Unmasked
Page 28
“Still, it had to make you feel like you were less than your father.”
She settled into her seat and thought about that. “I think it was more an understanding that something stronger than her love for me existed. That, although she did love me, her love for him was bigger. In a way her love for him was even bigger than her love for her own life. I understand losing somebody to the extent that you’re overcome with grief, because that was me with my mother. Yet I’m not sure how it feels to be so overcome with grief that all you can do is put in time until you can rejoin that person.” She spoke as honestly as she could. “I went through a fair bit of trauma, sorting out my own feelings about it all. But no doubt I needed to make her as comfortable as possible to the end, if only to fulfill my role as her daughter and to show her my gratitude for raising me.”
“And you shouldn’t feel ashamed for any of that,” Sebastian said from the front seat. “Or any sense of guilt for the few moments you may have been away where you were happy, or for a sense of wondering what was wrong with you that she didn’t want to stick around to spend time with you.”
At that she gasped. “How did you know I felt like that?”
“I think one of the hardest things about death is it leaves us with a confusion of feelings we have to sort out. From a relief that it’s over and then the sense of guilt for being relieved. I don’t think anything is quite so confusing as watching a person you love die.”
“How long did it take her to pass?” Hunter asked.
“Interesting you ask it that way,” she said with a smile. “Most people ask how long she was ill.”
Hunter turned to stare at her. “I view death a little differently. Once you become horribly ill, and you know death is coming, some people walk toward it with open arms, embracing it, and other people drag their feet, kicking and screaming. So my question was more about how long it took from when she got very ill to actually dying.”
“Getting to the point of being very ill took her a couple years,” Lacey said, thinking back. “But, about three months before she died, she was like, … Leave me alone. Just let me go. At the time I told her no, no, no, and I went away and cried, but then I finally came back and told her that, anytime she was ready to go, I was okay with it and that she didn’t need to stay with me.”
“Did that make her happier?”
Lacey nodded. “I think it did. I think she lingered because of me, caught between her duty as a mother and her love for me versus her need to go and her wish to exit a very painful existence.”
Hunter nodded. “It sounds like you have had quite an intimate experience with death. Although it might have been extremely difficult, I think you were also blessed to have lived through such a thing because it changes your perspective on life.”
“It did,” she said. “But I’m not sure it changed my perspective as much as these last couple weeks here has.”
At that, he laughed. “So very true.”
They’d pulled into a large parking lot and headed into an underground parking garage. Sebastian brought the car up to a security gate, where he punched in a key code. The gate opened, and he drove down below the building.
She’s frowned. “Where are we?”
“A secure building,” Sebastian said. “We keep a lot of archives here. They have to be kept in special oxygen-sealed rooms.”
Interested, she perked up when he took a parking spot close to the elevator. “You think the mask will be safe here?”
“I’m hoping so,” Sebastian said. “I’d like to keep this locked down for the rest of humanity, so it doesn’t kill anyone else.”
“But it didn’t kill me,” she reminded him.
“No, it didn’t,” Hunter said. “But that doesn’t mean it won’t kill somebody who doesn’t have abilities or who doesn’t know enough to free himself or herself. Imagine if you hadn’t had Stefan, who knew and could tell you how to free yourself, even though you have psychic abilities.”
“It was terrifying even with his help,” she said. “I still can’t believe it went from being this metal mask to something of a dark energy and then a metal mask again around my face. Are you sure that’s what happened?”
Both men turned to look at her.
She shrugged. “Okay. Just checking.”
Soon they were out of the vehicle and walking toward a large elevator. Inside, instead of going up, they went down.
She looked around. “Do you own the whole building?”
Sebastian didn’t answer.
She mentally buttoned her lips to stop the rest of her questions from bursting forth.
When the elevator doors opened, Sebastian led the way to a large room with a metal door. When the metal door opened, he walked inside, and they found one man sitting at a desk.
The man looked up, stood and said, “I didn’t expect to see you here this morning, sir.”
“At ease, Henry, please. We have something to secure in the vault.”
Henry nodded, brought out a ring of keys and what looked like an iPad and headed down the hall. They followed as he punched codes in a door on the left, and it opened.
Lacey followed Sebastian inside a small room. It appeared to be lined with stainless steel and had a pedestal in the center. He very carefully removed the mask, placed it on the pedestal. From the ceiling came down a long tube of glass, and he sealed the mask inside the tube.
She was stunned as the glass filled with smoke. “What are you doing to it?”
“It’s going through a process where we test to make sure it’s not carrying any diseases and that nothing strange is on it. It’ll go for more intense testing later, but, as we already know how very dangerous it is, we need to make sure nobody opens this without the proper preparation—not to mention proper authority.”
“Should have to wear a full hazmat suit,” she said, “so it can’t grab onto their face.”
“That’s an interesting idea,” he said. He motioned her back out of the room.
