ve run a thorough check on you. You’re not on our website, you’re low-key, and you don’t appear in any articles. No arrests, obviously. Honestly, anyone who looks for you is going to just wonder what jobs you’ve held since you left the military. I’m sure you can come up with an answer for that.” She smiled. “Sounds like a great option as far as I’m concerned.”
“We need a bigger staff,” he grumbled.
“Working on it,” she replied. “But we don’t have anyone else for next week.”
Wondering what she was up to, and who she had her eye on to increase their investigative staff, Derek found another objection. He knew his own shortcomings. He wasn’t the most patient guy in the world. Understatement. “How am I gonna deal with a bunch of smart-ass punks? The first one who pisses me off…”
“Stop it,” Olivia said, her southern-genteel voice gaining a bit of steel. “Stop with the self-deprecation. We all know the real you, Derek. You can do it.”
Mick chuckled. “Yeah. Everybody knows you’re a big marshmallow inside.”
“Uh-huh,” Julia piled on. “Your resting-bad-ass-face is a cover for a heart of gold.”
Aidan rolled his eyes. “Children, please.”
Julia got serious again. “Besides, it’s for seniors. They’ve had time to get the punkiness ground out of them, judging by how harsh this place sounds. Any young man who wants to graduate and get out of there knows he has to pass that two-week session…one final kick in the ass before he escapes for good.”
Aidan finally contributed to the arm-twisting. “I know you don’t like it, Derek, but it is the most logical solution.”
Damn. The not-much-older-father-figure of the group had spoken. Once the most responsible one of the group had put his stamp of approval on the plan, Derek knew there was no way out of it. He was outmaneuvered and out argued. He hated the idea—really hated it. There was, however, no getting around Julia’s determination, Olivia’s sweet smile, Mick’s gloves, and Aidan’s rationale.
“Fine,” he said with a sigh, opening the folder in front of him, wishing he could do something simple, like posing as a thug for the mob. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the job. He was going undercover in a rich-boys’ prep school to try to find out what had happened to the missing brother of a determined doctor.
God help him. And the students.
“Good,” said Julia, sounding pleased but not surprised she’d gotten the result she wanted. She got up to lead him out of the office. “Let’s go meet her. By the way—this doctor? Totally bitchin’ hot. Sexy, super-smart. You’re going to like her.”
Derek grunted, not impressed. He didn’t do this job to meet women.
Following his boss out of the conference room, he spotted a flash of dark, gleaming red. It was cascading in thick waves down the back of a tall, curvy women who disappeared into Julia’s office, apparently led their by their receptionist.
That was the client? The doctor? Holy shit.
Only seeing her from the back was enough to freeze him in place. The stunning waterfall of hair was distracting enough. The body clad in a professional but form-fitting suit? With the trim waist, the generous hips, and an ass that would make a grown man howl?
Hell. He might have believed he would never get involved with a client. This one, however, was already proving to be a major distraction, and he hadn’t even seen her face.
The case had sounded like a pain in the ass from the start. Now, with a glimpse at the woman he would be working with, things had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.
“I don’t think this is going to work, Miss Harrington.”
Kate Lincoln hadn’t meant to say the words aloud to the owner of Extrasensory Agents. She’d intended to keep them in their brain, where all the other thoughts of Derek Monahan had been swirling since the moment she’d been introduced to the agent assigned to her case.
Good God, he’s gorgeous. Then: That body, those shoulders. And: He stepped off a poster for Bad Boys Anonymous. Finally: He’s every woman’s secret, dangerous dream.
But not hers. She hadn’t had those kinds of dreams in a long while. She might once have had a thing for bad boys, but that was over. Frankly, she hadn’t been interested in men since her world had shattered with the loss of the only person she truly loved. Maybe she’d been momentarily affected by the agent’s rugged good looks, but she was here for a reason that did not include being distracted by a sexy male.
“I’m afraid Mr. Monahan might not be right for this job.”
