Had she meant me when she’d said she needed to make sure her family was safe? Did Aunt Sarah think by leaving and getting ‘help’ from Hollan, that it would be helping me?
Devlin asked the next question. “You helped her by distracting Sinclair?”
The boy’s voice broke in a sob. “My mom’s name was Sarah, too. The lady made me think of her, and I couldn’t tell her no.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, trying to offer the boy some comfort, even though my stomach twisted at the idea of my aunt using a small boy in this way “There’s no harm done, is there, Devlin?” I glared at the older man, trying to tell him to let the kid off with no more than a warning. This hadn’t been his fault. Kids did what adults told them to—especially these kids. He wasn’t to know she shouldn’t be trusted, and the idea that my aunt had reminded him of his mother made my heart break.
“We’ll talk about this later, William,” Devlin said. “Class will be ready to start soon.”
The boy sniffed, and nodded, but seemed relieved to be able to run back to the elevator and sink back down into the bowls of the earth, away from all the angry adults.
I rounded on Devlin. “So my aunt was just allowed to walk out of here? All it took was distracting one of your security team?”
Devlin’s lips pinched. “This isn’t a prison, Darcy. You’re all free to come and go as you please. We keep an eye on the boys, of course, but we don’t make people stay here who don’t want to.”
“You have codes on the outside door and cameras everywhere!”
“The code on the hatch is to keep people out, not keep people in, and the cameras are for outside, too. This place is a home as much as anything else, and we’re not in the business of making the people who live here feel like they’re being spied on.”
I could barely believe what I was hearing, especially after I’d been kept captive myself for a number of days. It wasn’t as though they were averse to doing that if necessary. Something inside me tripped uneasily. Was I advocating holding my aunt here against her will? Wasn’t that doing to her exactly what they had done to me? But it was to keep her safe, I told myself. Trouble was, that was exactly what the guys had used to justify the way they’d taken me and held me captive.
I’d simply assumed we wouldn’t be allowed to leave here of our own free will, but maybe Aunt Sarah had never made that assumption.
“Shit!” I thought for a moment. “Could we try to use the computers to try and spot her now?” Isaac had used satellite imagery to watch over my house before we’d gone there to get Aunt Sarah. I knew they had the technology.
He shook his head. “There’s too much tree coverage around here. It works well for the cities, but assuming she’s left the clearing, we won’t be able to see if she’s walking down the side of the road. The canopy overhanging the road is too dense. And we definitely wouldn’t be able to tell if she’s managed to get a ride from someone. She could be in any kind of vehicle.”
We were in the middle of nowhere. Would she have tried to walk to somewhere she felt safe? Would she have tried to take one of the vans we’d passed parked nearby when we first arrived? A crazy thought—Aunt Sarah stealing a vehicle. I would never have previously thought her capable of such a thing, but now I wondered.
A second thought occurred to me. Had she brought her cell phone here? She’d managed to keep hold of her bag even when we’d had to change cars in the tunnel, even when I’d forgotten mine. Was there a reason she’d clung to it so tightly?
“Oh, shit.” My stomach contracted with anxiety.
Isaac must have seen the expression on my face, as his own complexion paled. “What is it?”
“I’m worried she might have used her phone to contact Hollan.”
Isaac’s head darted back in surprise. “Why would she do that?”
“You have to think from her point of view for a moment. She’s known Hollan for years. She trusted him.”
“You’re her niece,” he pointed out. “She was supposed to trust you, too.”
His words made my eyes fill with tears, and I blinked them away. “I think she still sees me as that crazy, irresponsible teenager she had to take care of. She doesn’t realize I grew up. She was fed Hollan’s side of the story first, and I guess he painted me as being spontaneous and reckless, maybe choosing to leave with you guys instead of being taken. And then she picked up on the connection between us all ...”
I didn’t want to say any more than that. Devlin was in the room, and what happened between me and the guys was none of his business.
But Devlin had been listening to every word, and he stepped in, his face rigid with anger. “God damn it. You were brought here because your connection to your father meant you weren’t considered to be a security risk, and now you’re saying your aunt was on Hollan’s side all along, and possibly has just walked out of here with a cell phone, ready to contact him and give him our exact location?”
My eyes filled with tears. I should have told them what Sarah had been thinking, but I’d wanted her to be on our side so badly, I’d kidded myself that she was coming around to our way of thinking. After everything I’d told her, I’d never considered that she would take Hollan’s side. Did she really think Kingsley had put the memory into my head of me seeing Hollan on the night of my father’s murder? She must, if she didn’t believe me at all.
Isaac stepped to my side, his presence supporting. “We have to try to find her.” He looked to me. “If she has her cell phone, can’t you call it?”
My teeth caught my lower lip and my cheeks flushed with heat. “Yes, of course. Dammit.” I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of that already. I clearly wasn’t thinking straight. The digits of her cell phone flashed up in front of my face in spatial sequence. Calling her now might be too late, however.
“She might have contacted Hollan already,” I said.
Devlin’s head twisted in my direction. “You think she’d give up the location of this place?”
