Deception So Dark

by Clara Kensie

  “Tessa, honey, there was an accident,” Dennis said.

  “That was no accident,” Kellan snapped. He placed a laptop on the table and connected it to a projector aimed at a big screen on the wall. “The people driving in the car behind Aaron recorded the whole thing on their phone,” he said. “The idiots posted it on YouTube.”

  As the video buffered, more employees squeezed into the room. Nathan, lip curled, pushed his way to the front of the crowd while Kellan shouted instructions. “Bring me someone from the Techno department. I need them to wipe this video from the internet.”

  Everyone hushed as the video started. Shaky and blurry, it showed fluffy white clouds in the distance over gold mountains. The cameraman was a passenger in a car that drove on an ill-paved road, about halfway up a mountain. Ahead of them was a gray sedan.

  “That’s Aaron’s rental car,” Kellan said. “Up ahead of him, in the blue Camry,” he said, pointing to a blue car further up the road, “are the targets. Jillian and Logan Carson.”

  The camera was focused on the scenery, but I was focused on the blue car as it jostled and bumped its way up the mountain road. The image was too small and too blurry to see the occupants inside. The camera lazily shifted to the side window, to record the mountain’s steep cliffs. Then, offscreen, the driver exclaimed, “Hey. Hey! That car’s going off the road!”

  The view rotated back to the windshield, just in time to capture Aaron’s gray sedan swerving off the road and crashing through the guardrail. It hovered in place, dozens of feet in the air.

  “Do you see that?” the cameraman shouted. “It’s floating! How’s it doing that?”

  A blurry Aaron, eyes bulging behind his overly large glasses, pounded at the window. “Look!” the cameraman shouted. “The guy’s trying to get out!”

  Then the sedan, with Aaron in it, simply…

  Dropped.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” The driver screeched to a stop. Still holding the camera, the passenger ran out to the side of the road. He recorded the sedan as it hit the mountainside, then tumbled, tumbled, tumbled, crumpling and breaking, glass spraying, one door flying off beyond the camera’s range, before finally coming to a stop against a boulder.

  Then it exploded in a ball of fire.

  Yelling and cursing with dismay, the cameraman turned the view to the side of the road. “911! Call 911!”

  The camera’s view pivoted, landing on Jillian and Logan, who also stood on the side of the road, their blue car parked at an angle to the side. Jillian, her hair dyed a light red and cut to her shoulders, sobbed into her hands. Logan, his arm around Jillian, watched calmly. “We did the right thing,” he said, his voice muffled but icy. “I’ve always said we should fight instead of run. This time we did. And we won. If he sends anyone else after us, we’ll kill them too. We have no other choice.”

  He turned to the guy holding the camera and snatched it from him. “You hear that, Dennis Connelly?” His brown eyes wild and enraged, he snarled directly into the camera lens. “You didn’t think we’d notice that guy tailing us? Keep sending your people after us, Connelly, and we’ll keep killing them. Or how about next time you come after us yourself? I cannot wait to kill you.” He shoved the camera back to its owner. “Go ahead and post that video online,” he said. “Let him see it. Let everyone see it.”

  The cameraman continued to record Logan as he led a weeping Jillian to their car and placed her inside. Then, tires screeching, they sped off up the mountain, passing a metal sign that read Caution: Dangerous Curves Ahead.

  The sign reflected the sun, and it flashed silver. Brilliant, blinding silver.

  ❀

  The video ended, and in the silence the fog whooshed in, but only I could see it.

  Well, the Nightmare Eyes did too.

  Trembling, Tristan took me under his arm. “Aaron’s dead?” he asked, his voice trembling too.

  “He’s alive,” Kellan said, and the crowd slumped with relief. “But barely. He was thrown out of the car, but was hit by debris from the explosion. He was airlifted to the nearest hospital. Broken bones, lacerations, cerebral contusions, burns over forty percent of his body.”

  Broken bones. Lacerations. Burns. My brother and sister had done that to Aaron. They used their psychokinesis to push his car over the cliff. They tried to kill him.

  All Aaron wanted was to be Jillian’s hero.

