by H. P. Bayne
“It doesn’t,” Lachlan cut in. “We’re aware of what they did to Sullivan in Lockwood— him and other patients who shared similar gifts. Our understanding is the drug developed at LOBRA was being tested on patients with psychic abilities. We have also learned the experiments weren’t exactly a heavily guarded secret within the Circle. At least one other member—Prescott Montague—knew about it, and he’s since been permanently silenced. We also know there was a man present at the experiments, someone Sullivan described as wearing a mask.”
Paul nodded. “What you’re saying sounds like something a fellow wearing a tinfoil hat might come up with. But all of it makes perfect sense. I can’t say I was in on any of this regarding the experiments, but I very much believe what Sullivan reported was true. More than that, I believe I know the identity of the man in the mask.”
Dez unconsciously straightened in his chair. “Who?”
Paul offered a sad smile. “My father. It makes sense. He’s a heavy investor and a significant shareholder in LOBRA. I’d have to double-check the numbers, but I believe he holds a forty-one percent share in the company, with Lowell maintaining fifty-one percent and other Circle members the remainder. My father is effectively Lowell’s partner. Nothing would happen without his say-so, and I also know he’s a very hands-on kind of businessman. He’s not content with reports. He needs to see for himself. If LOBRA is testing a drug, and they’re using Lockwood patients to do it, my father would be involved. No question.”
“Why the mask?” Dez asked.
“Well, it’s not exactly legal what they’re doing, is it? If they were found out, it would ruin him—all of them.” A corner of Paul’s mouth quirked up, surprising Dez. “I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, but I’d actually love to see that happen.”
Paul looked from Lachlan to Dez and back again. “Thank you for letting me know. I’ll keep my ear to the ground and pass along any information I get. But you need to give me a little time. I’m going to start liquidating some assets and getting as much as I can out of the company. If I’m going to be in part responsible for taking down Dunsmore Developments, I’d like to ensure I’ve got something to live on when the dust clears.”
He stood. “I need to get back, but I’ll keep you both informed.”
Dez and Lachlan stood too. Across the desk, Lachlan extended a hand, which Paul shook. “Thank you for agreeing to help us, but as Desmond said, don’t put your life at risk over this. The last thing either of us wants is you ending up where others have.”
“That’s where we differ,” Paul said. “The last thing I want is to stand idly by, allowing others to end up that way. If there’s anything I can do to make things right, I intend to.”
He tipped an imaginary hat and bowed his head toward Dez and Lachlan. “Gentlemen. Good day. I’ll be in touch.”
He left the office, closing the door behind himself. Dez listened to Paul’s footsteps fading away on the stairs before turning to Lachlan. “What do you think?”
Lachlan’s face broke into a Cheshire cat grin. “I think we’re well on the way to cracking the case of the century.”
15
Sully had only intended to go as far as the basement side of the tunnel where he’d stashed his duffel bag and Pax’s extra food.
Then he remembered he’d left Dez’s portable cellphone charger upstairs, in the back parlour. Hoisting his duffel bag up and over one shoulder and tucking the bag of dog food into the crook of the opposite elbow, Sully left the passageway and headed for the basement stairs.
He hadn’t stopped to get Pax as Dez had suggested, wanting to avoid their mom until he’d returned from The Forks. She’d have questions, and he’d feel better tackling them if Dez was with him. But he found himself wishing he had the dog at his side as he gained the main floor to find the house eerily quiet.
There were two kinds of quiet in Ravenwood: the natural kind you’d find in any empty house, and the gathering storm kind of quiet. This was the latter, a silence so deep you could have heard a pin drop. No creaking floors, no scratching, not even the sound of wind pressing against the remaining windows.
It got like this just before Ned unleashed his fury on an unsuspecting intruder.
Sully decided he’d make this quick.
He headed for the parlour and searched the bookshelves and the mantle for the device before recalling he’d used it to charge his phone next to his makeshift bed last night. It was still there, on the floor next to the chairs, and he picked it up and pocketed it before turning for the door.
A clamour from the front hall drew him up short, the clang of something heavy and metallic, the sound of glass breaking, something heavy impacting on a wall or table.
Hurricane Ned had begun.
This time, the intruder wasn’t Dez.
Sully scanned the room until his eyes settled on the wrought-iron poker laid across the brick base of the fireplace. Having placed his bag and the dog food quietly on the floor, he grabbed the poker in a two-handed grip and stood to one side of the doorway. The door was open, and he didn’t try to close it, the creak likely to give him away. Standing motionless, he held his breath and tried to slow his rapid pulse to allow him to better hear an approaching enemy.
Another clatter from the hall, another heavy object thrown, wood on wood this time.
It was followed by a high-pitched squeak. Female not male. No second voice, nothing to indicate more than one human presence.
Curiosity got the better of him. He peered around the edge of the doorframe but saw nothing in the short hall. He’d have to make his way toward the entrance hall to see anything.
Keeping the poker hefted baseball-bat style, Sully left the room, putting his back to the wall and edging alongside it, foot over foot as he inched forward.
