A Blind Eye

by Julie Daines

  In my mind, I tallied the millions of times I’d really needed a father but he hadn’t been there for me. Until today.

  Wasn’t this the moment I’d been waiting for? He’d said he cared, that he wanted me to stay. What if this was my only chance to bridge the gap? I’d messed up a lot in the past. I didn’t want to blow it again. If I shut my dad out right when he wanted back in, how did that make me different from him? I’d vowed never to turn out like him.

  If I really wanted to turn around, to fix my life like Jay wanted me to, I had to forgive my dad.

  It was an act of faith. I had no guarantee he wouldn’t abandon me again. What if next week he decides I’m not worth the trouble? Would I go back to nothing? Letting him into my life was a huge risk. I didn’t think I could handle it if he turned on me again. On the other hand, what if he really did love me? I would never know unless I gave him a chance.

  Nothing could change the past, but maybe this could be a fresh start. Not erasing all those years but moving forward from this point, going in a new direction. A different direction.

  If I kept my eyes facing forward, things might still turn out okay.

  At least for us. I didn’t think I’d ever recover from my guilt about Scarlett and Jenny.

  I gazed up at the stars and spoke to my mom again. “If you see my friend Scarlett, take care of her for me. And tell her I miss her more than . . .” I tried to think of what Scarlett would say, one of her crazy British sayings. I came up blank. “Just tell her, ‘Crikey O’Reilly.’” That pretty much summed up everything.

  I started back to the car, but I couldn’t face going home yet. I wandered through the cemetery under the clear sky. A night like this was rare this time of year. I zipped my jacket.

  I meandered through the gravestones, ending up close to the mortuary. Lights shone from the windows in the rear. There must have been a recent death. Maybe they were working on Jenny. Of course, she could’ve been at one of dozens of funeral homes in the area.

  A couple of cars were parked in the rear driveway, next to the hearse. A morbid image of Jenny being loaded into it made me shudder. I doubted Scarlett would get that much dignity. She would simply vanish, and few would feel the loss. Some friends from her school and maybe her mom, if she cared enough to notice. And me.

  I sat down on a cold granite bench in the mortuary gardens and hung my head, wishing again that the lava would swallow me up. I should head back and take my misery away from this peaceful place.

  I stood to leave, but my eyes finally focused on what I’d been staring at. One of the cars in the mortuary carport was a black Tahoe. My breath caught, and the cold air chilled my lungs. I crept closer to check the bumper. Someone in Oregon Loves Me.

  They were here.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Christian vs. The Cure

  I smacked my palm on my forehead. How had I missed this? It made perfect sense. The mortuary had everything they needed. A perfect location for them to perform their sickening experiments. This had to be where they’d locked Scarlett until she’d escaped through the window and wandered the entire night, only to end up a few hundred yards away. Then, when I’d stopped here on my way out of town, she’d climbed into my car and changed my life.

  She could be in there.

  I ran forward then stopped. Don’t be stupid this time, Morris.

  They’d always been one step ahead of me, outsmarting me at every turn. I ducked behind the Tahoe to call for help. I patted the pockets of my sweats and coat. Oh yeah. My cell phone sat on my bathroom counter, crusty with blood—still in the baggie from Parker.

  Did I have time to go back to the house? If Scarlett was in there and still alive, every second counted. I couldn’t spare half an hour for there and back. I hurried to the car, took Dad’s gun from between the seats, and ran to the building. I really hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, but I needed some backup, and this was all I had.

  “Dad,” I whispered, closing my eyes and concentrating on some invisible ESP link that I knew didn’t exist. “I’ve never asked you for anything. But I’m asking now. When I don’t come home, call for help.”

  Okay. Think. How to get inside. A mortuary would definitely have a security system—they wouldn’t want anyone breaking in and body snatching. But they must not monitor it closely or else Scarlett wouldn’t have gotten away so easily. She climbed out of a window above ground without setting off an alarm. Maybe the alarm was wired only to the main doors. This was an old building, and it was possible the security system might not be up-to-date.

