That’s right. She didn’t talk because she couldn’t talk. Wes and Becca told Eric that already. The other resident in the butterfly garden told him, too.
“Only you didn’t remember because you’re a stupid dumb-dumb.” He grabbed his hair and pulled until his eyes started to water. Then he remembered Wes said not to do that when he was mad, but to count Mississippis.
“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi.”
He was on fifty-seven Mississippi and not only was he not angry anymore, he was starting to feel sleepy. Then he heard voices in the hallway outside his door. Speaking in low voices, like they were telling secrets.
Everything in this building was wood that made it look like a giant treehouse up in the roof of the forest, but with all of the open shutters and bare walls he could hear people all around. Coughing and snoring and farting.
“Who are these people?” a man’s voice said.
“Medical investigators,” a woman answered. “I tried to warn them off, but I think they’re still in the country.”
“It has been seven years. Why here? Why now?”
The man sounded like the man with the gray bushy mustache that made him look like a walrus. The chief boss of this place, Eric thought. He could remember the name if he thought about it.
Usher! That’s right. What a funny name. When he introduced himself to Eric and Wes, Eric got excited. The man was an usher. Foggy Hill must have its own movie theater, with popcorn and everything. No, Wes explained, that’s his name, not what he does. Oh. Well that was a disappointment.
Usher sounded nervous, but the woman didn’t. There was something cold and hard in her voice that scared Eric. And scared Usher, too. That was confusing, because once Eric learned the man didn’t work in a movie theater, he had figured out that Usher was the big chief of Foggy Mountain. She should be worried about the boss, not the other way around.
“Do you want to move her out?” Usher asked. “I could ask around, see what else is available in the country.”
“No. There’s no point in that. Her usefulness is wearing thin. She isn’t worth the bother.”
“I don’t understand,” Usher said. “If I stop trying to hide her and they get her out of here, won’t they figure out what you did?”
“What I did?” Her voice was sharp.
“Or, whatever got her in this condition,” he added quickly. “Whatever the reason is you want to hide her here.”
“Tell me something,” the woman said, “if you had to get rid of someone like her, how would you do it?”
A long pause. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
Her voice rose. “Answer the question.”
“Shh, keep it down. I’m thinking. Well, it wouldn’t be hard. Overdose of medication, maybe. Give her something to stop her heart—people in comas suffer cardiac arrest all the time. Or someone could take her to Devil’s Cauldron on a field trip and let slip the brake on her chair so she rolls into one of the pools. By the time anyone notices, she’ll have drowned. Purely an accident.”
“Won’t the government investigate?” she asked. “And wouldn’t it look suspicious if she died just as people came looking for her?”
“Sure,” Usher said, “but that’s easy enough to take care of. You won’t get rid of the suspicions, but nobody would prove that you killed her.”
Eric stiffened. He’d been growing increasingly uncomfortable with the tone and direction of the conversation, but couldn’t have said why. Suddenly, he realized they were talking about murdering someone, then making it look like an accident.
Wes was right. It was like Sherlock Holmes.
He sat up, which made the bed creak. The people outside the door hushed. It occurred to him that if he could hear them, they could probably hear him, too. He held still, less excited now than terrified. Because he remembered that in those stories, the killers always tried to keep secrets. That meant they killed witnesses, because dead men tell no tales.
He almost said this last part out loud, and clamped his hand over his mouth just in time.
“So you’ll do it?” the woman asked after a moment.
“Me? No. I’m not touching it.”
“It would be a shame if your role in all this came out,” she said. “You’d lose everything. End up in prison.”
“Don’t try to blackmail me, Kaitlyn. We’re too far down the road for that. If this gets out, you’ll be the one to take the hardest fall.”
His words were unpleasant, but Eric thought he still sounded worried.
“Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, I’m not quite ready to finish it yet,” she added.
“What do you mean?” Usher asked, cautiously.
“I need to know a couple of things first. Who put these people on her trail?”
