“We’re close,” he said. “Right on top, in fact.”
When the Surfer glanced at some of the road signs and saw where they were headed, he grinned and nodded his head. “Righteous.”
* * *
As they’d gotten closer to the town, the Reverend had picked up on the feeling, the energy—or the vibes, as his partner would say. He’d trained himself onto it, inhaled it, followed it, giving the Surfer directions like a bloodhound leading a hunter.
They parked in the lot, watching as very few cars came and went, waiting for…
And then the Reverend saw him, walking along the front of the brightly lit building, and the rottenness of the man’s soul was palpable.
“That’s him,” the Reverend said.
The Surfer tracked the man as he walked into the building. “Sure?”
The Reverend nodded.
He had a plan. And if knew the boy as well as he thought he did, it would certainly work.
24
Lance could not sleep.
Not because of the huge daytime nap he’d taken after lunch, but because the information Daisy had just passed on to him was so jarring, such an unexpected revelation, he found himself doing nothing but pacing back and forth in the Boundary House’s fancy kitchen, simultaneously trying to put together evidence that the theory he’d arrived at after Daisy had told him what she had was possible and also to convince himself it was ridiculous. Impossible. That he was a dog about to bark up the wrong tree.
Could he really accept this truth? And if he did, why hadn’t he been able to figure this out more quickly on his own? The night he’d arrived at the Boundary House for the first time and had gotten the glimpse of Loraine Linklatter’s past, why had the Universe decided to show him the visions of Daisy’s life and eventual death, instead of…
I hope she doesn’t end up like the others, Daisy had said.
The others, it turned out, had been other young people—somewhere around Lance’s and Diana’s age. A handful of them over the past year or so, Daisy had said. They stayed a night, sometimes two, she’d said. They didn’t go out, didn’t talk much, though Loraine tried to talk to them, Daisy said. She told Lance they’d all seemed very sad. She said she could feel it, like a chill that made her shiver.
“What happened to them?” Lance had asked, though he already knew the answer.
Daisy spoke quietly. “They’re like me now.”
And Lance’s brain kicked into drive, a superhighway of information crisscrossing lanes and trying to find a destination.
He remembered what April, the girl working behind the counter at the donut shop, had told him when he’d asked about the suicides. There’s talk that there’s somebody here who’s helping them.
And maybe giving them a nice place to stay in the process, Lance considered. With a fancy kitchen and bathroom and the best beds money could buy. A nice, peaceful send-off.
And as Lance let the acceptance of this idea begin to creep in, fully take hold, he nearly became dizzy with the idea that suddenly, he was no longer pacing in the kitchen of a comfortable bed-and-breakfast. He was pacing in the kitchen of a bed-and-breakfast that was also an assisted-suicide facility.
He had given money—his mother’s money—to a woman who was helping people kill themselves. Perhaps sleeping in the exact same bed those poor kids had slept in.
Lance remembered the night he’d arrived in Sugar Beach, the way that the fire had seemed to summon him as he’d sat in the lifeguard stand. He remembered the way he’d seen the lamppost and the sign for the Boundary House and had had one of those gut feelings that the Universe had brought him to that exact spot for a reason. He’d assumed it was the right place to be to begin to solve the problem.
He’d never considered that the Boundary House was the actual problem to begin with.
But why? What was Loraine’s motivation?
Daisy, he thought. Tragic events sometimes caused people to do tragic things. Terrible things. The death of a young child … Lance could only imagine what sort of mental scarring that caused, what sort of logic might get broken. But still, he needed to talk to her.
Or just call the police, he reasoned. Let them deal with it.
But something held him back from that decision, aside from the usual inclination to avoid police whenever possible. Police asked lots of questions, and Lance was a guy who had a hard time answering questions about himself honestly. No, he had a feeling, too. It wasn’t quite time. Plus, he had Diana asleep upstairs in his bed, and had made a promise to her he’d keep her safe. He’d talk to Loraine first.
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket, loud enough in the silent kitchen that Lance nearly screamed in surprise. He fished in the pocket of his shorts and pulled the phone free, checking the screen and seeing Leah’s name. He smiled. Despite it all, he smiled. He could use a friend right now.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m glad you called.”
“You’re in Sugar Beach, Maryland, aren’t you?”
Lance leaned against the counter, silent for a long time, checking the digital clock on the front of the high-tech fridge and seeing that it was nearly two in the morning. He had no idea how long he’d been pacing back and forth, how long he’d disappeared into his own thoughts.
“Lance?” Leah asked. Her voice was firm, matter-of-fact.
What could he say? She’d figured it out, and he would not lie. She knew the risks. He’d told her as best he could. Yet still, she’d persisted. He realized quickly that it was his own doing, telling her about both the girls selling soda and the kids committing suicide. He knew enough about the Internet to realize she’d probably figured out his location in less time than it would have taken him to finish a cup of coffee.
“Lance?”
He would not lie.
“Yes,” he said. “You’re correct.”
She let out a sigh that whispered in his ear. “See, now was that really so hard?”
Lance said nothing. Waited.
