The Unseen Trilogy

by Stephanie Erickson

  Tracy looked at me, a sly expression on her face. “You can do anything you put your mind to.”

  I rolled my eyes at her terrible pun. David smiled and said, “The important thing is to never assume something isn’t possible. It can leave you open to attack. Tracy is right. In the world of the mind, anything is possible.”

  The conversation lulled for a moment, so I sat back in my chair, allowing my eyes to wander to David’s desk. The file he’d been reading lay open on his desk, and there, plain as day, was Maddie’s smiling face staring up at the ceiling.

  The shock of seeing the image made me sit bolt upright in my chair and point accusingly at the file. The movement startled Tracy.

  “Why do you have a picture of Maddie in that file?”

  David sighed heavily. “I was just studying the incident, Mackenzie.”

  “David, I don’t think this is a good time,” Tracy said.

  My world stopped. In that moment, the chimps were gone, and the scientist was no one. All I cared about was what was in that file. My hands started to shake, so I folded them in my lap in an attempt to show how mature and collected I was… not to mention totally prepared for whatever he had to say.

  Clearing my throat, I said, “Now is as good a time as any.”

  David eyed me skeptically. “Tracy might be right. I wasn’t anticipating the job to have such a deep impact on you. Perhaps we can discuss this later.”

  “No, please. I want to know.”

  Tracy frowned and leaned back in her chair, but then reconsidered and sat forward again. “David, I urge you not to discuss this matter at length right now. You weren’t with her over the last twelve hours. She’s been an emotional wreck. I don’t even know what’s in that file, but whatever it is could break her.”

  “You don’t need to talk about me as if I’m not here.” I took a deep breath. “And I can handle it. I know I can.”

  Tracy eyed me, but what she saw didn’t change her mind any. “Mackenzie, this is not about some perceived weakness on your part. It’s about your mental health. I’ve seen your mind. Your grief has made it terribly unstable. Whatever is in there, you may think you want to hear it, but I can assure you that you don’t.”

  “How do you know?” I turned on her. “You never got any closer to finding your sister’s killer, so you know how painful it is not to know who took her life. Why would you want to rob me of that knowledge?”

  “What kind of closure do you think it will give you? Are you hoping that you’ll find out Maddie’s killers have already been eliminated? Is that what you want to see in that file? If so, you’ll be disappointed. Usually, there’s only vague, unconfirmed information about suspects. Do you want to live with that kind of frustration?” She paused for a moment, letting it sink in. “Or worse, what if it’s evidence telling us the Potestas weren’t involved at all? That Maddie, like everyone else on the train that day, was just a victim of a random act of violence, nothing more, nothing less. What will you do?”

  “I don’t know. But I should be given the chance to decide for myself.”

  David nodded. “The timing may be poor, but it’s standard operating procedure for agents to get some time off after an assignment. You will have the rest of the day today and tomorrow free. Do with it what you will.” He pushed the file toward me. “I will need that back in full when you’re finished. You are not to make copies of it. I don’t need sensitive information falling into the wrong hands.” I nodded as I eyed the folder, not willing to touch it just yet.

  “And I need you to be ready to go back to work Thursday. There’s a lot to do.” My eyes snapped up to him. The scientist. The chimps. The chemical. True, I didn’t want people to die at the hands of Dux Ducis and the scientist, but my heart was in that folder. I could only hope I would have more focus once I had answers. Reaching forward, I took it off his desk and met Tracy’s disapproving gaze head on.

  “Thank you for this,” I said to David, but I didn’t break eye contact with Tracy.

  “Are you sure you want to do this? The information in there…” He paused. “It won’t be easy for you to read. If you want to talk about it, my door is open to you.”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t sure I would feel much like talking… particularly not to him.

  “Don’t disappoint me, Mackenzie. We need you now, more than ever.”

  The statement stopped me short. “That’s an odd choice of words,” I said, even though I knew what he meant. But I’d heard that particular line so many times from my former aunt—don’t disappoint me, Mackenzie—and I was through with being a disappointment to the people in my life. “Was it you who taught my ‘aunt,’” I made quotation marks with my fingers, “to keep saying that to me while I was growing up without you?”

  He stared at me slack-jawed as I walked out of his office, the file tucked carefully under my arm.

  11

  Owen was waiting for me in the gym, but I walked right past him without really seeing him. I had tunnel vision. I planned to head straight for the work floor, pore over the file, find out who was responsible, and then…

  And then what? The thought almost brought me to a stop right in the middle of the stairwell, and that was when Owen, who must have been trailing me for a while, alerted me to his presence.

  “Hey!” He tugged on my arm. “I heard you were back, but by the time I got down here, you were already sequestered to David’s office.”

  I looked down at his hand on me. “Hey.” I blinked at him a few times, trying to bring myself back into the moment.

  “How was the job?”

  The job. The scientist. The chimps. The chemical. “You were right. David was right,” I said, turning and continuing on my path upstairs.

  Owen jogged to catch up to me. “Right about what?”

  “That he was evil.”

  “Hey, can you stop for a second?” He was a little out of breath when he paused on the steps.

