“I can hear you two.” Megan walked out of the closet holding a massive armful of lace and straps. “I am throwing all of this away. That’s the first thing I’m doing. I need all new underwear.” She looked pained. “Maybe not all of… No. I don’t want anything he’s had his hands on to even touch my body. I am getting all new underwear.”
It wasn’t what Katherine would have focused on, but then she couldn’t even imagine Baxter cheating on her, so she had no idea how she’d react.
“Oh God.” Megan reached her hand out. “Do either of you have your phone?”
“Yes.” Toni handed her a mobile. “Let me…” She unlocked it. “Here. I have a national plan, so if you need to call back east…”
Megan punched in numbers and nodded while the phone was ringing. “Hi, this is Megan Carpenter. Sorry, Megan Alston Carpenter, and I had a reservation for me and my friends at one and we’re just not going to make that because I drove home and found my husband cheating on me.”
“Oh my God, she’s calling the restaurant,” Toni said. “I thought she was calling her mom.”
“And she’s telling them about Rodney.” That was definitely a level of candor that Katherine would have avoided with unsuspecting restaurant staff.
Megan continued with a wavering voice. “Well, thank you for your sentiments, Laura; I really do appreciate that. And you’re absolutely right; your mother is a wise woman. I just wanted to call and let you know about the table so you’re not waiting on us. There’s no excuse for rudeness.”
Katherine had helped friends through divorce. Sadly two of her best friends from college had gone through the heartbreak. But she had a sneaking suspicion that helping Megan Alston Carpenter through a divorce was going to be in an entirely different experience.
Chapter 23
Toni and Katherine were sitting on the back deck, watching the tide come in that evening. Katherine had her leg elevated and was watching the surfers bob in the fading sunlight and catch a few last waves before they retired for the night.
“I feel kind of bad leaving her alone,” Katherine said.
“I feel the same way, but we don’t really know her children at all. I’m sure it would be strange for them to have two random women hanging around their house while their mom explains to them that their dad is a lying cheater.” Toni tapped the edge of her wineglass. “That is so fucked up.”
“I don’t understand men,” Katherine said. “Megan is one of the most positive and socially attractive people I’ve ever met. Not to mention she’s objectively beautiful and clearly very loyal.”
“You don’t understand men because you’re married to Baxter, who’s a male unicorn.”
Katherine almost snorted wine through her nose. “Sorry, what?”
Toni smiled. “A male unicorn. Your husband is smart and cute, has a great accent, and he completely adores you. He loves his work and he’s completely laid-back and confident. To most of us, he’s a mythical creature. Hence, a male unicorn.”
“A mythical creature? What about Henry?”
The faint hint of a blush appeared on Toni’s freckled cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Whoever was in the background on the phone the other day laughed when you called him a friend, so I’m guessing there’s a lot more to that story.”
Toni’s smile was carefully composed. “Henry is helping me with my house, and we were fighting about how to do the floors, so that’s probably why he laughed.”
“If he’s just a friend, why does he have a say in how you finish your floors?”
“Because he’s opinionated. Can we keep talking about how awful men are? Except for Baxter the male unicorn, of course.”
Katherine decided to let it drop until Megan could back her up. “I’m going to tell him you’re calling him that.”
“He’ll probably think it’s funny and charming, which is yet another thing that makes him a male unicorn.” Toni smiled. “If there’s one thing that Megan and I have in common, it’s thinking Baxter is the bee’s knees.”
“The bee’s knees!” Katherine laughed. “I love that saying. My grandmother used to say it.”
“So did mine. I’ve been missing her lately, so I’ve been trying to use more of her grandma-isms.” Toni narrowed her eyes. “The real question is, how much do we want to destroy Rodney?”
“Can you really destroy him?”
Toni snorted. “Oh yeah. Some of this shit is going to leak out no matter what. It’s Moonstone Cove. The town is not that big.”
“True.” Katherine remembered when one of the animal science professors at Central Coast had a semipublic affair with the chair of the botany department. The university had been consumed by the drama for months, and it had eventually touched nearly every department. “I think you need to wait and talk to Megan. Let her calm down and find out what she wants. You and I need to keep trying to figure out what’s going on with the students.”
“Without her?”
Katherine tried to imagine her nieces and nephews finding out that one of their parents had betrayed the other. Even though they were all in their teens now, she couldn’t imagine how gutted they’d be. “Her kids are going to need her. Teenagers may seem independent, but they’re really children, and their world just got rocked.”
“I wonder if her kids had any idea? Sometimes they’re more alert to rumors than adults are.”
“Either way, she’s going to have a lot on her plate.” Katherine looked at Toni. “But we can’t lose focus. We’ve just started putting together what’s happening with these students. Can you go get the large folded sheets of paper on the kitchen table?”
“Yeah.” Toni looked relieved to focus on something else. “I’ll be right back.”
“And ask Baxter if he can join us please?”
“You want me to call him a unicorn?”
Katherine smiled. “Not until I can see his face when you say it.”
