Burning Bridges (Shattered Highways Book 2)

by Tara N Hathcock

  As Quincy read, a sad picture began to form. Claire had been injured during a performance of Faust. She miraculously recovered, but it came at a price. Parts come more slowly after her injury and she had been cast once more in Faust, an ironic end to a glowing career. She had departed Florence at the end of her final performance but never made it home. Quincy had already read the police reports on everyone’s disappearances - detectives had confirmed that Claire boarded her flight to Orlando, but she never made it home. The police had no leads.

  Quincy guessed she’d been picked up from the airport. It fit the profile of the other abductions - the last place any of the missing persons had been seen was away from their homes, in places they routinely visited. As a traveling musician, Claire would have moved through Orlando International often.

  The question was, how did they get them? Claire was an intelligent, educated woman. Amy was the mother of a young child - she would be attuned to seeing danger everywhere. Miguel had been plucked from the inside of a big rig truck rolling down the highway at night. If those were unlikely, Andre’s might have been even more so. He was a big guy, 6‘5” and over 200 pounds if his license was to be believed. He wouldn’t have been easy to take down. He would have caused a scene. A very large one. So how did they do it?

  The patients had all been on familiar ground, so how did the company snatch them up? Even Quincy had been approached on what she would call her own turf. It was a pattern. Not much of one, but still, it was more than the police had. The question was, what could she do with it?

  Quincy tossed her computer back towards the floor and lay back, tucking her hands behind her head. Maybe instead of looking at each abduction separately, they should be looking at them as one operation. If there was one pattern, there were bound to be more.

  Her frustration and discomfort were pushed to the back of her mind as Quincy locked onto the problem and started to turn it over and over. There was an answer and she was going to find it. Her brain was literally built for the job.

  Chapter 26

  Dr. Cans

  Dr. Cans made her way towards the file room, a pizza in one hand and a six-pack of soda in the other. She nodded at one of the lab techs as he passed her in the hall and he grinned. She wasn’t the first person to use food to bribe her way past the records nerds.

  The hall became darker the further she walked. She glanced up, noticing several lights had gone out, probably years ago and never replaced. Whether through disinterest, a lagging maintenance budget, or the records nerds setting their own ambiance, she didn’t know. But it definitely set a mood. The floor had started slanting slightly downhill and, as she walked on, it was becoming colder and colder. She felt like she was descending into the bowels of hell. No, that wasn’t quite right, she decided. Hell would be hotter.

  The door to the file room had once been a solid, industrial-looking thing but had transformed over the years into an extension of the department’s personality, much like the hall leading to it. It was scuffed and stained, pockmarked from years of moving heavy carts and shelves in and out. The placard bearing the official title of Records and Receivables had been vandalized and a makeshift sign had been hung over it - Beware, All Ye Who Enter Here.

  Dr. Cans wasn’t sure of the pirate motif when it felt more like a tomb than a renegade ship, but who was she to judge? She straightened her skirt, again painfully short and tight, and pushed inside.

  “Hello, boys,” she said brightly. Two very pale, very stunned records clerks looked up, abruptly breaking off a rather heated debate about the probability of a very real zombie apocalypse in the near future. She smiled. “The zombie apocalypse is coming,” she said, picking up their topic. “Just look at some of our own experiments.”

  The smaller of the two clerks grinned triumphantly. “See,” he told his companion. “I’m not the only one who thinks we’ll be the cause of it.”

  The red-headed clerk to his left, the one who had obviously been arguing against the rise of the zombies, rolled his eyes. “One doctor’s opinion proves nothing.” He turned back to her, eyeing the pizza and drinks she carried. “And just what brings you down to the dungeon at this extremely late time of night, Dr. Cans?”

  “Working late,” Dr. Cans said, setting her supplies on the counter in front of them, “and I hate to eat alone.”

  “You hate to eat alone,” stoolie number two said, “or you want something from us and think pizza is a good enough bribe to get it?”

  Clearly, he was suffering from some resentment over her assessment of the zombie situation. “Both,” she answered lightly. She might as well be honest about it.

  She sighed dramatically, kicked her shoes off, and pulled herself up to sit on the counter in front of them, her skirt rising just another inch. They looked at each other and then back at her. There was a reason she had waited until the overnight shift to come down here. This trick didn’t work quite as well on other women.

  “I’m in a bit of a pickle,” she admitted. “See, Mr. Smith put me in charge of profiling our RNB patients so we can start looking outside of the few files the doctor who discovered it left us. But Mr. Anderson hasn’t given me enough to work with,” she complained. “Redacted files and addresses. That’s all. How am I supposed to do my job when that’s all I have to work with?” she asked plaintively.

  The mention of Nathan Anderson was enough to bring scowls to both of their faces. He didn’t treat anyone with respect. She could only imagine how his dealings with lowly records clerks had gone.

  The red-head, Don, his name badge read, sneered. “Oh, Mr. Anderson,” he said sarcastically, “Let me tell you about Mr. Anderson. He’s a low-down, no-good -”

  “Bully?” Dr. Cans supplied.