  The fog thickened, darkened, making me dizzy and woozy. I put my head to my knees. “Tristan, I’m going to—”

  He was already placing a wastebasket under me, and I vomited into it.

  Tristan and Dennis moved in, flanking me on either side, as I sniffled and wiped my mouth. The crowd, Nathan included, had watched as I heaved and retched into the wastebasket. Their expressions were not compassionate. My siblings tried to kill the son of the APR’s executive director.

  Dennis rubbed his chin. “What’s your next step, Kellan? I think you should call off the investigation for a few weeks. Let the kids calm down.”

  “A few weeks?” I cried. “No. Please.”

  “Oh, no,” Kellan said. “We did it your way for eight years, Dennis. Your kinder, gentler way of doing things got us nowhere while the Kitteridge Killers roamed the country, murdering everyone. Now their kids are doing the same thing.”

  He nodded to a small group of investigators with red badges hanging around their necks. “You, you, and you,” he said, pointing to two women and a man. “Drop everything else you’re doing. You’re on my team now, and this case is our top priority. I’m tired of those Carsons killing people, especially our people. I’m not going to risk another murder.”

  Kellan turned to Dennis, a silent message flying between them.

  Dennis turned white. “No,” he said. “You can’t. Kellan, they’re just kids.”

  “Those kids are becoming more and more unstable. Just like their mother,” Kellan said. “First they assaulted that motel manager in Tennessee, and now they used their psionic powers with the intent to kill. My order is completely justified, and Beverly Jacobs will support it.”

  “What order is that?” Tristan asked.

  Kellan’s gaze swept to me, landing for just a moment, before he turned to the investigators. “When you find those Carson kids,” he said, “shoot to kill.”

  I blinked, unable to believe what I’d just heard. John Kellan had just ordered my siblings to be killed. Not found and brought back safely to me, not captured, not tranquilized. Killed. He wanted them dead.

  Kellan shrugged into his black APR jacket and shoved a hat on his head. “I need to go tell Beverly Jacobs what the Carson kids did to her son,” he muttered. The APR employees parted as he left the boardroom.

  “Wait! Please! You can’t kill them,” I cried, jumping up from the chair and pushing through the crowd, Tristan close behind.

  Someone grabbed my arm, preventing me from running after Kellan. “Let me go!” I turned to see that the person holding me back was Nathan Gallagher.

  “Get your hands off her, Gallagher,” Tristan growled, then stood back with a gasp. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re blocking my premonitions. That’s why they haven’t been working right. I thought it was my fault. I thought there was something wrong with me. But it’s not me. It’s you.”

  Nathan froze for one second, then his lip curled. “She’s Killers’ Spawn, Connelly. How can you be in love with that?”

  Tristan roared, then flew at Nathan. Dreadlocks sailing, Nathan leapt upon him with both hands.

  Dennis shouted, and Nathan’s brother Cole rushed in. As they tried to pull the boys apart, I slipped from the room and caught up with Kellan in the hall.

  “They thought Aaron was trying to kill them,” I cried, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket. “It was self-defense. They don’t know the truth. Kellan. M-Mr. Kellan. Please.”

  He pulled his jacket from my hand, then strode away without a word. I rushed after him again, but this time it was Dennis who held me back. “Let him g
o, Tessa.”

  “But he’s going to kill my brother and sister.”

  “The board will never allow it,” he said. “The APR doesn’t kill people, Tessa. Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless our lives are in jeopardy. Then we’re allowed to use deadly force. It’s been our policy since—”

  “Since my parents killed Nathan and Melanie’s dads.” I sank against the wall. “And tried to kill you.”

  Dennis sighed. “Yes.”

  My siblings had vowed, on camera, that they would kill every person who came after them. And they had the motivation and the means to do it.

  The APR employees filtered from the boardroom, rumbling amongst each other. Cole dragged Nathan out by the arm. They wore the same enraged expression. Nathan’s anger was aimed at me, but Cole’s was aimed at Nathan. “You’re a safeguard,” he yelled. “You’re supposed to protect people, not hurt them.” He shoved Nathan into a private office.