“You don’t know?” Usher asked.
“I’m pretty sure I do. I asked my cousin, but he lied to my face. I need to put the pressure on, get it out of him. And that might mean bringing him down here. It’s going to be messy.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll send money. Start the cleanup early, if you know what I mean.”
“Got it.”
“By the time you’re done, I want to be able to deny that Meggie Kerr was ever in Costa Rica, let alone within a hundred miles of this place.”
They walked away, still talking in low voices, while Eric strained to hear. His heart was pounding.
Meggie. He knew that name. Who was she? Five minutes ago, he guessed, he could have answered. Or if he had some way to remember, like how he remembered Mr. Usher’s name, who should have worked in the movie theater, but didn’t.
Tomorrow he could ask the pretty lady if she knew. Then he’d give her Wes’s phone to make a call, tell her to warn his brother that a killer had come to Foggy Hill.
Eric climbed down to check the lock on the door. He didn’t like the way the floor creaked. And there was no lock. There never was.
“Oh, yeah. They don’t let us lock our doors.”
He climbed back under the covers and pulled the sheet up over his head.
Now feeling safer, Eric fell asleep while trying to remember what Wes and Becca told him to do with the pretty lady in the butterfly garden.
Chapter Nine
Meggie hadn’t seen Kaitlyn in two days and began to hope that the woman had left Costa Rica to return to the United States. Maybe she’d even imagined the entire thing while under sedation. It must have been the tranquilizer that had done it. She’d imagined Kaitlyn coming into her room early in the morning, tapping on her forehead, delivering dark threats, then disappearing.
But Meggie grew increasingly nervous the longer she went without spotting Benjamin’s cousin on the grounds or in the buildings. Her eyes darted around whenever she was out, and she startled at every strange movement. Without moving, of course.
Get a hold of yourself. What is wrong with you?
But every day she grew more anxious. Her heart started racing sometimes without warning, and it took forever to get to sleep at night. The second night after Kaitlyn’s appearance, she was drifting to sleep when it felt like a man was sitting on her chest, only there was nobody there. She couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t move to push him away. Eventually, the feeling passed.
The following afternoon, she was finally calming when that friendly, mentally handicapped young man found her in the butterfly garden. He was cheerful, with a wide, pleasant smile, but scatterbrained, and with a memory like mush. He introduced himself as Eric (the way he said it sounded like ‘Ruc’), asked her questions, then remembered she couldn’t move or talk, before trying to engage her again.
Exasperated, her attention wandering as the novelty of a new resident wore off, she was searching the corners of the butterfly garden, terrified to spot a familiar face, when he said something that hooked her attention.
Not my brother. He says I’m smart like Sherlock Holmes. He and Becca got marri
ed. She’s pretty, like you. She has a baby growing in her belly.
A baby growing in her belly? Immediately, Meggie remembered the young hiker who had stumbled through the gates last week. That woman had been pregnant, and Usher acted hostile and suspicious at her story of getting lost looking for a shortcut to the hot springs.
And what was that bit about Sherlock Holmes and a brother? How strange was that? Probably a coincidence, but maybe not. Too bad Eric lost his train of thought. He’d been struggling to tell her something, and not just that he thought she was pretty.
Meggie looked for him at dinner, but he never passed into her field of vision. When they wheeled her away for hydrotherapy that night, she gave up hope of seeing him that day.
The facility clung to the side of a long-dormant volcano. If the mountain ever blew its top, it would probably suffocate the village of Santa María del Lago on the other side of the lake, burying it in ash like a modern-day Pompeii. Here on the volcano itself, the few dozen people and staff living at Colina Nublosa might waken to a rumble, but then hell would rain down and burn them alive. Fortunately, the experts agreed that the mountain would never wake again.
