Stolen Secret

by Piper Dow

  A heavy vibration sounded on the other side of the wall, making Kelly jump and knock into Matt's chest. They froze in place again as they heard the door to the elevator slide open.

  "I'm just going to check on Roger again. I think that bite might be infected—he was looking a little glassy when I took the supper trays up." It was Maria. Matt's fingers dug into Kelly's shoulder.

  "That's what he gets for getting into the cage with him. Drop me on the way up, I'm going to hit the hay early." That was Mike's voice, coming closer.

  Kelly held her breath, silently praying they both left quickly. The elevator door slid shut again, its bangs oddly echoing in the stairway. Matt leaned down to her ear. "It's only going to take her seconds to see we're gone and check this stairway! We need to leave now!"

  Kelly hoped the vibration of the elevator masked any more squeaking stair treads as they sped down the last few steps and pulled the door open. She glanced around to get her bearings. The elegant hallway was empty. Matt strode with purpose past the arched doorways to the entrance they had come in. Kelly scurried after him, scanning the rooms nervously as they moved.

  "There's a fire in the lab!" Maria's shout sounded too close. Kelly's eyes found a speaker near the ceiling. Maria let out a stream of curses as she looked to the cages. "They're out of the cell! They've escaped!" Thunderous footsteps pounded overhead.

  "Go, go, go!" Kelly urged, stumbling as she and Matt tried to get out at the same time. The knob seemed stiff and unwilling to turn but finally gave and they were out in the night.

  Chapter thirty-nine

  The freezing air bit at her face and ears, but Kelly ignored it. She raced away from the building, avoiding the front where the lights shone down over the entrance. Matt soon outpaced her, his longer legs eating up the lawn as he raced toward the tree line. Out in the open, they could see by the dim light of the moon what they couldn't see through the window. There was a storm coming. Whether it would help them or hurt them in their attempt to flee remained to be seen.

  Kelly reached the shelter of the trees before she allowed herself to glance back at the building. It was a huge estate, three stories high with a couple of wings and a vast manicured landscaping. Lights blazed from windows of all three floors in the wing they had just escaped, though the other wing of the building was surprisingly dark. As she turned away to continue her flight, she realized that the flickering in the third floor windows revealed a growing blaze in the lab.

  "The road has to be this way." Matt held his arms up to protect his face from branches as he ran.

  Kelly didn't waste any breath answering him, just followed in his wake. She bent low to avoid some of the heavier branches, but still felt her eyes water as a springier branch slapped her face. A cramp grew under her rib and her legs were filling with lead, but still she ran as fast as she could. She glanced back again but the route they had taken led them away from the edge of the lawn and all she could see was a warm glow of light.

  Matt stumbled to a stop, bent over and bracing his hands on his legs to catch his breath. Kelly slowed as she approached, nearly sobbing out loud. They had reached the street. Chest heaving, she struggled to catch her breath, too. Before either could get a word out, though, an ear-splitting shriek sounded to their left.

  Matt cursed under his breath. Kelly whirled toward the sound and found its source, less than a hundred feet away. The mountain lion was huge, its spitting snarl easily carrying across the wooded space between them. It was Mike, Kelly knew. Just like she knew that he would love nothing more right now than for her to try to run. He didn't run at them, but stalked menacingly closer. Matt stepped between her and the animal. Kelly gripped his shirt, pulling him toward the street with her. She knew it was futile, she knew they didn't have a chance, but still, she backed away.

  Lights swept around the corner and lit the woods in front of her. Kelly turned wildly, hope spring-boarding her into the street, windmilling her arms like a mad woman. "Help! Help us!"

  The car skidded to a stop. Kelly ran to the driver's door sobbing, her relief making her nearly incoherent. The driver stared through the glass with his mouth falling open. Her eyes found his, registering his shock as she recognized his face. It was Drew, from the adventure course.

  "Please, help us!" Kelly sobbed.