  Tristan came staggering out, his lip bloody and swollen. I regained my legs and ran over, then gently touched his lip. “Are you okay?”

  He grabbed me and drew me in. “I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. You told me he hated you, and I defended him. I thought I knew him.” He glared at the office where Cole had brought Nathan, a muscle pulsing in his jaw.

  I stopped him before he could burst into that office and attack Nathan again. “Tristan, we have to leave,” I said. “We have to go to Colorado. Now. We have to find Jillian and Logan before Kellan does.”

  Sucking in air, he put me under one arm and wiped the blood from his lip with his other. “I’m sorry, Tessa,” he said, taking another gulp of air. “But you can’t leave Lilybrook.”

  “You—” I stopped, frozen, mouth agape. “Even now? But Nathan won’t block your premonitions about me anymore. He wouldn’t dare. They’ll work now. You have to let me leave.”

  “My premonitions have nothing to do with it,” he said. “My mom’s dream is still a threat.”

  “But I’m the only one Jillian and Logan will trust. I’m the only one they won’t hurt.” I looked back at the crowd for support. They looked back at me, Killers’ Spawn, and they were unmoved.

  Dennis included. “We can’t risk three dead Carson kids.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll go with Kellan to talk to Beverly Jacobs. I’ll try to convince her to call off the shoot-to-kill order. Aaron is her son, but she’s a rational person. At this point, that’s about all we can do. Except hope that Jillian and Logan stay hidden long enough for us to figure something else out.”

  He glanced at Tristan. “Stay away from Nathan,” he said. “Let Cole and the board deal with him.”

  With a sympathetic squeeze of my shoulder, he rushed away to catch up with Kellan.

  Unbidden but welcomed, the fog rolled in to numb me as Tristan and I walked outside to his car. He kept me tight under his arm. He stood tall, chest thrust out, full of confidence now that he could depend on his warning premonitions again.

  HeTristan drove us back to the Connellys’ house. It would have been so easy for him to turn left onto Main Street, then left onto the highway, then west to Colorado. My yellow getaway bag was still in the trunk of his car.

  But no. He turned right onto Main Street, then right onto his street, then parked on his driveway and led me inside. “We just have to wait, and hope,” he said. “You stay in Lilybrook where it’s safe. My dad and I will deal with Kellan. I’ll fix everything. I promise.”

  I nodded, but I was tired of waiting. And hope, I’d learned, was useless. Hope wouldn’t save my brother and sister. Promises wouldn’t save them either.

  Only action would save them. And Tristan, in his desperate attempt to keep me safe from Deirdre’s dream of tiny houses with silver-walled rooms, refused to let me take action.

  I wasn’t going to hope. I couldn’t just sit back and let Tristan fix things for me anymore. I didn’t care about staying safe. I didn’t care about Deirdre’s dream. The only thing I cared about was Jillian and Logan.

  With Marmalade on my lap, I watched as Tristan opened his laptop and do some more research. I nodded at his reassurances that he would fix this for me, that all I had to do was stay here in Lilybrook where it was safe.

  But none of it sank in.

  My getaway bag was in the trunk of Tristan’s car.

  That one was useless.

  But I had another getaway bag, a denim bag I’d used for eight years while my family was on the run. Jillian and Logan had it now. They’d taken it with them when our parents sent them away that last night in Twelve Lakes.

  I knew how to find my brother and sister. But there was only one person who could help me, and I had ruined her life.

  ❀

  Tristan didn’t go to Heron University the next day. He was going to the APR, to try to convince Kellan to withdraw his shoot-to-kill order.

  I, on the other hand, told Tristan I wanted to go to school.

  “I can’t leave Lilybrook anyway,” I said. “And there’s nothing I can do about Kellan. If I try to convince him to change his mind, it’ll just make him more determined not to.” I wrapped my arms around his chest. “I may as well go to school. I know you’ll fix this for me.”

  Placated, he lifted my chin and kissed me tenderly. “I will,” he said. “I promise.”

  I even let Deirdre drive me to school.

