by L. T. Ryan
“So, are you going to tell me what happened?”
Mandy had hinted that something went down after she left his house earlier in the day, but his mom had ushered them into the car, and there had been no time to speak privately until now. Mandy was bursting at the seams with information. “Some guy tried to kidnap me,” she said.
Marcus’ eyes widened and then shot to the door, like he was half a second from sprinting across the room and getting his mom. “Are you joking?”
“No.” Mandy scooted closer to him. “I was walking back from your house. This guy pulls up next to me in a van. He offered to give me a lift to my house. Like that would work now? Maybe back in the fifties.”
Marcus looked like he wanted to join in the on the joke, but fear prevented him. He leaned in closer. “How did you get away?”
“I can take care of myself.” Mandy flexed an arm, then giggled at Marcus’ unchanging expression. “Seriously, dude, lighten up. I’m fine.”
“But weren’t you scared?”
Mandy thought about lying to him, but when she remembered her relief upon seeing Bear at home, she almost teared up again. “Yeah, I was scared.” Her voice was quieter now. “Terrified. Everything sort of happened in a blur. I got a couple good shots in. My dad taught me how to fight. But I was lucky. As soon as I had a chance, I just ran away. And all the information we printed off is gone.”
“That’s why you wanted me to bring my laptop today.” Marcus tapped his bag.
She nodded. “I’m sorry. I really tried to save it. But my bag ripped, and—”
Marcus placed a hand on her shoulder. The look on his face was so sincere, she really did tear up this time.
“It’s okay. I’m just glad you’re safe. That paperwork isn’t worth your life.” He let his hand drop. “What’s going on, Mandy? Your dad finds a body in the back yard from, like, fifteen years ago. Laura Lynn and a bunch of other people get sick. And you almost get kidnapped. Even in a movie, this wouldn’t make sense.”
“We also almost got run off the road last night,” she added. “By another van. I don’t know if it was the same guy. I’m gonna be jumping every time I see a van for the next few years.”
“Are they after you?” he asked.
“I think they’re after my dad. They want him to stop looking into all this.”
Marcus looked sheepish, like he was ashamed that he was afraid. “Maybe you should. I mean, is it worth it? Putting your life in danger?”
Mandy felt her anger spike, but she cooled it by looking over at Laura Lynn. Marcus was a nice guy—he was sweet and smart and funny and weird. She liked him a lot, but he was sheltered. He hadn’t seen what Mandy had seen growing up. She tried not to blame him for thinking the best thing to do was keep your head down when you were afraid.
“It is worth it.” She turned back to him. “And when my dad figures all this out and saves everyone, you’ll see I was right.”
Something changed in Marcus’ expression. He wasn’t any less scared, but there was a determined set to his jaw now. “Okay. Let’s do this.” He pulled out his laptop. “I can bring up the information again, but I’m not sure how we’ll print it off. I might just have to email it to you.”
She’d set up an email for school. It wasn’t ideal. She was afraid someone would be able to trace the information, but she needed those hospital records. “That works, I guess.”
Marcus’ fingers flew over the keyboard. When he dramatically hit enter, his mouth turned down. “That’s weird.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I think I might’ve put the password in wrong. Hang on.” He tried again. When he looked up at her, she knew they were in trouble. “It’s not working. Someone must’ve figured out what we were doing.”
“Now what?”
Marcus leaned over to check that his mom was still out in the hallway. “I’m not sure, but whatever we do, we have to do it fast. They’re not going to leave us alone for much longer.”
“You won’t be able to get back into the system?”
He shrugged. “I mean, I can. Eventually. It’ll take some time to do it so we don’t get caught.”
“And I guess we’d give ourselves away using a hospital computer.”
“Just a little bit.”
Mandy sat up straight. “Actually—”
“No.” Marcus leaned closer, his voice coming out as a hiss. “That’s really dangerous, Mandy. What if you’re caught?”