“You and me both,” the longish-dark-haired, dark-eyed man said, his frown deepening. His voice was deep, throaty, and rough. Not to mention curt. It fit his looks.
Kate had expected someone professional looking. Not necessarily suit-and-tie, considering the reputation this place had, but not looking like a sexy, dangerous biker, either.
This man did.
He had a strong face, angular, with slashing cheeks, heavy brow, a hard, square jaw, and God, those gleaming, almost-black eyes. His cheeks were stubbled, but that only emphasized the masculinity of his face. His silky hair swung loosely, almost brushing his shoulders. That will have to be cut. He wore a ratty pair of jeans, engineer boots, and a black T-shirt that hugged bulges upon muscles. New wardrobe required, too.
She swallowed hard, knowing the clothes didn’t really matter on a man like this. A haircut and suit would never cloak the lion. No—wolf.
“He won’t fit in.”
Monahan obviously didn’t take offense. “That’s what I’ve been telling her.”
“Whoever goes into the school can’t stand out as a P.I,” she continued. “The headmaster knows I don’t believe the official story. He’s caught me nosing around and banned me from the campus. He’s turned away the other investigators I’ve hired. He won’t fall for this.”
“Exactly,” Monahan said with a firm nod.
At least they agreed on something. Well, that, plus the fact that they were a little uncomfortable with each other. She’d noticed the way he’d pulled his hand from hers quickly after they’d been introduced. He hadn’t looked at her since they sat down.
“We’ve worked out the perfect solution, Dr. Lincoln,” said the agency owner. Julia Harrington was younger than she’d expected, early-thirties, maybe. Kate had liked her the moment they’d met, appreciating a confident businesswoman in a male-dominated field. “We’ve pulled a few strings and gotten Derek assigned as the boot-camp sergeant. He starts next week.”
She glanced at the agent sitting stiffly in the chair beside hers. He looked like the kind of angry, scowling man the school would hire to terrorize their students and whip them into shape. She wondered if he was capable of smiling or had a drop of softness in his hard body. Somehow, she doubted it.
Although she didn’t like admitting it, she mumbled, “I guess that does make sense.” She didn’t like thinking about the fear in her brother’s voice during their last few conversations, but it had been there. “The boot camp training was worrying Isaac within weeks of his arrival at Fenton.”
“Worrying enough to make him run away?”
“No.” She didn’t expound, knowing her own certainty was audible.
Isaac had not run away. Nobody else believed it, but she knew it was true. But she hadn’t been able to explain her certainty to anyone…until now.
Because no one would have believed her…until now.
Or so she hoped.
Her heart twisted and her stomach clenched, as they always did when she thought about her only sibling, and his last, terrified cry. Why hadn’t she been close enough to answer it? If she’d been in the country, she would have dropped everything, driven like a madwoman, or hired a plane to get to him. Instead, she had been on the other side of the world, working with soldiers who had to deal with the horrors they saw every day in the field.
She’d been helping others. So she hadn’t been there to help her brother.
What happened to you, Isaac? Where are you? I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to save you.
At age thirteen, Kate had been resigned to being an only child in a cold mausoleum of a house, with parents who ignored her unless they needed to show her off. Then, a miracle had happened: Isaac Lincoln III. She’d babied him, nurtured him like he was her own, since her parents and a succession of hired nannies certainly hadn’t. Despite the age difference, the bond between them had been as tight as if they’d been twins. She’d always protected him, right up until the moment he’d needed her most. And then she’d failed him.
“I hate to tell you this,” Julia Harrington said, “but this wouldn’t be the first time a monster has been kidnapping a certain type of kids, counting on the public and the police to assume they were runaways.”
She was aware of that. She’d done her research, and knew two people intimately involved with the case. They had, in fact, been the ones who’d told her about this agency’s existence. “You’re talking about what happened in Granville.”
“Yes. The victims were all girls, but…”
“Otherwise, the pattern fits.”
