The Other

by L. J. Sellers

  But Heather had already hung up.

  Chapter 15

  Saturday, October 13, 5:45 a.m., Portland

  Rox paced her living room, waiting for Marty to come over. She’d been awake for an hour and had danced vigorously for half of it. Still, anxiety gripped her. This would be the most perilous extraction they’d ever tried. Not because they expected any physical danger from a sociopathic individual—as they’d experienced in the past—but they had a higher risk of arrest than ever before. This time, they would be interfering with state employees and violating a court order that stipulated a teenager’s incarceration. What could they be charged with besides trespassing? Kidnapping? Obstruction of justice? She wasn’t sure.

  Because nobody did this kind of thing!

  If they should end up facing a trial, a jury may not sympathize with Logan and his oddities, and consequently, might not give her and Marty any leniency. Maybe they should back out.

  No. Logan didn’t belong in the institution. He didn’t deserve to be isolated. Or to have his brain shocked with electrical current when he misbehaved. His mother was obviously heartless, and judges were often wrong. Sometimes the legal system was immoral. She knew that from working on the inside. The boy needed to be rescued.

  In the kitchen, she poured a second cup of coffee. She’d been up late creating paperwork for the transfer—by meticulously duplicating the state hospital’s logo and letterhead, based on images and forms she’d found on their website. If things went according to plan, no one would look at it closely.

  Marty’s knock was louder than usual, startling her. She rushed to the door and yanked it open, the world outside dark, cold, and still. Dressed in navy slacks and a pale-blue polo shirt, Marty asked, “Ready?”

  She waved him in. “You look like an aging waiter. Now I’m rethinking our choice of clothes.” She was dressed identically, with the idea that they would look like Serenity House orderlies.

  “A waiter?” Marty’s eyebrows waggled. “No, they wear black or white. We’re good. We checked the website.”

  They’d spent the previous afternoon planning the last-minute extraction, including renting a white van with a wheelchair lift. But Rox didn’t know if she could pull off such a serious pretense. “Maybe we should go back to the roadside distraction idea.”

  “No!” Marty practically shouted. “We’re not doing anything that makes us have to run for it.”

  Surprised by his volume, Rox gave him a wide-eyed look.

  “I’m sorry. I’m stressed about this one.” Marty rotated his shoulders and took deep breaths.

  “Me too.” They stood in the living room, looking at each other. After a moment, Rox said, “Worst case scenario, we ditch the van and the boy and disappear into the countryside.”

  “Let’s take a second vehicle and park it nearby, just in case.”

  “You drive the van, and I’ll take your sedan.”

  “Why my car?”

  “Mine is more likely to be stolen if we don’t get back to it quickly.” She grabbed her navy-blue sweatshirt and shoulder bag and grinned widely. “Let’s do this.”

  “You’re crazy, you know?” Marty shook his head and walked out.

  Rox followed. “I learned from the master.”

  Rox counted cars to distract herself as she followed Marty south on the freeway. They took the exit to 214, which ran east for a while, then south, parallel to I-5. After forty minutes on the road, the sun was just starting to rise, and some drivers had their lights off already. She hoped they weren’t too late.

  In another ten minutes, they saw a sign for the Mt. Angel hospital and turned off. The facility was another twelve miles east and not particularly close to the town it had been named after. Serenity House was farther north, near Woodburn, which they’d passed twenty minutes earlier. But they wouldn’t be taking Logan to his intended destination. They’d mapped a return route north on various back roads. Shay hadn’t contacted them this morning, but it was still early. Rox was working on the assumption that, if they couldn’t reach her afterward, Logan would be able to lead them to the home he’d lived in before his incarceration.

  First they had to succeed in getting someone at Mt. Angel to believe they were Serenity House staff members—then hand Logan off to them. So many things could go wrong.

  On McKee Wagon Road, about two miles from the hospital, Marty abruptly pulled off. As Rox made the turn to follow, an abandoned dairy came into sight. Marty crossed the gravel lot to the back of the property, and so did Rox. She parked the sedan behind a milking barn, locked it, and climbed into the white van.