  Instead of heading to my first period art class, I waited for Melanie Brunswick at her locker. She paused in her steps when she saw me, then continued forward. Her hair was down and she wore her usual Doc Martens with black tights and a black skirt.

  We stared at each other awkwardly. We both had reasons not to trust the other. My parents murdered her dad. Tristan broke up with her to be with me. Her best friend was Winter Milbourne, who hated me. And her uncle had just issued a shoot-to-kill order on my brother and sister.

  But she was the only person who could help me save their lives.

  “Melanie,” I said, thrusting out my chin, “I need your help.”

  “Me?” she said, opening her violet eyes wide. “Do you want me to talk to my uncle? He’d never listen to me.”

  “No. Don’t talk to your uncle,” I said, then leaned in closer. “You find lost things, right? That’s your psionic ability?”

  “Shh.” She looked over her shoulder at the other students in the hall, then softly said, “Yes.”

  “How do you do it?”

  She stepped closer to me. “I just need to know what you’re missing,” she said. “Then I see the item in my head. It works best with items you have an emotional connection to. Like jewelry. So if you lost your earring, I could tell you if it fell off at a restaurant or if it’s in a drawer somewhere. If you only lost a tube of lipstick, I probably couldn’t find it.”

  Perfect. I had a huge emotional connection to my missing item—a connection that meant life or death.

  “I lost a bag,” I said. It was my getaway bag, but I didn’t call it that because I didn’t want her to know I was looking for Jillian and Logan. Her uncle would read her mind, or Winter, and they would thwart my plan. “Can you find it for me?”

  “What does it look like?” she asked.

  “It’s a denim bag with a shoulder strap,” I said. The hallway was becoming crowded as more students stopped at their lockers or made their way to their first period class. “Light blue. Scuffed and worn. It has a zipper across the top.”

  “Is there anything inside?”

  “Not much. A pair of jeans, a sweater, jogging clothes, a hairbrush, a toothbrush,” I said. “And a book. Anne of Green Gables.” Tristan had given it to me in Twelve Lakes. He’d even signed an inscription inside the front cover. But Melanie didn’t need to know that.

  “A denim bag with a shoulder strap. Clothes and a book inside,” she repeated. “Okay. I’ll look.” She closed her eyes.

  I stood still. Bit my lips to stay quiet. Let her concentrate. A few feet away, a boy slammed his lock
er shut, and I shushed him.

  Melanie tilted her head, furrowed her brow. “There is no bag.”

  “Yes, there is,” I said. “I saw it a few weeks ago.” I saw it in a vision in the motel room in Tennessee. Jillian was going through it, crying and reminiscing.

  She only shrugged. “It must not exist anymore. Otherwise I would see it.”

  “Why wouldn’t it exist anymore?” I asked. “How can something just cease to exist?”

  Then I realized my siblings must have burned it. While my family was on the run, we’d always burned our things. Maybe Jillian and Logan had gotten tired of lugging my getaway bag around and burned it. I almost crumpled with disappointment.

  “The book still exists though,” Melanie said. “I can sense the book.”

  I almost leapt with joy. “Anne of Green Gables? Where is it?”

  “It’s inside a bag. Not your bag. A different bag.”

  “Where is that bag?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s dark inside the bag. But it’s moving fast. And there’s a humming.”

  “Like the trunk of a car?”

  Her face scrunched up. “No, it’s definitely not in a trunk. Too small and square. And it’s up too high to be in a trunk.”

  “A small, moving, humming square that’s up high,” I said. “What does that mean?”

  She opened her eyes and shrugged. “That’s what I saw. I don’t know what it is. Sorry.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter what it’s inside of,” I said with a sigh. “What I need to know is where it is. A town. I’ll even take a state.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “All I can do is see its surroundings. I wouldn’t know what town it’s in.” She looked down at her boots. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not very good.”

  Frustrated, I rubbed my fingertips into my eyes. “No, you’re amazing, Melanie. You’ve already been a big help.” Whatever that small, humming square was, it was moving. Which meant that Jillian and Logan were on the move too. “Will you keep looking? Once the book gets taken out of that square, you can describe its surroundings to me and I’ll take it from there.”