Serial killers often targeted the most vulnerable members of society. Prostitutes, the homeless, runaways. People whose disappearance wouldn’t kick up too much of a fuss. It seemed counterintuitive that someone would choose to take boys from a rich private school, but when considering why the boys landed there—because their families wanted them out of the picture—it made a twisted sort of sense.
“I’m not saying that’s what is going on, but it’s possible.”
“I know, and it needs to be investigated,” Kate said.
“Yes it does. I really think Derek is the right agent for you,” said Julia Harrington. “He has unique abilities that will help him find your brother. That is, if he’s, uh…”
“Dead?” she snapped, still trying to get used to the word, though she’d associated it with Isaac for almost six months now.
Julia nodded.
“I’ve heard some things about Mr. Monahan’s skills.” She’d done some investigating of her own. She had a vague idea what Monahan could do.
He saw ghosts. Which was why Julia needed to confirm her brother was dead.
“Yes, I guess he probably is the best person to investigate. Because Isaac was murdered.”
Monahan’s head swung toward her, and he stared, hard, maybe surprised by her blunt words or the certainty of her tone.
She looked at him evenly, holding the stare. “I’m not exaggerating, Mr. Monahan.”
His brow pulled down. The jaw clenched. “I can see that.”
“Believe me, I wish it weren’t true.” She swallowed and blinked away sudden moisture, angry with herself for letting her emotions intrude. Kate seldom cried anymore, despite feeling Isaac’s absence every moment of every day, sure of his fate, but unable to fully process the hows and whys.
The when she knew.
“Isaac died five months and twenty-two days ago.”
Julia looked at the folder in front of her. “The same night he disappeared? The night the administration and police claim he ran away?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
Was she? Absolutely sure?
Yes. Of course she was. She’d heard his final scream, his last plea for help. More importantly, she’d heard nothing since. Except in your dreams. But dreams didn’t count. Didn’t everyone dream about loved ones as if they were still there, still talking, still asking for help in their final, desperate moments? Her brother’s whispers to her in the dark of night were remnants of memories of his cries for help from years ago.
“Yes, I’m certain. As certain as I am that it happened somewhere on the grounds of that horrid school.”
With a plea from thousands of miles away, followed by a scream of pain and then utter silence ever since, she had immediately known the horrible truth of that night. Sweet, shy, but, according to her cold, repressive parents, newly-rebellious Isaac was gone. For the past six months, she’d tried to find out what had happened to him, to no avail. Hiring this unusual, but well-reputed psychic detective agency was a hopeful, last-ditch effort to get to the bottom of what, exactly, was going on at the Fenton Academy.
She wanted his killer caught. She wanted his remains found.
She had to know what had happened to Isaac if she ever wanted to go on with her life.
“Dr. Lincoln, can you tell us how you are so certain?”
“Please, call me Kate,” she told the dark-haired woman sitting on the other side of the broad desk. He could call her Dr. Lincoln. Considering the immediate tension she’d felt between herself and the sexy, gruff agent, she hoped formality would provide the distance proximity could not. “And yes, I can explain.”
These people, at least, would understand, and hopefully believe. Given the entire premise of Extrasensory Agents—people who used their unique psychic abilities to solve crimes—how could they dispute the connection she and her brother had shared?
“Isaac and I are…” she cleared her throat, “…were close.”
“Despite the age difference?” Derek asked.
“Yes. Our childhoods were difficult and we formed a strong bond.”
She thought she saw Derek shrug. She took no offense. Everyone looking from the outside-in at their rich New England family made the same assumption. How tough could it be growing up with six cars parked in the garage and silver spoons parked in their mouths?
The answer was: very tough. Behind closed doors, her parents were cold, violent people who gave not one damn for anyone but themselves. That included their own children. The happy family image they showed the world when a local newspaper wanted to photograph the successful Lincolns was a complete fiction. More often there were screams, harsh punishments, dark closets to be locked in, and occasional beatings.