  For a while, they were silent as they drove. “We could rehearse,” Marty eventually said.

  “The transfer probably won’t happen for hours. We’ll have plenty of time to kill.”

  “Maybe.”

  A few minutes later, Marty turned down an unmarked side road and parked in a spot they’d chosen yesterday during a recon mission. Nestled into a thicket of oak and willow trees, they were now two hundred yards from the hospital’s employee parking. Across an open field, they could see the outline of the concrete building, dimly lit by yellow exterior lights. The side lot was half full, but the front area was empty and still. Her stepdad pulled binoculars from his compact duffle bag and trained them on the vehicles closest to the side exit marked Admissions.

  “Damn!” Marty turned to her with a worried expression. “They have two transport vans.”

  They hadn’t counted on that. “Should we disable both?” Rox tugged on thin black gloves.

  “I don’t know. It may raise suspicion.”

  She shifted in her seat, anxious to get moving. “Let’s hope one van goes out on another mission.”

  “You’re ready?”

  She pulled the sweatshirt hood over her head and climbed out. Faster meant less exposure, so she broke into a run. The tools in her pocket-pouch bounced with every step on the hard lumpy field. They assumed the building had cameras near the entrances, but in the near-darkness of the early morning, she had little to fear until she reached the hospital’s vans.

  A few moments later, she crossed from the field into the parking lot and cut straight through several rows of cars, noticing that the nicest ones were parked nearest the building. Two vans sat side-by-side in an area with a wide space around it. Directly in front of the vehicles was the garage-style overhead door and the regular entrance she’d noticed on her first recon.

  Rox ducked down behind the larger vehicle—an ambulance-type medical van—probably equipped with life-saving equipment. Even though the facility was called a hospital, that was a euphemism. It wasn’t equipped for any kind of emergency, so this medical truck was likely used to transport patients in crisis to real hospitals. Logan wouldn’t likely be moved in it.

  Rox scurried to the smaller van and kept herself flat against the side as she approached the front end. She intended to pull the engine relay, if she could find it, or the fuse for the ignition. Both would keep the van from starting. A blade to the tire would be simpler, but it would also look deliberate and be easy to spot and fix.

  Keeping her head down—in case the camera over the door covered this area—she rounded the front frame. Just as she reached under the hood for the release, she heard tires rolling into the employee parking lot.

  Shit! Rox abandoned the engine sabotage and pulled her utility knife. She stabbed the driver’s side tire and heard the hiss of a leak. Keeping low, she darted through the employee vehicles. When she felt clear, she glanced back to see the arriving car pull up to the front and park a few feet from where she’d just been. Heart pounding, Rox sprinted across the field toward the shrubs.

  Back in the van, she gulped air with aching lungs.

  “That was such a short run; you must be really out of shape.”

  Rox couldn’t respond or even laugh. She took a few long breaths, then asked, “Did you see the car pull in right next to me?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I was worried.” He
patted her back. “You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you get the job done?”

  “I had to slash a tire because of the interruption, but yeah, the van is temporarily disabled.”

  “Now we wait.” Marty leaned back in his seat.

  Heart still pounding, she wasn’t ready to settle in. “What if they bring him out through the front?” Rox asked. “It has a wider entry with an automatic door.”

  “We’ve discussed that.”

  “I know. I’m nervous.” After a moment she added. “I think they’ll come out the man-sized door. The overhead is probably used only for admissions or emergencies.”

  Marty squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t get chatty on me. This could be a long wait.”

  “Chatty?” Rox laughed. “No one has ever said that about me before.” Suddenly overheated, she yanked off her sweatshirt.

  “This whole thing is a first for me too,” Marty said. “But I’ve been on some stakeouts that lasted all night, and the only thing worse than boredom is a nonstop talker.” He gave her a quick look. “I’m referring to a partner I worked with in my early days as a downtown officer.”

  “Who?”

