Run to You Part Three: Third Charm

by Clara Kensie

  Mr. Milbourne grunted. “The evidence room.”

  “I want them.”

  The warden shook his head and grunted again.

  Before I could plead my case, Tristan pulled out his cell phone and dialed. “Dad?” He murmured my request.

  A minute later, the phone on the warden’s desk rang.

  And a few minutes after that, I held a clear plastic bag that contained my parents’ wedding rings.

  They had an evidence room, and it was close by. I tucked that information away for later.

  After flashing Tristan a reluctant thank-you smile for getting the rings, I shook them from the bag: an engagement ring with a minuscule diamond and two thin gold bands. Nothing fancy. My parents had gotten married almost immediately after they met, when Dad was a reporter at a small town newspaper and Mom was a housekeeper at a motel. But no matter how wealthy they eventually became, no matter how many other jewels my mother acquired, they never took off their original wedding rings.

  One by one, I slid them on my finger.

  Guilt overwhelmed me, cutting off my air, and I pulled them off. I had no right to wear them when it was my fault they couldn’t.

  “If they don’t fit,” Tristan said, “I’ll get you a chain so you can wear them around your neck.”

  I tossed them back in the bag. “If my parents can’t wear them, no one should wear them.”

  As Mr. Milbourne led me away, I gave one last glance at my parents, sending them a silent apology.

  * * *

  When Tristan stretched out on the floor that night to go to sleep, I told him it wasn’t bedtime just yet. I pressed the buzzer on the intercom.

  “Yeah?” The crackly voice belonged to Weasel Face. Perfect.

  “Can you come, sir?” I asked in my most helpless tone. “We need you again.”

  Tristan cocked one eyebrow when the intercom clicked off. “More breaking and entering?”

  “I want to see what’s in that evidence room.”

  “Tampering with evidence is illegal, Tessa.”

  “So is locking up my parents without physical proof,” I said. “But I won’t tamper with anything. I just want to look.”

  The disapproving frown on Tristan’s face didn’t go away.

  “I’m going, with or without you,” I said with a shrug.

  Sighing, he stood up. “I’m not leaving you.”

  Ha. I knew he would say that.

  All it took to convince Weasel Face to lead us to the evidence room and unlock it was a few pleading eyelash bats from me and a friendly discussion about the Green Bay Packers from Tristan. With a waggle of his finger, he even disabled the surveillance camera hanging in the corner.

  I snuffed my guilt that Weasel Face could lose his job if he was caught. He shouldn’t be working for such an evil place anyway. Once I got my parents released, they would gratefully—and generously—reward him.

  Aisles of stacked beige lockers, each about three feet square, filled the evidence room. The rows were separated by narrow stainless steel tables. We wandered the aisles until we found a locker marked CARS0520 near the back. Weasel Face opened the lock with a few wiggles of his fingers, then Tristan sent him to guard the door.

  Taking a deep breath, I swung open the locker door to see what was inside.

  Almost nothing.

  I was torn between disappointment that there were few items to help me prove my parents’ innocence, and pride that we’d left so little behind for Dennis Connelly to find.

  I raised the fog as high as I dared. I needed to think clearly. Tristan and I took out each item and placed them on the table. Each one was in a separate plastic bag with a form printed on the front, referencing where the item was found, the initials of the psychic who had read it, and the information they were able to obtain from it.

  On almost every form, that last line had been left blank.

  The silver ribbon from my Winterball dress was in one bag, coiled up like a snake. On the form, Kellan reported how he’d used it to catch me when I ran from him in Twelve Lakes, and then to blindfold me. Quite a useful tool, that silver ribbon.

  Three bags contained the originals of the papers that had been copied into the green binder: the receipt for the Disney movies, Jillian’s dance recital program and one of Logan’s old compositions. Dennis Connelly had retrieved those items from our various hideouts and had brought them back here, as evidence, and for psychometric readings. The psychic couldn’t tell much from the receipt, but from the others he was able to tell my siblings were both psionic. He said the dancer was rebellious and resentful. The musician was cautious and protective. He’d predicted we’d go to Arkansas next.

