Burning Bridges (Shattered Highways Book 2)

by Tara N Hathcock

  So what did they know? They knew who the patients were, or they had made some educated guesses, anyway. Dave still had the patient files he’d developed while working for the company and he’d narrowed those down to people who were still alive. Of those, four had gone missing and the one that had been found was currently doing her best to make life difficult for him.

  Quincy spun back to the desk and pulled the files up on the computer in front of her. Dave had given her access to everything he had and she had already memorized everything they knew about the patients who had disappeared. Maybe she was looking at it wrong. Maybe there was something in their personal lives they could use. She just needed a place to start.

  Amy Madison’s file came up first and Quincy flipped through the documentation. How could a grown woman be snatched from a busy parking lot without anyone seeing anything? It just didn’t make sense. Maybe there was more there that the police hadn’t disclosed. Something that didn’t make the news.

  On the last page of the file was contact information for Amy and her husband. Quincy slipped her hand into her pocket and fished out one of the cheap, pay-by-minute burner phones she’d bought at the strip mall on the first solo outing she’d managed. It was the most basic phone available - no GPS, no internet capabilities. Just a phone. It would be difficult to trace and even if someone had a tap on the husband’s phone, it would be perfectly logical for him to get calls now and again from law enforcement or media looking for updates on the story.

  She knew what Logan would say. Too risky. Need to be smart.

  She was still mad at Logan, so she didn’t care what he would say. Since the clinic was empty, Dave had all of his medical students in one of the back exam rooms, giving a demonstration on how to treat patients like, well, people - a skill they all seemed to be lacking. Logan was down in the bat cave sleeping, having stayed on watch all night as was his pattern. She was as alone as she was going to get. Quincy jumped out of her chair and walked to the door, flipping the sign to “Closed” just in case, and then dialed the husband’s number. Some risks were worth taking.

  Chapter 19

  “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.” Helen Keller

  What will it take, she wonders, to win? Whatever it is will cost her something.

  The question she must answer is whether it’s a cost she’s willing to pay.

  ***

  Dr. Cans

  Group therapy was going about as well as Dr. Cans could expect. She was sitting at the head of a circle surrounded by her four patients and if the point of this exercise was to get them to connect with their emotions, then she was getting what she asked for. She could feel a headache coming on and one hand discreetly rubbed a problem spot at her temple as she looked surreptitiously around the circle, making mental notes.

  Andre, as large and imposing as ever, was sitting directly to her right, slouched in his seat with arms crossed, staring stonily across the circle. His silence, however, was offset by the always-entertaining Amy, who was in full anger mode yet again, choosing to make her feelings over being kidnapped and taken away from her small son very clear.

  Claire was to Amy’s right. The resident retiree, Claire served as the de facto grandmother of the group. As usual, she was attempting to calm Amy down, tugging gently on her arm, urging her to sit. Amy was not interested in sitting, but Claire was of the opinion that raw emotion, vocal or otherwise, was not the way to handle their current incarceration. Dr. Cans was particularly interested in Claire. She suspected there was more going on in that head than patience and subdued resignation. Either that or Claire just knew how to hide her emotions well.

  Unlike their first group session though, Andre and Amy’s rage was not directed at Dr. Cans. No, group therapy was a blessed reprieve from individual therapy, where they had nowhere else to direct their fear and anger. In group, they had a direct line to Miguel, their only voluntary member, and they took it.

  Dr. Cans shifted her gaze to the man in question. Miguel was a small man, with light hair and dark eyes. Though the others considered Miguel to be voluntary, he had been apprehended by force and brought to the company just like the others. But unlike the others, once here, he opted to comply. His condition had become such that he had difficulty dealing with even the most minute of everyday life. He was scared enough that giving up his freedom seemed like a better course of action than going home and dealing with what was going on by himself. Unfortunately, his voluntary status, no matter how necessary for him, made him a target for the others. He was a turncoat, a Benedict Arnold. Someone who couldn’t be trusted. Therefore, he was the enemy.

  While the others continued to fuss, Dr. Cans focused on Miguel. He was an interesting study. He had made himself a target by agreeing to stay at the facility willingly, but he was also the only one who had openly acknowledged his ability, and he walked around every day with the physical reminder wrapped around his eyes. Miguel had been brought in blindfolded and, to the surprise of his intake handlers, had requested to keep it on when he wasn’t in testing. He’d admitted to Dr. Cans privately in their first individual session that the blindfold was a relief, one he wished he’d tried earlier. He could see through the blindfold of course, to some extent. But it acted as a filter, dimming his visible spectrum of light and allowing him to see a little more normally. However, his decision to wear it was a physical reminder to the others that Miguel was a collaborator, no matter how much it helped him.

  It was too bad the others wouldn’t admit to their own conditions. Though ostracized from the group and the target of their vitriol, Miguel had found a measure of peace here. He hadn’t realized yet that the company wasn’t just helping him out of the goodness of its heart, though she had tried to bring him around to the reality that most likely, one day the company would attempt to utilize his gift for monetary gains. Still though, a bit of peace.

