Run to You Part Three: Third Charm

by Clara Kensie

  Tristan pulled his wallet from his duffle bag and handed him some money. “Send an intern to Hawthorne’s for a veggie burger and one of those fruit platters. And three slices of blueberry pie,” he added. “Keep one for yourself.”

  The guard pocketed the money and squeaked away.

  Tristan grinned at me. “Hawthorne’s is famous in Lilybrook for their pies. No one can resist them.”

  Without reply, I escaped to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Tristan was only being nice to me in order to ease his own guilt. He still believed my parents were killers. He still believed his father was a good man.

  When I returned from the shower, dressed in a new prison uniform, the cheeseburgers and fries still sat untouched in their baskets. Tristan waited for my lunch to be delivered, then ate both cheeseburgers while I ate my veggie burger and fruit.

  He was right: the blueberry pie was irresistible. Warm and sticky and tart, and I ate the entire piece. Jillian and Logan would have loved it. What were they eating? Were they eating at all? They had enough money, but what if they were too frightened to leave their hideout, wherever it was, to go buy food?

  “Is Kellan still looking for my brother and sister?” I asked.

  Nodding, Tristan swallowed a bite. “He’s assembling a new team. He did not ask me to be on it.”

  Jillian and Logan were out there, somewhere, frightened and confused and alone. And I wanted them here, with me. But for now, it was best if they stayed hidden, as far away from the APR as possible. I needed to prove my parents were innocent. Not just for their freedom, but for Jillian and Logan’s safety. What if Kellan neutralized them too?

  With the side of my fork, I scraped the last crumbs from the plate. I chose my next words carefully. “Last night, when I found the information about the professor, you said you thought the APR might be wrong about my parents.”

  “Yeah, for a moment.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “And then I read the rest of the facts.”

  “But there was a moment.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re not completely convinced my parents are criminals.”

  He paused for a moment. “I guess not.”

  “Then let me go,” I said. “Let my parents go.”

  “I can’t do that. Not without absolute proof that the APR is wrong.”

  I lifted the binder onto my lap. “If I can find that proof, then will you get us out of here?”

  He gazed at me, then nodded.

  With the fog blanketing my emotions, I spent the afternoon and late into the evening poring over every page, every photo, every note. The few times I found something that could confirm my parents’ innocence, Tristan found something else that proved me wrong.

  “You’re supposed to be helping me,” I said crossly.

  “I’m trying. I swear,” he said. “I want your parents to be innocent as much as—” He stopped, his eyes growing wide, and he gripped my arm. “Don’t be scared,” he said. “Don’t... Jesus. Don’t faint.”

  “Why? What’s...”

  “My dad’s about to walk in that door,” he said. “Right—”

  The door slid open.

  “—now.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  I tried to jump up, but Tristan held me. My breath caught, and I turned my head to the door.

  There he was. Standing in the doorway. Round wire-rimmed glasses and gray mustache and kind blue eyes. The man who’d tried to kidnap me eight years ago. The man who’d sliced me open. The man who had chased my family from countless homes and gave me nightmares every night, the man who had ruined my childhood and destroyed my family. The man who was going to kill me.

  Dennis Connelly.

  Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. No escape.

  The oxygen evaporated from the cell and was replaced by fog. The world started fading away.

  “Don’t faint,” I heard Tristan say. “Tessa? Hey. Clockwise, look at me.”

  I peered through the fog. Tristan was inches from me, holding my face between his hands. “Breathe.” He inhaled, showing me how to do it.

  I inhaled.

  He exhaled, and I did too.

  “Again.” He inhaled, then exhaled, his eyes locked on to mine.

  I inhaled, then exhaled. The fog gradually thinned, and Tristan came back into focus.

  “Good,” he said. “He won’t hurt you. I promise.”

  I shook my head, my hands fluttering to cover my stomach.

  He stood, pulling me up with him. My body was frozen, but the room around me was swirling. He had to support me so I wouldn’t collapse, or maybe he was holding me so I couldn’t run.

  Dennis Connelly stepped toward me. I imagined the fog slamming down between us, like a curtain. An iron gate. A brick wall.

  “Dad, this is Tessa,” Tristan said, pride clear in his voice.

  My heart stopped as his father turned his attention to me. “Tiny little Tessa, all grown up.” He held out his arms.

  I braced myself, ready for the sharp pain of him piercing my stomach, slicing me open again.

  “Dad, stop. No hugs. She’s really scared,” Tristan said.

  A hug? That’s what he wanted?

  He held up his hands, palms open. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  Was he sorry he’d cut me? Sorry he’d torn my family apart? Sorry my parents were locked up without cause?

  I forced myself to look at him for the first time in eight years.

  My nightly dreams of Dennis Connelly had morphed my memory of him into a monster, a demon, with wild rolling eyes and sharp yellowed nails. But one glance at him now and I remembered how he really looked that day eight years ago, when we’d chatted on my lawn. He looked the same now, a bit older. He wore the same round, wire-rimmed glasses, and he had the same mustache, just whiter.

