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“Just give me a minute. Make yourselves comfortable
and I’ll be right back. Can I get you two sodas or wine or
something?”

“No, we’re fine,” Kate said.

He was so fast going up the stairs it took my breath
away. When he returned, he was wearing a sweater.

“Okay,” he said, pushing back his hair and sitting
next to us. “Something terrible has happened. I can see it in your
faces. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“You’ve heard about the college teacher being
killed, right?” Kate said.

“No, I haven’t heard anything,” he said. “I’ve been
sleeping most of the day, trying to catch up.”

“She’s dead, Dr. Mortimer. This morning they found
her floating in the river,” I said.

“That’s terrible.”

I watched his reaction and it seemed genuine. He
took Kate’s hand. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Did you guys know her
or something?”

“No,” Kate said. “But she was murdered. And Abby saw
everything in her vision last night. She saw it all happen Ben.
Everything.”

He looked at me with large eyes. Horror filled his
face.

“Whoa, what are you talking about here?” he
asked.

“The visions. The ones we talked to you about at the
hospital. Remember?”

“Of course I remember. Is this true, Abby?” he
asked.

His eyes were dancing between us, back and forth. He
was nervous, I could tell. I took a deep breath, gathering my
courage.

“Yes. I saw her killed. It was awful.”

My voice was shaking as much as my body now and I
was sure that the cold had nothing to do with it.

“As you slept, in your dreams?” Dr. Mortimer asked.
“You saw her being killed in your dreams?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Abby was the one who called me to tell me about
it,” Kate said. “She found the body in the Deschutes this morning,
exactly like she had seen in her vision.”

“Oh, my God, that’s awful,” he said, sinking into
the sofa.

“I saw it all, Dr. Mortimer. I was there. I was
there with the killer and I know who he is.”

Dr. Mortimer grabbed his head and our eyes locked. I
could tell he was having trouble breathing. I knew that this was
hard.

“Shhh,” he said suddenly, sitting up quickly and
holding up his finger to his mouth. But it was too late.

He was there, in the house, listening to everything.
He had heard, and he knew I knew. A door upstairs opened and as we
all looked up, I saw a tall figure step out from the shadows. My
heart thundered in my chest.

“Hello, ladies,” he said, leaning against the
railing up above. A thick darkness surrounded him. There was no
mistaking it. It was him. The killer.

“What a pleasure to see you both again.”

Nathaniel.

CHAPTER 32

Nathaniel walked down the stairs slowly but with
purpose, and soon stood in front of us. He was smiling in that same
smug way I had seen in my vision.

“Please, don’t get up,” he said, as he sat down in
the opposite sofa. He was all in black, and had his hair pulled
back in a ponytail.

“You bastard,” Kate yelled and within a blink of an
eye, she flew through the air and landed on top of him. She started
pounding at him with her fists and for a minute, it looked like
Kate might take him down. She was always athletic and strong. But
after the shock wore off, Nathaniel regained his composure and had
the upper hand. And even though he was thin, he quickly pulled her
down to the floor.

“Nathaniel, stop it! NATHANIEL!” Dr. Mortimer yelled
as he rushed up to them and pulled his brother off Kate. He slapped
his face hard. “Stop!”

Nathaniel’s eyes went dark, his pale skin glowing in
the soft light of the house. My heart was pounding in my ears. I
couldn’t stop staring at the blackness that was around him. It made
me cold inside. It was the same darkness that was at the bottom of
the lake, the darkness of my dreams.

Dr. Mortimer had a strange shadow around him too,
but it was nothing like Nathaniel’s. How could I have been so
wrong?

“Everybody needs to calm down,” Dr. Mortimer said.
He pushed his brother back and Nathaniel fell into the sofa. “Kate,
Abby, please sit down again. Let’s all talk.”

And then I got a strong feeling, something that told
me that Dr. Mortimer had known. He had known that his brother was
killing people and that was probably why he carried that darkness
around him. It was guilt. He hadn’t stopped Nathaniel, hadn’t
stopped the murders of innocent people and so blood was on his
hands too.

“There’s nothing to discuss here, Ben,” Kate said
sharply. “It won’t matter what he says. He’s a cold-blooded killer.
A total scumbag murderer!”