  He was wrong.

  About Arkansas, anyway.

  Inside another large bag was an eight-by-ten inch canvas: the blue petal I’d painted when I was eleven. My alias Nicole Nelson was scrawled in the bottom right corner. The form said I’d made it when we lived in Missouri. I remembered now why I hadn’t brought it home—my teacher, Mrs. Dixon, thought it was so good she’d hung it in the hallway for everyone in the entire school to see. I’d known my parents would be upset at the attention, but I’d wanted to wait just one day before asking Mrs. Dixon to take it down. We’d fled to our next hideout that night.

  The psychic who’d read the painting hadn’t been able to learn anything from it, other than she suspected my real name started with the letter T. She’d also written the word guilt and circled it several times.

  She was right.

  Inside another bag was one of my old copies of Anne of Green Gables. The copy Tristan had given me was in my getaway bag. That bag wasn’t in the locker, which probably meant Jillian and Logan had it. As soon as I found them, I would toss out Tristan’s copy. Maybe burn it.

  I inspected the rest of the items.

  Tristan’s iPod. “Why’s this here?” As I asked, I realized it probably was bugged. He’d always turned it on when I disclosed my secrets.

  “It had a recording device in it,” he confirmed.

  My black cell phone, the one from my parents. Kellan’s guard had fished it out of the secret pocket in my silver dress.

  The handbag I’d used at Winterball. Inside was the blue cell phone Tristan had given me. “And that had a tracking device,” he said. I remembered what he’d said when he gave me that phone, so clearly it was like he was speaking the words aloud right now: I will not let you just disappear into the night.

  Pushing the electronics and my guilt aside, I moved on to the next items.

  Miscellaneous items from homes and motels. Textbooks and worksheets from various schools. A singed cookbook from our stay in Florida. Strands of Jillian’s blond hair and Mom’s graying hair. A toothbrush, a napkin, a coffee mug. I recognized the mug from a truck stop in Georgia a few years ago. A passing waitress, her tray heavy and unbalanced, had spilled hot coffee down my shoulder and arm. I’d bitten my lips bloody to keep from screaming. But my mother had sure screamed. My dad had dragged us away as the waitress fell to her knees, unable to speak she felt so bad for burning me. And then we’d raced out of the state. The burn had stopped hurting once Dad put some ointment on it, so I’d completely forgotten the whole incident until I saw the mug just now.

  That—that wasn’t the waitress who’d died of a heart attack, was it?

  “Tessa.” Tristan’s caress on my cheek woke me from the memory.

  I cleared my throat and shoved the mug back in its bag.

  My Civics notebook, Logan’s reeds, Jillian’s scarf. The rhinestone clips she lost at Homecoming. The hockey puck Logan had pulled from our bushes. Of course.

  In the next bag was the spoon Jillian had tried to show her friends she could move with her mind at Ethan’s party. I remembered Tristan scooping the spoon up from the floor, but now I r
ealized he’d never put it in the sink. He must have slipped it into his pocket. On the attached form, the psychic had scrawled five words: Defiant. Reckless. Desperate. Inebriated. Psychokinetic.

  A set of twisted car keys was next. The form said they were from the getaway car we’d used in Nebraska. A psychic with the initials BL had read them, and had drawn a picture of twelve lakes.

  Only one bag left. The object inside was heavy and flat and wrapped in bubble wrap and tape. The old tape peeled off easily, then I unwound the bubble wrap.

  A butcher knife.

  Shiny. Long. Silver. The form said it was from the kitchen of our house in Virginia, from the set my mother kept on the granite counter.

  Kellan said my father had stabbed an APR recruiting agent. Delivered the final blows. I’d never seen my dad be violent or even heard him raise his voice. Could he really stab someone to death? I pictured my dad slamming this knife into the agent’s back, again and again and again, as he crawled through a puddle of blood on our marble floor.