  I turned to him, confused. He didn’t understand. But then again, how could he? He didn’t know what was in the file under my arm. He probably thought it was about the scientist.

  “This is the first I’ve seen you in two days. How about we start over?” He climbed the stairs slowly, holding his hands out toward me, acting like I was some skittish dog that was about to take off on him.

  Realizing how tense my entire body was, I tried to force myself to relax.

  He leaned in close and rested his forehead against mine. “Why don’t we go somewhere quiet and talk about it?”

  I shook my head. “No. There’s more to do.”

  “It can wait. You have today and tomorrow off.”

  “No, I have today and tomorrow to work this out, then I have to start thinking about the scientist again.”

  Clearly, he was confused, and my cryptic answers weren’t helping. Part of me really did want to stay right there in the stairwell, wrapped in his arms. Part of me wanted to let him offer me the comfort that my soul desperately needed. But the folder was heavy under my arm—it weighed on me, demanding answers, retribution.

  Owen seemed to notice the file for the first time and pulled back. “Why do you still have that if you’re off for the next day and a half? What is it?”

  “Something that requires my attention.” Why was I being so secretive? Did I think he’d try to talk me out of finding more about Maddie? Or was I just not prepared to take the time to explain it to someone? Either way, it didn’t seem like a good way to treat someone you cared about. Guilt made me pause, and my mouth opened in preparation to tell him the truth. It was all there, ready to spill out. He might even help me read through the file. David’s words came back to me. The information in there won’t be easy for you to read. Did I want to be a total basket case in front of Owen… again? No.

  Anyway, I reminded myself, this wasn’t about Owen. It was about Maddie. I didn’t even know what was in the folder. Once I did, I would be better equipped for his questions. At least, that was what I told myse
lf as he stared at me with worried eyes.

  “Right now?” His grip on my arm loosened a little, as if he already knew he’d lost this round.

  I nodded, and he let me go completely.

  “I’d like to spend some time with you. I missed you.”

  “Me too.” I nodded quickly, hoping he heard my sincerity. But I wasn’t ready to be what he wanted just yet. I needed to do this first. I needed to give this time to Maddie.

  A sad expression passed over his face as he reached out and touched my arm lightly. “Come find me when you’re done.”

  Again, I nodded and hesitated before I continued up the stairs on my own, leaving Owen alone in the stairwell. My heart wanted to be with him, to stay there, to accept his comfort. But what it wanted and what it needed were two different things.

  I didn’t pay attention to my surroundings as I rushed down the hallway of the correct floor, looking for an empty workroom, so it surprised me when Mitchell rather abruptly stepped out of the room I was walking past.

  I nodded a greeting at him, but he didn’t nod back. He pulled the door closed behind him and stepped in front of me, coming to a careful stop.

  Eyeing the folder in my arms, he sighed. “Just be careful. Use your head, okay? Not your heart.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It wasn’t a lie. How could he possibly know what I was up to? Maybe he was talking about the work I’d done on the scientist? Either way, I wasn’t interested in wasting brainpower on it at the moment. I had bigger fish to fry.

  “Right,” he said, his tone skeptical, almost suspicious. I shrugged him off and sequestered myself in an empty workroom.

  Leaning back in the chair, I let exhaustion take me for a moment. It was only about four o’clock, but it felt like midnight after everything I’d been through. Frankly, I was worried Tracy was right, that I wasn’t entirely prepared for whatever the file contained. I might finally be holding the key to Maddie’s death. All I had to do was read.

  I glanced at the file in front of me, feeling like Pandora must have as she sat before a certain box. Once I read the contents, I couldn’t unread them, I couldn’t unlearn whatever horrors lay waiting for me inside. Or maybe there was nothing inside. Maybe the file simply contained empty lead after empty lead, with no real answers. Or maybe her death truly had been a senseless accident. What would I do then?

  The questions kept coming, so I silenced them by throwing the file open.

  Maddison Farland

  Born: July 2, 1989

  Died: September 21, 2014

  Cause of death: Terrorist attack

  Suspects involved: Aydin Nascimbeni, Washington Lange, Curtis Kingsley

  Headshots of all three men had been clipped right behind Maddie’s. Staring at their faces, I supposed the word “men” was a bit generous. They were probably not much older than I was. In fact, they were each kind of attractive in their own way. Under different circumstances, I might have flirted with boys like them. How had they become killers?

  I read on, noticing a hastily scrawled note near the list of suspects.

  Amanda?

  I read the name again. It couldn’t be her, could it? According to David, she’d disappeared and no one had heard from her since my graduation. The woman I’d known as my aunt couldn’t have been involved in Maddie’s death…

  David’s voice echoed in my head: Never assume something isn’t possible. Did she hate me that much? Of course she did. I’d listened to her thoughts all day, every day, for years. But Maddie? How could she do something so horrible to someone like Maddie? She was always kind to my aunt; she’d even gone so far as to make gifts for her on Christmas and her birthday. She was always the first person to remind me to give my “aunt” the benefit of the doubt. I had wanted to believe her, of course, but I’d always known the truth. It was hard to ignore.

