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.
Seconds passed. Stretched. How long? A minute, two? Meggie’s lungs burned. Her body ached with the need to breathe. Something black lurked at the edge of her vision.
Then she was above water. Her mouth opened and she took a huge gasp of air. Kaitlyn cranked the handle around and around while Meggie rose out of the tub. Soon she was completely above the basin, water streaming from her hair, running between her breasts, then down her legs before dripping off her feet into the basin.
“Interesting,” Kaitlyn said. “I wondered if you would breathe in the water and die. I guess not.” She sounded cool and dispassionate.
You psychotic bitch. I want you to die.
“Good thing you didn’t. That would have been inconvenient.”
The other woman came around the basin and studied Meggie’s face. “Only your eyes are moving. No expression. But I swear I can see emotions. All sorts of things—terror, rage, exhaustion. Am I imagining that?” She looked down at Meggie’s right hand. “Tap your fingers for me.”
Meggie kept her index finger steady.
“Tap your finger, to show me you love me.”
Go to hell.
Kaitlyn took the crank. She lowered the chair back into the water. Fear clawed its way into Meggie’s chest. She tapped her index finger furiously. The other woman stopped and smiled.
“That’s good. Now tap it two times to say that you are grateful I brought you out of the water instead of letting you drown.”
Meggie tapped twice.
Kaitlyn let go of the handle and paced around the room, chewing on her lower lip. At last she turned back to Meggie.
“Here is the thing, Megs. I’m almost done with you. I’ve kept you around for seven years because you have been useful, but I’m not into charity. And I’ve never liked you, you know that. You tried to turn Benjamin against me, and I’ll never forgive you for that.”
What do you want?
“So in a few days I’m cutting you loose. How depends on how useful you make yourself when Benjamin arrives. If you obey me, and answer exactly how I want you to, you’ll go free. I will turn you over to someone else, and they can try to penetrate that thick skull of yours.”
Kaitlyn leaned in closer. “If not, if you defy me, like you did just now, I will torture you until I get bored. Then I will kill you. Is that understood? Tap your finger once for yes.”
Meggie tapped once.
“Good, now here is what I want.”
As Kaitlyn explained her sick and twisted plan, Meggie listened with growing fear. Not just for what the woman was proposing, but because she knew the truth. Obey or not, there was no way that Kaitlyn would ever set her free.
She couldn’t take that risk. Meggie had always known too much. But what she was learning now, with every word out of Kaitlyn’s mouth, could only seal her death.
Chapter Ten
Wes paced the deck of the guest house, gnawing nervously on the tip of his thumb. Green and gold tanagers kept trying to feed at the plate of cut mango and melon put up by Señora Sanchez, and lifted with chirping protests whenever he drew too close, before settling back down when he’d passed.
“Calm down, Wes,” Becca said. “That’s not helping.”
“Something is wrong up there.”
“You don’t know that.”
He turned to where his wife was sitting calmly, sipping a cup of coffee and typing at her laptop. A trellis rose behind her, covered in flowering vines that attracted hummingbirds. Becca looked calm, but he knew that she was worrying in her own way.
The guest house sat in the town of Santa María del Lago, on the opposite side of the lake from their more luxurious digs of the previous couple of weeks. The accommodations were basic, with a shared bathroom servicing the five different guest rooms, and the other lodgers seemed to be entirely backpackers on their way to the cloud forest preserves of Santa Elena and Monte Verde. The lodge served full, hearty breakfasts, and offered a path through the forest down to the lake, with a view up at the cloud-covered volcano. Wes’s brother was only a few miles away on the other side of that mountain, but it took two hours to get there from here.
“He was supposed to send an email by now,” Wes said. “He was supposed to complain about the food and I’d come up and grab the phone and the video. Soon as it checks out, we get him out of there.”
“Maybe he hasn’t found her yet.”
“How many residents are there at Colina Nublosa? Thirty? Forty? They eat their meals together—Eric must have seen her a dozen times by now.”
“That doesn’t mean he got her alone long enough to ask questions and video her answers.”
“Doesn’t matter. There’s a signal for that, too, remember?”
Eric was supposed to email one way or the other. Complain about the food if he had the video, and rave about it if he didn’t. Either way, Wes would get a message and know where they stood. He’d dropped his brother off on Monday morning a
nd given strict instructions for Eric to email no later than Tuesday night. It was now Friday.
