Exposure Point: A gripping small town mystery. (The Candidates Book 1)

by M. D. Archer

  “Ignoring for the moment any moral or legal issues with what you did, it is a rather good idea, but where did you get it from?”

  “Uh, Logan’s house.” I looked down so I didn’t have to meet Mr. Ellison’s eyes.

  “Excuse me? His house? How—”

  “Look, Mr. E, I think the less you know about this, the better,” Isaac said, taking the laptop back off him and turning it on. A moment later, he groaned. “It’s password protected. We can’t get in.”

  “There must be a way around passwords.”

  “Maybe, but not that I know of,” he said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “We don’t know, but I can think of someone who might.”

  Isaac’s eyes met mine, and he snapped his fingers. “Harvey, right? When he isn’t on his guitar, he’s like a major….” His eyes slid over to Mr. Ellison. “He’s really good with computers.” Isaac pulled out his phone. “Based on how easy it was to get into his place and Logan’s, uh, lifestyle”—Isaac briefly flicked his eyes to mine—“something tells me he hasn’t got state-of-the-art protection programs on his computer.”

  On the couch, I drew my legs up and hugged them. My chest was tight, but was that because of excitement or fear? I’d thought something weird was going on at Montrose, but I had no idea we would uncover something like this.

  I glanced down. On the coffee table sat my patient file. I picked it up and thumbed through it aimlessly. I’d read it cover to cover at least twice, but it wasn’t until I was about to put it down again when I noticed something I hadn’t registered before. My name and home address were written on the inside cover, and the handwriting was familiar.

  Cole’s.

  I’d seen it a bunch of times, had even admired his confidently messy scrawl. The most recent time I’d seen it was on the blood drive paperwork.

  I dropped the file. Mr. Ellison looked at me, and Isaac turned his head slightly but kept talking on the phone.

  Was Cole’s handwriting there because he worked at the health centre, or was it something more? Was it possible he might know what was going on?

  I jerked upright as the memory of him trying to tell me something in the car barrelled into my head. What had he been trying to tell me? That he was caught up in Logan’s scheme?

  Suddenly Isaac slammed his hand on the table, jolting me out of my thoughts.

  “Sorry. Logan’s got a tighter security system than you’d think.”

  I almost didn’t care whether we could hack into the laptop. All I could think about was Cole. Had he been working with Logan all this time? Maybe the reason he wasn’t on social media was because he was hiding something. Something big. Because deep down, somehow, I knew it was my file he’d been looking at that day I interrupted him. He’d been pretty convincing when he’d said he didn’t know what was going on with Logan and the wrong bags for the blood donation situation, but what did I know? Maybe he was an excellent liar.

  I replayed the moment in my head, trying to extract every single detail so I might figure out whether Cole had been telling the truth. After I caught him holding a file and looking guilty, I’d left the health centre and crept around the side. I’d overheard Logan talking about the blood samples. Something he’d said, something that hadn’t made sense at the time, popped into my head.

  He’d said, “If it doesn’t work, we’ll do it again.”

  A shiver of disbelief rattled through my entire body.

  Did Logan plan on re-dosing the students?

  26

  Mr. Ellison had taken over with Harvey. They were going to keep working on cracking the password—Harvey was under the impression Mr. Ellison had locked himself out of his own laptop—while Isaac and I dealt with something else.

  Ten minutes ago, Mom, so angry she almost couldn’t speak, had called Isaac’s cell to find me. Isaac, not brave enough to say no to her, had handed the phone to me with a grimace. “You have to deal with it sooner or later, Callie,” he’d whispered.

  So now we were on the way to Ms. Spencer’s dance studio. I’d hoped Isaac wasn’t going to leave me there to face them on my own, but he was muttering about staying out of it, so I was pretty sure I was going in there solo.

  But I wasn’t even thinking about that, I couldn’t get Cole out of my head. Had he known? Was every conversation, every moment we ever had, somehow to do with DcH?

  Stopped at a red light, Isaac peered at my face. “Are you okay?”

