CHAPTER SIXTEEN
H
is opening statement distracted me from deciphering the paper.
Escaped from Vedault?
Maybe this wasn’t just about the police cover-up. What if he’d talked to Ben’s dad? Was he trying to pin Ben’s death on me?
“Willa?” Mr. Truth prodded.
“I’m sorry. Did you ask a question?”
His lips pursed. “You’re right. I haven’t asked you anything yet. It was more of a request. Tell me about that night.”
He sat back, folding his arms across his chest, as if settling in for a story.
The paper, evidence, resting within reach drew my attention. He hadn’t explained what I was looking at, but it resembled a log of some kind. Was that what I’d seen the mayor signing as he chatted with the nurse on duty?
Except, it was glaringly obvious George Orten hadn’t logged his name. Not about the cover-up indeed.
“A lot happened that night,” I offered, and not a word more.
There were three names on the list for the night I escaped, and one had been redacted. I slid the sheet closer.
“Ah, yes, the guest entries for your floor. I could tell you more about it.”
I canted my head. “Who crossed out this name?” It was a copy of the actual evidence, but the moment my finger brushed the blacked-out name, whispers rose and fell in a swift rush of noise before I hastily withdrew my hand.
Mr. Truth scratched his chin. “It’s hard to determine. We suspect it was the nurse on duty. The problem is, she’s no longer in the state. She packed her bags and moved.”
The nurse? Why? Did the mayor threaten her into crossing his name out?
“Honestly, I was hoping you could shed some light on that mystery.” Mr. Truth leaned forward.
“Me? What would I know about it?”
He studied my movements and tracked my eyes. “I talked to an officer—Officer Reeves?”
My heart froze when he said officer, but then it restarted as he added the name. Officer Reeves was about the best-case scenario of all the cops the agent could have questioned.
“And the thing is, Reeves insisted you were adamant that there would be some record of someone who tried to kill you in these logs. You must have told a compelling story or sounded convincing, because he checked into it to verify your statement. Reeves visited Vedault to subpoena the logs, flipped back to the night of your escape, and lo and behold…” Mr. Truth nodded at the page. “Redacted.”
“I…” I paused. The photocopy didn’t show any name below the ink. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”
He considered me for a beat. “How about you explain why you are so sure someone drove there that night to kill you? I checked the records. You were supposed to be restrained in your bed, and yet, ‘something’” —he finger quoted the word— “warned you that your life was in danger.”
I blinked at him.
He tapped the name he suspected the nurse had crossed out. “So you slipped your restraints, unlocked the door, made it past both the nurse on duty and your supposed killer, and managed to sneak out of the entire facility.”
I watched him watch me.
If he was holding his breath for me to cave, he’d need a medic before long.
“How?” he enunciated, drawing the question out until it performed double duty as a demand.
“A lot of it is a blur.” Not a lie. “They forced me to take a rainbow of pills as part of my ‘regimen.’ To spice things up from time to time, they’d insert a drip in my arm that kept me docile but loopy. It was super fun. Five stars, would recommend.”
Mr. Truth analyzed my words, seeming torn. “You describe your experience like the horror stories from back in the day, when psych wards handed out lobotomies like Halloween candy and electro-shock was all the rage. Are you sure your memories aren’t biased?”
I laughed, my eyes watering. “Yeah, they probably are. How difficult of me for not rolling over fast enough and swallowing whatever crossed their fancy—things that stole time. Things that made me a shadow of myself. The nurses are probably ecstatic that my disobedient self no longer haunts their halls.”
His attention sharpened. “Haunt?”
“Figure of speech.” I waved him off, even if my heart raced with adrenaline. “Probably since you brought up the old insane asylums. Aren’t they supposed to be hotbeds for paranormal activity?”
He made sure to enter something on his phone before continuing our discussion.
Was it a tactic to throw me off? Why would he care about my word choice? It’d been important to me, but to the FBI? The inside innuendo should have flown right over his head.
The agent finished, looking up. “So not only were you locked up, but you were drugged, weak, and loopy, yet faulty memory or not, you still managed to escape a secure facility.”
Well, when put like that…
“It sounds crazy, I know.”
“No, it doesn’t sound crazy,” he corrected.
“You’re a teenage girl. You can’t weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds, soaking wet.
Unless my team missed you taking a class on breaking and entering or googling how to pick locks and hack surveillance systems in your spare time, then it’s not just implausible. It’s impossible.”
He’d mentioned the video feeds, which I’d already known about from Officer Reeves.
I’d told him to check them in the first place, relieved that it would be the end of the matter.
They’d see the mayor at the visitor station, see him gain access to my room, and would connect the dots, asking themselves what an important political figure needed to see a teenage girl for, after hours, when he wasn’t on any approved visitors list my parents had submitted.
Only my life couldn’t be so easy. Somehow, all the video feeds were snow, from the time the mayor entered until his exit. That window also included my great escape.
Mr. Truth leaned forward, tapping the guest log once more.
“This is the only indication we have that not everything adds up. The nurse leaving looks suspicious as hell, pardon my French. More so when you consider she received a large deposit before making herself scarce. You know what we call that at the agency? Hush money.”
So the mayor paid her to disappear. That made some sense.
He studied my reaction, or lack thereof. “You don’t seem surprised by that.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Because your accomplice was the one to wire her the payment?”
I blinked. “Accomplice?”
“Yes, the timing matches with your escape.”
