CHAPTER 3
Kate thought she had done a lot of research on the Fenton Academy. A few hours with Derek Monahan in his office on Saturday evening, however, showed her how much she’d missed. There was more. So much dark and awful more.
“I can’t believe this,” she said, reading posts he had found on the secretive dark web, and had printed out for her. “There are so many comments from former students about the vile things going on there.” Not much actual physical torture, but the emotional and psychological stuff was horrific. “How can nobody have done anything about it?”
“Who would? The parents certainly aren’t backing their claims. They’re just happy their kids come home completely obedient. Would yours, if Isaac had told them?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
“I guess that end result is why people ignore the rumors and send their kids to this place. Never mind its reputation, the site’s history should be enough to scare any decent parents off.” He must have realized after he’d spoken that he had placed judgment on her own. Glancing over, he muttered, “Sorry. No offense.”
“None taken. Mine weren’t decent.” It was true. There wasn’t much anyone could say about the glamorous Lincolns that she hadn’t told herself multiple times. “If you’re asking why they dumped Isaac there, it’s because they’re complete narcissists who were incapable of caring about anyone but themselves. Isaac disturbed their perfect, ice-cold lives, especially once I was far away.”
“So they stuck him there because they didn’t want him around?”
“Yes, plus he went a little crazy when I left the country to work in Afghanistan.”
“What were you doing there, anyway?”
“Counseling soldiers with PTSD.”
He maintained his stoic expression, but she definitely wondered what was going on behind those dark, gleaming eyes.
“I should never have left him alone with them, but I very much wanted to do it. I was working with Doctors Without Borders, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that once I had Isaac full time after he turned eighteen.”
Her words got a reaction; his eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? You were a volunteer?”
She shrugged. “I wanted to give back, and I could afford it.”
His mouth curled again, just a bit. It didn’t look like a potential smile this time, more like the start of a sneer. “Nice.”
She knew exactly what he was thinking. It wasn’t flattering.
“I live on my own money, not my parents’. I make a pretty good living, you know.”
If that sounded defensive, it was because it had been. She’d gotten her undergrad degree by working her ass off and earning an academic scholarship. Yes, she was lucky she’d had an inheritance from her grandparents to pay for medical school, but at least she hadn’t had to take anything from her parents.
Having no student loans enabled her to build up a nice savings account in the two years she’d worked in New York once she’d been certified. So she could afford to take a year off to volunteer overseas. It had wiped out much of her savings, but the experience would have been well worth it…if not for what had happened to Isaac.
“Sorry again.” He grunted. “I keep thinking the worst and saying shitty things to you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I suspect that’s par for the course.”
Gaping, he stared directly at her. She stared back, not intimidated.
Mistake. Looking at him head on made her quiver. She simply couldn’t ignore her fascination with those handsome, masculine features; there was no denying his looks would inspire any woman to make a complete fool of herself.
She didn’t consider herself a fool, yet Kate felt her heart skip a beat, and her stomach did a funny little flip. Being the focus of this man’s undivided attention was disconcerting. Shocking. She didn’t like it…and yet she did.
“Touché,” he said. And then, as if she hadn’t been fascinated enough, that mouth widened into a genuine smile and amusement tripped out of it in a deep, throaty laugh.
God in heaven. He’d been heart-stopping when dour. The smile took him up to soul-shattering. She was finding it hard to even breathe, wondering how many women had seen that genuine smile and lost their hearts—and their clothes—right on the spot.
She swallowed, hard. “Umm…where were we?”
She knew where she’d been—deep in her seductive imagination. But she hoped he’d be able to pull her back from the edge.
“So, you were going to take your brother once he came of age,” he said, not going back to the subject of her work with soldiers, or PTSD. She knew he’d been in the Army a few years after 9/11, and figured his combat days had been as traumatic as the soldiers she’d worked with. He obviously didn’t want to address them.
“Yes. I thought the timing would work out well. He would finish high school, I’d finish my nine months and come back, he’d move in with me and I’d help him get through college.”
“Sounds like it was a good plan,” he replied, his voice gentler than she’d ever heard it.
“I thought so.” She dropped her head, twisting her fingers together until she crumpled the corners of the pages she held. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t. I know they did something to him, hurting him, physically or emotionally, until he couldn’t stop himself from lashing out.”
“I’ve done my fair share of that.”
“But you had the chance to grow up and straighten out on your own.”
He nodded to concede the point, a frown forming as he, too, realized Isaac had never had that chance. “What’d he do that was so heinous he ended up at Fenton?”
“After a string of other bad behaviors, he stole our father’s prized 1937 Benz Roadster and smashed it through a wall at the country club.” He’d sworn to her that he hadn’t intended to crash the car, merely to take it to give their father a good scare. She hadn’t entirely believed him. “It was the last straw. Father was livid about the car. Mother was humiliated in front of her friends. They dumped him at the academy, without even contacting me.”
His tone didn’t change, so she wasn’t sure if he was trying to make her feel better or merely stating fact when he asked, “What could you have done?”
“I could have come back and brought him to live with me right away!”
“Come on, Doc.”
