Ryan considered Matisse’s words. “Are you ready to talk?”
How did Ryan always know exactly what to say? Nora wished she could be as collected and thoughtful.
“Um. Matisse, could we talk upstairs? The guys probably know a lot more than I do. If you don’t mind, that is.” There, that was Ryan-like, wasn’t it?
Skating his palms against his knees, he rocked back and forth a few times before he stood. “Yeah,” he answered. “Sure.”
With one more sidelong peek at Ryan, she started up the stairs. Matisse’s stocking feet shuffled against the floor behind him as he followed her inside her room then waited while she closed the door behind them. Her Ryan-channeling apparently only went as far as her bedroom door. Now they were alone, she didn’t know what to say.
Launching himself into the air, Matisse landed prone on her bed and propped his head on his hand. He patted the comforter. “Ask your questions, cher.”
“When did you start racing? Ryan said there are tracks in Vermont. I didn’t know that.”
Her question held no judgment, only curiosity. The only experience she’d had with speeding cars scared the daylights out of her. She wondered what appealed about it to Matisse.
“Years ago.” He smiled crookedly, flipping onto his back to stare at the ceiling. Perched next to him, Nora watched his face change, soften. “I’m mechanically inclined. Even as a little boy I loved taking things apart, putting them back together, watching the gears. I had some money, rebuilt a car, and raced it. It was fun, but then I got a bike, and it—” His eyes closed, and he let out a deep breath. “It was like nothing I’d ever felt. All the craziness inside me, all of it went away with the wind in my face and the speed...”
“Vermont’s not known for racetracks.”
“There are more than you’d realize, but no, it’s not like the south. We have the weather to contend with here. You get a few months, maybe. If it rains, you’re out of luck.”
“So you race whenever the streets are dry and you get a chance.” She was coming to understand.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“It’s very dangerous.” Would this statement set him off?
“I know.”
This was where things got tricky. If Matisse knew it was dangerous, why did he do it? How could she pose the question and keep him talking? “I was afraid for you,” she settled on. “I don’t want you to stop doing things you enjoy, but this—”
“I need it, Nora. I need it for a lot of reasons. It keeps me centered, pulls all those parts of me that want to fly apart back together. And the money—”
“The money?”
Sharp eyes narrowed. “Yes, the money. We race for money. This last race was for a lot of money.”
Good intentions flew out the window. “You could have been arrested. Or worse, you could have been killed or killed someone else.”
Rolling off the bed to stand, he stared her down, hands flexing at his sides. “It seems we have a lot in common, doesn’t it?”
“Huh?” He’d made a leap she hadn’t.
“How often have we asked you to stop doing the study with Dr. Murray, Nora? But you keep doing it. For the money. You want to be independent. Want to be self-sufficient. Don’t want anyone telling you what to do.”
“It’s different,” she countered.
“How? How is it different? You don’t care how we worry about you.”
“I care!” The two situations were completely different. “You can’t compare them!”
“I can, and I did.” All hints of carefree Matisse were gone. The person standing in front of her was edgy. She’d never seen him so discombobulated. Pacing, he ran his hands through his hair. Other times he shook his hands out at his sides or lifted up onto his toes. It was too much for her. She knee-walked across the bed to him, wrapped her arms around him, held his arms tight to his sides and squeezed. His body hummed beneath hers. She could feel the energy in his flexing muscles. For a moment, he fought against her, but then his body relaxed, and he sunk into her embrace, head resting against her shoulder before he cupped her elbows tightly.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “You’re right. All of you did ask me to quit, and I did stay in the study for the money. But it’s a little bit different, Tisse.”
He was quiet so long she wondered if he heard her. The only sign she had was a slight tensing. He lifted onto his toes again, and she staggered under his weight.
“Sorry.” When he would have stepped back, she hugged him tighter, adjusting her grip so he could hug her back.
“You made a good point. I see what you’re saying. The difference is this study isn’t going to kill me.”