  “Cole’s handwriting is on my file,” I choked out. “I don’t know what to think. He’s probably involved, right?”

  Isaac stared at me for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. He works there.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what?”

  Had Cole been working with Logan Kerry this whole time as part of his secret experiment? The thought nauseated me. “Stop the car, Isaac.”

  He cast a worried glance at me and pulled over. We were still on Main Street, only a few minutes from Spencer’s Dance Academy. I stumbled out of the car, taking long, deep breaths, trying to calm myself down, attempting to suck normality from the night air.

  “You okay?” Isaac came to stand next to me.

  “Not really.” My body felt heavy.

  “We should get to the studio. Your mom—”

  “We’re not—” I sucked in some more air. “We’re not going to the studio. Take me home, please. I need to get my phone.”

  “Are you sure? If you talk to her, you’ll feel better.”

  I shook my head. “She doesn’t listen, and I’m done trying to explain. I need my phone, Isaac. I need to call Cole.”

  He gave me a look that I ignored.

  When we got to my house, Isaac left the engine idling while I ran upstairs, grabbed my phone from Mom’s dresser, and then raced downstairs.

  “Back to Mr. E’s?” Isaac said as he pulled out.

  I was about to agree when a dark blue sedan turned onto my street, moving slowly toward us.

  “Oh no, Isaac. That’s Logan’s car.”

  Without a word, Isaac stepped on the accelerator. We hurtled past the sedan. I buckled myself in and turned in the seat to see Logan make a hasty U-turn, his car running up over the curb and nearly knocking over a mailbox. It didn’t slow him down much.

  “Isaac, he’s coming after us.”

  “Where do I go?” Isaac yelled, zigzagging his way through the back roads of our neighbourhood. We came up to an intersection and Isaac randomly turned right, tires squealing as he took the corner too fast.

  I looked behind us, waiting. The headlights appeared. “He’s still on us!” I cried. “We can’t go to Mr. Ellison’s. We can’t lead Logan right to him.”

  “No. Somewhere public.” Isaac was driving like a maniac. Maybe we would get arrested; at least Logan wouldn’t be chasing us anymore. We got to the Main Street intersection. “I’ve got an idea,” he said, his voice tight with fear. He turned left.

  A right turn would have taken us south past the school and toward the downtown area. A left turn, however, was the way out of town. It took us down Discovery Road, out of Montrose, and since I doubted Isaac planned to get on the highway and lead Logan on a high-speed chase, he must be heading toward Discovery Diner.

  “The diner? Will we be safe there?” I asked.

  “Safe as anywhere else,” Isaac said, gritting his teeth with concentration. “But just in case, call the police.”

  “But Mr. Ellison said Radowski—”

  “There’s a guy chasing us, Callie. Even if Radowski is involved in the cover-up, you can still call 911 and ask for help.”

  I used the burner phone to call. My phone was off, but it had also occurred to me that if the Montrose police were in on it, an unregistered phone could be safer.

  As soon as I got through, I blurted, “There’s a crazy guy chasing me and my friend. We’re driving and we can’t stop because we think he’s going to come after us.”

  “What is your location?
Where are you?”

  “Just turned onto Discovery Road, Montrose, heading north.”

  “Can you see the license plate of the car?”

  I craned my head. “Yes.” I read it out for her. “Dark blue sedan.”

  “Try to stay safe and keep your speed down. I’ll call it in. A unit will be with you shortly. A minute or two, max.”

  I disconnected and glanced at Isaac. “Just hold on for a couple more minutes.”

  “Should I carry on to the diner?”

  “Might as well.”

  I glanced behind us. Logan was still there.

  He stayed on our tail the whole way, and I kept checking the rear-view mirror, waiting for a flash of red and blue to appear, to come rescue us, but it never happened.

  The promised police unit never showed up.

  Isaac pulled into Discovery’s lot and parked haphazardly across two spaces. We scrambled out and ran inside, then hurled ourselves into a free booth next to the window. Hunching down, we watched Logan’s car as it pulled in and parked so he was directly facing the entrance and the window.