Now, given her profession, she could recognize and name the various diagnoses that plagued her parents: Narcissism. Borderline Personality Disorder. Maybe not Psychopathy, but not far from it, especially where her mother was concerned.
“My parents should never have had children,” she said matter-of-factly. “They are extremely self-involved. So Isaac and I formed our own little family. I was thirteen years older, and I viewed him as my child more than my sibling.”
Holding him in the dark, rocking him gently, controlling her own fear as the toddler sobbed, wanting out of the tiny closet.
She and Isaac had always known they weren’t wanted, which was why they’d been so close; they’d only ever had each other. The moment a staff member started being too attentive or kind to them, out the door they’d go. When her parents had realized how much Isaac relied on her, they’d encouraged her to leave the state to go to college, but she hadn’t wanted to leave him alone with those frigid people. She sometimes thought her parents hated Isaac. Her, they usually ignored, though she’d gone through some serious punishments of her own. Isaac, they tormented.
Knowing she had to plan on a future for both of them, however—one that didn’t rely on their parents—she’d had to accept a full-ride to NYU. After college, she’d gone to medical school, knowing she couldn’t fight them for custody of Isaac while he was underage. But they’d both sworn when he turned eighteen—which would have been last month—he would come live with her. Neither of them would have anything to do with their parents again. She didn’t think they’d have cared, except for the possibility others would find out how dysfunctional the family was.
The plans she and Isaac made had been for nothing. While she was overseas, counseling damaged soldiers about to return to civilian life, her parents had shipped Isaac to a rigid school that meted out harsh discipline with the trigonometry and history. They hadn’t reacted much to his disappearance, believing he’d run away in rebellion or in a scheme to get ransom money out of them. Although a ransom call never came, and a kidnapping was never suspected, her parents still didn’t worry too much. He was an embarrassment, he’d turn up sometime, let’s not talk about it. As if they wanted to forget his existence.
Kate never would forget. Not ever.
“Dr. Lincoln?” Julia prompted, recalling her to the here and now, and not the ugly past.
“I’m sorry. Lost in history.”
“I understand. So you were the closest family he had. Does that mean he called you or something the day he disappeared to tell you he was afraid?”
She turned in her chair to face them both, knowing if Derek was the one handling this investigation, he had to know the truth. More importantly, he had to believe it. She had to reveal each detail, no matter how insane it sounded or if it made her look as disturbed as her patients.
“My brother and I shared some pretty traumatic experiences as kids.”
“Oh?” He didn’t sound skeptical, merely interested.
“My parents were…unkind. They used to lock him away in small, dark places when he was just a toddler.”
The man’s rock-hard jaw thrust out the tiniest bit.
“He used to scream to be let out, and beg me to come get him. I did a few times, until they started locking me in my room. But I still heard him.”
With each wail, every sob, her heart broke a little more. Her rage built until she broke, too, tearing her room apart and screaming to be let out.
“One day, I silently wept with him, sent out a mental wish for him to calm down, to stop crying, knowing that was the only way he’d be released.”
After a long second, Derek said, “He heard you.”
“He heard me.”
Heard her, and responded, his childish voice echoing in her mind. She’d thought she had imagined it, at least until she saw his face and he repeated the words they’d shared from across the massive mansion.
“That was when we realized what all of you must have realized at some point in your lives. We had a mental link. Telepathy, if you want to call it that.”
Derek remained still. Julia slowly nodded. Neither rolled their eyes or smirked.
She had come to the right place. Her whole body relaxed, though she hadn’t even noticed tension had been holding her stiffly in her seat.
“Have you always have that ability? Do you still?” Julia asked.
She shook her head. “Just with Isaac. We’d have entire conversations in our minds. Although I tried it with a few other people, it never worked. Isaac was the same way. It was only him and me.”
After a long moment of silence, Derek cleared his throat. “That’s how you know what happened to him? He told you while it was happening?”
