Stolen Secret

by Piper Dow

  Tears leaked between her lashes and slid down her cheeks. She didn't think she was afraid, really, but her heart ached for the pain she knew her family must be in. Her throat constricted as she struggled, on the verge of giving in to the despair. She couldn't let herself sink into this!

  Kelly lifted her head, wiping her wet face on her arms. She gazed at Joe again, staring at the ceiling and murmuring to himself. She had to keep going, keep fighting, or she would end up like that. Blowing out a deep, cleansing breath, she tried to focus. When Sam had been in the hospital, Kelly had found a measure of peace in the pages of the hymnal she'd found in the chapel. She cast about for the lyrics to one she knew, then let the words fill her mind, "When peace like a river attendeth my way, when shadows, like sea billows roll. Whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say: It is well, it is well with my soul."

  She wasn't sure of the words in the other verses. She remembered reading that the author of the hymn had lost his family on a ship before writing the song. Well, her situation wasn't that dire. She repeated the one verse she could remember a few times, the choking sensation gradually fading as the peace she needed began to fill her. Closing her eyes to block out all the distractions, she prayed for her family, for Matt's head, and for God to provide an escape.

  THE ELEVATOR SLID OPEN again. Kelly watched Mike stride out and make straight for Roger. Roger's head popped up from the microscope he was peering through and he motioned excitedly for Mike to take a look before catching the expression on his face. Roger's grin faded, replaced by a look of puzzlement.

  "What's going on?"

  "We have a situation."

  Curiosity piqued, Kelly stood and walked to the edge of the cage to be able to hear them better.

  "Mackenzie just showed up, told us she saw them," he gestured at the cage with his thumb, "on the news. The girl's car ran out of gas, and the clerk at the gas station remembered her talking with him. Police are looking for them both."

  "Are you kidding me? This has to happen now, of all times?" Roger jumped up, muttering under his breath, and both men turned to look at the cage. Kelly met their scrutiny baldly. Roger crossed his arms, stuffing his hands up into his armpits and hunching his shoulders, a scowl creasing his face. Mike's hands rested on his hips, his feet shoulder distance apart. His stare was calculating.

  "We can't jeopardize everything now."

  Roger's eyes flew to Mike's face, searching. He shook his head abruptly. "You have to look at the slide—what I wanted to show you when you came in." He took a step back toward the microscope and gestured for Mike to examine it.

  Mike slowly broke his stand-off with Kelly and bent to look in the eyepiece. He adjusted the knobs at the side to bring the slide into better clarity, then let out a low whistle. Picking his head up, he met Roger's excited expression with one of cautious anticipation.

  "Which one?"

  "Hers."

  Roger's voice came out at a higher pitch than Kelly had heard him use before. His face, when he turned it toward the cage, was strained with excitement. Suddenly she was glad for the cage wall between them.

  "We're going to have to figure this out, Roger. We can't let this mistake mess up everything we've been working for!" The anticipation that had briefly shown on Mike's face was gone, replaced with the hardness Kelly had come to associate with him. "We have to find out if the police have anything to tie Carl or the van to the area, before we make any decisions on what to do."

  Roger clenched his jaw and drew himself to his full height, standing a couple of inches taller than the other man. "You know what? Not my problem. This room, this work—this is my problem. I'm going to move forward with the closest thing we've come to a breakthrough while you figure out what you're going to do to fix this. I'll tell you this, though—you say you don't want to screw up everything we've worked for, but this," he jabbed his thumb toward the cage, "is what we've been working for!"

  Mike ground his teeth, looking like he wanted to say something but was biting his tongue. He threw another angry glare in Kelly's direction before stomping to the elevator and heading back down. Roger waited until he was gone before moving. He rubbed his hands down his pant legs and shook them at his side, a smile slowly growing across his face. Humming, he resumed his seat on the rolling stool and began making notes at his desk.