  “Great. He can totally see us.”

  “But he can’t do anything, right?” Isaac said. “And we don’t have the laptop, so even if he did confront us, there’s no incriminating evidence,” he added.

  I felt a tiny bit better. And it was Logan, after all. Yes, he could be dangerous, but he wasn’t a trained assassin.

  I risked a glance out the window. God, what did I know? Maybe he was. I shivered.

  “Well, if there was ever any doubt Logan was involved in something shady….”

  “There isn’t now,” Isaac agreed. “And what’s with the police not showing up?”

  “Did Radowski intercept the call?”

  Isaac lifted his shoulders. “I guess it means we’re in this alone.”

  I shrugged off my coat. It was too hot in here. The familiarity of the Discovery Diner should have been comforting, but right now the clatter of cutlery, the hiss and sizzle of the grill, the occasional shout from the kitchen, it all seemed threatening.

  A waitress with Cindy written on her name tag appeared. “Something to eat?” She leaned in expectantly.

  We hesitated, blinking at each other as we tried to communicate without words. What was our plan? Were we going to sit here casually drinking coffee while Logan stalked us outside the diner?

  The waitress looked from Isaac to me. “You seem like a lovely couple of kids,” she said. “But unfortunately, if you ain’t buying, you ain’t staying. Boss’s orders.” She shrugged as she thumbed behind her to the counter where Big Mike glared at us.

  Great, him again.

  “Coffee, please. Thanks,” I said, giving her a nervous smile.

  “Me too,” Isaac said.

  “I’ll bring them over and take your food order,” she said, moving away.

  Isaac’s eyes met mine. “I could eat.”

  “Are you kidding? You literally just had a burger.”

  “Only one, and—”

  I held up my hand to stop him. This was no surprise.

  “I’m actually kind of hungry too,” I said. “And it’s kinda weird with Logan out there, but what else are we going to do? Is he still watching us?”

  Keeping his body still, Isaac turned his head very slightly. “I can’t see without properly turning,” he grumbled. “You try. Females have better peripheral vision than males.”

  “Okay.” I did the same, and I didn’t know if my eyeballs were more flexible or Isaac was right, but I could see Logan. He was still there, staring straight at us. “He sure is. He’s watching us, and he doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere.”

  “Okay. Let’s order food and decide what to do. We can tell Mr. E we’ll be back soon.”

  When the waitress came back, Isaac ordered blueberry pancakes and I ordered a grilled cheese. When Isaac heard my order, he doubled it, then added a side of hash browns. “Who knows when we might get a chance to eat again.”

  The waitress, satisfied by our order, tucked the pencil behind her ear and walked away.

  I hunkered farther down in the booth and rested my head against the vinyl. “Isaac, what have we gotten ourselves into?”

  “Something pretty frickin’ serious.” Isaac also slid down in his seat. He pulled out his phone and turned his attention to texting Mr. Ellison with an update.

  It was Kathleen who delivered our food, but she didn’t say anything that resembled a greeting. She didn’t make eye contact or even smile. Her face was a grey mask of worry.

  “Thanks,” Isaac said. He widened his eyes at me, as if to say, What’s up with her.

  “Everything okay, Kathleen?” I said.

  “It’s Brie,” she said, her mouth turned down. “My daughter. She’s missing.”

  “She is?” I cast a stricken glance at Isaac. “What happened?”

  “They put out a bulletin this afternoon, but….” She shook her head and wrung her hands. “Someone at her work said she had a lead on a story. But she didn’t say anything to me about it.” Kathleen’s anguished eyes landed on me, then shifted to Isaac, as if one of us might have answers. When we didn’t say anything, she moved away, her head hanging down.

  “What was that about?” Isaac asked.

  And just like that, I remembered.

  “Isaac!”

  “What?”

  “Her daughter is a reporter. She did a story about all the deaths in the park, kind of implying there might be some cover-ups, and she’d started a series on the students at Montrose. Talking about final year pressure and how it can have a bad effect.”

