Natasha arched an eyebrow. “Is your personality as handsome as your face?”
“You’ll have to consult Nicole on that one, I’m afraid,” responded Wes.
We all chuckled. Thankfully, Wes had shelved his animosity towards my mother. I knew it was mostly for my benefit, but I appreciated it all the same.
“Good answer,” said Natasha. “And are you a police officer, Mr. McAllen? Or did you steal that uniform from some poor, unsuspecting soul? Because I have to admit, it looks like it’s seen better days.”
Wes glanced sheepishly down at his raggedy uniform. It was rumpled and muddy, and the collar was stained with blood from Wes’s injuries. Not to mention, the fabric was starting to emit a slight odor. “It’s mine. It’s just been a very long couple of days.”
“Well, why don’t you head inside and have a shower?” offered Natasha, stepping aside to let Wes pass. “The spare bathroom is at the top of the stairs. Did the two of you bring bags?”
Simultaneously, Wes and I shook our heads.
Natasha threw Henry a questioning glance. “All right, then. Henry can lend you something to wear.”
Henry made to follow Wes inside, but Natasha stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Don’t think you’re getting off the hook for this, darling,” she said under her breath to him. I glanced away, feeling intrusive, as she went on. “You have a lot of explaining to do. You told me you were running an errand for work.”
Henry shrugged and grinned. “I was,” he said. He kissed her cheek and headed inside.
Natasha shook her head. “Men,” she said to me in a tone that suggested we were the best of friends rather than an estranged mother and daughter. “Come inside. You must be freezing.”
The dogs nipped playfully at my heels as I followed Natasha into the farmhouse. She shooed them away, but I smiled sadly as they ran off to patrol the white fence that bordered the property. Their exuberance reminded me that my own mutt, Franklin, was currently under the care of one of Lauren’s friends. If what Henry had said was true, and Lauren’s alternate cause really had been discovered by the Raptors, there was no way for me to check on Franklin’s status. An even more depressing thought occurred to me: with the Raptors looming, getting Franklin back wasn’t exactly high on our list of priorities.
“So,” said Natasha. “Are you hungry?”
She led me into the kitchen. The house’s interior was light, airy, and pretty. Natasha and Henry favored a rustic white-and-natural-wood theme. From what I could tell, the first floor was one wide-open space. I could see the expansive living room and the leather sectional couch from my position at the island counter in the kitchen. Beyond that, floor-to-ceiling windows and a set of French doors exhibited a beautiful view of the acreage behind the house. Two horses grazed in a distant pasture, and the shadow of a barn sat serenely on the horizon.
“Starving,” I admitted, wandering over to the windows and gazing out.
“I have some leftovers from last night,” she said. She rummaged through the fridge. “Chicken, zucchini, and rye bread. We grow mostly everything on property and make a lot of it from scratch. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”
“No.”
It all seemed too normal. The house, the dogs, Henry and Natasha’s relationship. It wasn’t fair. While I had spent thirty years wondering why my mother had abandoned me, she had been cozied up in a pretty town with her handsome husband.
“Good,” she went on, stacking tupperware containers full of food on the counter. “Don’t get me wrong. I make excellent vegetable soup if I do say so myself—”
“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?” I interrupted, fiddling with the leaves of a potted plant on the windowsill. Mint, from the scent of it.
The rattle of dishware met my ears as Natasha portioned out the leftovers. “I’m scared to ask actually.”
I turned to face her, crossing my arms over my chest. “I thought you were dead. Aunt Elena told me you died of a brain aneurysm.”
Although her focus remained on the counter in front of her, I could see that Natasha’s ears had turned red. “You don’t understand—”
“What don’t I understand?” I demanded. I strolled to the kitchen and planted my hands on the counter opposite my mother. “You left. You abandoned me. You let me think you were dead. Do you know what that does to a person? Do you know how I felt last night when Henry showed up out of the blue and told me that you were alive? That you’d made a conscious choice to eliminate me from your life?”