Doc? Nobody ever called her Doc. Katherine, Kate, Doctor Lincoln. Never Doc.
She didn’t like it. It implied…closeness. Intimacy. Not something she wanted in her relationship with a man who already bothered her in ways she hadn’t yet defined.
Bullshit. You’ve defined them. Her logical brain just didn’t want to admit it.
“I’ve known people like your parents. Do they ever willingly give up control of anything they think they own—like your brother? You can’t honestly believe they would have let you take him, be kind to him, when they thought he should be punished.”
Kate had been tormenting herself with the what-if’s for months, and was used to taking the blame. Now, though, she felt a tiny quiver of absolution glide through her. She’d thought the same thing, of course, which was why she and Isaac had decided he wouldn’t move in until he was eighteen. But it was nice hearing it from someone else, even a near-stranger who had never met her brother, or her awful parents.
“You gotta let it go. It’s hard—believe me, I know it’s hard. But you have to do it if you ever want to move on.”
The tears she thought she’d stopped crying months ago dampened her cheeks. “I will,” she said, angrily wiping them away with her hands. “After.”
She was about to thank him for his help and his concern when he abruptly turned his attention back to the computer screen. His chair lurched forward as he pushed himself under the desk, presenting his back to her, a broad, solid wall that silently screamed Keep out.
Derek Monahan was a private man. A hard man. Yet he’d let down his guard with her, had offered her consolation and kindness. And he didn’t like it one bit.
“The whole place is under a fucking black cloud,” he said as he hit print again. After finding stories about the students, he’d begun reading about the history of the facility, which sat on a couple-hundred acres of secluded land, ten miles outside of the city. “Talk about a blighted setting.”
“Wait until you see it up close and personal,” she said.
“Tomorrow night,” he murmured.
That took her by surprise. “What?”
“They have sporting events Saturday nights that sometimes run late, so tonight’s out. It’s gotta be tomorrow.”
“But you’ll be working there by Monday morning.”
“I know. I want to scout it out first.”
Once he was an employee, he would have more leave to wander the property, but he would also be more recognizable and, perhaps, questioned about his curiosity. A clandestine visit made a lot of sense.
“Okay. I’m coming with you.” She hated the thought of prowling that place in the dark of night, but knew he would need her. Besides, her brother had endured it. She added steel in her voice, expecting him to argue. “Don’t say I can’t.”
“I’d hoped you would.”
Kate’s jaw unhinged. Had he really just said that? She’d expected an overprotective, woman-stay-home attitude from such a gruff, hard-looking man. “Seriously?”
“Of course. The whole point of me going late at night is so you can come along and show me what you’ve found so far.”
“You surprise me,” she murmured.
“Why?”
“You project one image, but you aren’t stubborn. You’re smart enough to take help when it’s offered, and you don’t try to shut me out because I’m a woman.”
“Did you think I was some kind of caveman?”
Actually….
He grinned. “Aside from the fact that Julia and Olivia would have beaten any lingering misogyny out of me by now, I spent half my life with a forward thinking grandmother and a strong aunt. Weaker sex my ass.”
Though curious about why he would have spent half his life with a grandmother and aunt, she didn’t pry. Kate liked the relaxed, almost boyish look on his face, sensing it didn’t appear often. With that expression, he looked almost like a different—though equally sexy—person. Frankly, she wasn’t sure which she liked better. This side appealed to her a lot. But, being completely honest with herself, so had the surly, long-haired, bad-ass guy she’d met in Julia’s office. Which, she wondered, was closer to the real Derek?
She didn’t wonder for long. They were both Derek, of course. During the hours they’d spent alone together, she’d already realized he was a complicated mix of sexy and sultry, angry and rebellious. Smart and tender, caustic and tough.
And he fascinated her more by the minute.
Smile fading, he glanced away. “Anyway, I need to look at any particular places Isaac mentioned to you. It’s not as if we can walk around on the campus together in broad daylight.”
Definitely not. “We can’t be seen together by anybody at Fenton. The headmaster might have me arrested for trespassing if he finds me there again.” He had warned her of that the last time she’d gone there to snoop around, having security escort her out.
“There’s a prime example of how rotten the place is. Banning the family member of a missing loved one says they’re more interested in keeping secrets than in helping find a lost kid.”
“I figured that out when the local police did the most cursory investigation after I filed a missing person’s report. My parents’ attitude didn’t help.”
“Looking at the map, it appears the place is right outside the Savannah-Chatham Police district. Too bad. Liv’s husband is a detective; he could be a big help on this. I know for sure he wouldn’t have looked the other way.”
“The school is policed by a small force in the nearest town. I don’t even think they have a detective squad.”
“Isaac’s wasn’t the first they blew off, from what I’m seeing.” He shook his head, the rigidness easing out of him in a slow breath as his broad shoulders slumped the tiniest bit. “Those boys don’t have a chance. Jesus, your poor brother. Sounds like he wasn’t a bad kid, just one in need of affection. He sure wasn’t going to find it there.”
Hearing the genuine feeling in his voice, Kate looked into his dark eyes, seeing the way they softened with sadness. She couldn’t look away, torn and confused by the emotion she saw there, suspecting he didn’t often show it. Something warm and human washed between them, a tide of understanding, and she realized she’d gotten to know a lot about this man in that one moment. He might hide his feelings behind his hard façade, but he definitely had them.