  “Tessa. Let it go. Now.”

  Tristan’s sharp command penetrated the image, and it disappeared. He’d grabbed my wrist and was trying to pry my fingers open. They were wrapped around the knife’s handle so tightly they hurt. I released my grip, and a tinny clang echoed around the room as the knife fell to the table.

  How dare I even imagine my father using that knife?

  I yanked my wrist from Tristan’s hand and threw everything back into the locker as he glowered accusingly at me. He put the knife back himself.

  Before he shut the locker door, I snatched my black cell phone out. Like a child finding her lost security blanket, I hooked it to my waistband and tapped it with my fingertips. I thrust my chin at Tristan, silently daring him to order me to put it back.

  He didn’t. He just gave me a solemn nod of understanding.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  My nightmare, now even worse than before with images of bloody silver knives and pleading waitresses, woke me with a start the next morning. As soon as my heart stopped pounding, I reached under the cot to the far back corner. My fingers brushed past Dr. Sheldon’s green binder and the plastic bag that held my parents’ rings, and I pulled out my black cell phone.

  “I’m calling Jillian and Logan,” I told Tristan in response to his curious glance from his makeshift bed on the floor. They were still safer out there than they would be in here, but now that I had my phone back, the need to hear their voices was crushing.

  Tristan sat up straight. “Great idea.”

  His enthusiasm made me suspicious. “I won’t let them tell me where they are,” I said with a glare, “so don’t even think about sending an investigator after them. I just want them to know we’re okay.” I swallowed and decided to rephrase that. “Well...that we’re still alive, anyway.”

  I flipped the phone open, heart sinking when it didn’t light up. “The battery ran out.”

  “That phone probably wouldn’t get a signal down here anyway.” He held out his phone. “Use mine. Standard APR issue. It gets a signal down here.”

  “No way. You’ll just track the call.”

  His guilty look showed me I was right.

  “I can’t use your phone anyway,” I said. “Logan programmed ours so they would only accept calls from each other.”

  He hopped up. “Then let’s go up to the Lab. I know someone who can charge your phone for you.”

  We quickly dressed, then rang the buzzer for the guard. Spiky Hair opened the cell door a few minutes later. Before we could even start to convince him to let me leave the cell, he waved us out. His lips twisted in a snarl, he informed us that Dennis Connelly had made arrangements for me to go to any public area of the building, as long as a guard escorted me. He was fortunate, he said, to have that pleasure this morning.

  He followed us to the upstairs hallway, now brightly lit with florescent lights and bustling with APR employees, many of whom greeted Tristan cheerfully and welcomed him home while giving me curious looks. An excited, celebratory buzz filled the air.

  On the left side of the hall was a small open room with a microwave and a refrigerator. The lunchroom. Smiling to myself, I imagined Kellan flying back against the fridge, perhaps breaking the coffee maker, as Heath punched him in the jaw.

  Across from the lunchroom was a door decorated with crayon drawings. Red cubbies lined the walls on either side of it.

  “That’s my mom’s class,” Tristan said. “She runs a preschool for psionic kids who haven’t learned to control their abilities yet. They’re on winter break now.”

  A stray knit mitten, royal blue with a brown teddy bear design, peeked from one of the cubbies. The bear’s eyes were made from tiny black buttons. I pictured a towheaded, rosy-cheeked little boy, so excited to get home to bake cookies with his grandma that he didn’t notice he’d dropped his mitten.

  I stared at the colorful artwork on the door, then stuffed the mitten into a cubby and rushed away.

  Closely followed by Spiky Hair, we walked to the very end of the hall, which opened into a big room with smaller offices along the perimeter. “This is the Lab,” Tristan said, “where we test potential psionic subjects.”

  The room didn’t look like the science lab I’d expected. Bright and open, it was more like a lounge, with round tables and comfortable chairs scattered about and large glass windows showing the snowy forest beyond. No unpainted cinderblock walls here.