“It wasn’t like that,” she said softly, drawing forks and knives from a waist-high drawer.
“What was it like then? Please, explain it to me.” I watched, aggravated, as she set places at each bar stool. “God damn it, put down the silverware and look at me.”
She slammed the forks back into the drawer and pushed the container of cold chicken away from her. “I can’t,” she declared. “I can’t look at you for longer than a few seconds because it reminds me of every mistake I made thirty years ago. Yes, I left you. Yes, I let you think I had died. Because the alternative was letting the worst people I knew—” She cut herself off abruptly, covering her face with her hands. “Never mind. You won’t—”
“Understand,” I finished for her. “Except I bet I understand a lot more than you ever expected me to. And if you had bothered to keep better track of me over the past thirty years, you would know that.”
Natasha looked up, her eyes bright with the threat of tears. “What are you talking about?”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I ended up at Waverly University for graduate school anyway. Not that I was able to complete my degree, of course. The Black Raptor Society took care of that.”
Natasha’s bottom lip trembled. “No. Please. Don’t tell me—”
“I found out about them,” I plowed on. Now that I’d started speaking, the words just kept pouring out of me, no matter how hurtful. “It all started when my history professor disappeared several weeks ago. Do you remember George O’Connor? You went to school with him, and I’m pretty sure he was in love with you. He’s dead now, by the way. Anyway, O’Connor was trying to bring down the Raptors before they could get a hold of me. It didn’t really work out, but at least he tried. Right, Mom?”
Natasha looked at me. “Nicole, never in a million years did I ever expect you to find your way back to that hellhole of a university,” she said. “I was scared and out of options. Catherine Flynn had already killed your father, and she tried to kill you next. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Wait. Flynn tried to kill me?” I asked, confused. From my mother’s old diary entries, I already knew that Flynn had arranged my father’s death and that she had driven Natasha away from Waverly University by threatening her life as well, but I’d never heard anything about an attempt on my own life.
Natasha nodded. “It was shortly after your second birthday. I thought I had shaken off the Raptors. I thought that you and I were safe. In the beginning, it was never my intention to give you up, but when that happened…”
“What happened?” I pushed.
She shuddered, as though attempting to repress the memories. “I don’t want to talk about it. It was awful, but the incident made me realize something.”
“Which was?”
For the first time since we had arrived at the farmhouse, Natasha maintained eye contact with me for longer than a few seconds. “That the Black Raptor Society and Catherine Flynn were always going to haunt me. They were always going to track me down. If I kept you, we would have led a life on the run, a life burdened by the need to keep moving lest the Raptors discover us again, and that would have been no life for a child. It would have been selfish of me to put you through that, and at the time, I thought that the only way to lose the society for good was if everyone believed I was dead.”
“It didn’t work though, did it?” I asked. “Henry told me that you’re still in contact with Catherine Flynn.”
My mother’s bro
w furrowed. “He said that?”
Before I could respond, the stairs in the entryway creaked, announcing Henry’s return from upstairs.
“Whew!” he said, wiping his forehead as he made his way into the kitchen. “My knees are getting too old for all of these steps. Nicole, you’re more than welcome to use the bathroom off of our bedroom if you’re desperate for a shower—what happened?”
He glanced between Natasha and me, taking note of Natasha’s shimmering eyes and the look of consternation that I knew must still be present on my face in response to my mother’s revelations.
Natasha wiped her face with the back of her hand and turned to Henry with a defiant scowl. “How did you know?” she demanded of him. “How did you find out that Nicole went to Waverly? How did you even figure out that I had a daughter?”
“Well, you certainly weren’t ever going to fill me in,” said Henry. Though he was firm, there was no anger in his tone. I marveled at his self-control. His wife had hidden huge secrets from him for the past twenty years, yet he remained cool and collected in the face of her withheld truths.
“I kept these things from you for good reason,” declared Natasha. “It was imperative that I cut all ties with Waverly and stay far away from anything that had to do with the Black Raptors.”