My blood ran cold. I wanted to convince myself she wouldn’t do that. She’d seen there were children here, hadn’t she?
Isaac’s lips thinned, his nostrils flaring. “She’s your aunt, Darcy. You vouched for her. You made it sound as though we could trust her.”
My eyes welled with angry, frustrated tears. How many more mistakes was I going to make? How many more times would I get everyone in trouble?
Devlin jerked his head. “Get on the phone,” he told me.
Feeling sick, I hurried over and picked up the handset. I punched in the numbers as they appeared in front of me, then pressed the phone to my ear. Please pick up, I prayed, but it didn’t even ring and instead went straight to her voicemail.
“It’s me, Aunt Sarah.” I caught the guys watching, and shook my head to indicate I was talking into a machine rather than a person. “I’m sorry you felt you had to leave without speaking to me, but please, please don’t go to Hollan. If you love me at all, you have to trust me on this. It’s literally a matter of life and death. I love you.”
I didn’t want to tell her we were coming to find her. I thought that if she’d reached Hollan, it would only give them time to prepare to face us.
I put the phone down to find multiple gazes locked on me.
Gesturing out either side, helplessly, I said, “I can’t do any more from here.”
Isaac nodded his agreement. “We’re going to have to go after her.”
“We don’t go out without being prepared,” Devlin commanded. “You take everything we’d already set up for today.”
I straightened, putting my shoulders back and lifting my chin. “I’m going, too.”
Devlin put his hands on his hips. “No, you’re not. This is about our security now as much as protecting your aunt. We need to bring her back in.”
I held out both hands. “I get it, I do, but this will all go down a lot smoother if I’m there, too.”
Kingsley stepped in beside me, and I glanced up at him, grateful
to have his solid presence. The back of his hand brushed my fingers, and I resisted the urge to grab hold of his hand and hang on tight. “She’s right,” he said. “Darcy and her aunt are close. I’d rather we’re able to have a conversation and persuade her to come back than having to use physical force right away.”
I hated to think of my poor aunt being manhandled into the back of a truck.
Devlin shot me a look. “They couldn’t have been that close.”
His words were like a knife in my side. I knew what he was saying—that if we’d been close, she would have believed me instead of taking off. And I knew the reason his words hurt so badly was because they were the truth. I couldn’t blame her, though. I’d been the one who’d spoken to the reporter in the first place. I probably couldn’t be trusted.
Behind us, the elevator doors slid open, causing us all to spin around. Stupidly, I hoped it might be my aunt, but instead Alex’s form was revealed, and he stepped out into the room.
“Hey,” he said, glancing around at our anxious faces. “What have I missed?”
Isaac filled him in. “Darcy’s aunt vanished during the night. We think she might have had a cell phone with her, and that she’s contacted Hollan and left. Apparently, she didn’t believe what Darcy told her about Hollan being the one responsible for killing her father.”
Alex winced and looked to me. “Shit, sorry, Darc.”
I shook my head, brushing off his sympathies, though I did appreciate them.
“This is my fault.” I resisted adding ‘again,’ knowing they’d kept the story of the last time I’d messed up—when I’d called my aunt from the house—from their boss to protect me.
I had one final card to play, and I figured now was the right time. I turned to Devlin, fixing my gaze on his to show I wouldn’t be intimidated. “Let’s consider something for a moment. If my aunt is going to meet Hollan, and we’re able to find my aunt, then chances are we’ll find Hollan as well. Correct?”
He nodded. “Yes, that’s more than possible.”
I continued. “And where we find Hollan, we also stand a good chance of finding the memory stick. You said the memory stick contains lists of coordinates, right?” Devlin’s eyes narrowed at me, probably wondering where I was heading with this, but he nodded. “What would happen if either he or one of us got access to the stick, but it was destroyed before anyone had a chance to make a note of the coordinates?”
“Well, they’d be lost forever.” From his tone, I could tell he was still unsure.
“Exactly. But what if someone had managed to see them before that happened?”
“They’d need to have a photographic memory to be able to remember them all perfectly.”
“Or a mind that was able to visualize numbers.”
He shook his head, unsure. “What does that mean?”
I tried again. “It means I’d be able to remember those coordinates, if it came down to it.”
“What makes you think that?” he said, frowning. “I heard Kingsley had to work with you several times to get the code for the memory stick.”
I lifted a hand. “First of all, that was completely different. I was fourteen years old and my father was dying. Secondly, I’m good with dates and numbers. I would be able to remember those coordinates if I saw them.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Good, as in you did well in school?”
“Don’t patronize me, Devlin. I mean good, as in I have a special affinity for them.”
His nostrils flared. “Special affinity?”
Seeing that tiptoeing around the subject wasn’t getting me anywhere, I jumped in with both feet. “Have you ever heard of synesthesia?”
My change of topic had thrown him. “Synesthesia?” He was parroting everything back at me. His fingers touched his lips as he thought. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it. It’s when people see certain months as colors?”