  Kelly backed away from the wall of the cage. She moved back to sit at Matt's side on the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees. What was all that about? The police were looking for her, so her family must know this wasn't something she had planned. She felt a sudden jolt of joy, her heart buoyed despite the gravity of her situation. She had prayed, and God had found a way to let her know what was going on outside of this little room. One more reminder that God was still in control, despite what it might look like.

  Chapter thirty-two

  Matt felt achy and stiff. His back and butt were growing numb from the hard surface they rested on, but he didn't want to shift his position because it would disturb the warm weight leaning on him. He frowned, struggling to free his mind from the deep darkness trying to drag him back down. There was something important...was he supposed to remember?

  He heard soft breaths near his head, coming from the weight on his shoulder. Brownie? He reached his hand to scratch behind her ears, a warm feeling filling his chest. Brownie always knew when he needed comfort. His hand touched skin.

  Matt jerked awake, his eyes flying open. The girl who had been using his shoulder as a pillow scrambled away, holding her arms up to shield her face.

  "Shhh! It's okay!" Her voice was urgent, trying to soothe him.

  His eyes darted around her face and then the cage, memory flooding in. He dropped his hands to his sides and fell back against the wall again.

  "I keep forgetting. Then I wake up, and it's all still here."

  "I know, I know," she murmured. She sat back down on the floor, hugging one leg and resting her face on her knee.

  Matt studied her. The bruise on her cheek was a darker shadow than those under her eyes. He wondered when she had last gotten any sleep. He tried to think, to figure out how long they had been there, but thinking too hard made his head hurt so he put that aside and continued studying the girl. He realized he couldn't remember her name, though he was pretty sure she had told him at some point.

  Her hair was tied back, but wisps had escaped from the elastic and hung limply near her face. She wore a pair of jeans with enough rips in them that Matt's mother would have cut them up to use for rags, but they didn't look bad on her. Her shirt was a gray close fitting long sleeve. She had pushed the sleeves up on her forearms. Matt could see a deep purple bruise under the edge of one sleeve.

  "Did they hit you?"

  "What?" Her eyes fell to the bruise on her arm. "No, that's from where the woman made a mistake trying to draw my blood."

  His eyes went to her cheek. "What about that?" He pointed on his own face to indicate where her bruise was.

  She raised her hand to her cheek. "No," she hesitated. " I don't know. I didn't realize I had a bruise there."

  Something about her attitude made his stomach twist. "I did that, didn't I?" She bit her lip. He sighed, rubbing his hands with his face. He saw vague images on the backs of his eyelids; a dark room, someone leaning over him, shoving that person away. Were those memories? Had he hit her? "I'm sorry."

  She shrugged one shoulder. "You haven't been yourself. How's your head feeling now?"

  He shrugged, running his hand over the top of his head. He winced, his fingers softly testing the edges of the lump he found there. "What did they hit me with?"

  The girl glanced at the room beyond the cage wall behind him. "A gun, I think. I did convince them to give you something for it. Do you remember?"

  He gave a small nod. "Gritty water."

  One corner of her mouth quirked up. "Yeah, I bet it was."

  "Hey, where was your car? Mike said you ran out of gas?" The man from the second cage had moved to crouch near
the wall separating the two cages. He kept his voice low, glancing at the other end of the room.

  The girl squinted her eyes. "I think it was in Waterville. I'm not sure where the town line is near there. Why?"

  The man grunted. "I've been trying to figure out where we are. Fred and I were both staying at a shelter in Campello. That junkie I told you they just took away, she said she was from Foxton. She figured she was riding for half the night to get here, but she wasn't too good with time. Fred said he fell asleep, so he don't know. I know it was a couple of hours ride, 'cuz I had to take a leak and that guy refused to stop." The man shook his head. "Piece of work, some of these guys."

  Matt could see the girl's curiosity increase. She lifted her head and gazed at the back wall, but not like she was really seeing it.

  "We were in the van for about an hour. I think where we are is pretty rural, because there weren't a lot of street lights toward the end of the ride."

