Run to You Part Five: Fifth Touch

by Clara Kensie

  That’s when it hit me: “You’re taking me to see my parents, aren’t you?”

  He pressed the Down button, and the doors closed. “I am.”

  “But I told you I’m not ready.” I covered my belly with my hands. I would never be ready. They were liars. Thieves. Murderers. They made me Killers’ Spawn.

  “You don’t have to see your mother,” Dennis said as the elevator brought us down. “But your father needs you. As you know, he’s been unconscious the whole time he’s been here. But lately he’s been stirring and mumbling. More and more every day.”

  “He’s finally waking up. That’s good.” I didn’t want anything to do with my father, but I was relieved he was waking up.

  “He’s still incoherent. He keeps reliving the night Kellan abducted you,” Dennis said. “Today, he became frantic. They can’t calm him down. I was here to check on Aaron, but when I heard what was happening with your father, I suggested that you come see him. He’s not aware of his surroundings, but maybe he’ll sense that you’re safe, and calm down on his own. Are you willing to see him, Tessa?”

  “Of course. Yes,” I said, a knot of concern forming in my stomach. My father must be in agony, reliving what was probably the worst night of his life. I didn’t want him to suffer like that.

  The knot in my stomach tightened when a gun-chomping, muscle-bound man met Dennis and me at the elevator—Mr. Milbourne, the head warden. Winter’s father. Nathan and the rest of the Lab Brats would know all about my Underground visit by the end of the day. I could just picture the gleeful, vengeful gleam in Nathan’s eyes. He would probably be happy my father was in such a tormented state.

  Mr. Milbourne grunted a greeting and led us through the prison. Dim and dank, smelling of mildew and hopelessness. Dozens of steel doors, windowless and locked airtight.

  He led us past the cell where I’d stayed for three weeks, the cell Kellan had thrown me in after he’d kidnapped me. The cell I’d refused to leave until I could leave with my innocent parents.

  The cell where Tristan had proved to me that he truly loved me.

  We continued walking, the hall silent except for our footsteps. We rounded a corner, and an echoed howl came from behind the door at the far end.

  My father’s cell.

  As Mr. Milbourne swiped his badge through the security pad, I held my breath, gaining the courage to see my father for the first time since I’d left the Underground.

  * * *

  If he’d been lying peacefully in his hospital-type bed, it may not have been so bad. It was his hysteria that set me trembling, that made my legs refuse to move and a small whimper escape my throat.

  My father was even thinner than when I’d last seen him. Pale. Cheeks sunken, hair gray. Unshaven and bedraggled. His eyes, however, were open, and alive with panic. They darted, wild, back and forth. He howled, struggling with ferocious effort against the padded cuffs connected to the bed rails.

  “We don’t know where he’s finding the strength,” Dennis said. “They had to restrain him so he wouldn’t hurt himself.”

  Mr. Milbourne stood in the doorway, stiff-legged, massive arms crossed over his massive chest. Coming up behind him was the woman I’d seen talking to Kellan outside of the boardroom a few weeks ago.

  “Tessa, this is Beverly Jacobs, the agency’s executive director,” Dennis said over my dad’s howls. “She’s Aaron’s mother.”

  Her gold badge shone brightly, and her face was smooth and hard as ice as she acknowledged me with a quick nod, then turned to Dennis before I could greet her. “I hope this works, Dennis,” she said.

  “Me too,” he replied grimly, and nudged me further inside my father’s cell.

  Various pieces of medical equipment lined the perimeter of the antiseptic-smelling cell, some of them attached to my father by tubes. The screen to his heart monitor shone brilliantly, casting an eerie white glow over the tiny room, and beeped frenetically, though the sound was barely audible over Dad’s frantic wails.

  “Mr. Carson,” Dennis announced. “Look who came to see you. Your daughter, Tessa.”

  My father whipped his head in our direction. “Oh thank God thank God thank God, you have to do something!” he crowed. “You have to help her! Help her! Help her!”

  I whimpered, bringing my hand to my mouth in shock. He was talking about Kellan, the night he’d kidnapped me and held me as bait, to force my parents to surrender.

  “He’s going to kill her. He’s going to make her pay for what we did. Make her pay. Make her pay. Make her pay!” He threw his head back and wailed.