  “Sure,” Don said. “A bully. Totally what I was going to say. And he’s never done anything for anyone that he didn’t have to.”

  “That’s true,” his little buddy, Mason, said. “He only cares how he looks. He’s sure not going to help anyone else out.”

  Dr. Cans sighed. “He really hates me, too,” she said. “I made him look bad in front of Mr. Smith.” She frowned, seemingly indignant as she looked at her two marks. “I don’t like bullies, no matter how big they are.”

  The two men in front of her nodded. “Me neither,” Don said. “How can we help?”

  Dr. Cans smiled. “Well, first,” she said, pushing the pizza his way, “you can have dinner with me. I really don’t like eating alone.”

  Both men beamed up at her, clearly taken. And why shouldn’t they be? No one ever came down here for the pleasure of their company first.

  “And then maybe I could wander around back there a little bit?” she asked. “Take a look at some of my patients’ unredacted files?” She could see the hesitation on their faces and pulled back a bit. They needed to feel like they were in control. “Or not,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  They looked at each other for a minute and then turned back to her. “No one else is here,” Mason said boldly. “And we don’t have any camera surveillance in this room. As long as you’re back upstairs before the guards do their shift change at 6:00 a.m., there’s no danger.”

  No cameras and no guards until 6:00 a.m.? That was good to know. She smiled. “Are you sure? You guys seem nice. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to.” She shifted, crossing her legs and leaning in ever so slightly. Don’s eyes went wide.

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  Chapter 27

  Dr. Cans

  The dust from the piles of folders scattered around her were thick in the air and Dr. Cans sneezed. Again.

  The records room wasn’t the most enjoyable place to be but she’d gotten lucky with her admirers and she knew it. She wasn’t about to push her luck by trying to sneak the folders to a more agreeable work space. So she soldiered on, pausing now and again to swipe at her itchy nose. So far, the unredacted records had been a bust.

  Well, not completely. In t
erms of her profiling assignment, they were a dusty goldmine. So far, she’d learned that each patient suffered from extreme migraines. Not that the patients had revealed that information themselves. No, that helpful tidbit had come after paging through a series of medical files obtained from each patient’s doctor, no doubt illegally. She hadn’t encountered a single headache complaint in her month at the facility, but then again, the patients were determined to say nothing that might benefit her or anyone else at the company.

  Even Miguel, who was grateful to be here, to a degree, was cagey, not giving anything away in their sessions. Dr. Cans suspected it was his way of complying with the group. He might have wanted the help, but he didn’t want the others to hate him more than they already did. He wasn’t going to volunteer anything that might be common to the whole group. Which brought her back to the reason she was down here in the first place.

  So, the headaches. Excellent information to have. She didn’t know what she could do with it just yet if the patients themselves weren’t willing to talk to her about it, but at least she could start building the physical profile Nathan Anderson and Mr. Smith were looking for.

  As she’d read, she’d noticed these headaches were very distinctive, described almost precisely the same from one patient to another. There were two versions - one dull but intense, happily throbbing away for hours on end but, ultimately, liveable. The second was much more sudden - sharp, shooting pain that came without warning, lancing through their heads like daggers and leaving them incapacitated, sometimes for minutes or hours at a time.

  Dr. Cans paused to blow her nose again and think it through. These debilitating headaches had to be connected to their diagnoses. That was the only way to explain five patients with RNB suffering from the same severe migraines.

  Regular migraines often had a trigger. Light, scents, noise, even vibration. The same principle could theoretically be applied to RNB patients. There was really only one trigger that made sense to her and that was RNB itself. These patients had all survived extreme head trauma. Developing RNB had saved their lives but there were bound to be consequences. Some might argue that living with chronic, debilitating pain was a reasonable price to pay for survival. Those same people had very likely never lived with the kind of chronic, debilitating pain these headaches caused. Ultimately, that choice would come down to each individual patient.

  Dr. Cans wondered, did any of her patients struggle with paying that price? Did they hear echoes in their heads, taunting them, telling them that death would be easier? She didn’t know, and they weren’t going to tell her. Right now, anyway. If she could just find something in these files that might give her an edge in their sessions. Something to forge a connection with, something she could use to gain their trust.

  It wasn’t lost on Dr. Cans that using personal information as a way of manipulating trust was the height of irony. But she had to play the cards she was dealt and right now, she was playing from a short deck, so manipulation it was. She closed her eyes and rolled her head, rubbing her shoulders in an effort to work out the knots that had formed there. She pushed herself back up to the table and slid Andre’s medical file back towards the pile.

  The medical files all indicated the same back story. Blunt force head trauma, coma, and sudden, unrealistic recovery. Add that to the headaches and a decent physical profile started to unwind, which gave the company a base to start searching out new patients. Andre’s file was one of the twelve the company had been able to salvage after the brilliant Dr. Garrison had abandoned ship and burned all of his bridges behind him. Of those twelve, Andre, Amy, Claire, and Miguel were the only patients to be found alive when the company tracked them down.