“An hour and a half’s drive from campus isn’t exactly ‘far away,’” I pointed out. “Why didn’t the two of you move out of the country? Or at the very least, out of the state?”
“I did,” growled Natasha. Her gaze remained fixed on her husband like a laser pointer, but his calm demeanor didn’t falter. “Henry and I met in Palo Alto. He was the one who suggested we move back to the area. He told me that he’d always dreamed of moving back into the farmhouse that he had grown up in. Even then, it seemed like a suspicious coincidence, but I agreed because I thought I was simply being paranoid. Now, I’m starting to wonder if I was right to suspect. Henry, darling?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Would you like to pitch in to the conversation?”
“I’m quite content, but thank you for asking, my love.”
Natasha’s answering glare was sharp enough to burn holes through Henry’s flannel shirt. He sighed, reached into his back pocket, and extracted a small, black wallet.
“Agent Henry Altman,” he said, flipping open the wallet to reveal a shiny, gold badge. “FBI. Over twenty years ago, I was assigned to investigate white collar and violent crimes occurring in and around Waverly University.”
There were two hundred and twenty-five concrete blocks that made up the far wall of Lauren’s containment room. She’d counted them. Twice. Soon, she feared that she may die of boredom. Her stomach growled. The Raptors hadn’t offered her anything to eat or drink since they had captured her, and she could hardly remember the last time she ate. She let out a derisive laugh that bounced off the walls and echoed back to her. If Flynn’s plan was to let Lauren waste away in the bowels of the Waverly library, then so be it.
But just as Lauren began to internally commiserate about a slow, solitary death at the command of her own aunt, a loud thunk outside the door indicated that the chair had finally been removed from underneath the knob. As Lauren rolled off the bottom bunk and sprang to her feet, Wickes and Hastings walked into the room to greet her.
“The Morrigan is ready for you now,” said Wickes, beckoning Lauren to follow him.
“I can’t contain my enthusiasm,” quipped Lauren. She attempted to force her way past the two boys, but Wickes stepped into her path. “What?” she snapped.
He held up a zip tie. “Hands, please.”
She eyeballed the plastic. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Wickes grinned. “Morrigan’s orders.”
With a dramatic sigh, Lauren presented her hands, crossing her wrists and flexing both fists. Wickes tightened the zip tie until the plastic bit into Lauren’s skin, but she refused to voice her annoyance. The trio left the room, the boys flanking Lauren as they led her down the stone corridor.
When they reached the large dining room at the end of the hallway, Lauren drew in a surprised breath. She had expected to meet solely with Catherine Flynn. Instead, the room was filled with people. Some sat around the long polished table in the middle of the room, doubling up on the high-backed chairs. The others stood shoulder-to-shoulder, pressed against the walls and each other to make space for everyone. From the looks of it, every student member of the Black Raptor Society had turned up for the event. Flynn lounged casually at the head of the table, but when Lauren, Wickes, and Hastings appeared in the doorway, she beckoned them inside.
“Come in, come in,” she said genially with a regal wave of her hand. Her wedding ring glimmered in the light of the overhead chandelier. It was a gorgeous piece of jewelry, a gem of red beryl set into a gold band, and Lauren knew that it had cost a fortune. She wondered why Flynn still bothered to wear it. Her husband, Harrison, had died long ago, and Flynn had expressed an appropriate amount of grief at his funeral before seemingly forgetting all about him.
“Have a seat, Lauren,” said Flynn, gesturing to the only available chair in the room.
Reluctantly, Lauren drew the chair out with her bound hands and sank into it. “Got the whole society here today, don’t you, Aunt Catherine?” she said, keeping her voice light. “My, my, I feel so important.”
Flynn smiled coyly. “My dear girl, you didn’t possibly think that I called all of the current Raptors out of their classes and extracurricular activities for the sole purpose of addressing your act of treason, did you?”