“What are they going to do? I’m fourteen. They won’t throw me in juvie. At worst, I’ll get a stern talking to.” She put her hands on her hips while making a serious adult face.
“You don’t know that.” Marcus looked worried. “Someone tried to kidnap you just a few hours ago. Are you crazy?”
“Only a little bit.” She grinned and got to her feet. “I’m going to pretend to go to the bathroom. Then I’m going to see if I can find Dr. Sing’s office. Maybe I can find her new password or get on her computer. There’s gotta be something useful in there.”
Marcus threw up his hands. “There is so much that could go wrong with this plan. What if she’s in there? What if someone sees you? What if there’s nothing to find?”
“Then I’ll wing it.”
As Marcus’ jaw dropped in disbelief, Mandy skipped across the room and into the hallway. The adults stopped talking as soon as they saw her. “I just have to pee,” Mandy said in her sweetest voice.
Marcus’ mom smiled down at her, and Mandy headed toward the sign for the bathroom. She turned back to the two women before she entered. They were engrossed in their conversation once again. She figured she’d have at least twenty minutes before they started to wonder where she was. Maybe another five or so before one of them tried to find her in the bathroom. It should be more than enough time.
Mandy continued down the hallway and around the corner. No one paid her much attention. She held herself like she knew where she was going. When she reached the elevators, she looked at the directory. Dr. Sing’s office was two floors above her. She was off to a good start.
She decided to take the stairs to get a peek at what the floor looked like. From her vantage point in the stairwell, this one seemed busier than the last. But luck was on her side. Dr. Sing’s office was right across the hall.
Mandy waited until the hallway was empty before launching herself from the stairwell into the corridor. She was light on her feet, just like Bear had taught her. She leaned her ear against the door to the office and waited for three beats to see if she could hear anything. All was silent. She tried the handle. Locked.
She had expected this. It had been one of the first lessons Bear had ever taught her. Mandy pulled a bobby pin from her hair and stuck it in the lock. Thank God she hadn’t needed to steal a keycard.
The lock popped. Mandy had to resist the urge to cheer. She slipped inside, shut the door with a tiny click, and locked it behind her. The lack of windows left the room pitch black. She switched on her phone’s flashlight.
Aside from the desk and a couple chairs, metal containers filled the entire room. Filing cabinets. They weren’t even all the same size or color, like Dr. Sing had collected them over the years as her client list expanded. Some of them looked rather beat up and old, but a few were brand new and still shiny.
The first thing Mandy tried was the computer. It was old and took a few minutes to boot up. When it did, it prompted her for a password. She looked around the desk to see if Dr. Sing had been stupid enough to keep a sticky note with the information here, too. She cursed when she came up with nothing. She shut the computer back down so it wouldn’t look like anyone had tampered with it.
Most of the doctor’s desk drawers were filled with office supplies, like pens and pads of paper. There were some latex gloves and sample boxes of medications, but Mandy didn’t recognize any of the names. There was a drawer that was locked. After a few seconds, she picked that one, too. She wouldn’t be able to close it again without the key, but that w
as a risk she was willing to take.
Inside, there were several mid-sized journals. Mandy peeled one open and saw notes in tiny handwriting filled them. It was cursive, and she could barely read it. There were names and dates and some drawings along the margins. They looked like patient notes, but if Dr. Sing had a method for how they were organized, it was a code Mandy couldn’t crack. She decided to leave the journals for now. Maybe something else would prove more useful.
Mandy bumped the drawer closed with her hip and made her way around the desk. There were at least half a dozen filing cabinets to choose from. She went with the oldest looking one first. It pulled open with a squeak and was heavier than she expected. It was full of files labeled last name first. She didn’t recognize any of the names from the list she had pulled earlier, and their charts were full of information she didn’t know how to read.