  With the exception of patient number 12, that is. Jane Doe. There was no confirmation on her whereabouts or status; the loss of numerous operatives in her retrieval would seem to indicate she was alive and very much aware of her abilities, but that was just speculation.

  Dr. Cans ran a finger along the edges of Jane Doe’s file. She hadn’t looked at it yet, choosing to focus on the four patients currently in her care. But she had to admit, she was curious. Jane Doe was practically a legend around here for her ability to elude the hired mercenaries the company employed.

  Whether Jane Doe was actually eluding the company or, in fact, dead, didn’t seem to factor in. The rumors had spread even to the patients. While Miguel was a Benedict Arnold, Jane Doe was a folk hero without a name. She was a source of inspiration and hope for the four patients currently residing with the company.

  Other than some grainy, black and white footage of her leaving a hospital eight years ago, she was a complete mystery. Dr. Cans had listened as the patients speculated about her. Nothing concrete, of course. Just rumors and stories that Dr. Cans suspected became larger with every telling. The file in front of her would answer some of those questions. It would tell her just what exactly the company knew about the elusive patient that had slipped through their grasp time and time again.

  Jane Doe was not her patient. She hadn’t been captured, and she wasn’t living on-site at the company research facility. No matter how much of a curiosity she was, Jane Doe wasn’t her concern at the moment. Dr. Cans shoved the file away. Ah well. Priorities.

  She glanced at her watch. It was almost 5:30 in the morning. She had been here all night and had agreed not to be caught down here when the guards changed shifts. She started packing up the files, not interested in explaining why she was down here to the day shift when they clocked in. She had made some progress on a physical profile but she hadn’t made any headway into connecting with her patients. But that was alright. Now that she’d gotten in once, she knew she could do it again. She dusted off her hands and shrugged back into her jacket. She’d brought a change of clothes from her small apartment in the staff section of the company’s private compound. She’d head back to her office, change clothes, and go to the patient cafeteria to observe from behind the one-way glass wall. At this point, every little bit of information she could get, even if it was just diet preferences, would help.

  Maybe, thinking they were unobserved, one of them would say something that would help point Dr. Cans in the right direction.

  Chapter 28

  “You cannot find peace by avoiding life.” Michael Cunningham

  These moments are fleeting, the times when she can see the light through the shadow becoming fewer.

  She takes what she can get, knowing I will always be waiting for her.

  ***

  Quincy

  She wasn’t sure why she had let Logan talk her into this. She glanced at her reflection one more time in the chipped mirror she had found abandoned in a dumpster behind the Boulder Outlier Mall. The frame had been torn off, leaving the edges jagged and rough, but it was full length and, once she’d shined it up a bit, worked just fine.

  Now, she regretted finding it. She sighed, wishing she had started to put in a little effort before now. She hadn’t changed her hair color since she had adopted her current persona. She had been tired of the maintenance and the effort of maintaining a new hair color every few months and decided Quincy could be a little more natural. Usually she preferred her own, auburn-tinted hair, but looking at it now in the dim, dank light of her basement corner, it appeared flat and lifeless. When was the last time she’d washed it, she couldn’t help but wonder? No, it hadn’t been that long ago. That wasn’t the problem.

  Quincy leaned forward and smudged the liner she had drawn lightly beneath her eyes, feeling ridiculous. She also hadn’t bothered much with makeup since becoming Quincy. It wasn’t that she couldn’t wear it - Kara Scott had spent an hour every day putting her face on, after all. It was more that, as opposed to Kara Scott, Quincy didn’t wear much. And it had been months since she had tried. She felt shaky and out-of-practice.

  “Hey, what are you doing in there?” Logan yelled from outside her curtained doorway. “Painting the Mona Lisa?”

  Men had no appreciation of what it took to loo
k nice.

  “I’m sure you look fine already,” he added, sounding suddenly nervous, like he’d thought better of the comment. The whine of a man tired of waiting had been replaced by fear of a woman scorned, and she hadn’t had to say a word. Good.

  Quincy straightened. She was ready, she supposed. As ready as she would be, anyway. She just felt so…naked. Exposed, somehow. After all these years, she would have thought the makeup and the clothes would have become like armor, acting as a shield to the outside world. But after going without for a few months, wearing it now left her feeling more exposed than before, somehow.

  That’s because you are. Cold. Calm. You can’t paint over the truth. You can’t escape what is.

  As much as she tried to ignore the snide innuendo inside her own head, she couldn’t fool herself for long. She was exactly like the mirror taped to the wall in front of her. She had lugged it home from that forgotten alley and propped it up against the wall by her mattress. She could clean it up, polish the grime away, but it was still broken. The edges were still sharp and jagged, missing pieces of itself.

  She could dress herself up, paint on a couple layers to help disguise what was missing, but she couldn’t fill the gaping holes left behind.

  “I may starve to death if you don’t hurry,” Logan started back in, right outside her curtain now. He must have decided he was more hungry than afraid. “If so, you’ll only have yourself to blame.”