“Listen,” Leah said, “since you’re handicapped with that inferior technology you call a cell phone, and I wasn’t sure how much you’d been able to find out about the people committing suicide. I thought I’d check into it for you, you know, to try and help some more.”
Lance slid into the breakfast nook, taking the same side as when he’d sat with Diana earlier as she’d eaten her late dinner. “You didn’t have to do that, Leah. You’d already done more than I should have asked of you.” Clearly, since you’ve Sherlock Holmes’d your way into figuring out where I am, Lance thought but did not say.
She waited a beat, then said, “You know, you’re right. What was I thinking? I forgot you prefer to save the world all by your lonesome. And, you know what, it’s past my bedtime, so I’ll go ahead—”
“Please tell me what you found out,” Lance blurted, feeling a rush of heat to his face. She wants to help, Lance. You don’t get to make that decision for her. “I’m sorry,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Really. I … I do appreciate you helping. And right now I could definitely use it.”
She pushed on. “Okay, good. That’s better. You’re welcome.” She cleared her throat as if about to give a speech. “Now, I don’t want you thinking I went and solved this for you, so don’t get too excited, but I got the gist of what’s going on and discovered something kinda interesting that ties into what you told me earlier.
“Five people have been found dead of an apparent suicide in Sugar Beach over the past year or so, both male and female, ages ranging from eighteen to twenty-three. All of their families said basically the same thing: they had no idea their child was even unhappy, and certainly not on the brink of suicide.”
Lance thought about the actor Robin Williams—how he’d made the entire world laugh and had seemed like the most carefree guy in the world on the outside and had ended his own life. Does anyone really know anything about anyone else? We all have demons.
“The oldest one was the first,” Leah said. “A girl f
rom the University of Maryland. She’d gotten a master’s degree in biology and was working on a PhD.”
“Wow,” Lance said.
“I know. Just like the parents said, they had no idea. But anyway, the rest followed after her, staggered every few months. Nobody was too certain why Sugar Beach was suddenly the hot spot for this sort of thing, but two of the articles I read—ones by some bigger publications, I guess with better resources and more motivated journalists—hinted at some message boards on the Dark Web for folks looking for help with going through with their planned suicides.”
“Dark Web?” Lance asked.
“It’s like a secret Internet,” Leah said. “For bad stuff, mostly. You see it a lot in movies and TV, but it’s real. Instead of shopping on Amazon for a pack of socks, you go to the Dark Web and shop for stolen credit card numbers.”
“Please tell me you didn’t try to find this website.”
Leah made a dismissive sound. “You kidding me? I’m not that dumb.”
“You don’t know how, do you?”
“Shut up.”
“Leah…”
“Okay, I get it. Don’t worry. I’ll stick to the boring regular Internet.”
“Thank you.”
“Anyway, my guess is, if there’s really somebody in Sugar Beach who is helping these people end their lives, they’re on that message board, trolling around looking for new … is customers the right word?”
“You think they’re paying for this?”
Leah was quiet for a minute, thinking. “Yes, I think they might be. I mean, seems like an odd hobby, don’t you think? No, I think there’s profit here somewhere.”
Lance looked at the fancy refrigerator. Expensive, had to be.
He wasn’t going to tell Leah he thought he knew who was helping with these suicides, and he certainly wasn’t going to tell her he was actually only one flight of stairs away from said person. But he did have one more question. “Leah, did these articles say how these kids took their lives?”
“Drugs,” she said instantly. “They overdosed on some wild concoction of pills, so says the medical examiner. Same thing for all five.”
Lance thought about how he’d first assumed the girls selling the sodas had been drug-related. Right idea, wrong side of the coin.
“And there’s one more thing,” Leah said. “All five kids’ bodies were found in a similar spot. Right on the beach, like they’d washed up onto shore.”
Lance was quiet for a long time. Putting pieces together.
His silence must have been telling.
“This all means something to you, doesn’t it?” Leah asked. “You’re too quiet, like you’re working it all out in your head.”
She knows me well, Lance thought. Incredible, really, when you considered how little time they’d actually spent together.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes, what?”
“It all means something. I think I know who’s profiting from these kids’ mental illness.”
Now it was Leah who was quiet. Then she asked, “What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
And to change the subject, Lance told Leah what he’d learned about Diana and the other girls that worked for the website Leah had told him about. When he was finished, Leah said, “That’s so incredibly sad.” She made a disgusted sound that reverberated across the digital line. “God, sometimes I really hate this world we live in.”
Lance said nothing.
“So what are you going to do with her?” Leah asked. “I mean, do you think those people will come looking for her? They have to, right? If they think she’ll expose their whole operation. I mean, the list of illegal things they’re involved in is a mile long—underage sex-workers are only the tip of it.”
Lance suddenly had a craving for coffee. A caffeine jolt so his brain could keep up.
He settled for saying, “I don’t know what I’m doing about any of it, but…”
“But what?”
“But whatever’s going to happen, it’s got to be now, and it’s got to be fast.”
Leah said, “Well, that doesn’t sound good.”