  Holding back a sob, I said, “Daddy, that man, he didn’t kill me. See? I’m right here. I’m safe.”

  “Tessa Tessa Tessa!” he croaked.

  “That’s right, Dad. It’s me. Tessa.”

  His feverish eyes opened wide and he sat up as much as the restraints would allow, the tendons in his neck straining with the effort. “He’s going to kill her!”

  He didn’t know it was me. His terror was almost tangible. It came off him, forcing its way through the fog, rolling like waves, one after another. “He took my baby girl, my Tessa Blessa. He’s going to kill her.”

  “Daddy, no.” I put my hand on his arm, hoping my touch would comfort him. “That night happened a long time ago. It’s over. I’m safe now.”

  But he continued to writhe. “He took her and he’s going to kill her,” he howled, bucking against the restraints. “Someone has to save her. Please save her. Please save my Tessa Blessa!”

  “It’s not working,” I cried to Dennis over my dad’s howls.

  “No. It’s not,” Dennis sighed. “I thought you’d be able to get through to him, but he’s looking right at you, and he doesn’t recognize you.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I know what to do now.” Slowly, I pulled up Tristan’s hoodie and revealed the five jagged scars on my stomach: the only thing my dad ever truly saw when he looked at me. “Dad. Look.”

  His gaze shifted down, coming to a rest on the scars. “T-Tessa?”

  “Yes.” I exhaled with relief. He knew me now. I let the hoodie drop back down.

  “Tessa,” he whimpered. “He’s going to kill you, Tessa, Tessa, Tessa.”

  I took his hand and gave it a light squeeze. “No, he’s not. John Kellan just needed you to think he was going to kill me so you’d surrender. But it’s over. I survived. I’m safe.”

  Dad stared at me—at my stomach—and began crying.

  “Oh, Daddy. Please don’t. Please don’t cry.” I didn’t know which was worse—seeing my father in the throes of abject terror, or seeing him so weak and broken. “I can stay for awhile. Would you like that?”

  He nodded with a whimper. Then a cry. Then he howled, wailed, screamed, his eyes growing wide with terror. “He’s going to kill her!”

  “Dad, no, it’s me,” I cried. “I’m safe. Look at me. Look!”

  As I let go of his hand to lift my hoodie again, he grabbed my wrist. “Someone has to help her! Save her! Save her! Save my Tessa!” His body stiffened, back arching off the bed, and he squeezed my wrist with unyielding strength.

  It hurt. It hurt but I couldn’t pull away. Dennis tried to uncurl his fingers, but he couldn’t budge them. Mr. Milbourne stepped over and tried to help, but the two men together could not loosen my father’s fingers.

  “Dad,” I cried. “Let go. You’re hurting me.” His grip became tighter still. He was going to crush my bones if he didn’t let go.

  He howled, and the heart-wrenching terror in his eyes cut off and changed into something different. It took me a moment to identify it. I saw it every day in other people’s eyes, in John Kellan’s and Nathan Gallagher’s and Winter Milbourne’s. But I’d never expected to see it in my own father’s eyes.

  Rage. Fury. Hatred.

&n
bsp; And they were black. Dark as a starless night and black as a cavern of coal.

  My father blamed me for putting him here. Blamed me for destroying our family. Blamed me for betraying our family by telling Tristan our secrets. My blood burned through my veins.

  A smile slithered across his lips, and slowly, purposely, he squeezed my wrist tighter. And tighter. And tighter.

  I heard the snap before I felt the pain. I clamped my mouth against a scream—never ever ever scream—and it came out as a strangled shriek.

  Still, he kept his grip on me, squeezing the bones tighter, tighter, impossibly tight, grinding them together. He was crushing them to dust.

  The fog rushed in, numbing me, making me dizzy, making everything far away.

  “Shoot him,” Mrs. Jacobs said from behind me.

  “No,” I tried to shout it, but it came out as a moan. “Please don’t shoot my dad.”

  “It’s just a tranquilizer,” Dennis said. “It’s the only way we can weaken him.”

  Mr. Milbourne pulled a gun from his holster. Pressed the barrel to my father’s neck.