  The man grunted again. He squinted at the floor as though picturing a map on it. "So, we've got to be south of Campello, then. South, southeast, something like that, if your trip was shorter, and the junkie's was longer. Huh. Maybe she did get that part right, or near to."

  Matt wasn't sure why it mattered. He could think of a more important question. "Do you know what they want with us?"

  The blonde pursed her lips, glancing at the man and beyond him, into the other cage. Matt turned his head slowly, following her gaze and trying not to let the fact his vision was moving at a different speed than his head make him sick again. There was a big tan cat sitting up on the bunk in the end cage.

  "Isn't that the cat that was in the back of the van?" he murmured from the side of his mouth.

  The blonde shook her head. She opened her mouth to answer, but the other man spoke first.

  "That used to be Fred. The one in the van was probably Maria, or Carl. They're both the same kind." His mouth twisted in half a smirk, his eyes almost gleeful as he watched Matt.

  Matt wondered what sort of reaction he was waiting for. He frowned, then tried to stop as the pull from his brow furrowing increased the pain behind his temple. His eyes sought the blonde's and he waited for her to explain.

  "Joe, that's not very nice," she scolded the man, then sighed. She met Matt's eyes. "I know what this is going to sound like, but I'm not joking with you or trying to be funny. What Joe means is that these people..." she licked her lips and glanced away, but then met his eyes again. "These people are shapeshifters. They can turn into animals. They've been abducting homeless people and doing experiments on them, trying to see if they can turn them into shapeshifters, too."

  It was suddenly too warm. He could feel his pulse quickening, felt his eyes sweating. He shoved away from her, putting his back in the farthest corner he could get to. He remembered in a flash watching the blonde get into her little black car, thinking she would never go for a guy like him. He'd still let himself think she was nice, though. Not like the others, the girls who made fun of him for struggling to read, or not being able to do numbers at the board in school. And now she was pretending she believed this craziness—for what? To get him to believe it, too? To make him look stupid?

  He glared at the other man. The man was chuckling to himself. Sure, go ahead and laugh. Jerk. They both were. He opened his mouth to tell them exactly that when the cat in the last cage let out a strangled sort of yowl and dropped off the bunk. It hit the floor and stayed there, hissing and twitching.

  The big man who had checked Matt's head and taken his blood jumped up from where ever he had been sitting in the other end of the large room, cursing into a phone, and ran to the end cage. He fumbled for keys from his pocket and jammed one at the lock. It took him a couple of tries before he was able to get the door opened. A running stream of curses spilled from his lips as he dropped to his knees near the cat.

  The elevator opened and a man and woman flew out, both heading straight to the last cage.

  "Get me a collection kit!" The big guy had a stethoscope against the cat's chest, but Matt couldn't see how he could hear anything with the noise from the other's loud steps. The woman ran to do as he ordered, bringing back a needle and some collection tubes.

  The man stood outside the cage, feet wide apart and hands on his hips. His face was set, his lips pressed together. "What happened to protocol, Roger?"

  The kneeling man held out his hand to the woman for the collection kit and threw a scowl over his shoulder at the other man. "We have to see if the cells are in lysis. I told you, I think that's what is happening but I've never been able to get a sample during the episode. This could give us the answers we've needed!"

  The man outside the cage shook his head but didn't say anything more. The woman glanced between the two before entering the cage and kneeling next to the cat. She quickly ripped the packaging from the needle and handed it to the man, Roger, then readied a number of vials.

  Despite his efforts, Matt felt his eyes drawn repeatedly back to the action in the other cage. The blonde and Joe stared unabashedly.

  "Is he going to make it?" Joe appeared to be asking the man standing outside the cages.

  The man lifted a corner of his mouth in a sneer, looked like he was going to spit on the floor but then thought better of it. "Doesn't look good, does it?"

  The woman stood, gathering the filled vials in one hand and holding the used needle in the other. Roger glanced up at her, opening his mouth to speak, when the cat sprang forward and latched onto his arm with its teeth. He let out a scream, followed by another string of curses as he tried to dislodge the animal.