He squeezed her. “I don’t know, Nora. There’s something not right there.”
“It’s all psychological, and I’m strong. There’s nothing they can do to me that is worse than what I’ve already been through.” Tipping her head back, she met his eyes. “But what you’re doing, Matisse... It just takes one wrong move. One person backing out of a driveway without looking. One teenager driving home from their job in the middle of the night. I know it would eat you alive if your choice resulted in someone else being hurt.”
“Can we agree we both made some shitty decisions?” Exhaustion laced his voice, and a strange tremor began in his arms. “I need to get out. I’ll talk to you more; I just need some air.”
Without another word, he left. Nora cocked her head, listening as he spoke to Ryan before the front door closed.
Collapsing onto the bed, she replayed the conversation through her head. His points were good, but so were hers. Nothing about Dr. Murray’s study would result in someone’s death, right? The declaration she made to herself jangled—it didn’t sit right—like she was making the same sort of excuses Matisse did when he downplayed the risk to his life and strangers’ lives. With a groan, she buried her face in her pillow. There was going to be another conversation in their future, and she wasn’t looking forward to it.
6
Matisse
Matisse had enough sense to grab his jacket before he went out and straight to the carriage house. Once inside, he flicked the old light switch and collapsed into the front seat of the wheel-less, engine-less MG he stored there. He pulled at his hair and stretched his arms, but nothing alleviated the sense that he’d fucked up. It wasn’t Nora’s fault. It was his.
With a shove, he extricated himself from the car and walked to the back of the building where his motorcycle sat under a tarp. He lifted it out of the way and squatted next to the wheels to pull dried leaves from under the exhaust guard. He’d driven it back from the Ethan Allen Memorial, expecting at every corner to be pulled over by a city cop. But he’d made it the five miles without incident.
Like the guilty man he was, he’d hidden the bike in the back corner of the carriage house, covering it in case someone came by and peeked in the windows.
They wouldn’t, though. It was part of the deal with all the racers. If someone got caught, they took responsibility for themselves. They didn’t bring down the rest of the group with them. Matisse knew each and every racer, and he knew they’d never rat him out.
But that wasn’t the source of his unease.
It was his conversation with Cai earlier. It still banged around his head—the arguments, the questions. He could hear them all as clearly as when Cai had spoken them.
After Nora’d left him in bed this morning, he’d fallen back to sleep for a few hours. He’d gotten his bike, brought it home, and walked to the hospital, never expecting the conversation that awaited him.
Cai was awake when he got there. His skin returned to its normal golden color, the rash he’d gotten from his strep infection only a few bumps visible at the base of his throat.
“Took you long enough.” Sick Cai was grumpy Cai. Used to being active and working at least six days a week, plus volunteering, this forced inactivity was driving him bonkers.
“I had stuff to do,” Matisse said.
“Must be nice.”
“Are you going to bite my head off the whole time I’m here?” he shot back. “Or do you have something to talk about?”
Cai sighed, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Sorry. Yeah. I do.”
Next to the bed was a stool that spun in circles. Hooking a leg around the bottom, he dragged it to him and twirled back and forth. “What’s it about?”
“Tyler.”
Matisse stopped, grabbed the rail and pulled himself to the bed. “I’m sorry about him.”
“I need your help,” Cai went on, his voice commanding with a tone dangerous for whomever was on the receiving end. Even Matisse, who generally didn’t give a shit what people thought of him, was tempted to do whatever the voice asked of him.
“Ryan’s generally better at the people problems than me,” he said.
“Ryan can’t help me with this.”
Shit. Matisse met Cai’s eyes. “Okay.”
“I’m lying here, and I’ve got nothing but time to think,” Cai began. “And I’m thinking about Tyler, and I’m thinking about Nora and all of us. And then I’m thinking about Tyler and Nora—”
“There was nothing going on between Nora and Beau,” Matisse cut in. “Tyler was completely off-base.”