  Isaac’s eyes widened until they were saucer-like. “Holy crap. And now she’s missing? Like, she might be missing because she was getting too mouthy about what was happening at Montrose and needed to be shut up?”

  We stared at each other until a flash of lights pulled my attention outside. Logan had turned on his lights and was pulling out of the carpark.

  “Isaac. Logan is taking off.”

  “We should go too.” Isaac leapt up. “We need our food to go,” he yelled in the general direction of the kitchen.

  I looked back at the parking lot. Either Logan had lost interest in us or something much more important was happening somewhere else.

  ***

  It wasn’t until we were back on Discovery Road that I remembered to turn on my phone.

  It beeped and buzzed at me excitedly. The most impressive number of texts and missed calls I’d ever received at once. There were a couple of calls from Ms. Spencer, and a few more from Mom—obviously before she remembered she’d taken my phone off me—a couple from Isaac telling me he was coming down early, and a bunch of messages from Cole. Four texts, a missed call from his cell, and then three calls from a withheld number.

  I deleted the messages from Ms. Spencer and Mom because I already knew what they said. Then I got to Cole’s text messages. Two were from last night and two today. The last said, It’s Cole. Where are you? We need to talk. Call me.

  His voicemails were similar.

  “Calliope, it’s Cole again, calling from home. Your phone is off, and I’m worried. I need to talk to you. I need to tell you something. Call me back when you get this.”

  “Hey, me again. I’ve just remembered you’re grounded. Did your mom take your phone off you too? I’m hoping you’ll get it back tonight. I need to talk to you. Call me back.”

  “It’s me. Again. Listen, I need to tell you something, and it can’t wait. I hope you get this. I’ll try again, but I need to tell you… your patient file is missing from the health centre and… I think you know something about it. Calliope, the thing is, I think it’s been noticed… and there’s some stuff going on, and … listen, I’m coming back to Montrose. I’m in the city now, but I’ll be back in Montrose around midnight. Can you meet me? You pick where. I hope you get this. If you don’t, I’ll come find you.

  “Calliope. Please. You might be in danger.”

&nb
sp; Isaac checked his side and rear-view mirrors, then glanced at me. “What’s going on? Your phone is blowing up.”

  “Messages from Cole. He said my missing file has been noticed. He said he needs to tell me some stuff. He’s coming back to Montrose tonight. Wants to meet at midnight.”

  Isaac kept his eyes on the road. “So maybe his handwriting on your file does mean something.”

  “Or maybe he worked out something’s going on at the heath centre like we did,” I retorted, then looked at my phone. After a brief pause, I sent him a text.

  Yes. Can meet tonight.

  I stared at my phone, but no reply came through. “Should I call him?”

  Isaac made an indifferent noise and looked out the window. “We should get back to Mr. E. Let’s hear what he has to say first.”

  I exhaled. “Fine.”

  We rode the rest of the way in silence.

  Mr. Ellison met us at the front door to the building to let us inside.

  “I got into the laptop,” he said.

  “You did? What did you find?” Isaac did everything but tug on Mr. Ellison’s shirtsleeve as we followed him up the two flights of stairs. Mr. Ellison didn’t respond but waited for us to get inside his office. He locked the door after us.

  “Did you find something to prove Logan Kerry is up to something?” My voice sounded tight, and I realized how much I wanted something that would get rid of Logan. It was starting to sink in that he’d been following us—following me.

  “First of all, can I ask you to leave your food over there?” Mr. Ellison looked pointedly at our takeout containers as he gestured to the coffee table. Isaac’s container of hash browns was threatening to leak everywhere.

  “But—”

  “Now, please.”

  Isaac looked from his container of food, to the laptop, back to the food.

  “Why don’t you both sit down and eat.” Mr. Ellison got napkins from his desk drawer and handed them to us. “And I can tell you about the laptop.”

  We nodded and sat obediently.

  “Now….” Mr. Ellison paused, wrinkled his nose. “Are you eating… pancakes?”