It took twenty minutes trudging through the downpour until they were up the flat, gravel trail and past the house where they’d been staying the previous week, when Uncle Davis had called them home. They’d been gone nearly a week already, but the house was dark and appeared to have remained unrented since their previous stay.
Becca shone her flashlight through the gates of the property. “A little luxury doesn’t seem so bad all of a sudden.”
The trail grew steeper above the house. Well-graded and adequate in normal weather for wheelchairs or bikes. But it was slick with rain, and flooded on the few stretches where the ground turned flat. They stumbled over branches, heavy with waterlogged moss, that had blown down across the trail.
But whenever Wes questioned whether they should have waited until daylight, he thought of Diego’s final message.
Get your brother out. He’s not safe here.
The sooner they recovered the cell phone, the sooner they had their proof, the sooner they could yank Eric and go home.
About halfway up, Becca called for a rest break beneath the outstretched branches of a tree. She uncapped her water bottle. “Any faster and I’m going to induce premature labor.”
“I wish I had an excuse.” He unslung his backpack and groped for fresh batteries. His flashlight was losing juice. “You’re running me into the ground. I can barely keep up.”
“You’re such a liar,” she said, good-naturedly. “I can tell when you’re coddling the pregnant lady.”
“If it’s coddling, then why does my heart feel like it’s going to launch itself from my chest?” He drained the offered water bottle. “Ready?”
As they set off again, Wes thought about Kaitlyn Potterman. Why was she tormenting Meggie? What crime was she hiding?
Sadly, it was common to find a locked-in patient only to face family opposition. Instead of being overjoyed to discover treatment for their paralyzed loved one, they fought to maintain the status quo. There were many reasons. One woman had caused the accident that crippled her husband while driving drunk. In order to battle the crushing guilt, she’d remade herself as a model wife, coddling him like he was a seventeenth century French king.
She worried that if they freed him from his prison, allowed him to communicate with the outside world, she would become unnecessary. Worse, she was terrified that the first thing he would say when given the chance to speak was, “I want a divorce.”
He hadn’t. He’d been grateful for her care and forgiving of her mistake.
In other cases, the family suffered quite a different blow. A son or parent had suffered a stroke and slipped into a coma. Brain dead, it was believed. And the family abandoned him. Left him to rot in a long-term care center, fed and bathed, turned and moved like a potted plant. To accept that all those years he had been fully alive inside, but left in crushing loneliness, with nothing to stimulate his mind, was more than some people could accept. And so they denied the medical facts. They refused to believe, even when presented with reams of data that proved full consciousness.
But this case was something different. It was more like the initial investigation into Uncle Davis’s paralysis, when Wes and Becca discovered that he’d been shot with a spear gun while diving on the Golfo Dulce, then been hidden away while Wes’s mother and her other brother fought it out for the company fortune.
And then there was Walter Fitzroy. Locked away in the former resort of Vanderzee in Upstate New York and tormented by a mentally ill woman who believed she was his girlfriend. It had taken trickery and personal risk on Becca’s part to free him for treatment.
The case of Meggie Kerr was reminiscent of those two investigations. Money, people willing to commit violence in order to cover their crimes. Exactly what the crimes were, Wes didn’t know. He was anxious to get Meggie out, use the miracle of modern technology to pry open her brain and excavate the dark pit of human motivation.
“Davis knows,” Becca said a few minutes later. “That’s what this is about. That’s why he told us to come back to Vermont.”
Wes was deep in his own thoughts. “Wait, what?”
“Think about it. We were on our call chatting about that kid in the Bronx. And gradually getting around to discussing Meggie. Then suddenly he orders us home.”
“I know. I was telling him we didn’t need an entire house. I didn’t know he was about to cancel it and change our tickets. I was thinking, ‘Where did that come from?’”
“Remember anything funny that happened right before he said that?” she asked.
“Um, he said that bit about ‘We find them, we rescue them.’ So it was bewildering that he gave up just when we were about to make a big score.”
“I mean what happened, not what he said. He went quiet all of a sudden. Didn’t say anything for about a minute.”
Wes frowned. “Yeah, I remember. I thought his computer had crashed.”
“He learned something. That’s why he went quiet.”
Things came together. “He was multitasking. Checking his email while talking to us. Someone must have sent him a threatening message. He ordered us home to protect us.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“You don’t think that’s a leap?”
“If it is, it’s not a very big one. Otherwise, why the about-face? There’s only one thing I can’t figure out. Why hasn’t he checked up on us since then? I’ve emailed him probably twenty times about other stuff. Not once has he asked me why I’m not in Vermont.”
“Wait a second.” Wes stopped and turned his light on Becca. He wiped the water from his face as his mind raced ahead. “I’ve got it.”
The rain had diminished to a drizzle and the frogs were bellowing, croaking, buzzing, and chirping in the trees that surrounded the trail. Somewhere in the distance, howler monkeys hooted.
“Think about Tropical Beans,” he said. “Think about what they do.”
“Um…they make coffee?”
“Not the whole company. Kaitlyn Potterman.”
“Computer stuff. What … ? Oh!”