“I’m going to call the administrator.”
“Don’t make him suspicious,” Becca said.
“It’s not suspicious. I just dropped him off, so naturally I want to know how he’s adapting.”
“They said not to do that until he’d been there two weeks. It disrupts the adjustment.” As Wes passed, she took his arm. “Sit down. Please.”
He obeyed and she poured him coffee. He didn’t drink it. They sat in silence while Becca typed at her laptop.
“Any word from Davis yet?” he asked.
“The usual. Emails, back and forth. I haven’t told him where we are, and he hasn’t asked.”
“What about the money?”
“He hasn’t noticed it’s missing yet. Or if he has, he hasn’t mentioned it.”
“And he doesn’t want to know why we never showed up at the house?”
“Not yet. Kind of surprising.”
“Yeah,” he said with a frown.
Maybe his uncle would have given them a pass on Tuesday, figuring they were wiped out from the travel. Maybe as long as Becca kept the emails coming, he would give them a pass on Wednesday, too. Maybe even Thursday. But Davis didn’t like a purely virtual office—being wheelchair-bound, it made him feel doubly isolated. It was now Friday, and he’d expect them in. It was already noon in Vermont, so wasn’t he at least curious as to why Becca and Wes were nowhere to be found?
“Forget about Davis for now,” she said. “What about Eric?”
“I bet he forgot. I bet he spaced out why he’s there and what he’s supposed to be doing.”
“We drilled it a million times. His memory isn’t that bad.”
“Sometimes it is.”
“He gave me a blow-by-blow description of The Hound of the Baskervilles,” she said. “How bad could it be?”
“That’s different. That’s a story. He can remember stories.”
“Hmm.” She frowned and closed her laptop. “My guess is he almost has it. If we could find a different way to get him the information, instead of making him memorize and repeat it back.”
“Good idea. I could get him out of there and try again.” He gestured at the laptop. “Pass it over. I’ll send admin an email and tell them I want to see my brother one last time before I fly home to the States.”
“They told you no,” Becca said. “Zero contact in the first two weeks.”
“I don’t care, he’s my brother.”
“That place has so many rules and regulations. What if you piss this Usher guy off and he gives Eric the boot? Then how do we get to Meggie?”
“We’ll think of something. Becca, please!”
Frowning, she slid the laptop across the table. He pulled up his email and sent a quick message. It said that Wes would be coming for his brother at five-thirty that evening. No need to save dinner—Wes would feed Eric before he brought him back. He apologized for the inconvenience, but didn’t make it sound like it was up for negotiation.
The answer came back from Jerry Usher less than five minutes later. A visit was against the rules, it being within the first two weeks of Eric’s residency at Colina Nublosa, so reluctantly, Usher would have to decline the request. Also, all visitations must be scheduled at least forty-eight hours in advance. But he sincerely hoped that Wes had a safe trip back to the United States, with no travel delays or other annoyances.
Becca sighed when Wes read her Usher’s response. She put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Can he do that?”
“You signed papers, right?”
“And what if I show up anyway? I’ll tell him I left my hotel after sending that and never saw his answer. Will they turn me away at the gates?”
“Probably. And then it will make them suspicious. They might even keep a closer eye on Eric, and that won’t help anything.”
“This was all a mistake,” he said. “I shouldn’t have put him in there.”
“Maybe not. I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“That’s generous,” she said. “It was my idea.”
Wes had plenty to feel guilty about. Becca had had more faith in Eric than he had. And maybe she was right; maybe Wes was overplaying his brother’s handicap. Eric had enough challenges without people holding him down when he had a chance to do some genuine good. Why shouldn’t he be able to rise above his limitations? Eric certainly wanted to help. He looked up to his brother and his uncle and adored Becca.
Wes even suspected that Eric’s obsession with Sherlock Holmes was because of their investigations. Holmes was like the super-hero version of their team, using his powers of deduction to force open the dark corners of criminal minds and bring in light and justice.
“Are you angry with me?” Becca asked in a soft voice.
“No, with myself. I shouldn’t have let him go.”
Wes felt guilty for holding his brother back, and guilty for letting him go. For ignoring his misgivings. He wished more than anything they hadn’t proven justified. He realized glumly that Eric simply didn’t have the tools to do the job.