  I peered around the side of the car, scanning the eaves for cameras. I found one centered above the garage, between the back door on one side and the loading bay on the other. I circled the structure, searching for a way in.

  Scarlett said she’d landed on mulch, so I needed a window without bushes below. The funeral home was carefully landscaped. An attempt to make the families of the dead feel good about their choice of mortuary. Around the side, a room jutted from the building, its paint a little cleaner than the rest. A new addition—and no azaleas under the window.

  I pulled on it. Locked. Most likely, they’d found it open after Scarlett’s escape and had remedied their oversight. I checked every window, tugging at the casings, but all were secure. Now what? I’d have to try the doors and risk setting off an alarm. Front, back, or loading bay? All the doors were in full view of a camera.

  Still, sneaking in where I might be caught on video seemed less risky than smashing a window. The back entrances were closest to the carport; maybe they left them unlocked after going in. I’d try the smaller door, hoping to get in farther away from the main area of use.

  I sidled up to the door, completely exposed by the floodlights in the carport’s ceiling. I steadied the gun in my hand and reached out, quietly grasping the smooth, cold doorknob. With a deep breath, I gave it a slow turn. It was open.

  I cracked the large steel door enough to discover that it led to a narrow hallway. The lights were off at this end, but a glow emanated from around the corner. I slipped inside and noiselessly closed the metal door behind me.

  To the right was solid wall. To the left, the corridor carried on straight ahead and a smaller hallway branched off. I stuck my head around the corner. Lights and voices came from a room down that way. I went straight, crossing the intersection in two steps, careful not to make a sound on the hard linoleum floor.

  I opened the first door I came to. It was a viewing room. A coffin sat on a wheeled metal cart in the front. I had to check. Bracing myself for the worst, I lifted the lid. It was empty. Of course they wouldn’t store a murdered body in a public room. I let out a breath.

  I crossed the hall and entered another room. An office. I clicked on my flashlight and made a quick scan of the desk. A stack of business cards propped upright in a brass holder sat on the corner. I picked one up and read it: Gary Wyden; Forest Park Mortuary. Accompanying this information was a picture of Deepthroat. He was Dr. Anne Wyden’s brother, the resemblance obvious to me now. In the photo, he wore a dark suit and smiled, warm and friendly, looking like the perfect man to take care of all of your funeral needs.

  I stuffed the card in my pocket. If I ever got out of here alive, I’d show it to Detective Parker. Although, he’d probably already figured it out. Seemed everyone knew more about this than I did.

  The base of a cordless phone sat next to the cards, but I couldn’t find the handset anywhere.

  I slipped out and tried the next door. It opened into a large room. I swept the flashlight across the darkness and saw rows of pews, like at church. The funeral chapel. Following the hall took me around a corner and through the front lobby, where a cloth sofa and plush chairs were arranged around end tables, like a living room. Mottled-brown carpeting covered the floor at this end of the building, making the chapel and lobby homier and less industrial looking. I turned down the hall on the opposite side of the one I’d just checked.

  I found another viewing roo
m, this one without a casket. About twenty feet farther down, lights shone from under two doors, along with the quiet murmur of voices. I’d made a complete U around the corridors of the mortuary. At the end of the hall were an elevator and the loading-bay doors that opened into the driveway across from where I’d come in.

  With my back against the wall and the gun in my hand, I listened outside the first door. Nothing. The voices were coming from the next room a few yards down the hall.

  Either they’d left the light on, or I’d step into this room and come face-to-face with one of the kidnappers. If it was Simon, I’d shoot him on the spot. I thought my chances were about fifty-fifty that I’d be dead in the next five minutes.

  I turned the knob quickly and slipped inside. On a hard, stainless-steel autopsy table lay Scarlett, her pink hair matted and stuck to her face. Her eyes closed. I reached her in one stride, brushing the stray strands from her forehead. Her skin was warm, and her chest rose and fell with slow, rhythmic breathing. Alive.