“I know that.” Cai huffed. “I wasn’t accusing her of anything.”
“Good,” he said. “Because it’d be bullshit.”
“Jesus Christ, Matisse. Can you listen for two seconds?”
“Excuse me, Your Majesty.”
Cai sighed and rubbed his temples. “I think I’m getting better, and then a few minutes with you and suddenly my head is pounding again and I’m about to set off the blood pressure monitor.”
“Stop being so dramatic,” Matisse teased. “Tell me what you need.”
“Tyler and Nora are both part of Dr. Murray’s study.”
“Donc...” Waving his hand for Cai to go on, he tried to figure out what connection his friend had made between Tyler, Nora, and Dr. Murray, besides the obvious.
“So... the girl who threw herself off the roof, Tilly Mason, she was in Dr. Murray’s study.”
“Again—so?”
“And Nora’s brother, who shot five people to death, he was in Dr. Murray’s study.”
“Yes, yes and yes. All true.”
“Matisse. All of them lost it.” He caught Matisse’s surprise and held his gaze. “Think about it. Tyler was fine, gregarious and funny. In the few weeks since we met Nora and his arrest, he withdrew. And then, a kid with no criminal record, no history of mental health issues, suddenly assaults a girl and is arrested. Do you know where he is right now, Tisse?”
He shook his head.
“Baird Five—the psych ward. In this hospital.”
That sucked. “But Cai, Tyler had a rough life. He was homeless for a while, and his family is shit. Who knows how long this has been building?”
Cai shook his head. “I don’t buy it. Yeah, this is all true. But Tyler was stable. What if...” he trailed off, as if gathering his courage to go on. “What if Dr. Murray and whatever he’s doing is what made Tyler go off the deep end? What if he’s the connection between these people who have lost it?”
“How, Cai?” he asked. “You think Dr. Murray told Tyler to assault Nora? That he told Reid to open fire in a high school?”
“No. Not directly. But think about this, Tisse. Think about how Nora is when she comes back from those interviews and testing. She’s withdrawn, quiet. It can be minutes or it can be hours before she’s back to her normal self. And what the hell was up with that crazy initiation they did, driving through the streets, making her think they were going to run over a bunch of college kids? Do you know how hard it is to make Seok lose his cool? He laid into those guys. That’s what I’m talking about.”
What Cai described was insidious, and Matisse couldn’t help the shiver of unease he felt. “That’s messed up.”
“It is.”
“But it’s all conjecture. You have no proof.”
“I don’t.” Cai narrowed his eyes. “But you could get me proof.”
Matisse’s stomach dropped. “You want me to hack into Dr. Murray’s studies.”
“I know what I’m asking. I know the position I’m putting you in, and I know how you resented Seok when he put you in a similar position, but I can’t think of any other way to know for sure.”
He wasn’t able to sit another minute. Kicking the stool out of his way, Matisse paced around the room before he stopped next to the window. He stared out at the sunny sky and the glimmering lake so at odds with the darkness Cai hinted at. “What exactly do you want?”
Behind him Cai let out a huge breath. “Let me explain. Remember when Nora first met the doctors?” He leaned back against the pillow, as if his arguments exhausted him.
“How could I forget?” he muttered. While Nora’s fear continued to upset him, Seok’s freak out ending in a cold-cock to the doctor’s face was his favorite bedtime story.
“It’s been bothering me for more than the obvious reasons.”
“More than reinjuring a woman who’d just been shot?”
“Yes,” his friend answered. “The doctor who held onto her hand. The way they watched for reactions. The way they said it was necessary. I kept thinking about college. When I was a psych major, there was a long list of potential hazards associated with any studies I took part in. And I did. They were required for most of us. None of that paperwork looked anything like the contract Nora brought home.”
Ryan had gone over her contract, and all of them had read through the potential hazards and side effects it could cause. It certainly had a few: trauma, stress, anxiety. What did Cai think was missing?