But the superheated rock deep inside the mountain sent up bubbling torrents of water that flowed out through the massive bowl of the Devil’s Cauldron. There was a steep path through the forest from Colina Nublosa—where the pregnant hiker had supposedly got herself lost on their grounds, inside the gates—and a second, more gentle path up from the lake on the opposite side of the mountain. The lake path was wheelchair accessible, and Costa Ricans from Santa María del Lago would come across the lake with their children and their abuelas to hike up and bathe in the pools. But to use it from Colina Nublosa meant forty minutes by car around the mountain to the lake, then crossing the lake, then a trip up the backside. And so the residents used the shorter, steeper path for their weekly excursions, and that meant the ambulatory patients, not the wheelchair-bound.
She’d only seen the cauldron once. It was part of a longer field trip down to the beaches on the coast. Staff had pushed the chairs up from the lake. By the time they arrived, the mobile residents were already bathing and playing in the hot pots.
Placed in an overlook above, Meggie looked down at the churning cauldron. A duck flew over the cauldron and, apparently misjudging the water, came in for a landing. By the time it tried to pull up, it was too late. It flapped helplessly two or three times before the boiling water overcame it. Then it floated grotesquely, a mass of twisted feathers, before eventually spilling over the edge.
Not all of the water emerged at the Devil’s Cauldron. Some seeped out in hot springs all along the mountain. Here at Colina Nublosa, it bubbled from the ground at a perfect 106 degrees Fahrenheit, like a hot tub turned up to max. They piped it into tiled rooms for hydrotherapy. Meggie had to admit that it, together with traditional physical therapy, had kept her limber so she wasn’t twisted up like a piece of beached driftwood.
Tonight was hydrotherapy. Two female aides pushed her into the first room, undressed her, then lifted her to a chair at the edge of a ceramic basin sunk into the floor. It was roughly twice as wide as a bathtub, but deep enough for patients to stand in. Those who could stand. The aides strapped in her arms and legs and fastened a band around her head so it wouldn’t flop forward. Then they left.
Meggie waited in the chair with her toes inches above the water. She breathed in the thick, sulfurous air and tried to relax. Normally, this was her favorite part of the day, calming and somnolent, but today her heart was racing. What was wrong with her?
The door opened behind her, then shut. A hand reached for the crank and lowered her into the water. The first touch was always scalding and Meggie’s breathing accelerated of its own accord. Every inch burned, but after a few seconds her body adjusted and the water soothed her. Still her heart kept thumping away.
“Here we are,” a woman said from behind. “Alone at last.”
She knew that voice. It was Kaitlyn.
Meggie tried to cry out. No sound emerged.
No. Please, God. No.
“I own you, Meggie. You are my possession. When you are good, I reward you.”
Leave me alone.
“And when you are bad, you are punished. You have been very bad lately. Is your heart racing? I would expect so. We have been experimenting with your medication.”
That was why. First the tranquilizer, then some sort of stimulant. Too much of it.
Kaitlyn leaned around and stared her in the eyes. A smile spread across her face, cold and without joy, only evil satisfaction.
Meggie’s stomach turned to liquid. She was staring into the face of a psychopath.
“Are you ready for your water therapy?”
What do you want?
Kaitlyn lowered Meggie until the water was up to her waist, then let go of the crank and came around the side of the ceramic tub. She kicked off her shoes and sat on the tiles with her feet dangling into the water.
“Ouch, that’s hot.” She looked at Meggie, now at eye level. “Good, I can see that you understand. I can also see you don’t believe me, but it’s true.”
Believe what?
Kaitlyn wore white linen pants with a tight fit that didn’t conceal her figure, still as trim and attractive as it had been seven years earlier. She rolled up her pant legs and eased further into the water until it came up to her calves.
“I have taken care of you, Meggie, whether you believe it or not. Who do you think put you in this place, where your every need would be coddled? Where you would receive the finest, most expensive care? It wasn’t Benjamin, he was worthless after the accident. I merely suggested, and he agreed to do anything I asked, if it would make you comfortable. That’s why he went through with the marriage.”
You liar, it was so the two of you could control me, that’s why. He needed to be my husband so he could sign my life away.