“No, he didn’t have nearly enough love in his short life,” she murmured, appreciating the expression of genuine sadness for Isaac. The rest of his loving family certainly hadn’t shown it.
“Have you ever thought….” He shook his head and began to swing his chair back around toward his desk. “No, never mind.”
“What?” she prodded.
“Forget it.”
Kate scooted her own chair closer, until she sat right beside him, their legs brushing. She tilted her head at an angle, forcing him to face her. “Say it.”
A beat. Then he put it out there. “Have you ever wondered if Isaac wasn’t actually your parents’ kid? And maybe that’s why they treated him like shit?”
She immediately shook her head. “I remember my mom being pregnant. She bitched and complained for eight-and-a-half months.”
“Huh.” He waited. As if expecting her to read his mind.
Suddenly, she did. “Are you saying….”
“That maybe he wasn’t your Dad’s?”
Kate stiffened. Although she had no real feelings for her parents anymore, there was something instinctive and human that made her react defensively. “No. It’s crazy.”
“Forget I said anything.”
But she couldn’t.
She’d never let the thought enter her mind before, but she supposed there had been a moment or two during her life when she’d wondered. Oh, not that her mother had cheated and conceived her younger sibling with another man, but that something strange had happened to explain their complete lack of concern at his disappearance.
“My father was always awful to him, and they look nothing alike,” she murmured, wondering why a rich, successful man would be fairly indifferent to his daughter, but outright hateful to his only son and, ostensibly, heir. “My mom’s just a stone-cold bitch to everyone.”
Kate’s thoughts churned, knowing his explanation made sense. She could certainly picture her beautiful, selfish mother having affairs, as she knew her father had. Maybe the long years between her birth and Isaac’s meant something after all…that Isaac Lincoln II hadn’t been able to father another child?
“I suppose it does make sense,” she said, not feeling much, other than another heaping helping of sadness for Isaac.
“Maybe,” he said. He turned, staring at her. “But Isaac was 100% your brother, no matter who fathered him.”
“Of course he was. I wouldn’t care if they’d found him on their doorstep.”
Which was why she had to find out what had happened to him. No matter what.
He swung away again. “You hungry?”
The quick subject change startled her. Sensing he was angry at himself for getting into a private conversation, she went with it. “A little.”
“Pepperoni?”
“Sure.”
He picked up his phone, barking a quick voice command, placed an order, and put it back down. She had to laugh. “You have pizza delivery on speed dial?”
“I don’t cook a lot.”
“Since they know to deliver here without you even giving an address, I assume you work late a lot too?”
It was late—after eight o’clock. They had the office suite to themselves, his boss, Julia, having popped her head in to say goodnight about twenty minutes ago. Having been so focused on what they were doing, it hadn’t really occurred to her that this entire suite of offices was empty. She was alone with dark and sexy Derek, who had affected her physically at first sight, and was now tugging at her emotions as she got to see glimpses of the man within.
She didn’t need to be adept at self-evaluation to understand why she suddenly shivered. It wasn’t with fear. It was attraction. Her most feminine side had been dormant during these past months of worry, fear, frustration and grief. This completely unexpected man had awakened it.
“Yeah, I guess I do. I live outside of the city, and hate to shop, so carry-out and delivery are my two favorite meals. You sure you’re okay with pizza?” A half-smile. “I figure you’re more used to five-star dining.”
“Are you kidding? I would have given my right hand for pizza when I was overseas. That stuff they served on base barely qualified.”
“Tell me about it. Gooey bread with ketchup and sprinkled parmesan.”
“It was better than the some-kind-of-meat loaf.”
“But nothing beat the mystery glop on toast.”
They both laughed, sharing a memory, reminding her that, despite outward appearances, they did have a few things in common. Including time spent in another world, practically on another planet. She hadn’t been carrying assault weapons, merely a pen and some empathy, but they had both seen the devastating results of battle. She only hoped Derek had had somebody like her to help him deal with its aftermath.
The pizza arrived quickly, a loud knock telling her the delivery guys were probably used to pounding to get the attention of the lone occupant. He left the office, going through the dark reception area to get it. Coming back and putting it on the only clear part of his desk, he grabbed paper plates and napkins from a nearby shelf. His every move was efficient and precise. She’d noticed that about him before. There wasn’t a languid bone in his body—he was always focused, in action and in speech. She suspected the brief lapse into personal conversation a little while ago had been a rarity.
He confirmed it by getting right back to work as they ate.
“Okay, I’ve done a lot of research on the property, as well as checking every available map. According to the most recent satellite images, there are a lot of structures on the site.”
She quickly swallowed. “Do you know what the land was originally used for?”
He nodded, grim and disgusted. “A Confederate prison camp.” He mumbled something under his breath. “This is gonna be fun.”
“It’s even worse than you think. It’s a boggy swamp out there—useful for nothing except dumping captured northern soldiers, and then tuberculosis patients, and then the mentally ill.”
“And now, wayward boys. The place is damned.”