Closing the drawer, Mandy blew out a breath of air before opening another. She had been so hellbent on getting answers she hadn’t stopped to wonder what she should be looking for. It’s not like there’d be a folder labeled WHY PEOPLE ARE GETTING POISONED. She wasn’t even sure if she was looking in the right place. Dr. Sing was only one of the many doctors in the hospital. It was a good place to start, but who was to say she was involved at all?
Mandy closed the second drawer and opened another. She did this a dozen more times until she had gone through every filing cabinet. She was painfully aware that her twenty minutes were almost up. If she didn’t get back from the bathroom soon, Marcus’ mom would start to worry, and then the whole hospital would be looking for her. The last thing she needed was to be caught in here red-handed.
Not that she’d found anything important.
Mandy closed the last drawer and slumped against the wall. She thumped her head back in frustration, not caring how much it hurt. But the wall gave a little, and the sound was more hollow than solid. Turning, she inspected it more closely.
It was a brown panel wall from the seventies. She didn’t know how old the hospital was, but on her way in, she’d noticed one wing looked newer than the other, like they had added on instead of overhauling the whole thing.
Mandy pressed her hands against the wall and pushed. A section gave way and clicked open. The seams were hard to spot amongst the panels, but now that she knew it was there, she could see them easily enough. Dr. Sing had built a small hidden compartment in the wall and had partially hidden it with one of the filing cabinets.
Mandy slid the panel over on its track and used her phone to look inside the cubbyhole. It was small, maybe the size of a safe, but full of files and notebooks, similar to the ones she’d found in the desk. But these were hidden for a reason.
There was a small switch on the back of the wall inside the compartment. Trying to resist the urge to flip it was futile, so she did. When she pushed the little nob up, the panel slid back into place, nearly invisible to the naked eye. Pressing on the piece of wall again clicked it open, the nob turned down once more.
A simple contraption, and one that would hide whatever Dr. Sing didn’t want others to see.
With little time to spare, Mandy moved fast. She pulled out the first folder and skimmed the pages. They were shipping orders for antivenom from all kinds of snakes and ordered in huge quantities. At least a thousand at a time. Mandy looked up at the wall, lost in thought. Most hospitals kept antivenom on hand, but not in this quantity. She knew the stuff was expensive and in low supply due to the complexity of making it. Why would Dr. Sing need so much?
After snapping a photo of a few of the shipping orders, she replaced the file and grabbed another. More shipping orders. This one was for a drug she couldn’t even begin to pronounce. She had no idea what it was for, but she took a picture anyway. Maybe Bear would know.
Mandy grabbed a notebook and opened it to a random page. The doctor’s same small handwriting was squeezed into the page. It was dated from last year, and when she skimmed the words, she caught a few she could read. Trial. Prognosis. Side effects. More time. Larger subject pool.
From what Mandy gathered, it sounded like Dr. Sing was conducting some sort of experiment, like a clinical trial. But what did that have to do with antivenom? And why would she keep it a secret? And where could she conduct something like this without people noticing? Surely the hospital would notice her ordering so much.
Mandy heard the squeak of shoes outside the office door, followed by a muffled voice speaking on the phone. She snapped a picture of the notebook and shoved it back into the compartment, then froze, holding her breath. How long had it been? Well past twenty minutes. Was Dr. Sing returning to her office?
Her worst fears were confirmed when she heard a key inserted into the door. Mandy flipped the switch inside the compartment in a flash and turned off the flashlight on her phone. Shoving the device into her sock, she leapt across the room, away from the secret panel. The best she could do was hide behind the door and hope the doctor wouldn’t notice her.
But it was no good. As soon as Dr. Sing flipped on the lights, she swung the door closed so she could hang up her jacket on a hook on the other side. When she caught sight of Mandy, she dropped her phone and let out a startled scream.
Busted.
25
McKinnon parked the car around the corner from the bookshop where they were meeting Eileen Mayberry. Bear peered through the window and checked the street. It was bustling with people. Wasn’t much of a surprise for a Saturday afternoon in the fall.
“Busy,” McKinnon remarked.
