The Lost Causes

by Jessica Koosed Etting

  Sabrina felt her whole body go numb, her limbs tingling as if tiny pins were pricking her skin. Patricia and Lily had killed the other group of Lost Causes. Or at least had tried to. How long would it be before Patricia tried to kill them?

  * * *

  Nash was starting to put the pieces together and did not like the shape this mental puzzle was taking. “What happened to the first group you gave the serum to?”

  Patricia looked away, retreating into her own thoughts for a moment. Her voice was thick when she spoke again. “They died in a car accident. It was awful and tragic, but it had nothing to do with the serum. Lily and I were devastated. They’d made so much headway on Sam’s case and then we were back at square one.”

  Nash finally realized Patricia wasn’t just intense about her job. She was delusional. “That’s why you were devastated? Because you were back at square one? You experimented on a bunch of kids for your own benefit. You didn’t even use them for an FBI case.”

  “Trust me, it did a lot for those kids,” she replied indignantly. “It gave them a purpose, the same way it did with this group. And anyway, we paid the price, too. Lily blamed herself, left the FBI and quickly spiraled downward after that. New supervisors came in and I was ordered to shut down the serum project and destroy whatever was left of it.”

  “Which you didn’t even do.” This was unbelievable.

  “I knew I’d need it again one day. And I was right.” Patricia gave him an oddly triumphant look. “The only way to solve Lily’s murder was to use the serum again.”

  Nash was about to say that if she’d just destroyed the serum, she wouldn’t have a murder case to solve right now, when his laptop dinged with a new email.

  It was the list of those extra faculty members from Director Plouffe. The ones they needed to vet and possibly add to the suspect pool.

  “What’s that?” Patricia said, walking toward him and looking at the screen.

  Nash ignored her and opened the email. Now that he knew what Patricia had done, the urgency to find the killer was that much greater, and he had three more suspects to vet.

  He clicked on the attachment and looked at the three names and photos of the possible suspects. He scrolled down slowly. Right off the bat, two were female. They could be eliminated. But the last one, a broad-shouldered man who was the right age and build, could be added to the list.

  Billy Brandt. Defensive coordinator of the Cedar Springs High football team.

  Patricia looked at him questioningly. “Who is that?”

  “A football coach we never originally put on our list. He received the green Windbreaker, too.”

  Patricia looked at the photo more closely, her eyes blinking quickly. “Zoom in on that.”

  There was something in her voice that made Nash oblige. Her eyes widened as the rest of her face sagged, aging her twenty years in five seconds.

  “It can’t be …” she murmured so quietly that Nash barely caught it.

  “Can’t be what?” he asked.

  “That looks like … no.”

  “Looks like who? Who is it?”

  Patricia walked back to the chair and sank down as if her legs had suddenly given out on her. “Kevin Beswick.”

  * * *

  Patricia and Lily were murderers. Sabrina repeated it over and over in her head, her fear escalating each time. She didn’t know who made her more afraid now. Brandt or Patricia.

  The other Lost Causes were silent, trying to wrap their heads around the story, too. Gabby looked as if she might pass out.

  “How did you and Devon — I mean Christopher — survive that car accident?” she asked. The more she could keep him talking about his past as a Lost Cause, to keep reminding him of that unique shared experience, the better chance they had at getting out alive. Or was that just wishful thinking? Was he going to kill them no matter what?

  Brandt’s eyes darkened at the memory. “Luck, I guess. If you can call it that.” He laughed bitterly. “It all happened so fast. It was an old car with one of those crank windows. I was able to open the window and swim out before the waterline hit it and messed up the pressure. Chris and Catherine were next to me and got out, too. Catherine …” He swallowed, his face bleak. “She ended up drowning. I tried to help her to the shore, but I lost her in the current at one point. I swam back down for her, but it was too late. Chris said he saw Amy and Danielle in the front seat before he got out. They were both already dead from the impact.”