“Give him a chance,” she said.
“He had a chance. Time to end this. I’ll go up this afternoon and yank him out of there.”
“There has to be another way,” Becca said. “What if we give him more instructions? Eric has an email account, right?”
“Which he never checks unless someone tells him to. And his reading comprehension sucks. Whatever I said, he wouldn’t get. Besides, what if someone is looking over his shoulder while he puzzles over my message? Do they monitor email up there? Does he even have computer access yet? Who knows?”
“I’m just trying to think of something. If only we could get to him outside the facility somehow. Wait a second,” she added. “I saw something on their site about field trips. What about that?”
Wes was still sitting at the computer and pulled up Colina Nublosa’s web page. Yes, there was a big page about field trips, with pictures and flowery prose. One photo showed older people on a boat cruise on the lake, and others showed the younger, higher-functioning residents doing things like canopy walks and even zip lines. According to the site, all residents left the facility once a week, generally with their team of residents at a similar ability level.
“Except there’s no calendar,” Wes said. “I could call and ask what Eric is going to do this week.”
“Right after you got an email denying your request to visit him? Sure, they’d never guess you were up to something.”
“Crap.”
“Hold on.” She was looking over his shoulder and took the computer away and scrolled down. A grin broke across her face. “Check this out.”
Frowning, Wes scanned to the bottom of the page, where she’d put her finger. He’d been skimming quickly looking for a link to a schedule and had missed it the first time. But there it was at the bottom, clear as anything.
Every Sunday afternoon the staff takes residents to hike to the hot springs at Devil’s Cauldron. All residents who are ambulatory and not on behavior restriction are invited to attend.
“And Eric loved the hot springs,” Becca said. “He’ll be sure to go.”
“The springs are open to the public. Anyone could be there.”
He sat back and stared at the birds fussing over the fruit plate. A black squirrel scrambled down from a vine and chased them away so he could steal in peace. At breakfast, one of the other guests, a backpacker from Seattle, had watched the same squirrel scampering in the branches high overhead and excitedly called his buddies out to look at the “monkey.” When the squirrel came lower, the others had a laugh at his expense.
Wes imagined how Eric’s visit to the Devil’s Cauldron would play out. Both he and Becca had worked in care centers; field trips challenged the staff. The mentally handicapped residents, like Eric, were like children in adult bodies. Easy to find trouble up there—boiling water,
falls, getting lost in the forest—and Eric would be on a tight leash.
But what about after a half-hour or so? They’d relax their vigil. Sooner or later, he’d wander around with little supervision, much like he’d almost stumbled into Wes and Becca’s lovemaking the previous week. If they positioned themselves well, it would only be a matter of time before they could make contact. And then what? Debrief him? Give further instructions? Maybe nothing more than verify that he was okay, that they could leave him in there until he completed his mission.
“Okay,” Wes said at last. “But if he doesn’t show, or if we see him and anything seems off, that’s it. He’s my brother, so I make the call. I’ll pull the plug.”
Chapter Eleven
Meggie stepped uneasily to the edge of the cave where it dropped into the hillside. Behind her, Benjamin tied the 150-foot rope to a boulder, while Kaitlyn spread a tarp and laid out their gear for one last check. An hour had passed since they’d abandoned the two sick men at the truck. For a cave so nearly unexplored, it was easy to find with the GPS. A few minutes wandering around, calling out numbers, and then Meggie saw it yawning black and round in front of her, a mouth opening into the mountain.
The sun had climbed into the sky as they picked their way up the brush-covered, rock-strewn foothills of Nevada’s Snake Range. Glaring down from a brilliant blue sky, it sent heat shimmering from the desert floor far below them. But instead of shedding layers, they were pulling on long-sleeved cotton shirts in preparation for the subterranean chill. Night and day, summer and winter had little meaning two hundred feet underground. They put on tight-fitting leather rappelling gloves.
Meggie lay on her belly and crawled the last few feet to the hole, then shone a flashlight into its depths. The entrance was about ten feet across and dropped straight down like a well. Only the first fifteen feet lay exposed to daylight, before the shaft bent behind a jutting boulder that obscured the rest of the drop. In spite of the dry climate, water seeped from the cave walls a few feet below the surface, then dripped onto the boulder, which sprouted moss until it looked like a fuzzy green skull.
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