  “Not anyone you know. He quit after a few years.”

  “He probably got tired of you shushing him.”

  Marty rolled his eyes, then pulled up the binoculars. “I see another vehicle pulling in, and it’s driving around to the staff parking lot.”

  Rox had been trying to narrow down the transfer time. “I predict a nine-fifteen departure. After the patients’ breakfast and morning medications, but before visiting hours start.”

  “Yeah, we talked about that too.”

  “I know. I’ll be quiet now.”

  Chapter 16

  Two hours later, the door she’d been watching finally moved. A big male orderly in a white shirt pushed a teenage boy in a wheelchair. Her heart pulsed and Rox smacked Marty’s shoulder. He had nodded off listening to music on his headphones.

  “What?” He sat up, blinking his eyes.

  “He’s coming out.”

  Marty snatched the binoculars from her, and Rox pulled out her phone. “Can you tell for sure it’s Logan?”

  “I think so. He’s blond and the right age. He also has only one attendant pushing him.” Marty snapped his head toward her. “This is it. Make the call.” He started the engine.

  “I’m on it.” Rox had the hospital’s number keyed in.

  The young receptionist’s now-familiar voice answered immediately. “Mt. Angel Campus, Oregon State Psychiatric Hospital.”

  “This is Dr. Edwards from Serenity House. I wanted to let you know our driver will be there shortly to pick up Logan Wilmont.”

  An awkward silence. “Uh, I know he’s scheduled for this morning, but I thought the state was bearing the cost of the transfers. Let me check with my supervisor.” The woman sounded unsure, as if she doubted her authority to question the process.

  Rox played on that. “I discussed this with both Director Strada and Dr. Carlson last week and the issue was settled.” An idea came to Rox and she threw it in. “We’ve heard reports of abuse by state employees during transfers, and we’re not willing to risk having new patients come to us traumatized.”

  A longer silence. “I think Logan is on his way out now.”

  “Great. Our driver should be there.” Rox hung up.

  They were already en route, but Marty gunned the engine and made a quick turn onto Recovery Lane, the facility’s aptly-named private road. Rox pulled out a new burner phone, keyed in the hospital’s number, and handed the cell to Marty. “Your turn.”

  He held it to his ear, his eyes on the asphalt ahead. The receptionist took a while to answer this time. Marty cut into her greeting. “Hey, I’m here in the parking lot waiting to visit my daughter, and I see smoke coming from one of the windows on the second floor. You’d better get someone up there.” Marty hung up and turned to her with a grin. “A little chaos into the mix.”

  Their hope was that the emergency would override a deeper look into why Serenity House had sent their own driver. They both reached for the dark-blue baseball-style caps on the dashboard and put them on. Rox pulled the clipboard with phony paperwork from her shoulder bag and slipped on sunglasses. She was ready.

  Marty turned into the parking lot and headed around to the Admissions side. Logan, still in the wheelchair, sat on the sidewalk by the door, staring into the nearby meadow. The big orderly squatted next to the slashed tire, shaking his head.

  They pulled up behind the van, blocking it. With a glance at each other for courage, they both climbed out. The sun had risen in the sky and warmed the air, but an ozone hint of fall was in the air. Rox could smell her own sweaty armpits too.

  Marty strode up to the attendant, who had stood to stare at them. The big guy looked puzzled. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re from Serenity House, here to transport Logan Wilmont.” Marty nodded at the boy. “I assume that’s him.” Behind Logan, the door stood open, leading into a dark hall.

  “This is all news to me.” The orderly’s hands were on his hips, his eyes pinched.

  “Call your desk person,” Marty responded. “She’s up to date.”

  The big guy glanced at the tire, looked back at Logan, then nodded. “Do you have a wheelchair lift? If not, I can load him in.”

  “We’ve got it.” Marty moved toward the boy, and Rox stepped forward, just to stay close to the orderly.

  Suddenly, Logan stood and yelled, “I see you out there!”

  They all turned in the direction he’d pointed.