  But I could see a tall, electrified fence just beyond the trees.

  Tristan led me to one of the small offices and knocked on the door frame. “Mr. Halloran?”

  “That’s me.” An older gentleman with a bow tie sat at a desk strewn with piles of computer chips. He peered through a magnifying glass at a tiny green square.

  “I don’t know if you remember me,” Tristan said. “I’m Tristan Connelly. I used to work in the Lab as an intern and now I’m in Investigations.”

  “Oh. Yes.” He cleared his throat. “You’re Dennis’s son. What can I do for you?”

  “We were hoping you could charge my girlfriend’s phone and make it get a signal in the Underground.”

  I glared at him to remind him I was not his girlfriend.

  Mr. Halloran held out his wrinkled hand. I gave him the phone, and he pressed it tightly between his palms.

  “Mr. Halloran is technokinetic. He can manipulate technology,” Tristan explained.

  A minute later Mr. Halloran opened his palms. “You’re good to go. What’s a lovely girl like you doing in the Underground anyway?”

  “Oh, I’m just proving the APR is wrong about something,” I said with an innocent smile, leaving him speechless as I took my phone back. “Thank you so much, Mr. Halloran.”

  Half sighing, half laughing, Tristan thanked him for his help and pulled me from the room.

  Spiky Hair followed us from the Lab, but just before we reached the hallway a short man with a smiling reindeer on his sweater stopped us. “Tristan, hello! How long have you been back? Who’s your friend?”

  “Hi, Mr. Rigby,” Tristan said. “I got back a few days ago. This is my...this is Tessa.” He shot me a glance: Better?

  I was too astounded to reply. He’d introduced me using my real name. How liberating. I could tell everyone my real name now. No more aliases, ever.

  “Mr. Rigby is a sensor,” Tristan said. “He goes around the country looking for psionic people. When he senses one, he calls in a recruiting team. That’s how we find most of our test subjects and employees.”

  The way Mr. Rigby was looking at me with his head cocked made me squirm. “Tessa, I’m having trouble reading you. Tell me, what is your ability?”

  “My ability?”

  “Oh, she’s not psionic,” Tristan said.

  “Hmm.” Mr. Rigby pursed h
is lips. “I thought I sensed something, but it’s gone. May I look deeper?”

  I agreed. He could look as deep as he wanted; he wouldn’t find anything. He placed both hands on my shoulders for a minute, then let go. “You’re right.” He patted my shoulder sympathetically. “Neutral.”

  I supposed every psionic person felt sorry for us neutrals.

  “But I know why I sensed something from you,” he said. “You must have family members who are psionic.”

  “Yes, sir,” I mumbled.

  Mr. Rigby rubbed his hands together. “Have you kids heard the news?”

  Tristan shook his head. “What news?”

  He leaned in conspiratorially. “They finally captured the Kitteridge Killers. They won’t give us any details, as usual, but word is they surrendered right outside to one of the investigators, a couple weeks ago. Your father must be thrilled, Tristan. What a relief.”

  Tristan gave him a curt nod as I froze. Kitteridge. My hometown.

  “We really have to go. Nice seeing you, Mr. Rigby.” Tristan pulled me into the hallway. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Most people up here don’t know who your parents are.”

  Good. I didn’t want anyone to know my parents were the Kitteridge Killers.

  Spiky Hair gave me a knowing smirk.

  * * *

  Spiky Hair had barely locked Tristan and me back in our cell when I slid open my phone. It lit up brighter than ever, signal stronger than ever. But then I hesitated. I’d never used my phone to make calls, just receive them. How had Logan always programmed our phones?

  That’s right: he programmed our speed dials going from oldest to youngest. Our parents were one and two. Jillian was three, I was four, and Logan was five. Just like the target numbers assigned to us by the APR.

  I hit pound-three, and the phone automatically dialed Jillian’s number.

  Answer on the first ring: that was the rule. In one moment, I would hear Jillian’s voice.