Nathaniel smiled, his dark eyes darting back and
forth between the three of us.

“You just don’t understand,” he said. “You’re making
me out to be a monster and that’s not it at all. In society, some
have to be sacrificed for the good of the whole. It’s natural. It’s
evolution. It happens all the time. You and your beliefs can’t
change that.”

“What are you even talking about?” Kate said. Her
face was dark, anger was bubbling up. I hated seeing Kate like that
and it scared me. I didn’t know what she would do. I wanted her
friend James to arrive and arrest him, because clearly Nathaniel
was a madman and there was no reasoning with him.

“I’m talking about saving society, Kate! You don’t
even realize that I’m about to become society’s greatest hero. I am
this close to solving the greatest mystery known to mankind!
Death!”

Dr. Mortimer sighed heavily.

“Not this again, Nathaniel,” he said.

Nathaniel laughed sarcastically.

“‘Not this again.’ Do you hear him? And he calls
himself a man of medicine! Ben, don’t you think your patients, the
ones you can’t save, might be interested in my research? I would
think a doctor like you might believe that it’s advantageous to
beat death! Isn’t that what you try to do, day after day, with only
partial success?”

“You’ve gone insane,” Dr. Mortimer said, shaking his
head. “Absolutely insane.”

“But wait,” Nathaniel said, looking at Kate and then
at me. “What am I thinking? I don’t have to tell you two about the
amazing things I’ve done! You have already received the benefits of
my miraculous research!”

“What sort of gibberish are you talking about now?”
Kate said.

Nathaniel’s eyes shot back over to her like a
rattler ready to strike.

“Abby, of course,” he said, extending his hand and
pointing to me. “I gave your sister life. And I gave her back to
you.”

For a moment, I forgot how to breathe and I felt
like I was drowning again. I just stared at Nathaniel, my body in
shock. What was he saying?

Kate was lost, too. Dr. Mortimer stood up, ready to
attack. But I stopped him. I had to know.

“No, leave him alone,” I said in an even voice,
forcing myself out of the stupor. “I want to hear what he has to
say.”

*

He told us everything.

It started four years ago, when his company
developed a serum that was supposed to help cancer patients.
Nathaniel was in charge of the testing and research at various
hospitals across the country.

“I accidently injected a patient with the serum who
had just died. I hadn’t realized she was dead, but later I found
out that it had been noted on her chart. She had been dead over 20
minutes. And then, shortly after, she came back to life.”

“It was just a coincidence,” Dr. Mortimer
interrupted.

Nathaniel ignored him.

“She didn’t end up living too much longer. Cancer
destroys the body and this serum wasn’t able to stop that. But
imagine my excitement! I had brought somebody back to the life! But
I didn’t know if it was a fluke, if what I had invented was really
an antidote for death.”

“This is preposterous,” Dr. Mortimer said, shaking
his head. “Just something out of one of those old horror movies you
watched as a kid.”

Nathaniel smiled at his brother and kept
talking.

“Imagine, beating death! Ridiculous sounding, and
yet that’s exactly what happened. I realized I would need to do
more research, collect and analyze the data. I started to hang
around emergency rooms, waiting for accident victims, people who
had just died, but who were otherwise very healthy.”

Nathaniel’s eyes drilled into mine.

“Like you, Abby,” he said. “You were one of my test
subjects.”

It was like he had punched me in the gut. I heard
Kate gasp and Dr. Mortimer sigh. Nathaniel was saying that I was
some freakish mad scientist experiment. I just sat there, unable to
respond, staring at him with my mouth hanging open and my stomach
on the floor. I couldn’t move.

“Liar!” Dr. Mortimer yelled. “Abby and Kate, don’t
believe this. It’s pure fantasy. It’s nonsense!”

Dr. Mortimer grabbed my shoulders.

“Abby, you’re alive because we worked on
resuscitating you for over thirty minutes. You’re alive because you
fell into a frozen lake that shut your system down and you didn’t
need much oxygen to survive. Your living has nothing to do with
Nathaniel. Don’t believe him!”