  He was, in fact, handsome. Bald on top now, his eyes a darker blue than Tristan’s, but with the same bright, friendly quality. His face was open, and...youthful, cheerful. Merry. How different from my own parents’ faces, which had become tired, sunken and troubled over the years.

  How dare this man enjoy life for the past eight years, while he’d destroyed ours?

  Dennis Connelly was the murderer. Not my parents.

  But where was the sickly sweet, burned cherry scent? Why didn’t he smell like cigars?

  “My partner smoked those cigars,” he said. “Not me. The smell always clung to my clothes. Tristan’s mother hated that.”

  That’s right; he was telepathic. And a liar.

  He looked around the cell. “This is no place for a reunion. I’m sure they won’t mind if I take you upstairs. It’s much nicer up there.”

  No. I did not want to leave my nice, safe cell.

  Tristan put his arm tight around my shoulders and nudged me forward. Certain he would drag me or even carry me if I refused to walk, I brought the fog in even farther, then a tiny bit more, until nothing seemed real. On shaking legs, I walked with Tristan, and we followed his father into the hall and up to the main level. Two guards followed us.

  Tristan had no idea what a horrible man his father was.

  I concentrated on breathing instead, and walking. In, out. Left, right.

  One of the guards unlocked a room at the far end of the hallway. “We’ll use the boardroom,” Dennis Connelly said. “I may have retired, but I still have some pull around here.”

  The boardroom, with rich red carpet and dark paneled walls, was dominated by a glossy wood table and wide padded leather chairs in the center of the room. A black leather sofa and two matching armchairs sat in front of a fireplace at the far end. Dennis Connelly gestured to the sofa. “Have a seat.”

  Still holding me tightly, Tristan led me over. “You okay?” he w
hispered in my ear.

  I didn’t know how to answer that. This wasn’t how I’d expected to meet Dennis Connelly again.

  He sat in an armchair and smiled at me. “Imagine my surprise when I heard my son had fallen in love with tiny little Tessa. Isn’t it wonderful how things have turned out?”

  “Did Dr. Sheldon tell you everything Kellan did to her?” Tristan said, eyes blazing. “He hit her. He made her watch as they shot her—”

  I squeezed Tristan’s hand: Stop. I did not want to relive that night.

  He squeezed back: Sorry.

  “John Kellan has always been driven and ruthless, as you know,” his father said, “but he’d never been violent before. One of the agents killed in the attack was his brother-in-law. He wanted vengeance. Regrettably, he took it out on Tessa.”

  “So they fired him, right?” Tristan asked.

  “He was formally reprimanded for hitting Tessa. That’s all. After the professor was murdered, the board gave him the green light to do whatever it took to apprehend the Carsons before they killed anyone else.”

  Tristan sat back with a growl of disgust.

  “I’m as upset as you are, Tristan. Kellan traumatized Tessa, and he put your life in danger. If I’d known about his plan, I would have stopped him. And he knew it.” Dennis Connelly turned back to me. “Tessa, I am truly sorry.”

  All these years, I’d thought he was angry, obsessed. Insane. But now I felt only earnest regret and sympathy and...paternal affection from him.

  But it had to be fake. “You destroyed my family,” I whispered.

  Both Tristan and his father raised their brows. I’d surprised myself by speaking aloud, too. “You tried to kidnap me.”

  “No, honey. I was trying to keep you safe.”

  “You cut me.”

  “No. That was the shattered glass from the car windows.”

  I had an argument he could not twist around. “You hunted my family for eight years.”

  “Your parents did some very bad things. We had to stop them.”

  “You made it all up.”

  “We have proof, Tessa.”

  “What, that binder?” I spat. “That binder isn’t proof. It’s just a bunch of pictures and notes. There’s no proof at all in there that my parents blackmailed or murdered anyone.”

  Tristan chuckled. “She’s right, you know.”

  “That’s true.” His father nodded. “That file would not qualify as proof of guilt in a regular court of law. But this is the APR. We have our own laws, our own courts and the full support of the federal government. We deal with extraordinary people, people who have special gifts that make them more powerful than most. That power shouldn’t be used to hurt anyone. And that’s what your parents did. We saw them do it through visions. We read your mother’s mind. We don’t need physical proof.”

  This was not going the way I wanted it to. “Do they even get a chance to defend themselves? What about a lawyer? Don’t they get a trial?”

  “There’s no need for a trial,” he said. “Trials are for people who can’t read minds, who can’t see the past or future. Trials are for neutrals.”

  Neutral. I’d heard that term before. Dr. Sheldon had declared me neutral when she’d looked in my mind. Tristan said my parents were being neutralized. “That’s what you call people like me—neutral?”

  “People who aren’t psionic,” Tristan said, “are neutral.”

  “So how do I know you’re telling me the truth?” I asked, gaining strength and courage with each word I spoke. “I’m neutral. I need physical proof that they’re guilty, and you don’t have any.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Dennis Connelly said. “We can’t prove it to you.”

  “You can let me see my parents,” I said. “They have no reason to lie to me now. If they’re guilty, they’ll tell me.” They would tell me the truth—that they’re innocent. And then we could figure out how to get out of this place.