Sniffling a little, knowing she couldn’t allow her weakness to interfere with this case, Kate lifted her chin. “We had one last, uh, conversation, on the day he disappeared. I was working in Afghanistan and he was here.” She noticed the quick widening of Monahan’s eyes. Not surprising. Most people wouldn’t expect a female doctor to spend time working in a war-torn world. “He didn’t tell me what was happening, but he was utterly terrified.” Like he’d been when crying out from a tiny, dusty closet as a three-year-old. “I couldn’t understand much. I just heard him begging me to help him. He said, ‘Oh my God, Katie, he’s gonna kill me. I’m in the dark and he’s gonna kill me.’ Then there was a scream, followed by silence. Nothing but silence for the past six months. I’ve reached out to him again and again, but he never answers.”
Julia was sucking her lips into her mouth, and her eyes were shiny. She was, however, enough of a professional not to react with any more emotion than that.
Monahan appeared deep in thought, his dark hair hanging in a curtain to shield his face, his hands fisting against his thick, jean-clad thighs. He was nodding, mumbling something.
Finally he lifted his head and looked at her. “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
Kate released the breath she’d been holding.
They were going to help her. She had allies, and they had a plan. She would finally get the answers she’d been seeking for so long.
Most importantly, Isaac would have the justice he deserved.
Eli Winston was scared.
No. Not scared. He was terrified.
Something was happening to his friends. He’d didn’t have many, being thought of as a psycho, a geek, a pyromaniac. Set a fire in one school sports storage building and suddenly you’re a freak. But he’d managed to make a few in this place that was filled with bullies and jocks, so like the ones at his old school, who’d hit him once too often, until he’d lashed out and burned down the football team’s storage facility.
Well, the bigger boys here had started as bullies and jocks. After a few weeks at the good old Fenton Academy, even the worst of them were no longer the pricks they’d been when they arrived. Picking on younger kids was the least of their concerns. Everybody was too scared they’d be yanked out of bed in the middle of the night and ordered to do a hundred push-ups because you gave a teacher a dirty look earlier in the day.
That was what really kept the students so tense. You never knew who had seen what, who would report what, when the punishment would come, or what it would be.
Running laps. Getting on your knees to clean toilets in the boy’s bathroom. Walking in circles for miles until you dropped from sheer exhaustion. Standing in a corner for five hours straight. No food for a whole day. A few hours in the hole—a tiny, dark closet. Being screamed at by older boys urged on by administrators.
Worst of all: Being locked in Building 13 overnight.
For somebody like Eli—a skinny, brainy computer geek, and one of the few African American kids in the school—those first few weeks had been horrifying. He’d lived in constant fear of getting beaten up, tormented, or worse.
It hadn’t been the upperclassmen who’d scared him. They ignored the newbies, already trained, completely in line and compliant. It was the bigger, meaner kids who’d come in as freshmen, dumped here by parents who wanted them off their hands, that he had to watch out for.
Fortunately, he’d met Charlie, Charles McMasters Jr. to his rich Montana parents, and things had turned around. Charlie was as big and strong as the upperclassmen, but he was a little slow. And nice. He’d joined up with some of the smaller kids, who didn’t make fun of him, and liked him for who he was. Even though Charlie wouldn’t hurt a fly, having him in their group made them all feel safer.
Soon, it didn’t matter anyway. The school broke down everyone eventually. Eli realized he didn’t have to worry about being beaten up by his fellow students for his skinniness, his glasses, or the color of his skin. His classmates wouldn’t dare.
And the staff didn’t need an excuse.
Although the whole group had become tight, Charlie was the one who was Eli’s best friend. Not just because he was strong, but also because he was vulnerable to ridicule from other kids and even from teachers. Eli hated it, feeling as protective of the bigger boy as Charlie did of him.
Now, Charlie was missing. Gone between nine p.m. Thursday night and five a.m. Friday. Right before dawn, Eli had heard a noise and sleepily opened his eyes to see an empty, rumpled bed beside his own. He’d assumed Charlie had snuck over to the window to take a piss out onto the ground three stories below. Not being able to get up to use the bathroom during the night had been torture for Charlie, who sometimes couldn’t hold it. Especially when the room monitor made them drink water right before lights out, calling it training in self-discipline, and then locked them in the freshman dorm.