Kate didn’t actually believe in such things. Or, at least, she hadn’t. Now, though, she was working with a private investigation agency that dealt with the supernatural, and they had her full confidence. Maybe it was possible a blight of negative energy could linger over land so saturated with darkness, torment, and death.
She thought of something: his gift. “I don’t think any of the structures from the prison camp are still there.” Hopefully that meant there’d be no ghosts of any of the soldiers for him to stumble across. She wasn’t sure exactly how his ability worked, but hopefully, with nothing left to haunt, any spirits lingering in the area would not be the emaciated, limb-torn ruins from the Civil War.
“Probably not.”
“The office and classroom buildings have been completely renovated and look modern and upscale for the parents and media. But there are a lot of dark pockets on the grounds. Locked sheds, outbuildings untouched for years. I didn’t get more than a hundred yards in before I was caught, and in that time I found three spots that could have come right out of a horror movie.”
“Yeah. Some of that’s mentioned in here.” He handed her the pages spitting out of the printer.
“It will be bad at night,” she added, already thinking about the high boots she was going to need to buy before she walked through the marshy, swampy grounds.
“I have a feeling the place would feel evil in broad daylight.”
Especially for inmates locked inside it.
Derek began to jot more notes on a yellow pad. Not speaking while they ate, he surfed, and she read. Several such silences had filled the time between them this evening, but they weren’t uncomfortable. She liked his focus; it gave her confidence that he was the right one for the job, despite the fact that he was way too dark-and-dangerous, not to mention sexy, for her peace of mind.
Derek Monahan epitomized the type of guy she’d been attracted to when she was a teenager out to shock and anger her parents. The type she now avoided, having been burnt a few times when she reached too deeply into the fire.
Safe men don’t break hearts. Nor did they turn into violent psychos…well, not usually, though there had been one who’d stalked her for a while in New York.
Derek was a former soldier with a chip on his shoulder and steamy good looks that screamed Hell, yes! and No way! to a woman without him ever having to say a word.
Having sat here with him while he worked magic doing research, however, she knew she was lucky to have him on Isaac’s case. The facts he had already uncovered about the hellhole to which her brother had been sentenced stunned her. He knew his business and did it thoroughly. Knowing he was the one she was going to be wandering around with in the pitch black night, in a place she considered completely evil, made her feel better about the expedition. One thing was sure—he put off protective vibes like nobody she had ever met. She didn’t actually need protection, and never had since she’d been thrown into adulthood at a young age, but it was nice to know it was there if they ran into trouble.
“Apparently the school’s not flying completely under the radar.” He handed her a copy of a newspaper article from about a year ago. “They compare the place to a prison.”
“I found this article too. The fact that there are no fences or obvious guards and many wealthy families of former students stood up for it calmed things down.”
“Money talks.”
“But abused boys don’t.” She rubbed a hand over her weary eyes. They ached from reading so much tiny print. “If the reporter had been allowed to see the way those boys are guarded, he might not have questioned the lack of fences.”
He raised a curious brow.
“They’re treated like condemned murderers. Nonstop supervision even when they’re not in class. Almost no free time, little sleep, constant reminders of why they’re there.”
“Which probably trains away any resistance.”
Exactly. They were subdued, crushed into submission. “If that doesn’t work, and a boy is too rebellious, he gets the Building 13 treatment, a night in the swamp, extreme exercise, and finally paddling.”
“Is that even legal?”
“Their parents must sign forms allowing it as a condition of admission.”
The families who sent their children to Fenton were rich, and wanted the disobedience hammered out of their sons. Despite all the negative press, they kept the place in business. Just like her parents. God, how she hated that she shared their genes.
She shook off the thoughts. They hadn’t even tried to contact her in months, not since the academy had informed them Kate was snooping around, and they’d called to insist she stop. She had told them that even if they didn’t give a damn what had happened to Isaac, she did.
They hadn’t called since, expecting her to crawl back. She never would.
Some things she might be able to forgive. Maybe even what they’d done to her and to Isaac when they were kids. Locking him up in Fenton, however, was completely unforgivable. Kate truly didn’t care if she never saw them again.
“So what time are we going tomorrow night?”
“Let’s meet here at nine. You’ll have to drive. My bike is pretty loud.”
Of course he drove a motorcycle. Probably a Harley. What else?
He was looking at a grainy black-and-white picture of a dark haired woman with a vacant, broken expression. “This history on this place….” He swiped a hand through his jet black hair in visible frustration. “There have been lots of deaths.”
“I’m sure there have been.” There shouldn’t have been any recent ones, since the site had been turned into a school. But she knew there had. She’d bet her own life on it. She only wished Isaac hadn’t been forced to bet his. “Is it going to be a major problem for you?”
She knew he saw ghosts. Maybe such a place would attract more than its fair share. That didn’t mean every person who died there had remained in spirit form, or that they would reveal themselves to Derek. She hoped.
“I can handle it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. Years of practice. I’ve been to a few places just as bad. There was this planation house…we worked a case over in Granville that blew all our minds.”
“The Granville Ghoul.”
He jerked his head. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Taylor Kirby is the one who told me about your agency.”