“I’ll admit, it’s a little excessive,” said Lauren, cocking an eyebrow. “And risky, too. One of the reasons we rarely hold such inclusive meetings is to ensure that all of the Raptors don’t mysteriously go missing from campus at the exact same time. It raises questions. What matter is so urgent that you would be willing to compromise the Raptors’ confidentiality for this discussion?”
“I think you’ve compromised the Raptors’ confidentiality quite enough with your attempted coup, my dear,” responded Flynn.
“I’d hardly call it a coup. It was more of a small scale rebellion.”
“Semantics, darling. The point is: you made your intention clear. You moved to incriminate the Black Raptor Society, the very society that your family helped to construct.”
“My point,” argued Lauren, “was that the Raptors have taken advantage of their status for far too long. We have grown apathetic and heartless. We have strayed from the path that was laid out by the members before us. No great society relies on coercion and manslaughter to further their own agenda.”
“Our society does not—”
“Furthermore,” continued Lauren, raising her voice to overpower Flynn’s. Her interruption caused a wave of murmurs to circulate around the room. No other Raptor would dare speak over Flynn. “When I brought my concerns to the attention of the council several months ago, I was dismissed without even the concept of a conversation.”
“So you decided that the only method of solving a problem of which you were the sole architect was to expose your entire family?” questioned Flynn.
“‘The sole architect?’” repeated Lauren in disbelief. “I’m sorry, Aunt Catherine, but do I need to remind you which of us in this room has willingly committed premeditated murder?”
“George O’Connor’s death was a tragic accident—”
“I’m not talking about George O’Connor,” snapped Lauren, “and you know it.”
The babble of voices in the room increased again until Flynn held up her hand for silence. She leaned over the table toward Lauren. “My dear niece,” she began in a tone meant to mollify Lauren. “I cannot understand the amount of stress you must be under to delude yourself into thinking that the morals of this society are so compromised. Ask your brothers and sisters around you. Tell me, Raptors. Have any of you witnessed these great misdeeds that Miss Lockwood speaks of?”
A general denial resonated throughout the r
oom, the students of the Black Raptor Society shaking their heads. Lauren rolled her eyes.
“Please,” she said. “As if the quality of our members’ intelligence hasn’t greatly diminished in the last several years. For example—”
Above the table, in full view of every Raptor, Lauren uncrossed her wrists. Immediately, the zip tie slackened, and she wormed both hands free in a matter of seconds. She threw the zip tie in Wickes’s face.
“Your boys don’t even know how to properly restrain a hostage,” spat Lauren.
Wickes and Hastings dove forward to subdue Lauren, but Flynn called out, “Leave her! She has nowhere to go anyway.”
Lauren crossed her arms, slouching down in her chair as she glared at the two boys. “What is it then?” she asked Flynn. “The purpose of this meeting? If not to punish me, then why bother to gather the Raptors in such a show of solidarity?”
There was a gleam of emotion in Flynn’s eyes, but it was hard to read. “A tragedy has befallen the Black Raptor Society,” she announced. “I decided it was only appropriate for me to deliver the news myself, rather than allow it to filter down through our members.”
Lauren straightened in her chair. “What tragedy?”
Flynn stood, opening her arms as if to embrace the entire room. “My dears, we now face a change in leadership, for one of our own has fallen. My beloved brother, Orson, is dead.”
28
The tension between Natasha and Henry was so palpable that the kitchen felt suddenly claustrophobic. There was a beat of silence before Natasha, in a voice of deadly calm, said, “Nicole, would you excuse us? I’d like to speak to my husband in private.”
“Sure.”
As quickly as possible, I sidled out of the kitchen and trotted up the stairs. I sat on the top step, listening to the shower run in the nearby bathroom. It was easy enough to afford Natasha and Henry the illusion of privacy, but hell if I was going to miss out on Henry’s explanation. It was bound to be enlightening, and I still wasn’t sure if I trusted either one of them to keep me and Wes safe.
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