Heartless Legacy (Heartless Heirs of Canyon Falls #4)

50. Holden

Chapter 50

Holden

T hea wants space, and Finn and I are pretending to give it to her. In the dining hall, Finn alternates between sitting with her and with us at our table, but his presence hasn’t had much of an impact on getting her to forgive us for Pax’s transgressions.

She spends a lot of time off campus. During the week, she’s at the beach, or diner or hotel, with her family. On the weekends, she disappears into thin air. There’s something else going on with her, and I’m determined to find out what. Is spying on her an invasion of her privacy? Yes. Do I care? No.

I’m outside the library, tucked against the side of the building, hidden by the shadows of the trees when she takes a call on a phone I can’t get access to. She refuses to share her new phone number. It’s not even listed on her school records or Prospectus account. If it were, I would have hacked into it by now.

She answers the call with a chipper, “Hey.” After a pause, she says, “Sorry, I’m just not feeling up to it tonight. I think I’m gonna work on some homework at the library, then head back to my dorm to get some rest.”

The call ends and I lose sight of her as she walks into the library. I pull up the camera feed and watch her enter the bathroom on the second floor. Five, six, ten minutes pass. My chest tightens, my stomach knots when she doesn’t come out. I move to another camera angle as I head inside. I finally spot her on the camera at the mezzanine level she prefers to sit at. I walk through the door. The tightness in my chest eases until she pops up on the camera that points to the back of the building.

What the hell? I stop next to the check-out counter, swiping between browser tabs. The camera feed of her inside the building is fake. It’s not looped, but there is a slight delay. The time stamp on it is thirty seconds behind the other one. I turn facing the mezzanine even though I know she’s not there.

Someone’s deep faked Thea into the feed. Who the hell did it, and why? I think back to the call she was on right before she walked inside. She told the person she’d be studying all night. But on the outside camera, she’s dressed in all black, her hair pulled into a high ponytail.

Where the hell is she going? She’s already made it to the school gate by the time I catch up with her. She continues down the road on foot, heading away from campus. Two miles later, she climbs into the passenger seat of a waiting car. I memorize the plates and run back to campus to get my car.

It took a while to track the vehicle Thea’s in. Now that I’ve caught up with her, I wish I hadn’t. I’m parked down the road right before the turnoff, so I won’t be spotted and monitoring her on the cameras I reconnected around the perimeter of what’s left of the building. I wanted to capture anything suspicious. This counts, not that in my wildest dreams would I have ever expected to see this. I’m caught off guard and it takes me longer than it should to even understand what I’m seeing. No, that’s not right. I understand. The problem is, I don’t want to see what I’m seeing.

Thea stands at the end of the driveway, staring up at what’s left of the charred hospital. Her shoulders heave before she slowly sinks to her knees. Each rack of her body pierces my heart. I wanted answers. I was trying to find any connection I could to the school. This wasn’t it. This couldn’t be it.

A car heads towards me from the opposite direction and makes the turn onto the single access road. It appears on camera a few moments later, stopping a few feet away from Thea. A tall figure gets out and immediately drops to the ground next to her. I recognize the man. It’s Deacon Wolfe.

I knew I was right to be suspicious of her whereabouts. What was it she’d said to Pax? She’d been detained against her will all summer.

It sickens me to even think that she was here, but I know it’s true. It’s the only thing that explains why I couldn’t find anything on her. Why the timeline of her arrest and return makes little sense. At least part of the time Thea was away, she was here in the hospital facility that doesn’t exist.

I grind my molars together to keep from screaming, and grip the steering wheel to keep myself in check. Running out there won’t help. It won’t get me answers any faster. All it will do is break my cover. Tracking her on campus is one thing, but witnessing this. If I go out there now and reveal I’ve been following her. If I intrude on this vulnerable moment, she’ll never trust me again.

So I remain in my car, watching from a distance. I watch her cry. I watch her stand, pacing back and forth. And I watch her go eerily still.

Then, Deacon pops the trunk of the car, and drags two red cans out of it. I watch them douse the building in gasoline, then watch with a sense of satisfaction, as Thea strikes a match and tosses it. She returns to the car, hops onto the hood and watches what’s left of the building burn to the ground.

Finn

Not Thea. I think to myself, shaking my head in disbelief. There’s no way my girl was trapped in that house of horrors. And yet it makes total fucking sense. The woman in the hospital said that they no longer existed. Thea was certainly a ghost from the time she disappeared last May until she came back to school in January. How did she get there? Who can I cut to get answers?

Holden eyes my knife as if I’m about to cut holes in the furniture. I’m not. Okay, maybe I am. The guy I was interviewing had a heart attack before he could give me any useful information about Mikey’s time in the hospital. My dad had a lot to say about that when I called him. How was I supposed to know he had a bad heart? That’s fine. I have a lead on a nurse that gave Mikey sponge baths right after his surgery. She’ll probably be more willing to talk.

“Finn.” Holden says, “You’re not even listening.” I want to tell him I am, but that would be a lie. I was listening, until he started with this whole, we need to be careful with Thea thing . “I heard you, but I don’t agree.”

“What part of the plan don’t you disagree with?”

“Um… all of it?” He’s looking at me like I’m being unreasonable, but it’s him who’s way off base here. It’s like we don’t even know the same girl. “Thea doesn’t need us to be careful, Holden. She needs revenge.” I wave my knife in the air for emphasis. “That’s what’s gonna make her feel better.”

“The building’s already out of commission. What she did last night will make it impossible for them to rebuild anytime soon.”

“The building is dead, but the people running it, whoever they are, aren’t. Do you think Thea will be okay knowing they’re still out there?”

He doesn’t say it, but we both know the answer is no. “Thea might not like people, but she doesn’t like bullies even more. And let’s not forget those guys were looking for someone in the hospital. My money’s on that sister, Marcy with an e , actually being Thea. If she was there, she’s the only patient whose brain wasn’t fried, which means she can identify everyone who was there.”

Holden clicks his mouse in quick succession. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Finn. I’m saying we have to be careful how we go about proving you’re right. If Thea was there-.”

I shoot him a look, because we’re both doing it. We know she was, but since we have no fucking idea what was happening in that building, we also want to pretend, pray, and hope that she wasn’t.

“Whoever put Thea in that place had the money and means to do it without raising suspicions or leaving any trace.”

I nod, in complete agreement that some fucker with deep pockets had to be involved. He continues, “We don’t know how she escaped. So, before we go on this hunting expedition, we need to know who we’re hunting, what they were doing, and most of all, we need to be certain that Thea’s not in any danger.”

He gets no argument from me about that. Thea’s safety comes first. “I can agree to all of that, as long as hunting happens, and Thea gets to be a part of it.”

He clicks more buttons. “She will.”