The door closed, but a window was in the door. They watched what was going on inside. Within, the glass tube flashed.
She gasped. “What’s that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “but it can’t be anything good. It will give us a computer scan of the results when complete.” He turned to Henry. “Make sure this door stays locked. Nobody gets in but me. Do you understand?”
Henry nodded. He tapped the iPad in his hand and held it out for Sebastian.
Sebastian signed his name, apparently on some kind of order, and then Henry took the iPad, swiping the order wherever it needed to be.
She watched all this as close as she could, but it wasn’t close enough to read the writing.
Then Henry led the way to another room, giving Lacey a quick tour as they passed several glass doors. “This room has computer-coded security,” Henry said, pointing, “like a bank vault full of safe-deposit boxes run by a computer.” He used one of the big ornate keys he had to unlock the next door that they came to, opened it and said, “I have them all locked in.”
Henry remained in the hallway. Sebastian entered first, Lacey next, with Hunter bringing up the rear. Inside was a large lab.
“So why is this under lock and key, and the others are all computer coded?” Lacey asked.
“This is part of the original building,” Sebastian said walking through another door. “The computer-coded areas were all upgrades. In this section though, a key is just fine.”
She turned, looking around, realizing it was a big office and sitting room. “It’s homey here at least.” She spotted her sketchbook on the desk. “Why is that here?”
“We were trying to scan in the images, remember?”
“Right. Your friend Bruno wanted a copy.”
He looked at her but didn’t say a word.
She walked over and flipped through the pictures until she came to the one with the masks. “This blows me away,” she muttered, “that I could have drawn this.”
She dropped to his side and motioned to the others. “Go, go, go! Find out what happened.” But, as she returned her gaze to Henry, she saw that the previous room they had left the mask in was open. She stared in shock. “Tell me the mask is still in there, please?”
Sebastian checked out that first room, his face grim when he shook his head. “No, it’s gone.”
She took several shaky breaths. Her heart slammed against her chest as she thought about all the damage that mask could do. She tried to stop the bleeding on Henry’s temple. “He’s either been hit, or the blast sent him flying back, and he hit his head on something.” He was breathing fine, so she hoped he was just knocked out.
“I’ve got somebody coming to help him,” Sebastian said, “and security will be here shortly.”
In fact, uniformed guards rushed down the hall toward them now.
She stepped away from Henry as two men dropped down beside him, wearing the same uniforms as Henry did. She searched around, but Sebastian was gone. Frowning, she walked over to the open room where the mask had been but was stopped by one of the guards and taken back to the nice office room she’d been in before the blast happened and was told to wait.
Collapsing onto a chair, she frowned, wondering what the hell was going on. Did the energy in that mask take offense to being held captive inside that glass container, or was it something else? Like was the explosion caused by the sparks?
She sat in front of her sketchbook, studying the drawing of the masks, hating that one was on Sebastian’s face and the other on Hunter’s. As she stared at the sketch it came to her that they’d found one mask—but only one. Was the second mask still intact? Was it here? Or still at the Mayan ruins? Considering Sebastian had never even seen a mask she wondered if there even was one. Maybe she’d drawn two masks because both men had abilities? They’d only found one mask, and that worried her even more.
She continued to study the drawing. She wanted to go back to the cave-in and see if it was there. She knew Sebastian and Hunter would both fight her on that. But, given what was going on with this first mask, it was more than important that they find the second one.
If it was even here …
She paced the room, wondering what she was supposed to do. Should she wait for Hunter and Sebastian to come for her? But, after twenty minutes, she couldn’t stand it anymore. She marched back to the door of this room, only to find she had been locked in. She took several deep breaths to still the panic already crowding her mind. She pounded on the door. “Open up! Open up!” she cried out. “Let me out.”
But she heard nothing. She walked back to the desk, and, of course, there were no windows because they were underground. She threw herself into the chair and again studied the masks she had drawn.
A horrible thought formed as she considered what else was housed here. “What if that energy wanted to be in here? In this secluded building full of other artifacts? What if that energy wanted those other artifacts? Could it sense them?”
Then she raised her gaze and studied the walls, seeing framed pictures from the old Mayan ruins and realized quite possibly that Sebastian had relics from the Mayan ruins stored here as well. Maybe that mask energy wanted to connect with those. Could it know? Maybe something needed to pull itself together amid the Pompeii finds and the Mayan finds kept in this facility.
Just thinking these crazy things made her cringe. How far had she come in a few days?
She got up and studied the images on the wall. It took her about ten minutes before she finally saw what she was looking for, on one of the temples still three-quarters buried. It was a tiny carving in the wall, and damn if it didn’t look like a mask, like the one she had drawn around Hunter’s face—the second mask. She leaned closer, wishing she had had that photograph enlarged, so she could see the details better.