  Sabrina pictured Amy, Catherine and Danielle in that photo-booth strip, bonded like sisters through their shared experience, laughing and mugging for the camera. Sabrina blinked back tears. This whole time, Amy had been trying to save Sabrina from the same fate as her.

  “Chris and I had no clue what to do next. I mean, the FBI had tried to kill us. But it’s not like we could tell anybody. No one would believe the word of two punks over the FBI. And we were scared the FBI would just take us into custody and finish the job they started.”

  “So you guys decided to go on the run,” Andrew said, his voice quavering.

  “Yeah, once we realized everyone thought we died in the accident. They’d found enough body parts so they assumed Chris’s and my remains had gone down river. We had nothing to stay home for anyway. Chris was in a group foster home. He was lucky if he ate once a day. And I’m sure my stepdad was happy as hell that I never came home.”

  “How did you guys survive without any money or anything?” Justin asked.

  “They stole people’s wallets,” Gabby responded quietly. “I saw them do it.”

  Brandt gave her a withering look. “I assume you all understand we had to do what we had to do.”

  “Like stealing people’s identities,” Z said, unable to control the hostile edge in her voice.

  Anger flashed in Brandt’s eyes. Sabrina flinched. “What would you have done to survive?” he asked.

  “I probably would’ve tried to be more resourceful than murdering people for their names,” Z muttered.

  Brandt punched the coffee table in front of Z so hard that a glass fell off it and shattered. Z’s eyes widened in fear. “How could you of all people judge me? That was the life Lily and Patricia forced on us. As far as I’m concerned, that blood is on the FBI’s hands. That’s why we came here. We needed to get what was owed to us.”

  “The serum?” Sabrina asked, clasping her hands to stop them from shaking.

  “No,” Brandt answered, his eyes glowing. “Justice. Chris and I were running out of money again in Alaska. We thought if we could find Patricia or Lily, we could blackmail them for cash to keep us quiet. It was the least they owed us. But we had no clue how to find them. When you work for the FBI, your name doesn’t exactly come up in search engines.”

  “So how did you end up finding Lily?” Andrew asked. “That must have been close to impossible.” He was stroking Brandt’s ego, Sabrina realized. Smart.

  “It was,” Brandt replied, with a note of arrogance. “But I have a good memory. When Sam disappeared, the cops searched a cabin in Cedar Springs that Lily’s dad owned. It was a long shot that we’d find Lily there, and we didn’t even know exactly where the cabin was. But we needed a new place to live and Cedar Springs worked as well as any other place, so we figured we’d give it a try. We were here a few months and were pretty much convinced we wouldn’t find Lily when, miracle of miracles, I open the paper one day and she’s staring back at me.”

  Z’s eyes flashed in comprehension. “That article. The news report that Lily was refusing to sell my father her property for his development.”

  “That’s right. Chris and I decided to pay Lily a visit. Like I said, we were going to blackmail her. Get what was ours. When we showed up, though, she was so surprised to see us, she accidentally told us she had the serum. So we changed course. We wanted the serum.”

  “Why?” Gab
by asked without making eye contact with Brandt.

  “At first it was to prove our point. The evidence we had always needed. But then we realized there could be a market for this kind of serum. With prices that meant we’d never have to work again.”

  Sabrina remembered Nash saying as much. Were they too late? Had Brandt already sold it?

  “But why did you kill Devon — Chris?” Justin asked.

  “It was me or him. Chris was always impulsive and violent, and the last thing I wanted was for him to get us on the cops’ radar right before we sold the serum. We were so close to getting the money and ending this nightmare. He knew he had a problem, too. Little did I know, he stole a bunch of meds from Lily and started taking them, thinking it would mellow him out and keep him under control. Instead he got a hundred times crazier and so paranoid he stopped sleeping. He was convinced I was going to double-cross him.”

  “Which you did.” Sabrina couldn’t help cutting in. Could Brandt admit to any accountability?

  Brandt glared at her and suddenly, inexplicably, a red-hot flame shot at her feet, creating a small fire. Sabrina screamed, jumping out of the way, as Justin quickly ran over to stomp it out.