  An IV pumped fluid into her arm through a long plastic tube stuck in at her elbow. I stashed the gun in my coat pocket and patted her cheek.

  “Scarlett,” I whispered. She didn’t move. I checked the label on the IV bag. Diprivan. What did that do? Knock her out, or keep her alive? It didn’t matter. She had a better chance of survival away from this place, with or without the drugs.

  I tugged the tape off the IV and pulled the needle out. A thin line of red leaked onto her pasty white skin.

  “Scarlett.” I slapped her cheek again, harder. I couldn’t waste any more time in here. “Come on.” I lifted her from the table, groaning as the effort shot pain through my arm. Her feet bumped the autopsy table and the steel clanked.

  She let out a soft moan. “Christian?”

  At least, that’s what it sounded like. She was barely audible.

  “Yes.” I would have put her fingers on my face, but my hands were full. “It’s me.”

  The smallest smile touched her lips. I turned around to open the door. I’d take her out the way I came in, around through the lobby and out the back door—avoiding the rooms with lights and voices.

  The door opened for me.

  Simon Lawrence stood there, his face a mirror of my own surprise. Then he grinned. “Finally figured it out, did you?”

  “Out of my way, berk!” I kicked him as hard as I could in the gut. He fell backward, and I bolted for the front entrance. No reason to avoid setting off alarms now. I heard Deepthroat—Gary—call after me. I didn’t stop. A gun fired, and a bullet smacked into the wall as I turned the corner. No wonder Connor had always carried the gun. Gary was a crap shot.

  “Don’t shoot. You’ll kill her. We need her alive.” I recognized Dr. Wyden’s smooth voice.

  I struck at the metal bar to open the door with my foot, but it was bolted shut. I ran down the other hall with Scarlett bouncing in my arms. The lights flicked on, and Simon and Dr. Wyden stood there, blocking my way out, Simon with a gun in his hand. I stopped.

  I thought about diving into the chapel, but that was a dead end. This whole place was a dead end.

  Something cracked against my skull, and I dropped to the floor, spilling Scarlett out onto the cold, hard ground.

  * * *

  Darkness. And cold. Freezing cold. My head hung backward, limp on my neck. I tried to lift it, but it was so heavy. When I finally unglued my eyelids, I found myself staring at white ceiling tiles crisscrossed with thin metal lines and a fluorescent light strip. I managed to lift my head. Duct tape bound my arms and legs to an old industrial-style office chair with a steel frame and a mint-green vinyl seat.

  Two bodies were laid out on gurneys behind me, their identities covered with green sheets. A storage room. For dead people. Did they die of natural causes, or were they victims of Dr. Wyden’s work? Was one of them Scarlett? How long had I been out?

  “No!” I yelled. I’d had her in my hands, only to lose her again.

  The door opened, and Dr. Wyden came in. She didn’t look quite as put together as she did in her glamour shot on the Retinal Implant flier. Strands of hair fell from the knot piled on top of her head, and her stylish glasses had slipped to the bottom of her nose and sat at an awkward angle. Simon trotted along behind her. Even with her flat shoes, she was a few inches taller than her husband.

  “Christian Morris.” She smiled at me and lifted her glasses so they rested on the top of her head. “Nice to see you again,” she said in her deep, soothing voice. Her white lab coat and friendly smile made her look like your average family eye doctor.

  “Where’s Scarlett?” I asked.

  “Upstairs. She’s fine.” She waved a hand as if kidnapping Scarlett and subjecting her to some twisted medical procedure was just another day at the office.

  At least they hadn’t killed her yet. “What are you going to do with her?”

  Dr. Wyden’s eyes sparked with excitement, and she licked her lips. “I’m testing something on her. Something that will change the lives of sightless people around the world.”

  “You mean change the life of your daughter.” She didn’t fool me. That’s what this had been about all along.

  A steeliness entered her voice. “So you did learn something when you destroyed my office and ruined my clinic.” She came closer, standing right in front of me so I had to crane my neck to see her face. I didn’t appreciate the nostril view. Simon stood by the door, stoic, with a gun in his hand.

