Chapter 38 Ana
Ana
Matt Hunt reached up and pulled off his mask.
“No need for this anymore.” He threw the mask on the bunker floor next to him and looked up at Ana. She hadn’t dared move and was still standing in the middle of the floor, clinging to the weight with both hands.
The dim light caught his features, vaguely familiar but softened by age and grief since the last time she’d seen him—a year ago, standing in the hospital hallway, hands in pockets, waiting to hear that Karl was dead.
She knew him from the all-school debates; the sad widower who’d sponsored the debate team and showed up to every event, no matter how small, to support his only son.
The only son who had walked into the gym a year ago, poured gasoline everywhere, and set himself and the building on fire.
Instinctively, Ana glanced behind her at the photo in the center of the corkboard. Karl’s young, anxious face peeked out at them, smiling into the mess that his actions had created.
“You finally figured out who I am. So, what was it? What gave me away?” Hunt was sitting on the edge of the chair now.
“The debate team uniform.” Ana nodded at his gray striped shirt and orange ‘HT’ logo.
“Your company, Hunt Tech, sponsored the debate team. Whoever was doing this had to have some tech skills—decent enough to hack the school portal. That was kind of obvious, don’t you think?
” she added. It had been anything but obvious, but she didn’t need to tell him that. She’d got there in the end.
“Ha, yes. My rather chic shirt.” Hunt chuckled; he was enjoying himself.
“I did indeed sponsor the debate team. When Karl was put on probation by the school, they required him to join the team. He was miserable, so I figured I’d support him in any way I could—show him I was proud of him.
What else did you manage to figure out?”
Ana tried to project calm control, her mind racing.
“The Balloon Game. It was the debate team warm-up.”
“Yes! Karl loved that game when he was little. We played it endlessly on car drives. He was the one who suggested it to the debate team, you know,” he added proudly.
“A moral quandary. Who should live and who should die—it seemed like a fitting metaphor for this place. Good. Anything else?” He was smiling.
Ana felt a flash of hot anger. How dare he smile?
“The Motel Loba.” Ana was winging it now, putting two and two together on the fly. “The Wolf Motel. In honor of Karl’s old basketball team—the St. Francis Wolves, I assume?”
“Hmmpf…close.” Hunt shook his head. “I did rename the Motel Loba after the Wolves, but certainly not in their honor. They don’t deserve to be honored.
” A coldness had crept into Hunt’s tone.
He threw out a quick smile. “Well, Ana Reyes. You answered my questions. I believe you have earned the right to ask me some questions now.”
“Is Alex alive?” Ana didn’t hesitate. She had to know. Her knees felt inexplicably weak. She held her breath. What if the answer was no? What then?
Hunt nodded curtly. “Alex is alive.”
That was all she needed to hear. There was still a chance. It was like a drug coursing through her veins, a powerful burst of hope exploding inside her, pushing fear away. There was still a chance.
“Next question,” Hunt said, smile still fixed smugly on his face.
How can you do this to us, you loser-freak? Ana bit back the words. It wouldn’t help. To beat him, she would have to think like him.
“Why are you doing this?”
Hunt’s smile dropped. It was as though a shadow fell over him. He looked away from Ana, one hand reaching out to gently touch a chess piece, fingertips resting on the queen.
“Two years ago, my beautiful wife, Karl’s loving mother…
died.” He moved his hand across to the white king and pushed it to the center of the board, then carefully picked out a knight and stood it alongside the king.
“It was hard for Karl, losing his mother that young. He had…struggles—challenges. He rejected his family and got into drugs and all sorts of trouble. Getting kicked off the Wolves was the lowest point for him. Basketball was his life, the one thing that kept him going. You would have thought they’d have given him a break.
He’d lost his mother, for Christ’s sake. But no. One strike and you’re out.”
Ana had heard it all before. How Karl had deliberately started the fire during the Wolves’ game because he was bitter about being cut from the team. She didn’t want to listen to Hunt making excuses for his son’s psychotic behavior; not after today, not after everything he’d put them through.