  “Don’t,” I whimpered, my head light and swimming. “Please. He may never wake up from it.”

  I didn’t hear the whistle as the tranquilizer shot from the gun into my father. But I did hear his violent gurgle as his body slowly sank back onto the bed. “Tessa Tessa Tessa,” he whimpered as the sedative took him away. “He’s going to kill her. He’s going to make her pay for what we did. Someone save her. Save her. Save my Tessa. Save my Tesssss...ahhhhh....”

  Silence. Screaming silence.

  My father’s grip on my wrist loosened, and Dennis gently, so gently, uncurled his fingers. “How the hell was he able to do this?” he spat at the warden. “How did he get so strong?”

  Mr. Milbourne shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Adrenaline,” Mrs. Jacobs said. She hadn’t moved from the doorway the entire time. She’d just watched. “Adrenaline, fueled by hysteria.”

  I flinched when Dennis touched my wrist. Groaning, I cradled it against me. I couldn’t move my hand.

  More painful than my wrist, though, was the rage in my father’s eyes. It still coursed through me, burning though my bloodstream, my tainted, tarnished blood.

  “Let’s go to the clinic,” Dennis said. “We need a healer to look at your wrist.”

  “It’s broken,” I said, my voice sounding far away.

  “I don’t see how that’s possible, honey. He was strong, but he couldn’t have been that strong. It’s just a bad bruise.”

  I didn’t have the strength to correct him. I’d heard the snap. I felt the pain.

  Keeping my swollen and twisted wrist tucked into my body, I looked at my father one more time before leaving. He seemed peaceful now, sleeping so deeply like that.

  “He didn’t mean to hurt you, Tessa,” Dennis said as we made our way through the Underground’s hallway. “He didn’t know what he was doing.”

  Dennis was right. He had to be. Despite the focused glee in my father’s eyes, he couldn’t have known what he was doing. He couldn’t hate me. He couldn’t.

  Besides, my father’s eyes were hazel. Not black. Hazel.

  I must have imagined the whole thing.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Oh, yeah. It’s definitely broken,” Amy Van Der Sande said as I sat on a low table in the APR’s clinic. Amy was the healer who had masqueraded as Tristan’s aunt while they were on assignment in Twelve Lakes. I liked her, but her cute pixie haircut and the bright polka dots on her scrubs didn’t do a thing to make this drab clinic any cheerier. The fog was so thick I was shocked that Dennis and Amy couldn’t see it.

  “It’s bad, Dennis.” She hissed, as if it hurt to just look at my wrist. She’d had to cut the sleeve off of Tristan’s hoodie; I was in too much pain to pull my arm through. “If this was a hospital for neutrals, she’d have to have surgery.”

  Dennis held his cell phone to his ear. “Yes, Tristan, Amy says it’s broken.” I could hear Tristan shouting through the phone.

  “Is he coming?” I asked.

  “Of course he is,” Dennis said, sliding the phone shut. “He’s already on his way.”

  “He didn’t have a warning premonition,” I said. “He’s going to blame himself.”

  “I know,” he sighed.

  “So what happened, Tessa?” Amy asked. “Did you crush your wrist in something?”

  “Just fix it, Amy,” Dennis said. “Please.”

  Thank you, I mouthed to him. He knew I wouldn’t want anyone else to know my own father had done this to me. If Amy was truly curious, she could probably read it in the inevitable report. My family’s file was probably the thickest in the APR’s history.

  “I can’t heal a bad break like this one completely, but I can get it started,” Amy said. “Hold still.” She held her open palm a half inch over my wrist, heat emanating from her hand.

  We’d been in a similar position a few months ago, in Twelve Lakes. I’d had no idea she was healing my broken collarbone.

  The swelling in my wrist lessened a bit, and then the pain. “This may take a few minutes,” Amy said. “It’s a really bad break. It’s like your bones were crushed, and then...ground against each other.”

  My skin became very hot. “It’s burning,” I gasped, resisting the urge to move.

  “That’s good. You’re healing.” She slowly waved her palm over the break.

  “I don’t remember it burning when you fixed my collarbone,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “That was just a tiny fracture. It didn’t require much effort. I basically looked at it and it healed.”