“Ben, always such a nonbeliever,” Nathaniel said.
“But it doesn’t matter what you think. The truth is Abby was dead,
I injected the serum, and then she was alive. I saved you, Abby. I
brought you back to life.”

“No, Nathaniel. You didn’t bring her back! Why do we
have to keep going over this?” Dr. Mortimer said, his voice booming
through the house. “It was an act of God. And you, clearly, have
nothing to do with God!”

“Perhaps,” he said, smiling. “But I have everything
to do with Abby surviving that accident,” he said. “I just don’t
know why it scares you so much. You should be embracing this. You
should be as excited as I am!”

I couldn’t stop shaking. This was all too much.

“Ben, was Nathaniel at the hospital that night?”
Kate asked. Her voice was unsteady. She didn’t want to believe it
either, and yet, as crazy as it sounded, we both feared it could be
true.

Dr. Mortimer looked at her, his eyes wild.

“Yes,” he said. “He was there that night. I told
you, he works with St. Charles through his company. He was there,
but he was in the lab.”

He shot a hateful look over to Nathaniel.

“You weren’t down there. I didn’t see you down in
the ER.”

“Of course you didn’t,” he said. “I’m not a fool.
Besides, I waited until you moved on to another patient. It was an
older man who was having chest pains. Remember?”

“I didn’t see you, either, Nathaniel,” Kate
said.

“I was there and I sure saw you. You must have
thought I was an intern, the one checking Abby’s pulse and
breathing after she returned.”

The room was spinning and I needed to get out, leave
all this behind. I stood up and looked over at Kate.

But I thought for a minute. I still had a question.
I needed to know how someone who was trying to save people had all
of a sudden decided to become a murderer.

“How could you do it, Nathaniel? How could you kill
those innocent people? You’re supposed to help people and heal
them,” I asked.

Nathaniel wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked at me.
It felt like we were the only ones in the room.

“I needed to, Abby, for the data. It’s as simple as
that. For years I waited for accident victims in hospitals. But it
was taking too long. After the huge success with you, I realized I
needed to narrow the experiment, to test only drowning victims, or
people who died from asphyxiation. And then go from there with
certain blood types and body weights and things like that. It’s an
active experiment. I’m logging all my results. Careful record
keeping. I’ve been trying to reenact what had happened with
you.”

I was stunned. He really was insane.

“It wasn’t hard to wrap my arm around them or slip a
bag over their head so they would pass out. Some I took to the
river to finish the job. But the second they died, I was right
there, ready to give them back their lives. I injected the dosage.
I wanted them to live. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen that way.
Not yet. But I know I can do it again.”

We all sat stunned.

“You’re crazy,” Dr. Mortimer finally said. “And you
need help, Nathaniel. You need to be locked up.”

This was all so unbelievable. As I stared at him, it
was clear that he didn’t care one bit about the people he
killed.

“Abby, I still would like to run some tests on you.
I need to figure out how it worked on you.”

“You’re not doing anything to her,” Kate said,
moving toward him. I was worried she would start attacking him
again and knew we needed to get out of the house.

“That’s it, I’ve had enough,” Dr. Mortimer said. He
walked over and Nathaniel stood up. Dr. Mortimer was larger than
his brother, and I had a feeling that he could probably pulverize
him. At the very least, detain him until James arrived.

“Ben, the police are on their way,” Kate said.

I didn’t know why Kate told him that.

“You called the police?” Dr. Mortimer said, rubbing
his chin.

“Of course I did! He’s a killer, Ben!” Kate
said.

Dr. Mortimer stared hard at Nathaniel, who stared
back. The two brothers were full of hate. The house felt electric,
violent.

Outside, a car pulled up into the driveway.
Nathaniel walked toward the back of the house, but then stopped,
looking exactly like when I had seen him in my vision.

“Oh, and Abby,” he said. “It was fun seeing you last
night. You know, with the college teacher. You were standing in the
trees. Or a part of you was. You didn’t exactly look whole. I’m not
sure how you were able to be there, watching me as I worked. Seems
that we are linked somehow. It’s intriguing, to say the least.”

I glared at him.

“I’ll be back. Nothing too invasive. I’ll come find
you when things have settled down.”