Another solid throw by Ned resulted in a louder shriek this time. It was close, close enough he thought he’d probably be able to see the woman if he peered around the corner.
Keeping his weapon at the ready, Sully peeked into the entry hall.
What he saw had him lowering the poker and leaving his place of concealment.
“Quit it!” he called out to Ned. “She’s not a threat!”
He’d first met Phoebe Waters two years ago in Lockwood, back when he was just a visitor looking for answers regarding Harry Schuster. Like Emily Crichton, Phoebe was tiny and had large glasses that magnified her eyes, contributing to her nickname, Snowy the Owl. But Sully had learned there was more to Snowy’s moniker than mere appearance. She had a certain wisdom to her, an all-seeing aspect that made her different from many other patients inside the institution. She’d been a friend of Harry’s, not just because her ingrained empathy drew her to the desperate man, but because she was like him. Snowy had a gift, the kind of gift that had made her a target to men like Gerhardt and Lowell.
The time Sully had spent as a patient there was mainly lost to the haze of drugs, but he remembered Snowy talking to him in those in-between moments when his family or Ara weren’t there. He couldn’t always respond, but her presence had been a comfort—a far more substantial comfort than what she was clearly experiencing now.
Snowy was, he believed, somewhere in her late sixties, although it was possible her time at Lockwood had aged her prematurely. Regardless, she had achieved a yoga-like posture on the floor, curled up on herself like a turtle as she anticipated further ghostly attacks.
“Sully?” she asked, voice quaking from within the helmet her arms had created around her head.
“It’s okay, Snowy. He usually listens to me.”
“Usually?”
Sully chuckled, hoping the sound would ease her anxiety, before approaching her and offering a hand. She peered up at him, one large eye visible through a space at her elbow’s crook, then slowly extended the arm to take his hand.
Having helped her to her feet, Sully guided her through the house to his room. He waited until they were inside to encase her in a gentle hug.
�
�I can’t believe it’s you,” he said. “I thought you must be dead.”
“And I assumed you were,” she said. “It wasn’t until recently I learned otherwise. I heard you, when you went to Dr. Gerhardt’s old house. Terrence and I, we’ve been staying in a house near that one, and I knew you were there.”
The word “heard” for Snowy meant something different. She had the ability to read thoughts. It wasn’t perfect, she’d once told him, but it worked very well with other psychics, those whose minds were already more open. It was how she’d been able to communicate with Harry and to complete the rudimentary drawings giving voice to his visions when he no longer could on his own.
“I’m sorry we didn’t come to your assistance,” she went on. “We saw those men enter, and Terrence went to help, but he came back a minute later and said you had it well in hand. He was impressed, and he doesn’t impress easily.”
“Terrence?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, you didn’t know, did you? Terrence Waters. You met him, I understand, around the same time you met me. He was medically discharged from the Armed Forces, and he managed the army surplus store. He told me you helped him with his friend, the one who was killed in the explosion. Terrence is my son.”
“What? Seriously?” Sully considered the information. “I always figured something must have happened to you in Lockwood, but it was Terrence, wasn’t it? He helped you escape.”
“He has skills that come in very handy. I’m sorry we weren’t able to help you too. It needed to be a ‘quick extraction.’ His words. There just wasn’t time.”
“You don’t need to explain. I understand. Where is he now?”
“Outside, keeping watch near the front gate.”
“It would be great to see him.”
“He won’t come in here. Ghosts spook him too much. I don’t share that fear—except for the one I’ve just met.”
“He has that effect on people. How’d you know I was here?”
“After you and your brother left the Gerhardt place, Terrence and I tailed you back here. I’d hoped to speak with you, but Terrence talked me out of it. Your brother is nephew to Lowell Braddock, the man who forced my son into hiding. It was what brought him to break me out of Lockwood when he did. He’s convinced Lowell tried to kill him, and he said he was a walking target. He decided starting over somewhere else would be necessary, but he didn’t want to leave me behind.”
“He’s a good son.”
“He is. Anyway, I’ve been working on him since last night and finally convinced him to let me come back to talk to you.”
“Good timing,” Sully said. “I’d actually just been packing up to leave. I’m going to stay at Dez’s place in Riverview.”
“You’re certain that’s safe?”
“I can’t say this is safe either. The threat of break-ins and attacks like the one last night are always there.”
“But on the outside, there’s Lowell,” Snowy said. “You know what he is. I’m sensing that from you.”
“I do know what he is,” Sully said. “But he thinks I’m dead, and I doubt he even knows where Dez’s apartment is. I’ll be fine there. Anyway, if I stay at Ravenwood much longer, Dez will be the bigger threat. He’ll kick my ass.”
“I wasn’t thinking of you staying here alone. I meant for you to come back with Terrence and me. You could stay with us. It would certainly give Terrence a break if he didn’t feel he has to keep a constant watch.”
“I’d be happy to help, but with what I’m working on now, there’s a good chance the end result will mean all of us can leave The Forks forever and go back to our real lives.”
Snowy fell silent, and Sully sensed her mind working away. It was a little creepy, her picking away at his private thoughts, but he reminded himself he had nothing to conceal anymore.