  As though snapped from a trance, Drew motioned for her to climb into the back seat. Kelly shouted Matt's name, urging him to climb in behind her. Kelly could see the tan form charging as Matt turned his back to climb in, knew what he was about to do, but was powerless to prevent it. She grabbed Matt's shoulders and tugged as the cat grabbed onto his leg and tried to pull him from the car.

  "Drew—drive! Just go!" she screamed, trying to slam the door on the cat to make him let go.

  Matt shouted and punched at the cat's head. Drew stepped on the gas and the cat tried to hang on, biting and clawing as it was dragged, but had to let go. Kelly reached past Matt to slam the door closed.

  "What on earth is going on?" Drew sped down the street, repeatedly glancing into his mirrors to see if the cat was coming after them.

  Kelly fell back on the seat trembling. She was still out of breath from racing through the woods, but her mind was racing as fast as her pulse.

  "Drew, where are we? What town are we in?" she demanded. She pulled her shirt off, stripping down to her tank top, then twisted the shirt into a long length. She worked it under Matt's thigh and tied it tightly above where it was bleeding to try to slow the blood loss. She avoided inspecting the wounds, raw and exposed from the cat's bite and claws where it had tried to hold on. "Is there a hospital near here? He's bleeding pretty bad."

  Drew nodded, taking a fork in the road onto another street. "Yeah, okay. We're in Bournedale. I can get you to the hospital in about 20 minutes. But, what was that? What's going on? You know you've been on the news as missing?" He studied her in the rear view mirror.

  "Yeah—these Shades kidnapped us, and they've been holding us captive."

  Matt groaned, his head thrown back on the headrest. His hands were slick with blood as he gripped his leg. He inhaled through his nose, gritting his teeth.

  "Hang on, Matt," Kelly murmured, scanning his face anxiously to see if he was going to pass out.

  "What Shades—at the Morganzer place?" Drew sounded incredulous. "That's near where I picked you up, but what would they want to kidnap you for?" His scrutiny in the mirror was harder now, his eyes uncertain.

  Kelly's eyes met his unflinchingly, but her chest felt tight again. "What do you mean, the Morganzer place? Drew?" Her eyes jumped between his, searching. Flashbacks of Drew, flashing his toothy grin after grabbing her their first class, holding her arms as they crossed teams on the balance beam, leaning down and offering her his hand to climb the giant ladder, laughing with the others at something Tim said, sashaying out in his huge Nimrav Shadeform.

  Drew shrugged his shoulders, returning his attention to the road. "The Morganzers, they have this huge estate near where you were. It's a Shade organization. I always think of them like the Elks or the Lions clubs, you know, doing good things in the community, but mostly just in the Shadows. But I can't see them kidnapping people, Kelly."

  "Unless this area is filled with huge estates owned by Shades, they've been doing genetic experiments on homeless people." She hesitated, unsure how much to say. A sudden question occurred to her. "What were you doing there, do you live around there?"

  Drew steered onto the on ramp and checked his side mirror to merge onto the highway. "I was heading to my aunt's house. I'm house sitting for her while she's on vacation. I live in Ellisville, but I've been going to Bournedale my whole life. I used to spend summers with my grandparents there. It's a Shade-friendly area."

  Kelly wanted, desperately, to believe him. She had learned to trust him in the course, hadn't she? But trusting him in a class designed to inspire positive relationships between Lights and Shades was so much easier than trusting a Shade whose form was a breed of cat, whe
n she had just been held captive by other cat Shadeforms.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled, trying to slow her racing heart. She focused on her feet, sitting precariously on the discarded mail and fast food trash on the floor of the car. She couldn't handle one more disappointment right now, could she God? As sure as she had felt a prompting to act when Roger was rocking on his stool, she felt a reassurance to trust Drew now.

  Kelly opened her eyes and found Drew watching her in the mirror again. She tried to give him a small smile, managing a grimace. "I can't imagine where we'd be right now, if you hadn't been driving by just then. Thank you." She shuddered as the thought of Mike's expression when he'd told her to put the collar on the first time suggested he wouldn't have been quick to finish them off. Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to talk to her mom. "Drew? Can I use your cell phone?"

