90. Deacon
Chapter 90
Deacon
I walk into the middle of a war zone. Judging by the look on Kendall’s face, Thea was the one who set off the bomb. She’s got that look on her face that says she’s threatening him to come at her so she can put him on his ass. She’s been wearing that look more and more. I’m happy to see it’s return, but I can’t bask in it right now, because Kendall’s on edge and it’s hard to rattle him. “What’s happened?”
“My mother’s alive.” Thea says as her right hand inches towards the small of her back. That must be the current location of her knife. Her laptop’s open on the couch, and there are printouts of pictures all over the floor and table. Whatever evidence she has to that fact is likely in that mess.
“Okay, where is she?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
That sets Kendall off again. It didn’t take as long to get to the bottom of the argument as I thought it would, but that doesn’t explain why he’s now threatening to zip tie her and haul her off to the box. This has to be about more than Thea sneaking off.
“You wanna go to Nags Creek?” I say, with a shrug, “I don’t see the problem with that.”
“Tell him, princess.” Kendall snaps. “Tell him how you plan to get information on your mother’s whereabouts.”
“I’m going to use what I’ve got to get close to Wade Bishop, so his daddy notices me. What do you call it? A honey pot?” Thea sticks out her chest and flips her hair to sell it. “It’ll be easy. Wade asked me out before.”
Not exactly the plan I expected to hear. “Okay, someone explain this to me like I’m a two-year-old.”
Thea gestures towards her laptop. “There’s a Rockridge facility in Connecticut. My mother was there after she disappeared.”
“What makes either of you think this place has ties to Bishop or The League?”
She says, “Evan Bishop is the third piece of Malcolm’s evil Trium. I already know the other two were involved in the facility here, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to see if Evan knows anything.”
I pick up the laptop, reading the web address and article about arts and crafts at Rock Mountain Rehab. I spot Hailee Laurent right away under a fake name. “Any proof she’s still there?”
“None.” Kendall grits out. “There’s no record of her after that picture was taken. No discharge paperwork. No chart . Which is why it’s a stupid idea to cozy up to the son of the man who’s best friends with the people who kidnapped and tortured you.”
The yelling starts again. I let it go on for a few more minutes while I click through the website. “This doesn’t say it has any affiliation with Rockridge, so how did you come to that conclusion?”
Thea says, “Holden was messing around with the website and found a link.”
I can’t keep the shock out of my voice when I ask, “You brought him in on this?”
“He brought me in on it. I went to his room to see Finn, and Holden’s attempt to kiss me went sideways when I saw that picture.”
Kendall grimaces. “Holden and Finn? What part of secret agency did you forget today?”
“Relax neanderthal.” She says, rolling her eyes, “I didn’t tell them about you or my plan. I left right after I saw the picture and came here to look into this place myself. I called the tech team to help me get into their files and logistics for some recording devices. I didn’t know they were gonna call you.”
“Three names will always warrant an immediate call to me. You know which names they are?” Kendall holds up his hand and ticks off on his fingers, “Bishop, Cox and Lazarro. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or woman, I don’t care what age they are, or if it’s just a coincidence that they have the same name. They’re all threats until proven otherwise.”
I understand why Thea wants to get close to the Bishops, but there’s no way she’s had time to come up with a plan outside of using Wade’s supposed attraction to her. I don’t doubt Wade would be happy with the attention, but his father might have put him up to approaching her to begin with.
But I know Thea, and telling her she can’t do what she’s thinking about doing is just going to make her do it without us. That’s not safe. “I don’t like the idea of you spending time with Wade Bishop either. We don’t know that Hailee’s had any interaction with his father since leaving Canyon Falls.” Before she can turn her anger at me, I say, “But we do need to look into this clue. Let’s do some digging into this place and come up with a solid plan to get you close to him, complete with contingencies in place for if he tries to run off with you like Pax did.”
Kendall huffs in annoyance. “As I’ve told Thea, I’ll authorize a team to go to Connecticut to look into this place for her.”
“ With her.” I say, correcting the flaw in his plan. “Any recon mission should include Thea, or she’ll just sneak off to Connecticut on her own.”
Now Kendall directs his anger at me. I ignore him, kiss Thea on the top of her head and scoop up my gym bag to head to my room. We all want to keep Thea safe, but this is her mother we’re talking about. Letting her be involved as much as possible is the only way to keep her from running head first into danger.
Finn
Holden and I flew to Connecticut this morning to scope out Rock Mountain Rehabilitation and Treatment Facility. I’m pretending I’m here to get information for my great aunt who has a drinking problem. If great-aunt Olivia ever heard that’s the story I was telling, she’d twist my ear for using her name in my scheme, and then scold me for not actually bringing her with me to act out the role. She loves the theater.
Nurse Hillcrest is walking us around the public spaces. The next stop on our guided tour will be the recreation room. The brochure says it’s a structured living facility and the patients aren’t confined to their rooms. We’ve been on this floor for five minutes and I have yet to see any of those patients.
I peer around the door. “Is this also the arts and craft room for the patients who aren’t being treated for addictive behaviors?”
“Heaven’s no,” she says, “We keep our treatment residents separate from our lifestyle residents.”
“What’s the difference?” Holden asks, moving into the room.
“Our treatment residents, as the name suggests, are here for treatment for their trauma or chemical imbalances. They’ve reached a point in their lives where intensive therapy is needed. Our lifestyle residents are those who come to us to learn tools to help them function outside of the habits they’ve developed which enslave them to their chosen vices.”
I lean in close, following up Holden’s question with another of my own. In a conspiratorial whisper, I ask, “Do you ever get residents that fit both scenarios? Say someone comes in for their addiction and they also need intensive therapy because they refuse to deal with past incidents in their life, which were the catalyst for their addiction?”