“There’s a reunion tomorrow at Lockwood,” she said. “You’re planning to attend.”
“I’m trying to—”
“I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s admirable. But it might also be stupid. Why would you go back there?”
“The answers I need might be there. Anyway, I have to deal with what happened at Lockwood. The sooner I do that, the stronger I’ll be to handle Lowell when that fight comes.”
“What if it goes the other way? What if you can’t handle the memories of the torture you endured?”
Sully shrugged. “Maybe it won’t go so well. But my brother will be nearby and so will a couple of friends. I won’t be alone.”
“One thing about trauma, Sullivan. When we’re trying to find our way through it, we are always alone. Do you really think it will be worth the risk? Are you so certain Dr. Gerhardt will buckle to your demands if you solve what happened to his son?”
“I’m hoping so. What about you? You’ve had the opportunity to look inside his mind, haven’t you?”
“I tried once or twice,” she said. “But he’s a closed book to me. He’s built walls a mile thick, and short of drugging him, I can think of no way to penetrate his mind. Nor would I want to. There’s a real darkness inside him, and I’ve been trying my hardest to stay away from the dark. We both know where his thoughts run, Sullivan. No need for a mind reader there.”
“I guess I was really wondering whether he killed his wife. Did you know her? Eloise, I mean?”
Snowy shook her head. “She was before my time at Lockwood. I was there perhaps a decade, long after everything happened with his family.”
“A decade?” Sully asked. “I didn’t know it was that long. How did you deal with it, with the Blue Room?”
“I wasn’t taken there that often, actually,” she said. “A gift like mine wasn’t going to prove useful to the doctor and, quite frankly, I made him anxious. He didn’t need a person who read minds. I would be of little use to him unless he could place me next to someone he believed held some answers. With what you can do, you’re far more valuable. You’d be able to see his son in the afterlife.”
“All these years, all of his torturing psychics to find answers, and he’s never gotten them. Why?”
Snowy’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know. It might be, though, there are some answers we’re never meant to receive. What about you? I can tell there are answers you’re still seeking. You’re wondering about Harry, about the vision he had that led to the little Braddock boy’s drowning.”
“I was told Harry foresaw Aiden bringing down this group called the Circle. Do you know anything about that?”
“Harry thought about it frequently. He never got over it, that his prophesy was used to justify the murder of a young child.”
“Why did he say it then? Why not keep it to himself?”
Snowy’s responding smile was a sad one. “He didn’t often have a choice in what he said. His prophesies would come while he was in a trance-like state. When he was still at home with his wife, he was known for wandering around the neighbourhood, muttering things. Some people believed he was sleepwalking because he was so unresponsive. Betty used to visit Lockwood, and we’d talk. She told me she’d finally had to lock the bedroom door at night and nail the windows shut to keep him from getting out. It got especially bad after his first stroke. She also used to hear him talk about the vision he called ‘River Boy.’ Whenever he thought too hard about it, he’d end up depressed for days. Betty didn’t know the whole story, and Harry, in one of his lucid moments, begged me never to tell her. He didn’t want her to know he had a hand in such a cold-blooded crime.”
“Betty and their son assumed Harry’s vision was him looking back into the past, but it wasn’t,” Sully said. “He predicted something far earlier, something big enough to lead to the murder of a five-year-old kid.”
“He foresaw the downfall of the Circle. It was another recurring vision of his. Whenever it would enter his mind, he’d mutter the words, ‘second son,’ over and over.”
“And you saw the vision?”
Snowy nodded. “I saw what he saw: a man, his face in shadow,
standing over members of the Circle. A few of them were dead, some injured, others were pleading for their lives. It ended with the survivors in prison cells. You can imagine why an image like that would cause panic.”
“What does it have to do with this second son thing?”
“The prophesy was that the downfall would be brought about by the second son of a member of the circle. You can imagine the pandemonium that must have created. How many members back then would have had more than one son? How many must have looked at their children and wondered?”
“But Aiden wasn’t the son of a member,” Sully said. “He was Lowell’s nephew.”
“Did Lowell ever have children of his own?”
Sully shook his head. “No.”
“So maybe he viewed Desmond and Aiden as his own children. I don’t know. Whatever it was, Aiden was considered a threat, and a big enough one that the council ordered his death.”
“So Harry must have zeroed in on Aiden then,” Sully said. “I can’t imagine the council ordering everyone to kill their kids. That would have been insane, and it would have attracted a hell of a lot of police attention, even if the deaths had been made to look like accidents.”
“I know Harry did foresee something more specific as to the identity of the second son. But I don’t have all the answers. You’d need Harry for that, and he’s gone.”
“Maybe I can find him.”
“Maybe. But I doubt you’ll get him to talk about it. Like I said, he carried a great deal of shame over it. It was only because of the strength of my gift that I was able to see inside his mind, even without his willing it.”
“I’ll do my best,” Sully said. “My abilities seem to be getting stronger too.”
“I can’t go with you to Lockwood,” Snowy said. “But Terrence and I will be here if you need help down the road. Please let us know.”