It took him a second to place the name. “The twin? The one who was kidnapped?”
“Yes.”
“Aidan’s girlfriend, Lexie, is still in touch with the family.”
Realizing she should have told him about Taylor’s connection to the case sooner, she explained. “She and her roommate came to see me a month or so ago.”
“Let me guess. A girl named Vonnie?”
She nodded, not asking how he knew. She’d learned enough about the girls’ story to know they were inseparable. “I didn’t know them, but Taylor found me after I moved here. She knew Isaac. They met last fall when the academy let a group of seniors go for a campus visit. Taylor and Vonnie were student tour guides, and I guess they hit it off with my brother. He and Taylor stayed in touch.”
“Those girls went through hell. Good to know they’re still together and doing okay.”
Having heard about what had happened to them, not to mention to Taylor Kirby’s twin, she could only imagine how painful such memories were to the college freshmen. Well, no, actually, she didn’t have to imagine it. She had lost her only sibling; the grief had been indescribable at first. Although it had been half a year, like a badly healed wound, the pain still sometimes caught her off guard.
“Taylor seems to like school, and she looks happy and energetic. A typical co-ed.”
“And Vonnie?”
She considered it. “Similar, but not exactly. She’s a quieter, more studious girl.”
“Taylor’s always been bright and sunny,” Derek said. “Vonnie’s the moon…like Jenny was.”
“How eloquent.”
“Aidan explained it that way once. Made sense to me.”
“Yes, it does. They’re different, but incredibly close. They finish each other’s sentences.”
“Like twins.”
“Yes, exactly.”
He mumbled, “Battle brothers,” obviously thinking of his own experiences.
“Sisters.” Although not technically related, the girls were sisters born out of a nightmare, from what she’d heard about their kidnapping.
“So, a college visit, huh?”
“Isaac had planned to go to school in New York when he came to live with me. But I guess any boy would grab an excuse to get away from Fenton.”
“I’m surprised the prison allows field trips.”
“I guess they have to at least maintain the appearance of being an academic institution.”
“You said they stayed in touch. Did they see each other again?”
“No. Isaac’s phone was confiscated when he arrived, and he didn’t have much access to the Internet, but they emailed whenever he had the chance. There was a little flirtation going on between him and Taylor, even though she was a year older.”
She couldn’t believe he hadn’t told her about his brief romance, which had perhaps provided a small light in the darkness of his day-to-day. Maybe he’d been uncomfortable talking about it from so far away. Maybe he’d been waiting for it to develop into something more before he shared the details. How she wished he’d had time to fall in love.
“Is there any reason you didn’t lead with this when you hired us?” He didn’t sound angry, merely curious. “It might have been helpful to know, and to have copies of those emails.”
“I’m sorry.” She was kicking herself about it. “Taylor doesn’t know anything about his disappearance, but she really liked him. They’d planned to try to see each other this summer after he graduated. Then he stopped communicating with her.”
“And she found out he’d disappeared?”
“Yes. After I moved here, she tracked me down and suggested I hire your agency to look into it.”
He smirked. “Bet you were skeptical at first.”
Skeptical didn’t come close to describing it. “I was also desperate.”
“Desperate enough to put your faith in spook-central?”
“Aside from what Taylor said, I saw the publicity about the Granville case. There was a lot to read between the lines about how involved your company was in solving it.”
“Then there’s your own ability. You can’t be entirely unconvinced about what we do.”
“I’m not entirely sure what you all do. But I’m willing to try anything.”
“We each have our unique ways of approaching a case.”
He didn’t elaborate. Although she was curious to learn more about past cases, there was still too much work to do before tomorrow night. She knew he wanted to be completely prepared when they searched the place.
The more they uncovered, the angrier she became. He merely grew quieter, if that was possible for a man who was already more taciturn than any she’d met before. She couldn’t help casting glances at him, seeing the way his dark hair fell forward when he got closer to the screen to peer at something he’d found. His soft grunts of disgust warned her whenever she was about to read something else sure to make her skin crawl.
“Umm,” she finally said, suddenly remembering her last visit to the academy, “you know you’re probably going to have to not only shave, but buzz cut your hair before Monday.”
He looked up, a silky strand falling in front of his eye. “What? Why?”
“You don’t look like a boot camp instructor.” More like a biker gang leader.
“I’ll sling it back.”
He sounded disgruntled, like he didn’t really want to get the buzz cut most military-type instructors would have. It seemed unusual coming from so self-confident a guy, and she had to needle him a bit. “What, are you Samson? Is your power in your ponytail?”
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Ha! You are vain about your hair.”
The frown became a glower. “Bullshit.”
“So why are you so scared to get it cut?”
“This isn’t exactly easy to hide.” He yanked up a handful of hair, revealing a bare patch of scalp crossed with a jagged red scar. “I don’t particularly like getting grilled about my past while sitting in a barber chair.”
Kate froze, feeling cruel for teasing him about scars he still carried, both inside and out.
“That must have been a close one,” she whispered, unable to stop herself from lifting a hand and reaching toward him.