She wandered the room looking for more pictures of it. And froze. There appeared to be one of the same location–only minus that rough carving. She pulled out her cell phone but there was no signal. Of course not, being down as far underground as she was. So no way to contact Sebastian and ask him.
She walked back over to study the mask in the framed picture and then murmured, “Is that mask here? Maybe it doesn’t need to be the whole mask… Is there a piece of that mask here? Are you trying to connect with it? But then how would you even know if it were?”
Just then the door opened, and Sebastian walked in.
She raced to him and threw herself into his arms.
His arms closed around her securely, and he just held her tight.
“Are you okay?” she demanded, grabbing his face so she could look into his eyes.
“I’m fine,” he reassured her, gently hugging her close. “And Hunter is too.”
She looked around him, but the door was shut again. “Where is he?”
He gave her a crooked smile. “Hunting.”
She tried to step out of his arms, but he tucked her closer and just held her. “Just stay here for a moment,” he muttered thickly. “I need this.”
She gave a broken laugh. “I need to show you something.”
He looked down at her inquiringly, and she led him to the framed photos, tapped the carving she’d seen in the picture then pointed to the similar image only minus the carving. He studied it for a long moment and then shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re trying to show me.”
She walked over to her sketchbook, picked up the drawings of the masks and brought it so he could compare the two. His sharp indrawn breath said he got the message.
“I don’t know what it means,” she said softly. “But what’s the chance the mask wanted to come here? That it was attracted to whatever else was here? That it needed to come here and used you to get here?”
He stared at her. “And why would it do that?” he asked cautiously.
“What’s the chance”—she raised her drawing alongside the photograph on the wall—“that there’s another mask here?”
“No.” He shrugged. “I know all the pieces here. I would have recognized it.”
“What if one of the little pieces which came back with you from the Mayan dig was part of another mask?”
“We didn’t bring anything like that back. Remember we barely got out with our lives, let alone any artifacts.”
“Maybe, but it wouldn’t have been a very big or a very identifiable piece.” He motioned at the two pictures on the wall. “And that doesn’t explain why the image is there in one picture and not in the other.”
“But if you did, it would have an energy signature, right?” she asked slowly.
He stared at her with respect. His gaze changed suddenly. “Right, it would at that.” He turned to study the drawing in her hand and then the photograph. “Come with me.” He held out his hand.
She grasped it tightly. “Shall I bring the sketchbook?”
He shook his head. “No, leave it behind.” He led the way out in the hall, down in the direction where they’d passed the security guard, then deeper into the hallway. He brought up his cell phone and punched in a code. A clicking in the lock on the door in front of them was heard. He opened it enough to peer inside and then opened it wider for her to step in with him. The air was cool, chilly even. He left the door open on purpose, putting a doorstop wedge on the floor, so it wouldn’t close by accident.
She frowned as she watched him. She was going to say something but held back the words. He led the way to a vault.
He used a combination to unlock the vault, pulled it open and looked at her. “Stay here.”
She shrugged and said, “Sure, no problem.”
He walked inside and returned with a small bag. At a nearby table he gently dumped out the contents.
She peered at them. They appeared to be broken pieces of metal and rock. “
What are they?”
“Everything I brought back from the Mayan site ten years ago—which as you can see is very little,” he said in a hushed whisper. “Four men died there. I didn’t have any reason or desire to catalogue the inventory from that trip. We had a hard enough time trying to explain the deaths of our team members. We put it down to accidents, and there was no way to retrieve the bodies. It was as if the site itself swallowed them whole.”
“Considering the cave-in where we found the mask, I hope you don’t mean that literally.”
He shook his head. “In a way, I do …”
She stared up at him to confirm he was serious, then took in a deep breath. “Well …” She gently moved the pieces around on the table. “So they’re nothing important?”
“Only one.” He picked out a couple and placed them to the side. Then handed her a four-inch piece of black metal.
“I carried it as a good luck piece for having survived that massacre up until a few days ago, when I put it back in here. At the time I didn’t understand why it was there. I figured that maybe one of the other men had dropped it. I picked it up and I tucked it away in my pocket without thinking about it.”
She looked up at him. “Did you pick it up before the men died or afterward?”
He frowned at her, then shook his head. “Oh, I don’t like where you’re going with this at all …”
“It doesn’t matter if you like it or not,” she said gently, “but you need to answer the question. Because what if picking this up caused those men’s deaths?”
“Then I’ll feel guilty for those men’s deaths. I’ll carry that grief for the rest of my life. So it’s a good thing I picked it up afterwards.”
She covered his hand with hers and whispered, “What we need to do is solve that nightmare, so we can solve this one.” And that was a tall order. “It’s why you could cross the invisible barrier,” she said suddenly. “That’s suddenly making sense. We need to know how this piece got to the Mayan site.”
“I don’t know how,” he said, staring at the piece of black metal. “At the time, I wondered if one of the men hadn’t taken it into the Mayan ruins on his own. In which case, I needed to bring it back out.”