The first time Charlie had wet his bed, Eli had helped him hide the evidence. It hadn’t been out of fear the other boys would torment him about it, but because he might be held up for ridicule during a school-wide assembly. Or sent to the creepy school counselor. Or even the head, Richard Fenton, III himself. A sign with the school motto: Weakness is a Disease—Strong Boys are Successful Boys hung behind his desk. He never spared the rod or spoiled the child.
Those piss-stained sheets had been the first secret they’d shared, but it wasn’t the only one. They even had a secret hiding place—behind a loose wall tile in the third floor shower rooms. Because the staff had been watching every minute of their lives since Charlie disappeared, though, Eli hadn’t even had a chance to look behind it.
It was no wonder the teachers were all on high alert. Charlie wasn’t the first kid who’d gone missing from Fenton Academy during the night. Nor, Eli feared, would he be the last.
This was the third time this year the whole student body had been whispering about a student who’d disappeared from his room after lights out. From what he’d heard, there had been four last year. One of them had made a run for it a couple of days before he was gonna graduate and get outta here forever. It made no sense. No more than the idea of Charlie, big and strong but also scared of the dark, taking off in the middle of the night.
“He didn’t run away,” he muttered to Jeremy Scott, one of the other members of their nerd-herd, as some of the other boys called them. Whispered verbal insults were about all any student dared. “He wouldn’t have.”
“Are you sure?” Jeremy looked around the quiet cafeteria to make sure nobody was paying attention to them. “I mean, he was pretty scared of Professor Leggett.”
Eli could barely hear his words. As usual, the guards—who called themselves teachers—were walking the aisles between tables. Their heavy shoes clomped on the tile floor, as if to make sure none of the students forgot they were always being watched. Mealtimes were supposed to be held in complete silence. He’d dared to speak to the boy sitting next to him only because the nearest guard was two aisles away, and it was Professor Andrews. Their English teacher, a new, relatively young member of the staff, wasn’t as much of an asshole as most of the others. In fact, there were times when Eli thought he actually liked kids.
“I’m sure,” he finally mumbled back, trying to disguise his mouth movements by chewing. “Leggett moved on to a new target last week in our military history class. He wasn’t leaning on Charlie so much. Definitely not enough to make him run away.”
“So what do you think happened to him?” another kid asked.
“No clue.”
Mr. Angel—who was totally misnamed, which was why Eli and the others secretly called him The Devil—turned his head sharply, looking at them from all the way across the cafeteria. He had the hearing of a bat. And the face of one, all mean and ugly, with wrinkles hugging his mouth from all the frowning he’d done over the decades.
Eli shoved a forkful of peas into his mouth, almost gagging because he hated them, especially mushy ones like these. Remaining silent as he chewed, he didn’t stop shaking until after his Algebra I teacher turned away and went back to his pacing. Or stalking. Even then he waited a good two minutes before even thinking about talking again; The Devil had been known to swing back around an aisle he’d already patrolled.
He watched. Waited. Finally, he got the nerve to whisper, “He was fine yesterday. He was excited about his English grade.” English was the only class Charlie had half-liked, mainly because Andrews didn’t regularly call on him just to make him look stupid, unlike most other profs. The Devil was especially bad, hammering away at the boy while Charlie stuttered and stumbled, trying to find an answer to a complicated math question. “He was hoping his folks would let him stay home after summer break. Normal.”
That was what bothered Eli the most. If Charlie had still been the terrified, lonely kid he’d been—they’d all been—at the beginning of the school year, Eli might believe he’d made a run for it. Now, though? Why? It didn’t make sense. Charlie seemed okay. He had friends who stuck up for him, as he did for them. They only had a month more of school, and then they’d all get to go home for a while to show their parents they’d become decent kids.