While he was distracted, she took a closer look at Hunt’s radio.
It was propped on the chessboard, inches from his hands—he was keeping it close.
From here it was impossible to tell if it was a satellite phone or just some kind of fancy walkie-talkie, but she hadn’t seen anything else in the bunker that looked like a communication device.
It had to be the way Hunt kept in contact with the outside world.
Which meant it was her way to call for help.
Hunt was still talking: “Things were getting better, slowly. Karl got help—therapists, doctors, support groups. He was taking anti-depressants and they were making a difference. I took time off work to be with him. He had started working out and was beginning to feel like himself again for the first time since his mother died. The night before the fire, we were planning a European vacation, booking hotels and flights. He was so excited about the trip, about his future. No matter what anyone says, I know that my son did not want to die. I know.”
Hunt’s focus was on the chessboard. He wasn’t looking at her. Ana suddenly became aware of the weight still in her hand. All she needed to do was walk up and smack the weight into his head, take his radio, and call for help.
This would be over.
She felt nauseous at the thought. She wasn’t a killer—she’d never hurt anyone in her life.
Could she really do this? Would she be physically able to hit him?
To kill him? Even as she thought it, a brief, unwelcome image of Caden flashed into her thoughts—standing on the line, begging not to go.
Maybe she was capable of more than she wanted to admit.
“But then, there was the fire. I got a call and went straight to the hospital…and waited. For so long…waiting for them to tell me it was over. My boy was gone. Time of death: 9:58 p.m.” Hunt picked up the knight and cradled it in the palm of his hand.
There was an edge to his voice. “Murder-suicide—that’s what they called it.
They said Karl started the fire deliberately, that he’d wanted to die and take the basketball team down with him.
They called him a monster, a killer…my sweet boy.
I tried to tell them that they had it wrong; that for whatever reason he lit that fire, Karl wasn’t suicidal, and he would never, ever have done anything to hurt anyone else.
Not deliberately. I tried to tell them, but no one would believe me.
It was easier to make Karl the villain rather than look at what really happened that night. ”
Ana watched the top of his head, the side of his profile, his neck, taut with emotion. She felt her muscles tense. Her hands were sweating. She tried to imagine it, tried to picture herself stepping forward, raising the weight up high.
Hunt was lost in his own thoughts: “…could have given up. I was tempted to. I could have ended it all then and gone to be with my wife and son. But the one thing that kept me going was the thought that my boy’s memory was tainted, vilely torn apart by lies.
I had to prove his innocence. I had to show the world what really happened that night.
I had to find the truth. For Karl and for my wife. For Rosa.”
Rosa. The Motel Rosa. R O S A. Ana almost laughed. So that was the reason he’d picked this place and dragged them all the way out here. The reason he picked the code for the hatch. It was named after his dead wife. Great.
All the pieces were finally dropping into place.
Only the truth will set you free. Handwritten in the anniversary card.
It made sense at last. They were the guilty.
Each harboring a dark secret from that fateful night.
A secret that could free Karl Hunt from the blame of deliberately killing and injuring his classmates. A secret like her own.
“So how did you do it? How did you find out who was guilty?” Keep him talking, Ana told herself. Keep him distracted. It wouldn’t be too hard. Hunt was making the most of his villain’s monologue. He must have spent a few too many nights eating ramen alone in the dark bunker.
“It’s easy if you know where to look. I spent months hacking into everything, digging my way through people’s private lives—their social media, their bank accounts.
Everything from police records to the La Cholla school system.
Privacy is an outmoded concept these days.
There was one place where I found some delightfully sordid, nasty little secrets.
Indeed, the school psychologist’s reports were interesting reading… very interesting.”
Of course. Suddenly it all made sense. She had been right all along—Dankman was the source of their guilty secrets.
Maybe he hadn’t done it deliberately, but at the end of the day, was there a difference?
They had trusted him and he had let them down.
She hadn’t been the only one to confess her “guilt.” All seven of them must have had something to say—something Hunt found when he hacked into Dankman’s files and read everything. Everything.