“I thought it was pretty in-depth.”
“Yeah?” Cai asked. A cough had choked him before he could continue and Matisse went to the bedside table and poured him a glass of water. Cai sipped it quickly and wiped the tears from his eyes. “Thanks.”
“So what was wrong with the contract?” Matisse asked when it looked like his friend could breathe again.
“Do you remember anything about physical trauma? Do you think a car ride like that was typical? Tyler said they did the same to him and nothing was listed in the potentially hazardous side-effects section? For God’s sake, it listed sleeplessness! Sleeplessness, but not whiplash? The whole thing—I fucking hate it.”
“Fucking hate,” Matisse repeated.
“Don’t be a smartass, Tisse. I’m serious.”
“Sorry. No. You’re right. It’s all shady. So what am I doing? Getting into Murray’s records? Seems easy enough.”
“Murray’s, and Nora’s brother’s, and the girl, and Tyler,” Cai said.
“Fine,” he answered.
“And Nora’s.”
No. Not Nora’s. “We agreed, Cai. She tells us what she wants us to know. We ask, she tells. If she’s ready.”
“This isn’t about what Nora wants to tell us, Matisse. I want to know what she doesn’t know. Why do they want Nora? What is their plan? Why are they doing the things they are? What kind of study, funded by a university in Vermont, gets this sort of funding? Think about what they were offering her.”
“They made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”
“A deal with the devil.” Cai had stared at his blanket before peering at Matisse. “I know what we agreed. I know what I’m asking you to do.”
“I’ll do it,” he’d said. “But we share it with Nora. I’m not leaving this for her to find on your laptop. She’s not going to feel betrayed by me. Especially if it turns out to be nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” With his hands fisting, face tense, Cai disagreed. “It’s definitely something.”
“So do we tell her before or after?” Matisse asked, dread unfurling in his stomach. No matter how they approached the situation, Nora would be upset and it would be on him. He would be the one giving her the bad news.
“I don’t know,”
Cai replied, gold eyes hooded. “I’ve gone back and forth. Do we tell her we are doing this for her own good?”
“I hate it when people say shit like that to me,” Matisse answered quickly.
“I know. I do, too,” he whispered. “I can’t figure it out on my own. We need everyone.”
“So we meet, make a decision and inform Nora of our decision. That’s going to go over well.”
“Well, fuck, Tisse. I don’t know.”
“Two fucks, Cai.”
Mouth opening to yell, Cai suddenly snapped it shut and closed his eyes to take a deep breath. “I can’t figure it out on my own,” he repeated. “I need your help. I need all of your help.”
“Let Nora help, too,” Matisse offered. Watching Cai’s face shutter, he quickly spit out, “Or don’t. What the hell do I know?” He kicked the stool out of the way and left, ignoring Cai and the coughing fit he broke into. Stabbing his finger onto the elevator button, he then found himself sandwiched in the conveyance, shoulder-to-shoulder with humanity.
It took every strategy Matisse knew to keep his shit together enough to get outside. Once there, he walked around campus, eventually ending up outside Converse Hall. He stared up at the top floor and tried to figure out which window Tilly Mason had thrown herself from. Even though he hadn’t seen her fall, he’d seen the result of the girl’s decision. He and Ryan had hit the fifth floor in time to see Dr. Murray being dragged away from the window by two burly guys. Perhaps that’s why he was sympathetic to the man.
Sympathetic wasn’t the right word. Emotion words, he always sucked labeling an emotion and making sense of it. But he’d seen how upset the doctor was. Dr. Murray tried to stop Tilly. He had tried to catch her before she let herself drop from great heights and tumbled to earth.
And the man had been beside himself. Could he really be evil? Because what Cai was suggesting was evil. It was setting people up to fail or go crazy.
It was like that old Alfred Hitchcock movie—Gaslight?—where people merely telling her she was crazy drove a perfectly sane woman insane?
Finding Truth (The Searchers Book 3) Page 4