The marriage was fraudulent. Paralyzed or no, Meggie never would have gone through with it. Not after what happened in the desert. She barely remembered coming to Costa Rica; the nearest she could piece together, they must have sedated her, put her on an air ambulance, and brought her down under a forged power of attorney. Then there had been some sort of hastily arranged marriage under local laws while she was still in intensive care. She vaguely remembered seeing a government official in the hospital room, then hearing Kaitlyn and Benjamin discussing a marriage license. What a sham.
Tropical Beans had extensive contacts in Costa Rica, but it was still stunning how easily Benjamin and Kaitlyn could subvert the laws down here, as if the country were still a banana republic, under corporate control.
“But if I can take care of you,” Kaitlyn continued, “then I can make your life miserable, too.”
She rose to her feet and put her hand on the crank. The chair creaked lower, and the water rose above Meggie’s navel. Another half-turn and it rose to lap over her breasts.
Meggie was suddenly conscious of how deep the water was. How low did this chair go? There were men living at Colina Nublosa, many of them taller than her. Normally, they would lower Meggie until the water touched her chin, but if they could do the same for the men …
Kaitlyn said, “Why didn’t you leave well enough alone? You have everything you need here—it’s a paradise.”
You psychotic monster.
“You know what I’m talking about. Tapping your finger. Trying to blink out messages. That worried me. I thought maybe someone was trying to find you. Only I was wrong. Do you know why? Because nobody is looking for you. Nobody cares. Not your uncle and aunt—they forgot about you long ago. Not your coworkers, either. They think you’re dead. Your old friends, too. Or maybe they do know you’re alive and can’t be bothered. How pathetic is that? The point is, you’re all alone here, with nobody to look after you except me.”
A wild hope rose in Meggie’s breast, because she knew that Kaitlyn was lying. After all this time, there was hope. The pregnant woman�
��Eric called her Becca—had found Meggie at the hummingbird feeders. Well inside the facility perimeter. And that look Becca gave her was so full of meaning. And what about Eric himself? Someone must be feeding him instructions.
Kaitlyn put her fingers against Meggie’s throat. “Your heart is racing. Usher’s drugs pack a punch. I told him to cut them off, to get them out of your blood, just in case. But what if I tripled it, instead? How about five times? Ten? Would you go into cardiac arrest?”
Where was Meggie’s therapist? And what about the aides? She heard people moving up and down the hall, the slap of rubber-soled slippers on tile, the creak of wheelchairs, as other residents were led into their own therapy rooms. If Meggie could do so much as scream, someone would come.
Kaitlyn took hold of the crank. The chair lowered until the water came up to Meggie’s collarbone. “But there are a million ways to do it. An equipment malfunction in the hydrotherapy baths, for one.”
The crank turned again. A half-inch at a time, the water rose higher on Meggie’s neck. It reached her chin, then slowed, but didn’t stop. It took several more long seconds until it was lapping at her lips. Her mouth was closed. Kaitlyn slowed the descent, leaning forward now to study Meggie with a look of concentration, as if wanting to raise the water level at just the right pace. Moments later, the water touched the bottom of Meggie’s nostrils.
Inside, she writhed and screamed. Terrified, knowing that she was going to die if she couldn’t send a signal to her long-dead muscles, she threw all her willpower into moving herself. If she could, if only she could move this one time, she could wriggle her hand free from the straps, then yank them loose and get free. Then throw herself on this vicious, hated torturer with her hand on the crank.
Her finger twitched and her eyeballs rolled in their sockets. Nothing else moved.
Water flooded her nostrils. It reached the bridge of her nose, then came to her eyes. Meggie didn’t shut her eyelids, but darted her eyes back and forth even as the water submerged them. Underwater now, she looked wildly from side to side. The water was green and nearly opaque from all the dissolved minerals. Bubbles rose around her face as the last of her air leaked out. But her autonomic nervous system closed her throat and she held her breath underwater.
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