  “What the hell just happened?” Justin demanded, looking at Brandt with the rest of the Lost Causes, in utter shock.

  Brandt’s lips turned into a rueful smile. “Pyrokinesis. The little gift Patricia gave me. Sometimes I can control it better than others.” His voice chilled Sabrina despite the heat still radiating around her.

  “The burn marks …” Andrew realized. “That’s what you did to Lily. And Chris.”

  Then it clicked for Sabrina. “It was you in the van. I saw a flame in there. I knew I did. You were following all of us.”

  “I realized you guys were involved when I went to clean out Chris’s apartment and I saw some FBI lackey going in and out of his place.” Nash. “I knew they’d be trying to solve Lily’s murder, but I didn’t think they’d ever pin it on us. I had no clue how they were even on Chris’s tail. We weren’t amateurs. We’d covered our tracks perfectly. Then the next night, while I was still waiting, I saw the five of you show up to ‘Devon Warner’s’ apartment. And I understood it was happening all over again. They’d given another five kids the serum.”

  “I knew someone was watching us that night,” Gabby said softly. “I could feel it.”

  “You’d think that knowing we had taken the serum would have made you sympathetic instead of trying to run me off the road,” Sabrina shot back at him.

  “You decided to follow me!” Before she even realized it was happening, another flame erupted, this one on her arm. She fell, clutching the searing burn. Gabby rushed to her side.

  An errant ash landed on the floor, igniting a small fire along the edge of the curtain hem. Justin turned to stomp it out when Brandt stopped him.

  “Don’t move, Justin.” Justin met his eyes, the two of them testing each other, before Justin ultimately sat back down, the flame on the curtain growing even higher, slowly beginning to consume the thin fabric.

  “You had what you wanted. Why didn’t you just leave with the serum?” Z asked Brandt.

  “How could I? I was in the middle of selling it.”

  “Couldn’t you do that from anywhere?”

  Before he could answer, though, Nash and Patricia burst through the front door, the cold air fanning the flames on the curtain.

  Sabrina locked eyes with Nash as he entered. Obviously he’d had nothing to do with the original Lost Causes. Still, she wondered how much of this he had actually known about before he’d helped recruit them.

  “Patricia,” Brandt said, inching closer to her. “It’s been a while. About ten years, right?”

  Patricia held her ground, her gun leveled at him. Beside her, Nash had his gun raised as well. “We thought you were dead, Kevin. We can make this right.”

  “Really?” Brandt asked. “Because it looks like you’re trying to kill me. Again.”

  It was just a small flash — Nash’s eyes darting from Brandt to Patricia for a brief second, his jaw flexing — but it made Sabrina wonder if this part was news to him.

  “We didn’t do anything,” Patricia insisted. “Lily and I never meant for that to happen that night.”

  “Don’t lie,” Brandt beseeched her.

  “I promise. We just wanted to talk. You guys ran out so quickly. There was so much at stake. We needed to make you understand. We never intended for that car to go over the bridge.”

  Sabrina locked eyes with Nash. The way he looked at her told her everything. Nash had no idea Patricia had killed, or tried to kill, the other group of Lost Causes.

  “Like hell you didn’t send that car over. You were on our asses. And in that rain? Like you didn’t know something was going to happen. You forced us right off the bridge —”

  “We were horrified when the car went over. We were the ones who called the cops,” Patricia protested.

  “Anonymously. Once you thought we were all dead and your secret was safe. How many times did you ram the car? Was it three or was it four?”

  He turned to face Justin, and out of the corner of her eye, Sabrina saw Patricia begin to shift the gun in her hand.

  “Put it down!” Brandt demanded, swiveling back around. Before Patricia could, a flame burst in her hand, forcing her to drop the weapon as she screamed in pain.

  “You too,” Brandt said to Nash. “Now.” Brandt twisted toward Sabrina as if he was about to unleash another flame and Nash dropped the weapon instantly.