Well, unlike a lot of the others, Eli’s parents had never doubted he was decent, which made him one of the lucky ones. They hadn’t wanted to send him to this shithole, but it was the only way to get the judge to agree to probation.
Eli’s mom and dad had tried for months to stop the bullying that had been going on at his old school. But the administration had always stood by the jocks who brought in the donations from alumni. So his folks had actually understood when Eli had lost it one day and fought back with fire, the way he’d never been able to with his fists.
He was super glad nobody got hurt, but also hated himself for doing it because it landed him at Fenton. He had to stick it out for three more years if he wanted his record expunged when he turned eighteen. Knowing how worried his parents were, he couldn’t tell them the truth about what went on here, since they couldn’t pull him out.
On the other side of the table, Walt, another member of their gang, leaned over, as if trying to scoop the last of his meatloaf into his mouth. “He was crying the other day.”
Eli’s mouth fell open. “Huh?”
“Saw him. Locker room. After gym class. Really sobbing—snot running and everything.”
Crying? Charlie had been upset enough about something to cry, like he used to at the beginning of the year, and he hadn’t told Eli? “How come?”
Walt leaned again and the boys on either side of him did, too, to try to block him from view. “Dunno. He didn’t see me. I didn’t want to embarrass him.”
“Did anything happen during gym?”
“Coach Emerson rode him really hard. Embarrassed him in front of the whole class.”
Eli suddenly felt awful. Charlie had been the first friend he’d made here and was the best he’d ever had. Despite his size, he’d been soft and vulnerable. And Eli hadn’t been there when the other guy had needed him. Why hadn’t he talked about what was bothering him? It wasn’t like Charlie to keep his secrets or fears to himself.
“Didn’t Coach Gardener step in?” Gardener, who was Emerson’s assistant, was younger and nicer than his boss. He coached the J.V. track team. Every boy at Fenton had to participate in a sport, and track was the one thing Eli felt he might do okay in. He’d had a lot of practice running from assholes at his old school.
Turned out he was pretty good at hurdles. Also turned out Gardener wasn’t a prick like his boss. A bit of a meathead, but at least not brutal.
“He wasn’t there.”
“Shh!” The sound was almost as quiet as their whispers had been, and came from Mr. Slate, the crusty old custodian. He pushed a wide broom between their table and the next one. Although the old man often whistled when he mopped the halls, even he stayed silent in here. His mouth barely moved as he bent his head down to keep any of the other grown-ups from seeing. “You boys better shut yer mouths.”
Slate had barely issued the warning when a more terrifying one filled the cafeteria.
“Silence!”
It was a female voice, meaning the school nurse, Mrs. Brewer, had entered the cafeteria. Everyone flinched, including the custodian and a couple of the teachers.
Although she was small, only as tall as some of the freshmen, Nurse Brewer was as hard as a board…which he’d heard she liked to use on the butts of kids who got out of line. Reminding him of Umbridge in the Harry Potter books, she scared Eli even more than Mr. Angel did. He hoped he never got sick and had to sit in her cramped clinic, getting gagged by tongue depressors. Or worse. Rumor was she liked to make boys strip down naked so she could stick a thermometer in…other places. He’d heard guys say she did it to humiliate them. Sick old hag.
“I’d better not hear one more whisper or there will be a broth diet all week!”
He and his friends had snapped their mouths closed the minute they realized she was on the prowl for somebody to terrorize. Nobody would say another word until after lunch ended in five minutes. They didn’t even look at each other. They didn’t dare. If they were ID’d as the talkers, they could find themselves in big trouble later, after they’d had lots of time to sweat over it. Talking during lunch could mean no dinner. Or it could mean an overnight in Building 13, which terrified the boys most of all.
Eli forced those fears away, going back to the much bigger fear. He couldn’t help thinking something really bad was going on at Fenton.
Where was Charlie? Why did boys keep disappearing from the Fenton Academy?
Scariest of all: Who would be next?