“I’m playing two against one here,” Lance said. “Not impossible, but no room for error. One slipup and I lose. I’ve got to play smart.”
Leah made another of those disgusted sounds, though this one was less imposing. “You know, Mr. Hero, you could just, I don’t know, walk away from it all. Nobody’s making you do any of this. There’s a billion people out there, and every single one of them needs some sort of help. You can’t save them all.”
Lance said nothing. He understood her frustration. It was coming from the same place, fed by the same fear and concern that had caused him to shut her out for so long after he’d left Westhaven. She cared about him. Didn’t want to see him hurt … or worse.
But every time Lance found himself considering running away, abandoning somebody in need of his help, he would see his mother’s face as she lay dying on the ground. The greatest sacrifice he would ever know.
The line was quiet for a long time. Finally, Leah said, “Lance?”
“Yes?”
“Play smart, okay?”
25
Lance found a French press in the cabinet and a container of ground beans next to it. He filled the kettle with water and waited for it to heat, scooped coffee into the French press and finished the job. Pulled a mug from a different shelf in the same cabinet and filled it to the rim. No need to leave room for cream or sugar. Black was just fine. He took a sip. Hot and strong. Good.
He carried it down the short hallway and to the front door. He unlocked the door and had it halfway open before considering whether or not there might be an alarm system. He might be adept at helping solve crimes, but as a thief he would be lousy. No alarm blared and no lights started flashing, and after waiting a minute to see if Loraine Linklatter was going to come running to the top of the stairs with a baseball bat or shotgun in her hands, Lance figured he was in the clear. He closed the door and went to sit on one of the porch swings.
He sat, alone in the dark with his thoughts and the salty air and the cool, misty breeze coming in from over the dunes. He used the heels of sneakers to rock the porch swing back and forth, back and forth, matching his own internal decision making process.
Confront Loraine Linklatter … or not?
Part of him, despite his outrage that somebody could be so cavalier with a human life, especially one that was not their own, was focusing on Diana and the hell she’d escaped from, and how he could help with that. It was the more tangible scenario, and he was beginning to form an idea of what he needed to do—both to deliver Diana to safety (to the best of his ability, anyway) and to put an end to the people who’d wronged her and her family.
But the other part of him kept coming back to five dead kids. All adults by age, sure. But kids, all the same. Young people—at least one well educated—with their entire lives before them. No doubt they’d needed help. But not of the type they’d received. They’d needed help to live, not to die. Lance considered that just as sinful as murder—as might a court of law, he guessed.
Plus, there was Daisy. He still couldn’t figure how she fit into all this. She’d told him about the kids all staying at the Boundary House, but that couldn’t be her only purpose. Couldn’t be why she’d been waiting all this time for somebody—him—to show up.
She still needs me, he reasoned. Or she needs a reason to move on.
Could he help with that? He didn’t know.
He sipped his coffee and looked at the ceramic frog by the door. “You’ve probably been here a while,” Lance said. “Any opinion on the situation?”
The frog was silent, but Lance read plenty into the way those large eyes seemed to stare at him. “Yeah, you’re right,” Lance said. “I know.”
He sighed and stood from the porch swing. Gulped down the rest of his coffee and patted the frog on its head before pushing throug
h the door, back into the house.
Loraine Linklatter stood in the foyer, robe cinched tight, a small pistol clutched in her right hand. It was pointed directly at Lance’s chest.
* * *
Lance held up his hands and offered timidly, “Um … don’t shoot?”
“Oh, it’s just you,” Loraine said. “I heard somebody on the porch, but I figured you’d be in with your girl.” She kept the gun trained on him, though not as assuredly. After a moment she shook her head, as if she’d finally gotten fed up with it all. “Who are you?” she asked.
Lance said nothing.
“I mean, I know you’re Lance,” Loraine said, waving the gun in a hurry-it-along gesture. “What I mean is, who are you? Why are you really here?”
“Can you put the gun down first?” Lance said, his mind whirring into gear, trying to find a balance of survival mode and how to capitalize on this opportunity to get answers from Loraine Linklatter. Because clearly whatever he was meant to do with her, it was going to happen right now.
Or she would shoot him. There was always that option, Lance supposed. All he had to defend himself with was a coffee mug with a spit’s worth of liquid in the bottom. Not great odds. Okay, next-to-impossible odds, and Lance never was much of a gambler.
His silence causes her to press on, more aggravated. “Whatever you’re up to, you need to tell me. It’s my right to know, being you’re staying in my home. I’ll kick you and your little girlfriend upstairs right out of here, don’t think I won’t.”
“Why do you think I’m up to something?” Lance asked.
She rolled her eyes, jutted the gun forward. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Lance.”
Lance considered this statement. Then considered this: If Loraine Linklatter was, in fact, running some sort of assisted-suicide business by lurking in the message boards of some secret Internet that Leah didn’t even know how to access, and had managed to keep it all a secret up until this point, there was no denying that she was intelligent. Sometimes Lance marveled over how some of the most clever people were criminals. He often wondered what sort of things they could have achieved if they’d used their powers for good, so to speak.
The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4 Page 15