  Chapter forty

  Kelly jumped to her feet as her parents rushed through the door. Her face crumpled, hot tears spilling down her cheeks. She threw herself into her mother's embrace and felt her dad's hand on the back of her head. How they had managed to make it to the hospital as quickly as they had she didn't know, but Wayne, Samantha, and David coming through the door right behind them suggested an answer.

  "Shhh, shhh," Mom crooned, rocking her tightly as the sobs shook her body.

  Kelly tried to slow her tears, to take a breath, but the control and bravado she had gripped so tightly for the past week was gone. They stood in a small knot, her parents' arms wrapped around her, supporting her in the middle of the emergency room waiting area.

  David cleared his throat. "I got them to give us a conference room to use. Do you think you can walk, Kelly?"

  Kelly nodded, sniffing and wiping her face. She leaned her head on Mom's shoulder and walked with her, still wrapped by one arm, through swinging doors and into the room one of the aides directed them to. Mom directed their steps to a couch on the back wall and sat next to her. Dad perched on the arm next to her, one hand rubbing her back. Kelly gazed numbly around what must be a family conference room. The thought of doctors having to have a different kind of conversation with her family started Kelly's tears again.

  Sam pulled a chair forward and reached for Kelly's hand. Her eyes were red, but she gave Kelly an encouraging smile. Wayne sat in a chair across the room, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He stared at Kelly's tear-streaked face with a frown but said nothing.

  David waited a few minutes before breaking into the reunion again. "Your mother said you were taken by Shades? Can you tell me what happened?" He had a small notebook and a pen in his hands. He was here on official business, then.

  Kelly loosed her hand from Sam and reached for a tissue from a box on the table. It was thin and hard, not like the kind her mother bought. She used it anyway, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose.

  When Drew had pulled up to the entrance and Kelly helped Matt stumble into the emergency room, the receptionist thought Kelly was injured too. Kelly assured her the blood was all from Matt. Once they took Matt into the back Kelly made use of the bathroom to wash up, and accepted a johnny to wear over her tank top. Now she pulled the johnny tighter, drawing strength from it's invisible hug. The movement made a rustling sound and she gasped, shocked that she could have momentarily forgotten. She pulled the notebooks from her waistband at her back, where her body heat had molded them to her shape.

  She opened to her sketches of the Morganzers and pointed to her drawing of the driver, recounting how he had taken her and Matt from the gas station. She heard Dad's sigh when she admitted to running out of gas but kept talking. She skimmed over some details, trying to spare her family pain. After ten minutes, she ran out of words.

  She passed the notebooks over to David and waited for the questions she knew he would have. Instead, he finished jotting something in his notebook and looked up. "I'm going to get a status on Matt. I'll be right back."

  Kelly nodded gratefully, eagerly. She'd asked, but the hospital staff had refused to let her in with Matt, and wouldn't tell her anything because she wasn't related to him. She hadn't even known his last name to tell them.

  "I don't understand how all of these people exist all around us and we've never realized." Dad stood and ran his hand through his hair. "How? Where?"

  Samantha gave him a sad smile. "Dad, Shannon's mother didn't even know Shannon was a Shade. Because of how they were hunted hundreds of years ago, they learned to hide themselves from even the ones they love. Their children are trained from the very youngest age that they are not safe if they let others know."

  Dad shook his head in astonishment. "There's nothing like that any of you are keeping from us, is there? Because, honestly, I'm not sure I could take that right now."

  Sam shook her head. "Nope. You all know about me!"

  Wayne shook his head, too. His face was pale. He had barely spoken since coming through the emergency room door.

  David's face appeared at the narrow window in the door a moment before he opened it. He closed the door before speaking. "I've arranged for Matt to be transferred to our facility for observation tonight. They had a surgeon in to look at his wounds, and they think he will heal okay without plastic surgery. They cleaned and stitched the bite. He'll have to keep it clean until it heals, but he should be okay."

  Kelly heaved a sigh of relief. She hadn't even realized she was holding her breath. She leaned back again, her mother's arm around her shoulders a comfort she hadn't fully appreciated in years.