  A deafening crack froze all action in the room for a shattering second.

  Matt caught movement from the corner of his eye and watched the man outside the cages calmly putting his gun back in its holster at his hip.

  "We have protocols in place for a reason, isn't that what you like to say, Roger? Our research is only as good as our methods?"

  He stalked back to the elevator. Roger wrenched his arm from the dead cat's grasp and stood, looking dazed. Blood dripped down his forearm and off his fingers.

  "Roger! Put pressure on it and lift it up! Come on, man, get it together!" The woman dropped the used needle and snapped her fingers in his face.

  Roger blinked once, then again, before appearing to snap out of it. He lifted his hand above his shoulder and ran to the bathroom. When he reappeared, red blooms were blossoming on the paper towels wrapped around his arm. The woman called to him from the other end of the room. She opened a first aid kit across a table there.

  Joe crouched in a back corner of his cage and covered his head with his arms, hiding his face. Matt watched the blonde approach him slowly, hesitant. His brain felt sluggish again, stuck like a two-wheel drive truck in axle-deep mud.

  Her voice was soft. "I wasn't teasing, Matt. I told you you wouldn't believe me." She sighed, still keeping her voice gentle. "You just heard Mike, right? This is their research. We," she gestured in a circle that encompassed the cages and herself, Joe, and finally him, "are their research."

  Chapter thirty-three

  Kelly waited until Mike had pushed the tray through the trap door and moved to pass Joe's tray before moving to pick up the food. After the breakfast tray that first morning with the spoiled juice she had tried not to eat what they gave her, but eventually she broke. She was starving, her stomach growing louder and more insistent. Matt hadn't been able to keep anything down the first day, but he'd been feeling better once they started treating his concussion pain.

  "Sandwiches and apples. Looks like juice again, but there's bottles of water, too."

  She carried the tray over to the bunk and took one of the plates. Matt took a plate and a bottle of water and returned to his spot against the back wall. Kelly took a seat between him and Joe, who was already wolfing his sandwich down in the corner of his cage.

  "Do you think my daughter will ever find out what happened to me?" Joe's question was a little hard to decipher, sp
oken around a mouthful of turkey sandwich.

  Kelly had just taken a bite and didn't answer right away. When she swallowed, she shot him a glance before taking another. "Where are you from, Joe? How many kids do you have?"

  Joe grunted, swishing a bit of juice around his mouth before responding. "Upstate New York, mostly. I worked for a trucking company for a while, going cross country. Delivering goods to big stores, like Walmart, mostly." He spoke around his apple, finishing it off and tossing the core back onto the tray. "I got two kids, but only one that wants anything to do with me. She's in New York. She's smart. She's got a couple a kids already, but she's a hard worker, she'll do good by 'em."

  Kelly listened, nodding encouragingly. It was easier to keep Joe talking by asking questions than redirect him if he started poking at Matt. For some reason he seemed to find perverse enjoyment in needling Matt, trying to get a rise out of him. "What about your other kid?"

  Joe shrugged and pressed his lips together in a firm line. The effect was less intimidating than it might have been if he'd had more teeth. "He's a mama's boy, that one. Don't want to work at nothing but basketball. Couldn't get him off the court! An' his mother had all the excuses for why he didn't get the chores around the house done. Lazy, that's all." He spat the last line.

  Matt had finished all the food on his plate and half his water bottle. He twisted the cap off and took another swig. The action seemed to remind Joe he was there.

  "Prob'ly like him, that one." His face wore a vindictive sneer. "Not good for nothin'."

  "Or, maybe he's embarrassed his dad's a mean drunk." Matt's quiet comment was like a valve on a pressure cooker, starting out slow but building with increased steam. "Maybe he's actually a good kid but his dad is so drunk all the time he never sees it. Maybe he's glad his dad's not around all the time, so he can pretend he's safe with just him and his mom." His voice had grown louder and faster, and he glared past Kelly at Joe.