I nodded. “Right. But that’s only a part of it. There are certain types of synesthesia which people hear of more regularly—the popular kinds—and those include the example you just said, but there are others. It’s automatic and involuntary. The brain picks up on something and flips it into something else. Some people might see certain letters or numbers as set colors, like the number two might always be pink for them, or the letter S is always red. My brain works in a similar way, but for me I see numbers around me, in my personal space.” I waved my hand around my head to demonstrate what I meant. “The numbers one to ten are always in the same place for me.”
I felt the other guys staring at me, their questions so far unasked, but mentally pressing at me through the space between us. There was a reason I never talked about my synesthesia, and that was mainly because it was so damned hard to get people to comprehend it.
Devlin frowned, and I could tell he was trying to understand, even though I knew it must sound crazy to him. “Like in order.” He pointed to imaginary numbers in front of him and ticked them off with a jerk of his finger, one by one. “One, two, three, four ...”
But I shook my head. “No, they’re not in order. The number one is closest to me, but that’s where it ends. Eight is behind the number one, and then it’s three. Seven is right in front of my eyes, but further away, and nine is beside that. Zero is the furthest away and to my right.” I pointed in the direction of zero to demonstrate, though I knew he wouldn’t be able to see anything.
I was aware of time passing, and that every minute was another minute Aunt Sarah may have gotten farther from us and closer to Hollan, but it felt vital that they understood. It was a final, weak grasp at trying to get the men to see I was more than a weak woman they needed to protect, and instead someone with skills and strengths of her own.
Isaac joined the conversation, and sounded as confused as Devlin. “But if you need to think of lots of numbers, and they all need to go in an order, like a phone number, how do you know which order they go in if they’re always in the same place?”
“They light up, growing brighter and more defined, as though they’re saying ‘look at me.’”
Lorcan stared, one eyebrow pulling down quizzically. “You know this sounds nuts, right?”
I shrugged. “I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am.”
“And so when you remembered the code your father gave you,” Kingsley said, “you saw the numbers in front of you, all lighting up in the order they needed to be?”
I smiled, pleased that at least Kingsley sounded as though he was starting to get it. “I can see them now, if I want. All I have to do is think about it.”
“But hang on a minute.” Isaac lifted a hand. “If it came down to it, we’d need to remember coordinates, not single digits.”
I nodded. “I can do that. My synesthesia comes in other ways as well. For example, I see dates as well, both my past and my future. They’re like a slide running across my vision. My present is directly in front of me, and my past heads left and, where I can no longer remember, vanishes behind me on my left,” I gestured in that direction to demonstrate. “The future goes the other way and where I can no longer see any upcoming dates or events, vanishes behind me to my right.”
It all made perfect sense to me, but I looked around at all the guys’ faces to see that it wasn’t quite so clear to them. I’d stopped telling people about the way I saw things partly because of the expressions on the guys’ faces now.
I gave a sigh. “You’ve got internet access. Google it.”
Alex lifted both hands. “No, no need for that. We believe you. I’ve heard of synesthesia before, and I’m sure Kingsley has, too.” He looked toward the bigger man.
Kingsley nodded seriously, his eyes never leaving my face. “Of course, I have. It’s more common than we think, but people just don’t talk about it. They either don’t realize other people don’t see the world that way, or they’ve already had reactions from people thinking they’re crazy, so they’ve stopped talking about it.”
I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. Despite kn
owing my aunt was missing and there was a good chance she was headed to Hollan, my heart somehow felt lighter now I’d told them. It wasn’t as though my synesthesia was a secret or anything, but I wanted to share everything with these men, and being a synesthete was a big part of who I was.
Kingsley looked to me with fresh curiosity. “Could your father do what you can do?”
I shook my head. “No, it didn’t come from him.”
“So, your mother, then?” he questioned. “Synesthesia is normally inherited from the mother or father.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t really know. She didn’t stick around long enough after I was born to let me find out.”
His face pinched. “Shit, Darcy. I’m sorry.”
I let my shoulders lift to try to show them how unbothered I was. “Doesn’t matter.” The smile I plastered to my face didn’t reflect how I truly felt inside. “Can’t miss what you never had, right?”
I suddenly realized who I was talking to. Each one of them had been made orphans as children, and here I was bitching about my wayward mother, when I’d at least had my dad to raise me until I was fourteen, and then my aunt after that. They’d all grown up, first in a foster care home, and then in some kind of training institute that I didn’t yet fully understand. They’d had no one, when I’d at least had my aunt to take care of me. I’d still grown up in our family home. I hadn’t been raised by strangers.
“Shit, sorry.” I lowered my face to my palm, hiding my eyes. “I can’t believe I just said that. I’m sure you all missed your parents like crazy.”
“Hey, it’s okay, Darc,” Alex said. “We all experienced loss. It all sucked. There’s no need to worry about thinking if any one loss was worse than another.”
I gave him a thankful smile. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that if you need someone to remember those coordinates, I’m the girl for the job.”
Devlin had been watching our conversation without interruption.
He leaned back against his desk, his palms on the surface, and exhaled a sigh through his nose. “I’m not going to pretend this doesn’t all interest me, but we’re supposed to be going to get your aunt, Darcy. We don’t know that we’ll even come across Hollan or the memory stick.”
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