“That’s right. Remember the lawsuit accusing her of putting keystroke software on a competitor’s computers? Uncle Davis must have read the file.”
“Then the email came, warning him off,” Becca said. “He’s a smart guy, and he figured it out right away.”
“Smarter than me, apparently. I didn’t think of it, not even after rereading my notes about Kaitlyn.”
“That makes two of us.” She shrugged. “Anyway, so Davis gets a threatening email and figures out that hey, this woman is in IT and she lives in Vermont. And she just sent him a threatening email. What did she say? That she’s watching? I’ll bet he was worried she’d hacked our network. We don’t exactly keep it secure.”
“No, we don’t. The LIS interpretation software is open source. Same with the video chat. Opening up is what we’re all about.” He sighed. “Might be time to rethink that policy.”
“So he ordered us home,” Becca said. “That was the only thing he could do under the circumstances. Otherwise, he puts his own life at risk, our lives, and Meggie Kerr’s, too.”
“He had to know we’d disobey. We find them, we rescue them. We weren’t going to come home, not when we’re so close.”
“Which is why he never asked why we weren’t showing up at the house. He knew we were still in Costa Rica, that we never flew home. And he never wanted us to.”
Wes shook his head. “And here was I getting frustrated with Eric. We need just as much handholding. Can’t believe it took so long.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t tell,” she said.
The rain picked up again, but Wes’s mood was much brighter than it had been moments earlier. They were so close now—close to getting Eric out, close to helping Meggie. And close to exposing Kaitlyn Potterman. Justice.
A hint of sulfur cut the air. Then the wind shifted, and it came on stronger, like rotting eggs, waves of the stuff, coating Wes’s tongue and filling his nostrils. They
rounded the corner and the flashlights cut through a clearing up the hillside. Steam drifted from the pools and hot pots, and a larger cloud billowed down the hillside from the Devil’s Cauldron itself. The hot springs were deserted.
“What time is it?” Becca said in a low voice.
Wes strained to hear over the rain and the bubbling pots. “Eight-forty,” he answered after a glance at his watch.
“That took longer than I thought. Maybe he’s come and gone.”
“He also has to fight the rain. There’s time.”
And if he’d already left, at least they’d have the phone.
The moonlight that had earlier filtered through gaps in the clouds disappeared as the sky closed in and began dumping rain again. They made their way carefully up the hillside. Some of the upper springs were hot enough to scald, and they slowed down even more when they approached the Devil’s Cauldron itself. Wes took Becca’s wrist to hold her when they reached it, stopping to listen. No sound but the boiling water and the splatter of rain in the leaves and on the bare ground. Carefully, they picked their way around the cauldron and listened. They heard nothing.
They turned the flashlights toward the woods to look for Diego’s tree. There it was, directly behind the cauldron, where the forest encroached to lean its branches over the hillside. The main trunk was at least a dozen feet across, with so many thick, twisting branches, starting close to the ground and climbing into the canopy that it was like a kid’s dream of the perfect climbing tree. Large buttress roots formed walls at its base.
The tree was an ecosystem in and of itself. Vines as thick as pythons choked the lower trunk, while ferns, mosses, orchids, and even miniature trees hung or sprouted from branches. A pair of frog eyes reflected back at Wes from the flashlight, then blinked out.
“It must be this branch,” she said.
Becca stood in front of a low, thick branch that dipped in a u-shape. At its lowest, it came within two feet of the ground. Roots dropped from the branch to anchor it to the soil.
It did appear to be the most likely candidate on the most likely tree. But there was nothing unusual pinned in the hollow between branch and tree. Certainly not a plastic bag holding Wes’s cell phone and its video evidence. They checked out a couple of other branches, then dismissed the other trees one by one.
“No, it’s got to be this one,” Wes said, returning to the original tree. “Diego hasn’t made it yet.”
They snugged in against the buttress roots, in what looked like the driest spot beneath the canopy, turned off the flashlights, and settled down to wait.
Chapter Twenty-One
“He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.”
Eric stood on the porch, gripping the railing, while water hit his clenched knuckles and splashed his face. He couldn’t stop saying it.
“He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.”
They killed Diego! Eric saw it with his own eyes.
“He’s dead!”
Moments earlier, his new friend had been alive. Now he was gone. A man and a woman had him wrapped in a sheet. The witch and her friend. They lifted him to the railing. Diego’s arm flopped out and his green scrub top lay exposed, together with a bit of the man’s dark hair, poking out the top. If there was any doubt, that had settled it.
And here Eric had gaped like an idiot while Diego stumbled into Meggie’s room. He couldn’t see all of the room, but he could see people moving around. Struggling.
Could he have saved Diego if he’d run into the hall screaming bloody murder until someone came to help? Or if he had tried to find Meggie’s room in time to help his friend? He didn’t know. But it didn’t help that he’d stood here watching until the struggle stopped. It hadn’t lasted long.
The man and woman pushed the body and it fell over the railing and dropped into the darkness and disappeared. It was twenty or thirty feet down onto a steep slope that led into the trees. Why did they do that? Soon as it was day someone would see it. Something flashed in the woman’s hand. A knife. She stuck her arm into the rain and turned the blade over to wash it off.