“No, you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t have an accomplice—”
He didn’t even hesitate. “Now, that’s not entirely true, is it? Otherwise, we’re back to the assumption that you somehow freed yourself from—”
I didn’t need to hear the spiel again. My finger jabbed at the blackened stain marring the page.
“Okay, but this guy wasn’t my accomplice.
” The vehemence in my voice stalled him.
He stared me down with a stern expression, but he remained silent.
I pressed the moment, wanting to hammer this one point home, if nothing else.
“He wasn’t there to help me. He was there to kill me. ”
The admission cost me, cutting through my sanity. The last time I’d shared this aloud, it had been to the police. It’d gutted me then. Now, it just felt wrong, like the level of danger increased.
I hugged my arms, glancing around.
“Alright,” Mr. Truth said. “Say I believe you.”
Based on the tone of his voice, it was more than a hypothetical. He did. I’d convinced him that it was the truth. My eyes filled with tears, and I slumped in the seat. I’d been fighting alone and in over my head from the second someone cut my brake lines.
The first thaw of hope melted the permanent cold state of terror I’d been surviving in.
“This man arrived with the intent to kill you, and somehow you or your partner knew this, and you escaped in the nick of time.”
Yeah, it still sounded insane when he laid it all out like that.
“I mean, how could your associate have known this person” —he jabbed the paper with his index finger— “was coming? Did you have his or the ward’s phones tapped? Keystroke trackers?”
I released a tired laugh, even if my smile held a touch of warmth. This man believed me, and that bought him a lot of leeway. “You dug into my background, but you think I have connections to people with hacking capabilities?”
He ran his hand through his hair. “How else do you explain the timing? The conveniently snowed video feeds at the moment you escaped? My team isn’t infallible.
They could have missed something. Your dad has an impressive horde of followers.
Maybe you stumbled across someone in the comments and established contact, and that person has been covering communications ever since? ”
“No, none of that.” I sighed, tossing out a theory I’d been running through my head since Reeves disclosed the information about the missing surveillance. “I think the person who wanted to kill me was the one who tampered with the cameras to keep his identity hidden.”
“Knowing he isn’t your partner, that does clarify matters. Why would you personally want to erase evidence of your would-be murderer infiltrating the facility?”
Why, indeed. Still, after months of agony, his easy acceptance unnerved me.
“Just like that?”
Veritas tilted his head. “Just like what?”
“I mean, I say it once, and you believe me?”
He laughed then, like my question amused him to no end. “Let’s just say I’m a pretty good judge of character. That’s why I wanted to meet you in person.”
“Oh, so is that it? Now you go look for the killer?”
“Killer? That’s an interesting word choice, even assuming you’re right. He hasn’t killed anyone as far as I know, so we can’t exactly call him a killer.”
I frowned, hugging myself.
“Except,” he began, “you looked like you sucked on a lemon. Do you know differently? Maybe some explanation accounting for the missing time from your rescue to being checked into the hospital for a life-threatening injury?”
Oh, and there it was—the cover-up.
He pulled the folder closer and rifled through the papers out of view.
“Because the records say one thing. What I gleaned from my interviews with the first responders on the search party matched the compiled evidence, and yet, one of my team members dug up the automatic computer log that marked when the search dogs and paramedics were dispatched. And guess what? Going by the data, damned near a full day passed from the time they called off the rescue to when you were admitted to the hospital with a coma. That leaves me to ask one glaring question. What happened? Because someone or a lot of someones in this town are lying, and I detest lies.”
The cops’ careful narrative was falling apart.
With their threats, I was still on shaky ground or between a rock and a hard place.
I glanced away. If Mr. Truth liked truths, I would stick to those. “The man who broke in to kill me at Vedault… he’s probably the same guy who cut my brake lines at the local Save-a-Lot.”
Veritas stared, his thumbs hovering over his phone as if he didn’t know what to make of my statement. “I’m sorry, what?”
“The man who… That wasn’t in my file? How?
” My heart raced ahead of my thoughts, making it hard to parse through this new information.
I found myself answering him without considering if it would be a wise idea to do so.
“There was an incident report filed and everything. The police pulled surveillance feed of the incident. That’s what they called it.
The man tried to murder me and make it look like an accident, and they called it an ‘incident report.’ It… Nothing?”
Veritas began typing something on his phone, his fingers moving at a furious speed. He barked, “From the top, explain everything you remember.”
I did, though I didn’t remember the officers’ names who had worked the initial case.
“Look, I realize how bad this appears. Here’s another instance of missing surveillance with me at the epicenter, but I’m not lying, and I’m not crazy.”
He glanced up. “I never said you were, Walker.”
“Yes, but you have to be thinking it. I was locked up in a psych ward.”
“Hmm.”
An idea sparked to life. “Oh, my phone. Ben got his dad to text us a picture of the car they suspected, and he sent it to all—” My words died, and my jaw snapped together so hard that my teeth clicked.
The agent glanced up, homing in like a shark scenting blood. “What? You just thought of something.”
Before I could elaborate, a voice bellowed from the main office. We both glanced at the origin. The yelling rose again, an angry voice, one that sent goosebumps along my arms.
Veritas climbed to his feet. “Wait here.”
Suddenly, the man moved like a black panther on the prowl, every step measured and careful. He stood to the side as he opened the door and glanced out.
The shouting, which had been muffled before, blasted through much clearer without the barrier.
I recognized that voice as surely as a nightmare.
How many times had I woken, drenched with sweat, with a scream on the tip of my tongue?
Too many to count.
Chief Pierce was here, Ben’s dad, and he was not happy.