  "Kelly, we need you to come, too." Instantly she was sitting upright again, her pulse quickening. David's smile was apologetic. "I know this isn't something you want to hear. But Kelly, we need to see if we can figure out what they did, what they injected you with. I got word there's a five-alarm fire in Bournedale, they've got mutual aid from every neighboring town trying to put it out. They'll be lucky if they can save anything."

  His eyes met hers and he swallowed uncomfortably before continuing. "All of their notes will have burned already. We need to see if there's any repercussions from what they did..." David's voice trailed off as the tears welled in Kelly's eyes.

  Samantha frowned at David. "Can't we take her home, and bring her to the hospital tomorrow? She can have a night in her own home, take a shower and get a good night's sleep?" She wrinkled her nose and waved a hand at Kelly, and Kelly suddenly wondered how bad she smelled. Surreptitiously she bent her head and sniffed. She would love a shower, but she didn't think she smelled that bad. Her eyes traveled over the clothes she'd worn for more than a week, now covered with Matt's blood.

  David shook his head. "I'm sorry, but we don't know what they did, and we don't know what it's doing inside her. Kelly," he looked at her quickly to include her in the conversation before returning his attention to Sam, "you just said that the others—" he broke off abruptly and cocked his head, listening to a growing commotion outside the room.

  Kelly heard it too, and recognized a shout in the middle of the others. "That's Matt!" She jumped up from the couch and ran to the door. David was ahead of her, racing to a curtained room in the emergency room where several people in scrubs were gathered, apparently attempting to subdue an unruly patient. Kelly followed. She ducked under an arm and saw two men in uniforms trying to hold Matt down on a gurney. He struggled against their hold, neck muscles taught and hands grasping as he fought. A doctor stood nearby with a syringe, filling it from a small bottle of clear fluid.

  "Matt!" Kelly tried to reach his side but someone held her back. She could feel his terror, could feel her own heart pick up pace at the sight of it. "Matt, you're okay, they're not going to hurt you!" .

  Matt's panicked eyes found her. "I'm not going back there!"

  Kelly wiggled free of the arm restraining her and she reached his side. "Matt, you have to stop fighting or they'll sedate you. We're not going back. We're not," she soothed.

  Matt's eyes focused on someone behind her. "He said he wants to transfer me to another facility." He spat t
he words, but his struggles against the officers had ceased.

  Kelly didn't need to turn to know he was talking about David. She gripped Matt's hand, squeezing to regain his attention. "Matt, I'm going, too. He's not with—" She just caught herself, choosing her words carefully because of all the people crammed into the room. "Matt, the facility he's talking about specializes in...unique diagnosis like...we need to be checked for. We have to know if we...contracted anything." She pleaded with him silently, praying he would understand, that he would agree to come.

  Matt's tortured eyes stayed locked on hers and she held her breath. Finally, he gave a curt nod, closing his eyes and laying his head back on the pillow. The guards relaxed their grips but remained wary. The doctor held the syringe ready, undecided.

  Kelly turned to David, but didn't release Matt's hand. "Please, can't you tell he's had enough needles?"

  In the bright fluorescent lighting overhead the bruising from the needles looked even worse than they had in the lab. Kelly's arms next to Matt's told a similar story of too many poorly executed blood draws.

  David stepped forward. He put a hand out to stop the doctor and spoke directly to Matt. "Matt, we don't want to have to sedate you, but we also cannot risk you injuring someone. We're going to have to strap you to the stretcher for the ambulance ride. Are you going to be able to manage that without sedation?"

  Matt's eyes flew open, a hint of panic beginning to well in them again. "I don't need to go in an ambulance. I can walk—I walked in here. I can go in a car." His speech was fast, his hand becoming clammy in Kelly's grasp.

  The doctor took one step and jabbed the needle into his arm, depressing the plunger. Kelly's gasp underscored Matt's roar of outrage before he slumped back, limp, on the stretcher. The doctor was already preparing another syringe from a different bottle.