  “Hey, can you heal scars?” I asked. Maybe she could heal the scars on my stomach. My permanent reminder of my parents’ crimes may not be so permanent after all.

  “I can only heal injuries,” Amy said. “Scars are the result of injuries.”

  “Oh.” The disfiguring marks on my stomach were there to stay. “How’s Heath?” I asked to distract myself from the pain. Heath was Amy’s husband, and he’d served as Tristan’s safeguard while they were in Twelve Lakes. The quiet, shy man had punched Kellan in the jaw in retaliation for hitting me during the kidnapping, and for that, I would love him forever.

  “He’s good,” Amy said. “Kellan won’t let him safeguard any more investigators, but he doesn’t care. He’s safeguarding one of the board members now.”

  “Tell him I say hi. And thanks.”

  “I will, sweetheart,” she said. “There. I’ve done as much as I can do.” She lifted her hand away, and my skin cooled immediately.

  My wrist still hurt, but it was no longer twisted or swollen. Still, I was surprised when Amy started wrapping it in strips of plaster. “A cast? I thought you healed it.” I moved my wrist up and down, but a jolt of pain shot up my arm. I bit my lips to keep from screaming.

  “And that,” she said, “is why you need a cast. I’m a healer, not a miracle worker. You’ll heal much faster than if you were treated at a neutral hospital, but the bones are still weak, and you could break them again if you’re not protected. Go home and rest. No more school today.”

  Before Dennis and I left, Amy gave me a pill for the pain. Being pulled out of school this morning by an APR employee, then returning with a cast tomorrow, would definitely be fodder for both Lab Brat and neutral gossip. It was my left wrist, too. I wouldn’t be able to paint my mural, and Tristan would have to help me do my homework. And the weather was getting warmer, and though I’d hoped to start jogging soon, I wouldn’t be able to do so until the cast came off.

  And what would Jillian and Logan think, if Tristan or Aaron found them in the next few days? What would I tell them—that our father had broken my wrist?

  We
ll, our mother had given me the five scars down my stomach. I could tell them that news at the same time, right after I told them that our parents had killed dozens of people.

  Outside, Tristan was rushing up the pebbled path just as Dennis and I were walking down it. I gave him a weary wave with my casted arm. The pill Amy had given me was finally taking effect, eliminating the pain but making me woozy. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed, use Tristan’s chest as a pillow, and sleep. Dreamlessly.

  He greeted me with an anxious kiss and a three-foot teddy bear. “Tessa, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, Tristan.” My eyelids were so heavy. “My father broke my wrist, not you.”

  “It is my fault,” he said fiercely. “I didn’t have a premonition. Again. I don’t understand what’s wrong with me.” He took me under his arm. “I’ll take her home, Dad.”

  I waved a wobbly goodbye to Dennis, then leaned on Tristan as he walked me to his car.

  He placed me in the passenger seat and buckled me in. I held the teddy bear on my lap and laid my head on it. So soft. My left arm was tucked safely between myself and the bear. I couldn’t stay awake any longer. “My dad had Nightmare Eyes,” I slurred to Tristan.

  If he replied, either telepathically or aloud, I was asleep before his words reached me.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Deeming me healthy except for my broken wrist, Dennis and Deirdre let me go to school the next day. Ember told everyone that I’d gotten it caught in the elevator doors, but of course the Lab Brats already knew the truth: that my own father, one of the Kitteridge Killers, had broken it.

  Unable to paint my mural, after school I went back to the Connellys’ house. Ember had gone to volunteer at the animal shelter, Deirdre was teaching preschool and Tristan was still in class. I called Aaron to ask if he needed anything, but he said no. He didn’t have any new leads, either.

  So I cleaned. As best I could with one hand, anyway. I moved all the items that were cluttering the bathroom counter back to the cabinet, I cleaned the mirrors, I sprayed and wiped the kitchen counters. I went to the living room to dust the knickknacks and picture frames. Dennis was there, glasses low on his nose as he read through a pile of green binders on his desk: evidence binders from the Investigation unit of the APR. My parents’ names were printed on one of them: Andrew Carson—Gwendolyn Carson—Case #CARS5020. That binder was the thickest in the stack. “What are you doing with that?” I asked.