  Rox thought she saw movement by a tree, but a split second later, the scene was still. Just a grassy area dotted with shrubs, and beyond it, the cluster of oaks and willows they’d been parked near earlier.

  She turned back just in time to see Logan shuffle through the door and into the dark hallway.

  “Oh fuck!” The orderly slammed a hand against his disabled van.

  Rox didn’t move. They hadn’t prepared for this.

  “You might as well head back,” the orderly commanded. “The transfer will have to wait until we get him settled down.”

  Marty spoke up. “That shouldn’t take long. We can wait.”

  “No.” The big guy shook his head. “This whole thing feels off to me.”

  “Fine.” Rox shrugged as if she didn’t care. “We have another pickup anyway.” She turned and strode to the van, trying hard not to run.

  Marty followed and climbed when she did. “Goddammit. Of all the times for the kid to hallucinate.”

  Rox slammed her door shut. “We need to get the hell out of here before someone discovers we’re not really from Serenity.”

  Chapter 17

  Rox made PBJs—comfort food—while Marty went next door to his place to grab a couple of beers. Stomach growling, she couldn’t hold back, so she ate half her sandwich. The adrenaline of the morning had apparently burned some calories. Her six-foot body seemed to need constant fuel. She opened her snack cupboard and found a half-eaten bag of BBQ chips. Nice. She set them on the table and sat down.

  Marty hustled in, carrying a six-pack. “I’ve got some Hair of the Dog.” One of their favorite breweries. He glanced at her plate. “You couldn’t wait three minutes?”

  “No. Sorry.” She’d learned that it was socially better to wait and eat with the other person, but she didn’t understand it. Also, Marty didn’t really care. He just liked to give her shit sometimes.

  He opened two brews, handed her one, and sat down. He held up his bottle. “Here’s to not being arrested.”

  Rox laughed softly and clinked beers with him. “We almost pulled it off.”

  “The damn kid sabotaged us.” Her stepdad took a long swallow. "That’s why I wanted to hear about his delusions. But even knowing, I wouldn’t have predicted that.”

  Rox played the scene back in her mind. “I thought I saw movement where he was pointing, so he’s not
totally crazy.” She wolfed the second half of her sandwich, then looked up to see Marty staring at her. “What?”

  “You’re not thinking of trying again, are you?”

  “We can’t just give up. We’ve never quit before.”

  Marty shook his head and picked up his PBJ. “It’s a locked, state institution. We had one opportunity with the transfer, and it’s blown. We’re done. Give the aunt her money back—unless she’s willing to wait a few months after he’s moved.”

  Damn. He sounded serious. “I know they’ll be suspicious of anything involving Logan for a while, but we can still get inside.”

  He raised a bushy eyebrow. “So? Even if we make it in—and I’m skeptical about that—how do we smuggle out an unpredictable teenage boy who hallucinates?”

  She’d been brainstorming ideas on the ride home. “We medicate him and put him in some kind of equipment cart.”

  “Hummph.” Marty gave her a sideways look. “What if Logan doesn’t actually want to leave the safety of the hospital? He ran back inside.”

  Rox’s heart ached for the boy. “He just had a bad moment. He’s been locked up for years, and I’m sure he’s worried about moving to another facility.”

  “We need to find out.” Marty grabbed a handful of chips and talked while he crunched. “They’ll never let a new person visit him now, but maybe his aunt can get in to talk to Logan.”

  “She’s been to see him,” Rox argued. “And she hired us to get him the hell out, so we already know what she’ll say.”

  Her stepdad’s eyes narrowed, and he was quiet for a while. Then he crossed his arms. “I’m not going to try this again unless I have a guarantee of cooperation from Logan.”

  “Do you think Shay could tell him to expect us? So he’ll come along willingly?”

  “Yes.”

  Hell. Maybe they should have done that already. “I’ll try her again now.” She’d called their client on the way home from their failed attempt, but Shay hadn’t answered. Rox had left a terse message.

  Their client picked up on the third ring this time. “Yes?”