He stiffened, but didn’t pull away. She placed the tips of her fingers on the front of the red scar, and traced its bumpy outline until it disappeared into the hair he wasn’t holding up. The wound must have been at least six inches long. It wasn’t thin and straight, as one from a hairs-breadth-away, careening bullet might have been. Something broad and jagged had taken a sharp trip around his helmetless head.
“Shrapnel?” she whispered, slowly lowering her hand.
“Yeah. Proxy car bomb.”
She knew by what he didn’t say—no added story about the experience—that it had been a bad day. Maybe his worst one. Not just because of his own injury, but because others probably hadn’t escaped from the blast. She’d worked with plenty of soldiers and knew the drill. It was an all too frequent tale—someone is forced to drive a car laden with explosives into a military checkpoint. Everybody dies.
Except him. Thank God.
She didn’t offer sympathy; he wouldn’t want it. Rather than dwelling on the problem, she moved to the solution. “I don’t think you’ll have to do anything too drastic.” Getting up, she went to his desk, and picked up a sharp pair of scissors. “Let me take care of it for you.”
His glower faded. “I think I’m beyond plastic surgery, Doc. Besides, scar removal isn’t exactly your specialty, is it?”
“I meant your hair, Monahan.” She pushed his rolling chair forward and moved behind him, smoothing his hair with her fingers. “I used to trim Isaac’s.” A memory stabbed her in the heart. “He wanted to grow it a little long as a teenager. Our father got angry at seeing it fall into his face. So he took him to a barber and had his head shaved.”
“Talk about humiliation. What a guy.”
“Given what you mentioned a while ago, I suspect humiliation was behind a lot of what my father did to my brother over the years.” She couldn’t stop thinking Derek might have hit the nail on the head about Isaac’s real paternity. Maybe one day she’d begin talking to her parents again and could ask them. That would probably cement the estrangement forever. No big loss.
She tested the scissors.
“I’ve never trusted a woman enough to sit still while she wielded sharp implements against my neck.”
“First time for everything.”
She didn’t proceed, waiting for permission, and finally he nodded his assent.
Going to work with the admittedly too-large scissors, she trimmed as best she could. Her heart broke a little every time a soft, black curl hit the floor. God, the man had hair any woman would envy. But she knew from her many visits to the academy he would never fit in amongst the rigid-asshole set if he didn’t look more conventional. Richard Fenton wouldn’t let him anywhere near his military-precise students, especially not in a boot-camp-themed final round of torment.
As she cut, she couldn’t help watching for the appearance of his scar, wondering about the bombing that gave it to him. What had been packed into the explosive device to cause this ugly wound? Had it been a nail? A shard of glass? A piece of a once benign can? Or a hunk of metal shaved to a point to cause the utmost destruction when coming up against soft human flesh?
Her fingertips frequently brushed against the jagged outline, and each time she quivered. She inwardly imagined what might have happened if it had gone a bit deeper, or a bit to the right where it could have flown into his eye socket and directly into his brain.
She hated the people who had done this. Hated them. It wasn’t professional, and it wasn’t at all impersonal the way she had been trained to be. Still, she couldn’t help the reaction. Derek was, without a doubt, a unique man. Special. Kate knew that, though he was nearly a stranger. She wanted to physically injure the people who had been so callous and careless with his life…and who’d left scars, both physical and emotional, that affected him to this day.
The silence grew long, just the snick of the scissors interrupting it. Feeling strange in the thickness of it, she asked, “So, in this research of the school have you seen any mention of ghost sightings? Isaac told me some of the boys whispered about a haunted shack.” She wouldn’t see anything, but he certainly would if any spirits were lingering.
The realization that she was even having these thoughts startled her. God, how far she’d come in a week!
“I didn’t see anything in my web search. That’s surprising, considering how ugly the entire place has been throughout its history. It oughta open up to scare-seekers on Halloween.”
Knowing something about that ugliness, Kate gritted her teeth. She fought to keep her hand steady as she attempted to evenly cut the hair at the nape of his neck. “My brother told me horror stories about some of the buildings there, and their uses. Isaac was especially terrified of one called Building 13. He was locked in there overnight once.” Her voice lowered to a growl. “With his history, it could have badly damaged him.”
“Is that the one they think is haunted?”
“No. That one is supposedly somewhere much deeper in the swamp. The boys claim there are spooky noises and lights out there at night.”
“Hmm. Interesting.”
“You think there are really ghosts in it?”
“It’s possible. But no matter what, those rumors would help someone keep secrets and prevent any curious teenagers from sniffing around.”
“I suppose.” Kate stepped away, looking over her work, and lowered the scissors to the desk. He wouldn’t pass military muster, but he didn’t look so much the biker-guy. “Okay.”
“Done?”
“I think so.”
He looked up at her. “Thanks, Doc.”
“You’re welcome.”
He didn’t touch his hair, didn’t try to glance at his reflection in the screen of his laptop. It was as if he already trusted her, something she found unusual in a veteran who’d experienced what she knew he had. The realization warmed her.
“Now what about this Building 13?”