Washing away blood. And Eric knew what that meant. Diego didn’t fall and hit his head. It was MURDER.
“You knew that already. Pay attention.”
The man and woman went back inside. They stood arguing next to the bed for two or three minutes, then the woman left Meggie’s room and disappeared into the hall. The man stayed behind. Eric’s hands hurt from clenching the railing. He wanted to run to the door and block it with his nightstand, then drag his bed and wardrobe into place as well. In case the witch and her friend came looking for him.
“Keep watching.”
The man opened Meggie’s closet, her nightstand, and her dresser. Looking through someone else’s belongings. That was AGAINST THE RULES.
“Murderers don’t follow the rules.”
A flashlight moved on the ground below the habitat, where the woods met the hillside. A tight blue light.
At first Eric was excited, remembering Diego’s blue penlight, but then he remembered. That wasn’t him. They’d thrown his body over the edge. The witch must have taken his light. And now she was using it, mucking around down in the trees. It flashed back and forth, then stopped. Eric couldn’t see what she’d found. Something lumpy.
“It’s your friend. The one they killed.”
Oh, that was it. They’d thrown Diego over the edge, and now they were going to drag away the body. That was how they were going to hide their crimes.
“Too bad someone saw you do it,” he said with grim determination. “And that someone is me. I’m the judge, jury and executioner. No, wait. The judge and jury. Wait, I’m just the judge.” Only that wasn’t right either. “The police—I’m the cops. You’ll never get away with this.”
Eric looked back to the bedroom in the opposite habitat. The man stood over the bed, looking down. Eric remembered Meggie. He’d forgotten all about her.
She must still be alive in there. Because the other two had gone back inside and stood arguing near the bed. Eric couldn’t see her, but she must be there. Because if she were dead, they would have tossed her over the edge, too. He was pleased to have figured this out. But what next? What should he do?
“Go get help. Go help the pretty lady.”
His hands released their grip at last. His fingers ached, and there was a deep groove on his palm where the edge had pressed into his flesh. It distracted him for a moment. When he looked back at the room, the man was leaning over the bed. His arms were out, like he was pressing on something to hold it in place.
That didn’t make sense. Meggie couldn’t move. Why did he have to hold her down?
A vague feeling of alarm spread through him. He was looking at something going wrong. Whatever the man was doing, he was UP TO NO GOOD. If only Wesley were here to explain what. Eric would have to use deductive reasoning. Like Sherlock Holmes.
Then suddenly, he understood. The man was pushing down on Meggie’s face. He must be covering her mouth and nose. Keeping her from breathing. She wasn’t moving, wasn’t fighting back, because she couldn’t.
Eric flew into action.
*
He burst from his room and raced down the hallway to the first of the covered walkways that connected his habitat to the others. His bare feet thumped on the wood, so loud that he was sure someone would hear. He didn’t know if that was good or bad.
What if everyone at Foggy Mountain was UP TO NO GOOD? The bad man and woman were walking around and nobody told them they didn’t belong. Nobody told them they were not nurses or aides or janitors or kitchen staff or administrators. Nobody told them to go away. Instead, they could come and go and murder people. What if everyone knew already?
And so Eric didn’t yell for help. He didn’t know who he could trust.
He reached Meggie’s habitat, and then he got confused. There were five doors in the hallway. Which one was hers? He stood puzzling it over and trying to think which side it wo
uld be on to face his own balcony. But as soon as he tried to picture the building in his head it was like one of those impossible jigsaw puzzles with a thousand pieces, all confusing shapes and colors.
“Stop wasting time.”
He threw open the first door and flipped on the light. It was an old lady. She opened her eyes and glared at him. The next one had a girl named Angela—pronounced An-hela. She was from Argentina, they said. They spoke Spanish there, too. Angela or An-hela wasn’t who he was looking for. At least she didn’t wake up.
When he threw open the next door he knew it was the right one. There was already light in the room, coming from the single bulb on the covered porch on the far side. It reached inside and left the bed and its linens in a soft white glow like from the light of the moon. It was what he’d seen from his balcony.
Meggie lay on her back in the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She wasn’t moving. Her eyes didn’t turn to look at him.
That was called being TOO LATE, he realized sadly. Too late was when they didn’t push the button in time and the bomb went off. Too late was when they pulled the kid out of the frozen lake and the ambulance came and they breathed in his mouth and pushed on his chest. Then they stopped and shook their heads. Too late.
A deep sadness sank into his belly. He didn’t want her to die. The poor woman, trapped inside a prison in her own mind. She wanted so badly to get out and if he had come faster maybe he could have helped before that bad man killed her.
“He suffocated you to death because I was too slow.”
Her eyes moved toward him. He jumped back with a little cry of horror, then let out another cry, this one of joy. The pretty lady was still alive!
“I couldn’t do it,” a man’s voice said.
Eric turned so fast he almost fell. A man stood in one corner, his arms folded and one hand rubbing at his chin. He looked troubled. Guilty.
“You’re a bad man.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have it so easy here. Everything taken care of. Never have to pay a bill or learn how to run a business. Or know anything about dealing with brothers riding your case.”
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