  The others could have the same. Even if they didn’t want to cooperate with the company, they could still use the resources it could provide to understand and learn how to deal with their own abilities instead of stomping their feet and denying there was anything special about them at all. What a pity.

  As the session continued to rage around her, Andre silent and deadly, Amy loud and bitter, Claire the voice of reason, Dr. Cans zoned out. This obviously wasn’t working. Individual therapy, she could understand. They were one-on-one with the doctor hired to pick them apart and figure out how they worked. She could understand why they wouldn’t trust her or open up about their conditions. But if she wasn’t going to get information out of them, then she needed to get it from another source.

  When Dr. Cans had been brought into the company, she had been given copies of redacted files on each patient. The problem with redacted files, though, is that they were missing all of the useful information. How was she supposed to understand her patients, get into their heads and find out how they thought, if they wouldn’t tell her. Oh, she knew Amy was from Poughkeepsie and had a five - no, strike that, six-year-old son. She knew that Andre was a construction foreman and had played college football in a previous life. But these light biographical details were all her patients or their files were willing to tell her. If that was all her patients or the company was going to give her, she was going to have to find the good stuff for herself.

  Dr. Cans knew the company kept the full, unredacted files in a secure room on the basement level. Getting down there was no problem. She had been carefully making inroads with as many departments as she could in the short amount of time that she’d been here. Everybody knew records clerks liked to be fed. The cost of a couple boxes of donuts and a pizza or two were negligible when compared with the favor she would need to ask. The biggest question was, what would the company do when they found out? She supposed she could ask permission, but it would be denied. Especially if she asked Nathan Anderson. It was perfectly obvious the man had been fully prepared to take an active role in her failure, even before she had been gifted the ch
ore of compiling the patient profile by the CEO himself. Whether it was jealousy or insecurity, Dr. Cans didn’t know. Either way, it made him dangerous.

  The other option was to just do it - go into the file room, find what she needed, and get out. When the company found out, she could apologize. Explain that she was just doing her job. It would either be seen as overstepping her bounds, especially by Nathan Anderson, or demonstrating initiative above and beyond the call of duty. She didn’t particularly care about Nathan Anderson, outside of the fact that he was a dangerous enemy to have and she wasn’t quite ready to invoke that level of trouble just yet. She did care, however, about what the CEO, Mr. Smith, thought. His opinion mattered. It was his good opinion that allowed her to assume control of the profiling project. That was important. It was the first step in gaining his trust and she didn’t want to do anything to lose it.

  So the question became, was going into the file room without permission, which would be denied if she asked, worth the risk?

  The room had become quiet and Dr. Cans glanced up. Andre was still exactly where he had been, arms crossed, glaring at anyone who cared to make eye contact. Claire had coaxed Amy back into her chair, but her arms were crossed as well and she was glaring at Miguel as though he were the entire reason she was here.

  Claire was looking at Dr. Cans with a grandmotherly sense of disappointment, which Dr. Cans found somehow comforting. She didn’t know her own grandmother, of course, but she had a feeling she would look at her in the same disapproving fashion. Grandmothers weren’t supposed to approve of your choices, were they?

  Miguel was still sitting in his chair, hands folded in his lap, fingers twitching nervously. His head was down, blindfold tucked securely about his eyes, like he had been every time she’d seen him.

  No, Dr. Cans decided, this was getting her nowhere. Was a trip to the file room worth breaking her rapport with Mr. Smith? Yes, it was.

  Chapter 20

  Quincy

  The voice that answered on the first ring was smooth and deep. So few people answered calls from unknown numbers anymore but when your wife had gone missing, Quincy supposed you probably answered any number at all, hoping against hope.

  “Mr. Madison?” Quincy asked.

  “Yes,” the voice said. “Could I ask who’s calling please?”

  She took a breath and let it out, sliding easily into a new identity. This, she was good at.

  “My name is Susanne Bushnell, with KDVR out of Denver. I’m sorry to bother you but I was hoping to speak with you for a moment about your wife’s case.”

  There was a lengthy pause on the other end of the line and Quincy wondered if Mr. Madison had had enough of media vultures picking at the bones of his grief.

  But then, “Hold on a sec.”

  There was the sound of muffling and a quick “Be right back,” before a door opening and closing. And then silence.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “How can I help you Ms. Bushnell?”

  “I’ve been reviewing missing persons cases that made regional or national news and are still unsolved, and I came across your wife’s case. I was hoping I might be able to dig in, maybe shake something loose.”

  No hesitation this time. “What would you like to know?”

  Quincy hated to jump right into the day Amy had disappeared. That was how the cops did it and it’d turned up nil. Maybe she’d try a different tact.

  “Can you tell me about Amy?” she asked. “Anything you’d like me to know.”

  “Amy was an amazing mother,” he said, and Quincy could hear the smile in his voice. “That’s how I know she didn’t just walk away. That’s the theory the cops keep pushing me to buy, you know. That she was overwhelmed, or had a boyfriend on the side, or had some kind of mental break.”

  He paused, as though waiting for her to argue the point. She was a reporter, after all. Wasn’t that the way the story usually ended from her perspective? After what he had been through, he was expecting her to buy the party line.