  Brandt circled closer to Patricia, who clutched her blistered hand. “Did that hurt? That little special ability you bestowed upon me? My gift,” he spat out mockingly. “It felt so good to kill Lily, you know. You ruined our lives, you two.”

  Patricia’s eyes seared into his. “Your lives were ruined before you met us. What great things were you doing? I gave you a chance. You ruined that chance, too, though.”

  “You gave me this!” Brandt bellowed, releasing another flame at her, pinning her between the couch and the wall. In quick succession, three more flames burst forth, the whole room filling with smoke.

  It was in that moment Sabrina finally understood that Brandt didn’t care if any of them got out alive. He was focused only on getting revenge on Patricia.

  “Run!” Nash yelled to the Lost Causes. As they scrambled up, he used the fleeting instant of diversion to dive for his gun on the floor.

  But Brandt was expecting it, igniting Nash’s weapon into a bouquet of flames before he could grab it. “Go!” Nash called from the floor, his eyes meeting Sabrina’s for the briefest of seconds before he leaped up and charged toward Brandt.

  Sabrina turned toward the front door, but the fire along the curtain had erupted into a towering blaze, blocking almost the entire threshold, the heat already assailing them from across the room.

  “This way!” Andrew hissed, smoke strangling his vocal cords as he charged to the kitchen door. The kitchen table burst into flames, seemingly out of nowhere. Fire crackled through the wooden legs as if they were logs in a fireplace. The exit was blocked. Sabrina turned abruptly, looking for another way out, when she saw the hallway leading toward bedrooms on the other side of the living room. If they could just reach it, she was sure there was a window they could pry open.

  But first they needed to be able to pass Brandt and the gauntlet of fire in the living room. Luckily, his back was to them, so Sabrina grabbed Z’s hand, pulling her as she charged forward, the rest of the Lost Causes following as the room blurred around her.

  “Kevin, put it down!” Patricia yelled. Sabrina turned to see that Brandt had managed to grab Patricia’s gun, training it directly at her and Nash.

  Nash caught Sabrina’s eye. Keep moving, he mouthed to her.

  “Kevin, put the gun down. I’m sorry,” Patricia begged, a sob escapin
g. “We can work this out. I swear.”

  Sabrina pushed forward, gray smoke surrounding her like a thick fog, making it next to impossible to see the hallway just feet ahead of her.

  Then the sound of a gunshot blasted through the room.

  She dared to look behind her and could make out Patricia on the floor, blood seeping from her temple. Brandt, standing directly over her, discharged another bullet for good measure. Where is Nash?

  Brandt was looking for him then, too, and began to shoot almost blindly into the smoky room.

  Gabby screamed, “Justin!” Then she clutched her hand and Sabrina could see one of the bullets had grazed her.

  Justin turned and saw her wound, too. Before Sabrina even understood what was happening, the deer head had ripped off the wall and was hurtling through the gauzy air straight at Brandt. The sharp point of an antler struck him, impaling his throat.

  Brandt staggered backward, dropping the gun to clutch at his neck before he fell to the floor.

  “We have to get out!” Z cried.

  But Justin was frozen, watching Brandt suck in his last breath, until Z started pushing him forward.

  “Stay low!” Sabrina heard Nash bellow through the raging flames.

  “Smoke rises,” Andrew choked out. He dropped to his knees and began crawling around the couch, the rest of the Lost Causes following him. They crept along the edge of the room, the fire from the kitchen now blazing into the living room behind them, almost at their heels.

  “Hurry!” rasped Sabrina, who was at the tail end of the group. Where is Nash?

  As they reached the doorway to the hall, the smoke thinned for a second and Sabrina caught sight of him, pinned down by a heavy wooden armoire that had fallen on his right leg. The edges of the armoire were burning while Nash attempted to push it off himself with one hand. The whole thing would be ablaze in less than a minute.

  “Nash!” Sabrina yelled.

  “Go ahead!” he implored her.

  But Sabrina couldn’t leave him there.