She gives me an understanding smile. “We do. That’s the beauty of our facility. We can tailor our program to match our resident’s needs on an individual basis.”
“Would they live on the treatment side or lifestyle side?”
“It depends on if we’re made aware of these challenges ahead of time. If we are, we start them on the treatment floor, in a secure room while they detox. They have twice weekly counseling sessions, and when they show they’re committed to counseling, we transition them to lifestyle accommodations.”
Holden goes to stand over by a window and asks, “How long is the residency agreement?”
“That also varies from one person to the next. We have some programs that last for thirty days. Others, three to six months. As for treatment residents, some have been here for years, a few for decades.”
“Decades?” I repeat.
“That’s right. We don’t put a time limit on helping our residents become their best selves. Although most of those are in our incarceration wing.”
“I love that the plans are individualized.” I smile at her and say, “My great-aunt Olivia is a lovely woman, she just… well, I think we can both agree drinking at nine am is excessive. I’m just sorry we all pretended it wasn’t a problem for as long as we did. Some of our family still don’t want to upset her, because of the many times she’s threatened to cut them out of the will. I’d rather her be healthy enough that no one can contest her will based on incompetency when she passes. Twenty-five million and a few properties are on the line.”
A buzzer sounds, and a woman wearing a crisp business suit enters the hallway from a door with a security lock. I watch as she hastily shoves a slip of paper into her pocket. The nurse greets her with a smile. “Hello, Pamela.”
“Hello Nurse Hillcrest. Giving a tour?”
“Yes. This is Geoff Musgrove. He’s touring our facilities for his aunt. The family is working on getting her treatment for her dependence on alcohol. Geoff, this is Pamela Thatcher, our administrator.”
Pamela says, “We have the best lifestyle treatment program on the east coast. Have you seen our discussion rooms yet?”
I shake my head and she says, “I’d love to show you. It’s not uncommon for our first time residents to be unreceptive to counseling, so we provide an environment that’s less sterile. Some look like living rooms, other gaming centers. We have them tailored to match certain hobbies and personality types, but each one is designed to put the resident at ease.”
“And how do you decide which room is best?” I ask.
“We have the family fill out a questionnaire before we do the admittance interview.”
“It’s all based on what the family says?”
“Absolutely. Our residents are here for treatment. In the early days or weeks, maybe even the first month, they’re unreliable. They’re likely to put anything or nothing at all on their paperwork, and sabotage treatment before it even begins.”
“Do all family members get a say in treatment? How do you deal with conflicting or competing agendas between families?”
Pamela frowns and asks, “How do you mean?”
“I’m here, but three of my cousins think we should just let aunt Olivia go on as she is. What happens if they show up and cancel her treatment agreement? Or if she simply decides to cancel it herself? What stops her from walking out of here?”
“Ah. I see. Well, we ask for two points of contact for emergencies and to coordinate treatment. If those cousins aren’t on the admittance contract, the most they can do is visit. Even then, they have to be on the approved visitor’s list that the guardian fills out.”
Holden asks, “How long does that last?”
“For the entire duration of their residency. Change is often triggering for our residents, and most families won’t update the list, unless it’s to comply with some kind of legal proceeding. As for your aunt, the contract has a minimum stay requirement of thirty days. While the floors look accessible from the inside, they aren’t. There are some interconnected hallways between the wings, but you need a badge to swipe off the floor.”
She flings open a door to a room with glass windows and plants. “This is our garden oasis discussion room for the outdoor types.” Next, she takes us to the game room, the office room, and a sterile white room, which she tells us is used for those who need the most structure and reduced stimuli.
We tour the cafeteria and Pamela casually waves in the direction of the hospital wing. She proudly informs us that it has a full-time staff, which includes surgeons and anesthesiologists, which allows them to remain a fully self-contained treatment facility. It’s all impossibly perfect. Even the patients we walked by leaving the game room looked immaculately kept and were on their best behavior. Which only makes me want to see what’s behind the locked doors even more.
We end our tour back at the reception desk. I flirt with Nurse Hillcrest until she has to check in a few visitors, then we’re given an armful of brochures and an example of the residents’ admittance questionnaire to go over. As soon as we were off the grounds, away from view of the perimeter cameras, I pull out the electronic visitor’s badges I swiped and wave them at Holden.
I squint into the darkness, rub my eyes, and then squint again. I could have sworn I saw something in the trees, but Holden recalls his drone, insisting the perimeter is clear. This place is ultra secure, but there’s a door that the staff -whose lifestyle choices include smoking- use on their breaks. It’s a general access door; Holden had no problem hacking the code for the lock and embedding it on the strip of the visitor’s badge. I hold the badge against the lock, slipping through the door when the light turns green.
It’s well lights out time the facility imposes. The lights are dim in the discussion rooms we toured earlier. Holden and I split up at the reception desk. He’s heading to the lifestyle wing. My destination is the treatment wing. Our target is a file room on each side. Either paper or computer based. The facility runs on a closed network, making them impossible to hack from the outside, just like every other company that does business with The League.
On silent feet, I creep through the halls, floor by floor, pausing long enough to look for cameras before moving to my next check point.
The hallway I’m in slopes downward, extending beyond where the other floors had walls. There’s a sharp right turn and another sloping downward hall, then a left into a basement. I walk by a door labeled maintenance, and another that says supplies, before coming up on the Medical Records Office.
I ease the door open and step inside. The air behind me displaces as the door shuts. I spin around, arms up to block the blow, but I’m attacked from behind. My body slumps to the ground. The last thing I see are familiar violet hued eyes staring down at me.