She returned to her chair. “It was part of the old sanitarium, used for electro shock therapy. Isaac said the owners intentionally left equipment in there to terrify the kids.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, typical old mental asylum torture chamber stuff. Rusty beds with filthy, torn mattresses and restraint straps attached to the headboards. Stained straightjackets. Scalpels, operating tables.” She hissed out a breath between her teeth. “Actual McKenzie Leucotome devices, rusty and stained.”
“What’s that?”
“Tools once used for lobotomies.”
He grunted in disgust.
“Isaac said there are gruesome pictures of patients taped to the walls. Doctors hammering into victims’ skulls, cutting their heads open, draining blood. It was barbaric then, and the reminders left for frightened boys to find are equally as barbaric now. They leave the offending student alone overnight, locked in with one flashlight, a cup of water, and all that terror.”
“That’s sick,” he snapped. “Those bastards have to be stopped.”
It took him a minute, breathing deep, calming breaths, to bring himself under control. She watched, hoping he would have the strength to act his part starting Monday. She’d had to take a lot of those calming moments herself over the last several months. And she’d been tempted to punch several people on her visits to Fenton, including the headmaster, a smug creep for whom the academy was named.
“Okay,” he eventually said. “I think we’re done for tonight.” He shut down his laptop and slammed the lid. “I need to go home and wash my eyes out with bleach after reading the history of that place.”
She nodded, knowing he wasn’t referring only to the school. They’d gone back in time a century-and-a-half in an effort to unveil all the secrets of the old site that stood not far off Route 80. Unsettling didn’t begin to describe it.
“So…tomorrow night at nine,” she said as they both cleaned up the pizza dinner and prepared to leave. It was almost ten p.m. now; they’d spent a long night looking at this stuff. She might not need bleach, but a long, hot shower was definitely in order.
“You’re sure you’re okay with it?” he asked, sounding concerned in a way he hadn’t earlier, when he’d told her he wanted her to accompany him on his clandestine field trip.
“I’m sure.”
“It could get ugly.”
“You mean if somebody finds us?”
“Not exactly.”
Ahh, he must mean the swamp, then. Creatures in the muck, the darkness, the damp.
Well, she could handle it. She could handle just about anything if it meant getting the answers she’d wanted for so long.
“I’ll be fine,” she promised. “Nothing is going to keep me from finding out what happened to my brother. Absolutely nothing.”
After making the disturbing discovery in the back of her roommate’s dorm room desk, Yvonne—Vonnie—Jackson spent much of Saturday evening figuring out what to do about Taylor’s current, crazy obsession. She had no idea what Taylor intended to do with all the stuff she’d hidden in the drawer, but Vonnie had her suspicions. None of them good. Or safe.
“Time to shut this shit down.”
When Taylor got back from her date tonight, Vonnie knew exactly what she would do and say. She and Taylor were as close as sisters. Surviving a literal monster and escaping a literal torture chamber/dungeon together could do that to people. So they knew each other about as well as anyone ever could.
Taylor was stubborn, which wasn’t a bad thing—they’d both needed to be stubborn to survive their shared nightmare. But while Vonnie strove to always be rational and reasonable, Taylor’s stubbornness sometimes led to intransigence. If she felt like somebody was telling her she couldn’t do something, she was much more likely to do it.
So Vonnie would be calm, unaccusing, and completely understanding.
Actually, it was understandable. Taylor had lost two people she cared about in the last eighteen months. The murder of Jenny, her identical twin, had nearly destroyed her. Vonnie still heard her call out her sister’s name sometimes in her sleep.
Now there was this guy.
Vonnie knew how much Taylor had liked the boy they’d met at the campus tour. She’d talked about him for ages, and when they found out he was missing, she’d been way more upset than you’d think she would about someone she’d only met once face-to-face. But that was Taylor. Loyal and emotional, always springing into action. She had practically ordered Vonnie to go with her to visit the kid’s sister, despite everybody’s assurances that Isaac Lincoln had simply run away.
Taylor hadn’t believed it. She didn’t want Isaac’s sister to believe it, either, and had begged the psychiatrist to go to the Extrasensory Agents for help, praising their “unique” abilities.
“Nope, nope, nope,” Vonnie reminded herself. She would never forget—and could never repay—what those people had done for her. But her rational mind wouldn’t allow her to believe how they’d done it.
They were good private eyes, that was all. Not psychics. Not people who talked to ghosts. The conversation Taylor had had with her dead twin before they’d escaped from Mark Young, with his maniacal Burger King mask, had been a product of Taylor’s imagination, or a concussion. Temporary insanity. Not a real visitation.
Vonnie didn’t believe in such things. She wouldn’t allow herself to.
Nor would she allow the person to whom she was closest in the world do something as crazy as she seemed about to do. Vonnie would stop her. Period. Getting Taylor to give up this scheme was just a matter of handling her the right way. That meant Vonnie had to play it totally cool and rational, and would quietly, reasonably talk Taylor out of this insanity.
That was the plan.
Unfortunately, however, Vonnie’s mouth forgot the plan. The minute Taylor entered their room, looking bored rather than excited about tonight’s date, Vonnie launched. “Girl, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Taylor saw the open drawer, the items taken from it, and the look on Vonnie’s face. “You snooped through my stuff.”