* * *
They weighted the corners of the paper with a wine bottle, two wineglasses, and an abalone shell that sat in a corner of the deck.
“The clear common denominator is the study of course,” Katherine started. “But Kaylee threw everything off.”
“How?” Toni said.
“She wasn’t a participant,” Baxter said. “She was and is a graduate student. Which means that she might have participated in conducting the study, but she wasn’t a subject. So if this aberrant behavior was somehow caused by the study itself, how do we explain Kaylee’s episode?”
“She knew something?” Toni said. “Katherine said she’d dropped a couple of hints. Maybe whoever is behind this knew that she might expose him or her.”
“That could give motive, but we still don’t know how he or she is actually triggering these episodes. Why would Kaylee have been vulnerable?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I think it has something to do with fear.” Katherine pointed to Sarah Jordan’s page. “Pinpointing fear. Sarah’s greatest love and source of happiness was her horse. It could be easily imagined that something harming her horse would be a great fear.” She pointed to Justin McCabe. “Justin’s greatest fear was obvious. His brother had been killed in a school shooting, and his episode takes that to another level. Not only being killed in a shooting but actually causing one.”
“Then there’s Abigail,” Baxter said.
“Do you think she was afraid of Mario?” Katherine asked. “I never sensed anything like that between them.”
“She might not have been afraid of Mario,” Toni said. “But the general fear of someone she trusted hurting her? I think any woman can relate to that.”
Baxter said, “If police reports are to be believed, Abby lashed out at her own partner for no apparent reason. Random violence against or from the person she trusted the most? It’s not a stretch to imagine that as her greatest fear.”
“Have you been able to speak with her again?” Katherine asked.
Baxter
shook his head. “As far as I know, none of her friends have heard from her. At least not the ones I know. Her family is very protective.”
“Which brings us to Kaylee.” Katherine put her hand on Kaylee’s paper. “Same target: her greatest fear—falling over the ledge of a tall building—but one big difference. Kaylee wasn’t in the study; she was helping to conduct it.”
Toni leaned forward. “Okay, so explain biofeedback in more detail to me. You kind of went over it before, but I’m having a hard time picturing it. Could it be done to someone without their knowledge?”
“Absolutely not.” Katherine shook her head. “Biofeedback therapy depends on making the subject aware of their subconscious physical responses as a way of controlling them and lessening their effect. So a subject must be aware. They must be a willing participant in the therapy for it to have any effect. Added to that, there are sensors physically attached to subjects during the first phase of the treatment.”
“What about, like, hypnosis?”
Baxter and Katherine exchanged a look. “Here, my dear, Katherine and I will part ways. I am a believer in effective hypnosis treatment because I saw how much it helped my brother quit smoking. Katherine, on the other hand—”
“Wait.” Toni turned her attention to Katherine. “Really? I mean… really? You see actual psychic visions that predict the future, but you find hypnosis hard to believe?”
She glared at Baxter. “This is what you call throwing someone under the bus.”
“But it works,” Toni said. “My brother quit smoking too.”
“I simply think it’s debatable that hypnosis is any more effective than a placebo.”
“You think hypnosis is fake?”
“No. People underestimate the placebo effect of going to see a hypnotist.” She gestured to the papers on the table. “The placebo effect is very powerful. And hypnosis has nothing to do with any of this.”
“But,” Baxter said, “hypnosis and biofeedback do have some commonalities, and there is evidence that people can be hypnotized without their knowledge, which is not possible with biofeedback.”
Katherine couldn’t argue with that but… “I’m not going to say it’s impossible. I’m just saying I have my doubts.”
“Hypnosis could explain the amnesia too.” Baxter folded his hands and frowned, staring at the scribbles across the paper. “But Katherine is also right—the common thread between all these people is the biofeedback study. And that study had nothing to do with hypnosis. It wasn’t utilized in any way that we know of.”
“Maybe the study was just convenient,” Toni said.
Katherine turned to her. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe the study wasn’t the avenue for messing with these people’s minds,” Toni said. “Maybe the study was just where whoever is doing this found their victims.”
* * *
Katherine couldn’t sleep that night. She lay awake, casting her mind out to the students who had participated in good faith in order to advance the treatment of a condition she suffered from herself. And in doing that, they had become potential targets for whoever was playing this twisted game.
Baxter rolled over and put an arm across her legs. “Darling, you need sleep.”
She was sitting against the headboard, staring out the window at the fog-covered sea. “I don’t have visions in my sleep,” she said. “What if something else is about to happen? What if I can stop it?”
“You’re not going to be able to stop everything.” He blinked up at her. “You can’t take on that responsibility.”
“I feel like I have to.” She gripped his hand in her own. “We’ve worked so hard because the legacy is so bad, Baxter. Professors, academics, we did take advantage of vulnerable people. We have caused harm in the past. So much. Tuskegee. Sims. Statesville. There is a reason we guard this process so fiercely. There’s a reason we have to jump through so many hoops. And to think that someone might have used students—”
“I’m going to tell Anita about this, and if she doesn’t go to the IRB, we will. But I think she’ll volunteer to go. You know what kind of person she is.”