  Now, even more of that awful truth was staring back at me in messy handwriting, refusing to be disputed. But what role could she have played, really? Had she turned coat and led them right to her? Why her? Why not me?

  The file held no answers, so I spent the rest of the day searching the Internet and the Unseen’s databases for the names in Maddie’s file, starting with my “aunt.”

  Amanda Day was a bit of a ghost, at least to me. Apparently, I didn’t know her real last name, because I found no relevant search results. At times, it had bugged her that we shared the same last name, as she didn’t care to be mistaken for my mother. According to the story she’d told me, she was my dad’s never-married sister. Her perpetual singleness had confused me when I was younger, but I ultimately decided it made all the sense in the world that no one would want to spend their life with such a negative person. I searched the website of her old employer and found nothing. In fact, I couldn’t even find any record of the accounting firm where she supposedly worked. I knew it existed. I’d been there more than once. How had it just disappeared into thin air? If they’d gone out of business, wouldn’t there be some kind of paper trail? Making a mental note to ask David what he knew about my aunt, I moved on. I made a separate mental note to stop calling her my aunt.

  Surprisingly, I found a fair bit of information on the boys. Oddly, the three weren’t geographically close to each other. The one named Aydin lived in Texas, Curtis lived in Illinois, but Washington lived right here in Tallahassee. What were the odds of that? Did he have some connection to me? I stared at his high school picture on the computer screen. He was dark and handsome, and his expression was intensely sultry, as if he’d known women would be looking at the picture.

  Finding his address was a simple matter, and despite the fact that it might interfere with the Unseen’s investigation, I knew I had to see him for myself. A glance at my watch told me I’d missed dinner. I leaned back in the chair and rubbed my eyes, groaning.

  If the boys were so easy to find, why couldn’t I find anything about Amanda? I wondered what David knew about the investigation of Washington and the other guys. Maybe he could even tell me something about Amanda. Despite our recently tense exchanges, my drive to know more about what happened to Maddie outweighed my pride.

  My body cringed when I stood up, complaining after so much sitting. Stretching, I tried to appease my sore muscles and made my way back downstairs.

  Mitchell was working out in the gym when I got there, and I groaned at the sight of him. Despite the fact that he wasn’t the lecturing type, I knew he disapproved of whatever he thought I was doing. I had no idea why, and at that moment, I didn’t really care.

  Thankfully, he could tell where I was headed based on the angle I took across the gym. He simply nodded at me. I returned the gesture and knocked on David’s door.

  It was almost seven, so I didn’t really expect him to still be around. He didn’t sleep at the facility with the rest of us. In fact, I wasn’t sure where he went after “work.” He never hung around and watched movies with the rest of the Unseen, and he never ate meals with us. I figured it was some boss/employee hierarchy thing. He probably just wanted to let the peons have their time together. Don’t make things awkward by having the friendly boss swoop in. Anyway, I could only hope he was still there. I didn’t want to wait until morning to get my questions answered. I had other plans for my day.

  To my surprise, he responded to my knock. “Come in.”

  “I didn’t think you’d still be here.”

  “Someone brought some alarming new information to my attention today. It required further scrutiny.”

  I wrinkled my chin and sat down across from him. “Hey David, where do you go when you’re not here? If it’s a rule for us to live here, why don’t you?”

  “What makes you think I don’t live here?”

  “Because I never see you milling around the facility. You don’t have a room on our floor. And I never see you in the bathroom. Those are all pretty good indications that you don’t stay here.”

  He smiled. “All valid points. But I’d rather not say, espec
ially to you. As my daughter, you’re a highly valued target. The less you know, the better.”

  “In your worst-case scenario, they’re going to think I know all this anyway. They’ll torture me to death trying to get the information whether I know it or not.”

  He frowned. “Maybe.”

  “Don’t you think being your daughter should come with some perks instead of so many restrictions?”

  A small smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “The office is the entryway to my suite. There’s a hidden panel that opens to my apartment, equipped with my own kitchen, bathroom, living room, and bedroom. I live here too, just like the rest of you.”

  “Huh. I’d like to see it sometime,” I said, trying to picture how far back it went.

  “Let’s not get carried away. Is that why you came down here? To ask me where I sleep?”

  Though I was suddenly curious about whether there were other secret compartments inside the facility, I forced myself to return to the problems at hand. “I want to know about Amanda.”

  “You read the file then?” I put it on the desk, and he reached out for it. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you for showing it to me. Now, tell me what you know about her.”

  “Oddly, nothing. She really has disappeared. My moles tell me she’s joined the other side, which would make sense given the way her entire existence has been erased.”

  “It doesn’t make sense to me. The other three in that file were super easy to find. If she were a traitor, wouldn’t she be less protected than them rather than more?”

  “Not necessarily. And her level of anonymity tells me she’s stepped into a fairly high position. Of course, this is all just speculation. I can’t set too much stock in the information the moles give to us. They tell me what the Potestas want me to know.”

  “Why would she do such a thing?” I hadn’t thought she still possessed the power to hurt me, but if even a small part of what David had said was true, I was horribly wrong. She’d betrayed me in every way possible.