Vonnie didn’t let herself be diverted. “I was trying to find my Psych notes you borrowed so I could maybe do some studying.”
Taylor bit her bottom lip. “Sorry. They’re in my satchel.” She reached into her leather shoulder bag and pulled out the folded pages. They’d been pristine when Vonnie had given them to her. Now they were folded and coffee-stained. Vonnie sighed as she took them, not surprised, but also not distracted.
“Thank you. Now back to my question. What are you up to, Tay? Please tell me you’re not going to do something stupid.”
Taylor obviously realized she wasn’t going to evade this conversation. Squaring her shoulders, her chin lifting in defiance, she looked Vonnie in the eye, and replied, “I’m going to find out what happened to Isaac Lincoln.”
Not the answer she was looking for. “You’ve been trying to find him for months.”
“Well, now I have a new idea about how to do it.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Vonnie pointed toward the weird books with the odd symbols on the covers. Each of them had something to do with the paranormal. None of them seemed a bit credible to Vonnie. “Do those have something to do with this new idea?”
Taylor nodded slowly, taking off her jacket and dropping it on her bed in a stall for time. “Now don’t freak out,” she finally said.
“Too late.”
Taylor sat on the edge of her bed, her hands clasped, dangling between her legs. “There’s one person I think can really help find him. I just had to figure out a way to ask her.”
Vonnie so didn’t like where this was going. Especially because, given the subject matter of those books, she suspected she knew who Taylor wanted to ask. And that who was buried in a cemetery down in Granville.
“Jenny can help us. I know she can.”
Her heart twisting as she noted the color in Taylor’s cheeks and the wet, defiant gleam in her eyes, Vonnie let go of her anger and her fear, and focused only on her friend. It had been a year and a half, but the wounds were as raw for both of them as they’d been the night they’d whispered plans for escape from that dank, evil cellar.
She went to Taylor’s side of the dorm room and crouched in front of her, putting a hand on her roommate’s knee. “Honey, she’s gone. You know she’s gone.”
Taylor’s head dropped, her long, dark hair swooping down to cover her face as she whispered, “Gone from this earthly plane, yes.”
Vonnie’s hand tightened. “What are you saying?”
“You claim not to believe in lingering spirits or psychic abilities. I’m not sure why, considering how insane it was that we were found and rescued, but that’s fine, you can keep pretending it was all completely scientific and normal.”
Vonnie gritted her teeth, but didn’t defend herself. She intended to go to medical school after she graduated. The scholarship fund set up for her and Taylor after the story of their kidnapping got out would be more than enough to cover it. Still, she worked hard in all of her science classes, and she knew humans used only a small portion of the brain. Vast expanses remained untapped, their abilities unexplored. Maybe Aidan McConnell could reach into his. Maybe that’s how he had known where to find them. She was willing to go that far.
But no farther.
“Can we get to the point?”
“This is the point.” Taylor’s head lifted. “Stop trying to convince me I didn’t see what I know I saw, Vonnie Jackson. You might have closed your mind and shut out your memories of that night, but I have not.”
Jenny’s ghost.
Vonnie felt a little queasy, as she did whenever the subject came up. “Tay, be reasonable. Even you weren’t entirely sure of what happened. At first you thought it was your imagination.”
“Maybe, but I’m sure now. She was there, Von. She helped me get through it.”
Taylor wanted to believe. If that helped her deal, okay. Still, Vonnie could not humor her and go along with the fantasy if it became any more than wishful dreaming.
“Honey, please be realistic. We can’t Ouija board your dead sister to ask for help finding a probably-also-dead boy you barely knew.”
Considering it, Vonnie suspected this crazy scheme was as much about trying to reconnect with a dead sibling as seeking answers about Isaac Lincoln. Never having had siblings until Taylor’s family had taken her in and made her one of their own, Vonnie wasn’t sure what she would do in her friend’s place. A twin made it that much worse. So maybe she’d grasp at straws, too.
“I did see Jenny that night.”
“I know you think you did.”
“And I’ve heard her a few times since.”
Startled, Vonnie jerked back, landing on her butt on the floor. “What?”
Taylor dropped to her knees beside her. “Don’t you understand what that means?”
“I have no clue what it means!”
Taylor grasped both of Vonnie’s upper arms. Tension—intensity—roared from her body, and her grip was almost painfully tight. She actually shook her as she said, “It means she’s still nearby. Jenny left her body, but her spirit hasn’t left and gone on to whatever afterlife is waiting for her. She’s here, lurking.”
Vonnie’s jaw dropped, all the air exiting her lungs in a hard whoosh, as if she’d been punched. She could hardly grasp what her friend was saying, and wondered when on earth Taylor had gone so completely off the rails.
Obviously seeing her disbelief, Taylor jerked her chin up and dropped her hands onto her own thighs. With a quiet dignity Vonnie had never seen in her before, she added, “If she can’t get all the way to me, I am going to find her.”
Vonnie merely shook her head, eyes wide, thoughts a jumble.
“You can either help me, or stay out of it. But either way, with what I’m learning in those books, I intend to go to wherever my sister is, and ask her to help me find out what happened to Isaac Lincoln.”