Bear grunted in response. He wasn’t sure how he felt about their current situation. The old man they’d rescued earlier in the day had called Eileen on his phone. She was quick to answer him but clammed up as soon as she realized he wasn’t alone. Donovan had no idea where she lived, and she wasn’t giving up that information. After explaining the situation and vouching for Bear and McKinnon three times, the old man had convinced her to meet them.
That’s how they’d ended up outside the Book Emporium about an hour north of town. Eileen had instructed them to meet her in a back room. It was smart, Bear realized, for both parties. Public enough that the situation was unlikely to go sideways, and private enough that they could talk uninterrupted.
McKinnon popped open her door, and Bear followed her inside the shop. The woman behind the counter greeted them with a smile that fell from her face as soon as she saw the sheriff’s uniform. That thing was like a beacon of distrust.
And people rarely had nothing to hide.
“We’re here to meet Eileen?” McKinnon asked.
“She’s in the back already,” the woman said. She looked Bear up and down, and the crease between her eyebrows deepened into a ravine.
“Thanks.” He smiled in the hopes of putting her at ease. But the crease didn’t disappear.
The two of them made their way between packed bookcases. Bear knocked over a handful of stacked books and couldn’t manage to bend over to pick them up. McKinnon shot him a look like he’d done it on purpose. He shrugged in response.
The back room was cordoned off with a heavy sheet of plastic that McKinnon pushed to the side. There was a short hallway that opened into a break room. It had a single table, a couple chairs, and a refrigerator. Bear was disappointed to see there wasn’t a coffeemaker.
In the center of the room, a young woman sat with her hands folded in front of her. She looked at war with herself—should she run, or stay and get answers? Should she help, or continue her investigation on her own? Was this a mistake, or would it finally put her best friend’s case, and soul, to rest?
McKinnon spoke first. “Eileen?”
“Yes.”
The sheriff held her hand out. “You can call me Josie.”
Eileen shook her hand, then turned to Bear. He cleared his throat. “Riley.” He extended his own hand, which engulfed hers. “Appreciate you meeting with us.”
The young woman nodded. Her dark bangs fell into her eyes. She wore heavy makeup and all-b
lack clothes. There were half a dozen shiny silver rings on her finger, and a handful of necklaces circled her neck. Everything had been selected to look casual and thrown together.
“Thank you for finally taking this seriously.” There was a bite to her words. “Only took fifteen years.”
“I’m sorry about that.” McKinnon pulled out a chair and sat down. Bear followed suit. “I haven’t been the sheriff for long, and I didn’t know anything strange was going on until we found Katie’s body.”
Eileen shifted her gaze to Bear. “You’re the one who found her.”
“I am.”
Her features softened. “Can you ell me about it?”
“I was digging out my garden when I found a septic tank.” Bear had relayed the story many times, but it felt different sitting across from Eileen. “When I opened it, I knew the bones were human. There was a clump of hair stuck in the lid. That helped them identify her.”
“You know, it’s funny. Back when I still believed in something, I’d pray every night that we’d find her. Even if it was a body. By that time, I knew she wasn’t coming back. I just wanted closure.” Eileen picked at her cuticles. “And now that I have it, I don’t feel any different. Nothing’s changed.”
“I’m sorry,” Bear said, and he hoped the young woman believed him.
“Do you know how she died?”
“Not exactly,” McKinnon said. “Evidence points to her having been poisoned. She was sick. But we can’t know if she’d been strangled or drowned or any number of other possibilities.”
“Sounds like you know more than me,” Eileen said. “Not sure how I can help.”
“What were her parents like?” McKinnon asked. “We’re having trouble tracking them down.”
“Her mom was an addict and pretty negligent.” Some of the edge was back in Eileen’s voice now. “Her father was a dick. He yelled a lot. Pretty sure he hit her mom.”
“Do you know where they are?”
“Last I heard they moved across the country. Washington State, maybe? That was years ago.”