  But Dennis Connelly shook his head. “I’ll try, but your father is still unconscious and they’re having a hard time neutralizing your mother,” he said. “Her psychokinesis keeps regenerating. Until she’s completely neutralized, they won’t let anyone see her. But I checked on them before I stopped in to see you.” He tapped his temple.

  “You read their minds?”

  “I did.”

  “Are they okay?”

  “Your mother is groggy and weak, but she knows where she is and why.”

  I hated thinking of my mother as weak and groggy. She was the strongest person I knew, and the smartest, too. “What about my dad?”

  “I was unable to read his mind. All I felt was his pain. It’s excruciating.” He raised his hands to his temples, and his face contorted for a moment, as if he could still feel it. “It’s blocked out thoughts of anything else.”

  “But you have healers! Tell them to fix him!”

  “They’re doing everything they can. He’s fortunate that he’s here. Those headaches and bloody noses would have killed him, and very soon, without our intervention.”

  No, my dad wasn’t fortunate to be here. He wouldn’t have had to use his mobile eye at all if he hadn’t had to watch for Dennis Connelly for eight years. And when Kellan took me, he’d aggravated his condition to the breaking point by watching me from the minute he realized I was missing, even though he was bleeding from his nose, his ears, even his eyes, until he was shot hours later.

  “Will he ever wake up?” I asked.

  He was quiet for a moment. “I believe he will, and here’s why. Your family always fled just a couple hours before I found you. I was constantly safeguarded, so I was never able to figure out how you knew I was coming. But when you told Tristan last week that your father was unable to see me except when I was close, I figured it out. My original safeguard died during the attack in your house eight years ago. The few minutes I was unguarded left me vulnerable to your father’s remote vision whenever I was close to him, even though I’d gotten a new safeguard.”

  Before I could protest that no one was in my house that day eight years ago except for him, he held up his palm. “My point is, no one has ever been able to penetrate a safeguard’s protection before. Your father is very strong. If anyone can wake up from this, he can.”

  Psionic strength was not the same as physical strength, and now my father had neither. But Mr. Connelly was trying to comfort me, and I needed to be comforted. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Please. Call me Dennis.”

  How strange that sounded. Dennis Connelly was evil. Dennis was...harmless.

  Dennis leaned forward in the armchair, elbows on his knees. “Tessa, we need to discuss where you’re going to live.”

  Beside me, Tristan tensed, sat up straight.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “You’re letting me go?”

  “I can’t think of a reason to keep you here any longer. Now. You’ll want to live with your brother and sister, of course. Until we find them, you have three options.”

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “One, you can live with your aunt.”

  “I don’t have an aunt,” I said. “It was always just the five of us.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Your father has a sister. Rebecca. She lives in Delaware.”

  “He never told us about her.”

  “They were never close,” Dennis said. “Early in our investigation we learned that he was ten years older than her, and when she was very young she was diagnosed with leukemia. She recovered years later, but by then he’d grown distant from the family. The last time they spoke was at their father’s funeral, fifteen years ago.”

  “Does she have a mobile eye?” I asked.

  “No. She’s not psionic. Like everyone else, she believes you were all kille
d when your house exploded. She went to your memorial.”

  “Would she take Jillian and Logan too?”

  “I’m sure she would. Would you like me to contact her for you? We can’t tell her about the APR or where your parents are, but we can think of a good cover story about where you’ve been all these years.”

  I considered it. I suddenly had an aunt. Aunt Rebecca. She was neutral. It would be nice, living with someone like me.

  But I knew my answer. I did not want to go live with an aunt I’d never heard of before. And I’d still have to lie.

  I was so tired of lying.

  “What are my other options?” I asked.

  “We can place you in a foster home,” his father said.

  That was even worse than living with an unknown aunt. “What else?”

  “The other option,” he said, gesturing to Tristan and giving me a wide smile like he was presenting me with a precious gift, “is that you come live with us.”

  Tristan gave his knee a triumphant slap. “Thank you, Dad. That’s what I was hoping for.”

  I blinked with disbelief. Then my throat closed up, panic rumbling in my blood like water about to boil. Dennis Connelly had lulled me into complacency with his kindness and his soft voice and his fake fatherly concern. But now I knew what he was doing.

  “You finally captured us after eight years,” I said, “and now you want to bring me home like a trophy to hang on your wall after a hunt.”

  His face paled, his eyes widened.

  I rose and stepped toward him. “You may have Tristan fooled, you may have everyone else fooled, but you can’t fool me.”

  He cringed and shrank back, and I took another step. “You kill people. My dad has seen you do it. You probably killed everyone in that binder and framed my parents for it.”

  Another cringe, another step. “The only reason you haven’t killed us is because you don’t want Tristan to know the truth.”

  Standing directly in front of him now, I held my arms out wide, my stomach unprotected. “Show him,” I hissed. “Slice me open again. Show your son what you really are.”

  Arms grabbed me from behind, wrapping around my torso and dragging me away. Tristan. I struggled as he pulled me from the room, but then I realized—he finally understood. He believed me! I raced with him as he stormed down the shadowed hall, the staccato tapping of the guards’ boots echoing behind us.