  “There’s just no way she would abandon Jack that way.” He sighed. “She must be so worried about him.”

  Most people would lose hope that their loved one was still alive after a year missing but clearly Randall Madison wasn’t one of those.

  “I don’t know where she got the energy.” He laughed, and Quincy knew he’d slipped into the past. “Even when Jack was a baby. She was always the last one down, first one up. She insisted on being the one to get up with him through the night and sometimes, I don’t think she even came back to bed.”

  Quincy smiled. “She sounds like a wonderful mother.”

  “Oh, she is.”

  “I’m sure Jack misses her terribly.” What else was there to say? A little boy would miss his mother, but Jack was so young. If Amy didn’t come home soon, he would start to forget her a little at a time.

  She let the silence linger, giving Randall time to compose himself.

  “The day she went missing,” he said at last, clearing his throat, “was the worst day of my life.”

  Quincy had read the background of the case. Mother disappears during son’s soccer practice, father automatically the prime suspect.

  “I worked a lot, you know?” he said guiltily. “Especially when Jack was a baby. I was just so scared,” he said. “Scared that I wouldn’t be a good father, that my giant hands would hurt him somehow, and that I would let Amy down. It was easier to stay at work. At least I knew I was good at that. But then Amy had the accident and I was more scared of losing my family than disappointing them. My work habits got better as she recovered, but I still wasn’t around as much as I should have been.”

  Quincy took the confession for what it was - the regrets of a grieving man. If only he’d worked less, or done more, or was a better father. None of those things would have saved his wife. She wished she could tell him that.

  “Can I ask a strange question?”

  “Ms. Bushnell, I will answer any question you have if it helps get my wife back.”

  Still, Quincy hesitated. It wasn’t really pertinent to finding Amy. She just needed to hear it.

  “The accident that you mentioned - it was a head injury?”

  “A terrible one,” Randall said. “It should have killed her, or so the doctors tell me. I came home late from work one night. I could hear Jack crying even before I opened the door. I thought he was just fussing,” he said, and Quincy could hear the shame in his voice as he whispered, “For a split second, I remember wishing I was still at the office.”

  “But he wasn’t just fussing?” Quincy asked.

  “No. When I opened the door, Amy was on the floor, blood pooled under her head. She’d fallen off a ladder trying to change a light bulb. A light bulb she’d asked me to change a week ago.”

  There was a pause and it sounded like he’d lowered himself to the ground. Quincy could picture him there, closed in a dark garage or bedroom, back against the wall, head tipped back. Eyes closed.

  “There was bleeding deep inside her brain. I don’t remember now what the doctor called it, but the CT scan showed it was too deep to fix surgically without causing even more damage. I could tell the doctors didn’t think she’d wake up. When she did, they warned me there’d be serious damage. But she was fine. She was fine.” Randall still sounded like he couldn’t believe how lucky they’d gotten.

  “I brought her home a couple of weeks after she woke up and it was like nothing had ever happened. In fact, she seemed even more energetic after the accident than before. She never stopped, not even to sleep. I chalked it up to shedding the baby blues and moved on. I was just so thankful to have my wife back,” he said quietly.

  So, Amy Madison falls off a ladder, hits her head, and walks away without the need to sleep. Sounded like RNB to Quincy.

  “Do you think this has something to do with that old head injury?” Randall asked. “That happened years ago, back when Jack was a baby. Could she have had some sort of relapse?”

  �
��A relapse?” Quincy repeated. “What do you mean, a relapse?”

  “Well,” he hedged, “it’s something the police jumped on. I should never have mentioned it because it almost seemed like they stopped looking after that. It made sense with their narrative, I guess,” he said bitterly.

  Quincy had a feeling she knew what he meant. “Did Amy have some trouble after the head injury? Maybe problems she didn’t have before, like anxiety or depression?” she guessed.

  “I’m telling you, she didn’t abandon her family!” Randall Madison was vehement. “Just because she was a little down sometimes -”

  “Mr. Madison,” Quincy interrupted him, “Mr. Madison, it’s okay. I promise, I don’t think that!”

  He stopped and Quincy could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. Amy hadn’t been sleeping. She was depressed. She probably had a lot of headaches, too. All of that would add up to a certain picture in the eyes of most people. Luckily, she wasn’t most people.

  “I’m not sure if the doctors ever mentioned it,” she went on, “but severe head trauma can cause long-term side effects. Insomnia, depression, and migraines are all very common. If Amy wasn’t sleeping and the pain was driving her to something, it wouldn’t have been a disappearance. It would have been…”

  Quincy stopped. She didn’t want to worry him. She wanted him to know that RNB wouldn’t have driven Amy to walk away, but she also didn’t want him to know what it would have been driving her towards.

  “How do you know about the migraines?” Randall asked quietly.

  How did she know about the migraines? Well, that was a very good question.

  “I’ve done stories on head trauma patients.” The words rolled off her tongue with no thought. “I know quite a bit about the side effects. If Amy wasn’t sleeping, that could cause some pretty intense headaches.”