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Authors: Aileen Harkwood
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her.
“I’m sorry,” Gavin said.
“So, we just abandon her? Another Lost One left for dead?” Jack said. “I’m guessing we’ve decided the vow is meaningless then.”
“I’m sorry,” Gavin repeated. “We can’t chance losing another finder. ”
“No word on Taylor? No leads.”
“None. No change. We’re in the dark,” Gavin said. “It could happen at any time.”
Jack’s dread of the situation increased. There was something they were missing. Something they’d overlooked. For a change, he let Gavin stew in silence while he thought. Suddenly, he quit pacing. Stood rock still.
“How’d she find us?” Jack asked.
“Your target?”
“Lara. My Lost One’s name is Lara.”
“I assumed she was a finder, like you.”
“No,” Jack said. “I don’t know what she is, but she’s definitely not a finder.”
“They showed her a photo, then,” Gavin said.
“Right. But where did the Greys come up with a photo of the inside of this place?”
“You’re right. It doesn’t make sense,” Gavin said.
“Technically, a tourist who rented the cabin might–”
“Might what? Snap a pic, magically know they’re standing in a Society safe house and just as magically know who might be interested in that information? Not even worth considering. Besides, if the Greys got the photo from a tourist they wouldn’t bother sending your Lara. Why would they have to when the tourist could easily give them the address? The place would have been under surveillance long before you arrived. You’d be wherever March is now. They’d have taken you, not him.”
“I still say they had her working off a photo,” Jack said.
“At this point I don’t care how they found the cabin,” Gavin said. “You’re out of there. Two hours from now, the place is going to be so much rubble.”
Chapter 13
Lara rose from her dark oblivion guided not by sight or sound, but by the unrelenting pain in her hand. She opened her eyes and found herself on the floor of the same cell as before, huddled into the corner farthest from the door. Chair, instrument cart, and her tormenters were all gone. The zip tie around her ankles had been removed. Burns from hours under Grey Man’s torture with the car battery dotted her abdomen. They’d left her in the same clothes she’d had since the abduction, T-shirt and panties, the shirt now spotted with dried blood around her shoulders. Another large patch of it, still wet and sticky, stained the hem.
Immediately, her gaze locked onto her hand, clumsily wrapped in a layer of bandages at least one inch thick. She knew the wound was the source of the freshest, greatest amount of blood on her clothing.
Jack .
He was the last thing she remembered before passing out, the ghostly man whose body she’d seen in the room in Grey Man’s mysterious photograph. She’d assumed Jack was dead, his ghost warning her not to touch anything. He’d pleaded with her not to try and open the door, that she might lose her hand. It had made no sense to her at the time. How could she lose a body part because she touched something in a dream? He wasn’t even real, was he? He was just someone her mind had made up.
Figment or not, he’d been correct. Nothing, not even the torture she’d received over the past hours or days, could match the physical shock of finding her palm embedded in the metal doorknob.
Embedded .
Things like that weren’t possible.
I’m losing my mind .
Or she’d lost it already.
She remembered that’s exactly what she’d been thinking while standing in the bedroom with the pine paneling, that she must have had a stroke. She knew the mind could craft intricate illusions to rationalize injury to the brain. Could all she’d experienced so far, Grey Man included, really be attributed to a clot in her brain or a burst blood vessel? How long did such fantasies last? Could they pack the imaginary passage of entire days into a few minutes of real time? Could she actually be in a
“I’m sorry,” Gavin said.
“So, we just abandon her? Another Lost One left for dead?” Jack said. “I’m guessing we’ve decided the vow is meaningless then.”
“I’m sorry,” Gavin repeated. “We can’t chance losing another finder. ”
“No word on Taylor? No leads.”
“None. No change. We’re in the dark,” Gavin said. “It could happen at any time.”
Jack’s dread of the situation increased. There was something they were missing. Something they’d overlooked. For a change, he let Gavin stew in silence while he thought. Suddenly, he quit pacing. Stood rock still.
“How’d she find us?” Jack asked.
“Your target?”
“Lara. My Lost One’s name is Lara.”
“I assumed she was a finder, like you.”
“No,” Jack said. “I don’t know what she is, but she’s definitely not a finder.”
“They showed her a photo, then,” Gavin said.
“Right. But where did the Greys come up with a photo of the inside of this place?”
“You’re right. It doesn’t make sense,” Gavin said.
“Technically, a tourist who rented the cabin might–”
“Might what? Snap a pic, magically know they’re standing in a Society safe house and just as magically know who might be interested in that information? Not even worth considering. Besides, if the Greys got the photo from a tourist they wouldn’t bother sending your Lara. Why would they have to when the tourist could easily give them the address? The place would have been under surveillance long before you arrived. You’d be wherever March is now. They’d have taken you, not him.”
“I still say they had her working off a photo,” Jack said.
“At this point I don’t care how they found the cabin,” Gavin said. “You’re out of there. Two hours from now, the place is going to be so much rubble.”
Chapter 13
Lara rose from her dark oblivion guided not by sight or sound, but by the unrelenting pain in her hand. She opened her eyes and found herself on the floor of the same cell as before, huddled into the corner farthest from the door. Chair, instrument cart, and her tormenters were all gone. The zip tie around her ankles had been removed. Burns from hours under Grey Man’s torture with the car battery dotted her abdomen. They’d left her in the same clothes she’d had since the abduction, T-shirt and panties, the shirt now spotted with dried blood around her shoulders. Another large patch of it, still wet and sticky, stained the hem.
Immediately, her gaze locked onto her hand, clumsily wrapped in a layer of bandages at least one inch thick. She knew the wound was the source of the freshest, greatest amount of blood on her clothing.
Jack .
He was the last thing she remembered before passing out, the ghostly man whose body she’d seen in the room in Grey Man’s mysterious photograph. She’d assumed Jack was dead, his ghost warning her not to touch anything. He’d pleaded with her not to try and open the door, that she might lose her hand. It had made no sense to her at the time. How could she lose a body part because she touched something in a dream? He wasn’t even real, was he? He was just someone her mind had made up.
Figment or not, he’d been correct. Nothing, not even the torture she’d received over the past hours or days, could match the physical shock of finding her palm embedded in the metal doorknob.
Embedded .
Things like that weren’t possible.
I’m losing my mind .
Or she’d lost it already.
She remembered that’s exactly what she’d been thinking while standing in the bedroom with the pine paneling, that she must have had a stroke. She knew the mind could craft intricate illusions to rationalize injury to the brain. Could all she’d experienced so far, Grey Man included, really be attributed to a clot in her brain or a burst blood vessel? How long did such fantasies last? Could they pack the imaginary passage of entire days into a few minutes of real time? Could she actually be in a
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