  She squatted down to eye level. “But you’re wrong. Can’t you see? This goes far beyond my Mags.” Her eyes glowed. “Thanks to Scarlett’s genius friend, I’ve developed a new device. Simon’s been keeping an eye on Katie for a while, as the IT technician at Shepherd Hill. After Katie created her auditory amplifier, it didn’t take much for Simon to convince her to turn her talents on an innovation to help her best friend.” She tossed Simon an adoring look.

  “With a little input from Katie”—Dr. Wyden stood up and started pacing the room as if all this was too awesome to tell standing still—“I’ve developed a nanocamera that connects directly to the optic nerve, bypassing the retina altogether. It inserts into the pupil, allowing color vision in a resolution close to normal. Unfortunately, the optic nerve is very sensitive. Too little stimulation and nothing happens. Too much and, well, poof.” She lifted a hand and made an exploding gesture by her head. “The brain is fried. It’s a very delicate balance.”

  How many people had she tested this on? Had it ever worked? Scarlett was never going to survive. Not that Jenny was my standard of optic knowledge, but based on what she’d said, this could never happen. The nerves to the brain could not be repaired.

  “Can’t you test it on animals? Dogs or something?” I asked. Her Frankenstein methods didn’t seem quite in line with current FDA standards.

  She sighed heavily and shook her head. “We tried. But when we repeated the experiment on a human, the data didn’t transfer. We had to start over.” She seemed genuinely disappointed.

  “You’re psychotic.” All this so her daughter could see? Did Maggie know her mother was killing people to restore her vision?

  “Christian, try to understand. This project will bring sight to millions.” She swept her hands wide to encompass the whole world, and her eyes burned with the promise of victory. “Picture it. The end of blindness. A scourge that has plagued the earth since the beginning of time. Unfortunately, miracles through science require some sacrifices. Scarlett is proud to help in such a generous cause, don’t you think?”

  This was insane. Wyden really believed that she was some kind of crusader. That her perverted work on innocent people was justified. She walked back to Simon, stood beside him, and smiled as if there was no way I could argue against such a noble undertaking.

  “Makes sense,” I said, grasping at straws to buy time. “Scarlett probably is happy to help. Why not just let me go?”

  Simon shook his head. “So you can run to your police friend? I think not. Unfortunately,
when you hooked up with Scarlett, you sort of sealed your fate. Can’t have you blathering about our work to everyone now, can we?”

  I stared at him. “Is that why you want me? So I won’t tell someone that you’re murderers?”

  “Hey,” Simon said. I didn’t think he knew much about guns. He held it awkwardly in his hand, and as he spoke, he swung it carelessly in all directions. He must have noticed me watching it because he let his arm fall to his side, aiming the gun at the floor. “We didn’t murder anyone. Any kind of medical procedure involves risks.”

  “What about Jenny? And the waitress?” I asked.

  He waved the gun in dismissal, forgetting his previous attempt to keep it still. “That,” he said with emphasis, “was Connor.”

  Dr. Wyden jumped to her husband’s defense. “Connor was crazy. We hired him to help us with Scarlett’s abduc—” She glanced at the floor. “Transportation. He got a little carried away.”

  Sure. If you call shooting two innocent people a little carried away. Not to mention attacking Scarlett in the Lloyd Center and chasing me from school in the middle of class.

  “He was out of control,” Simon said. “I’m not sorry he’s gone.”

  Dr. Wyden shook her head and spoke to Simon like I wasn’t in the room. “We could have used him in a trial.”

  Simon nodded, and they considered each other for a moment. I watched some kind of unspoken conversation pass between them, then they both turned and looked at me.

  “Good idea,” he said.

  My skin prickled. Now they wanted to operate on me? “But I’m not blind.”

  She laughed. “We can fix that so easily.” She left the room.

  Simon turned back to me. “Thanks again for taking such good care of Scarlett. I really think she’s going to be the breakthrough.” Then he shrugged. “But I thought that about the last one too.” He followed Wyden out the door, his face thoughtful.