“And Ansel…” As much as she personally didn’t click with Ansel Shaver, she could not imagine he’d do something to deliberately put students in harm’s way. “This is like a… a serial killer who’s using the anonymity of an academic study to hunt for victims. Find out their greatest fear, figure out how their brain works, and then use that information against them.”
“But how?” Baxter propped himself up. “That’s what I can’t figure out. Hypnosis can be done without a subject’s knowledge, but with results like this?”
“It seems improbable.”
“But not impossible,” Baxter said. “Like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“All your new abilities. Improbable, but clearly not impossible.”
“Right.” She scooted down in bed. “I should go to sleep.”
“You need to. You’re still healing that knee and ankle.”
“I know.”
“And you get very cross when you’re not sleeping enough.” He yawned widely. “Good night.”
“Good night.” She rolled over, kissed him softly, and lay on her back. “Thank you for believing in the improbable.”
“You’re very welcome.” He reached for her hand under the covers. “Now sleep.”
She tried but she failed. She kept circling around Baxter’s question.
How?
Using the study to hunt for victims made sense, but for what mind game? What were they looking for? Was it about power? Advantage? Was it personal?
Isn’t it always personal?
She opened her eyes. Isn’t it?
Katherine closed her eyes and made a mental timeline. Sarah Jordan, Justin McCabe, Abigail Chung, Kaylee Ivers.
Sarah to Justin had been months. Justin to Abigail had been weeks. Abigail to Kaylee… days.
Whoever was playing this game, the time line had accelerated. What that meant for future victims, Katherine had no idea.
Chapter 24
The knock came at their door at nine o’clock the next morning. Katherine was drinking coffee and still trying to elevate her leg, so Baxter went to open it.
“Anita.” She could hear the shock in his voice. “Come in.”
“I’m so sorry to bother you at home, but I am just at a complete loss.” A statuesque woman with braided steel-grey hair and broad shoulders walked into the entryway. She was wearing a blue-green wrap that Baxter took from her and hung on a hook near the door. “I don’t know what is happening. In thirty-five years, nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
She paused when she saw Katherine at the table. “Katherine.”
“Anita.” Katherine smiled. “Would you like some coffee or tea?”
“I’d love some coffee with milk if you have it.”
“I’ll get it.” Baxter motioned to the table. “Please sit down. Katherine knows about the situation, so we can speak freely. She’s the one who realized the connections between the incidents with Sarah Jordan and Justin McCabe.”
Anita sat across from her. “Of course. You were at the gym.” She glanced at her knee. “Is this injury from that?”
“No. Unrelated.”
Had Kaylee told anyone about her involvement on the roof? It seemed like Anita was unaware of the incident, so Katherine kept quiet.
“Baxter approached me after his graduate student, Abigail Chung, had the violent outburst that injured her partner and herself. I was shocked and horrified of course, but also quite skeptical that anything related to the biofeedback study we did would have had any detrimental effect on a participant. I had to check the identities of the students myself to be sure they participated, and I cannot dismiss the connection. With three different students, a coincidence is too improbable.”
“That was my thinking as well.” Katherine held her mug out as Baxter refilled it. “Thank you, Baxter.”
“As soon as I confirmed with Ansel Shaver that all three students were involved, we called Professors Bernal, Rodriguez, and Kraft. We’ll be submitting our suspicions about the study to the IRB on Monday and turning over all our results for review. As Baxter requested, I’ve kept both of you out of the report entirely. There’s no reason for them to know you’re involved, in my opinion. You stumbled onto the information and came to me directly.” Her eyes were anguished. “I simply don’t know how anything we did in the study could have caused this violence. I’m still at such a loss.”
“Can you explain it to us?” Katherine said. “I’ve spoken to some of the students involved about their mental state. I’m curious to hear what you have to say.”
Anita glanced at Baxter, who nodded.
“The study participants were screened quite strictly. We were specifically looking for students living with anxiety who were already medicated and under the supervision of a doctor.”
“Like me,” Katherine said. “I was diagnosed with social anxiety years ago and I have a regular prescription. I can’t say I never have a flare of something unexpected—”
“But I imagine you have various coping mechanisms.”
“I do.”
“I also imagine you’ve had to change medications over the years as your body chemistry has changed and different treatments become available.”
“Yes. Tinkering happens. I think that’s pretty universal.”
Anita took a sip of coffee. “Baxter, this is excellent.”
“I’m glad you think so; I don’t touch the stuff.”
“Oh no. You’re a tea drinker, aren’t you?”
Katherine smiled. “It’s really his only fault as a husband.”
Anita smiled back, and Katherine was glad to see a little of the heaviness in her eyes alleviated. “When Ansel proposed this study, he kept the focus very narrow, which I appreciate. The only thing we wanted to test was if established biofeedback therapies used for other conditions would be useful to alleviate some of that tinkering you talked about.”
Runaway Fate: Moonstone Cove Book One Page 19
