Redemption (Enigma Black Trilogy Book #3) (28 page)

The pair circled the arena, Nicholas being the obvious aggressor of the two, but where his size was an advantage to him in the strength department, it was a clear detriment in the speed department, and Drake was well aware of that fact. Whenever Nicholas made a lunge for Drake, he would make a swift dive out of the way, running to the opposite side of the arena before Nicholas could regain his bearings.

“Drake’s strategy may work out well enough for him at the moment, but he’s going to tire long before Nicholas, and when he does, he’ll wish he’d just gotten everything over with right off the bat and hadn’t wasted his energy,” I said, cringing when Nicholas’ fist missed the side of Drake’s face by mere inches. “Do you want to go in there and show him how it’s done, maybe provide backup for the little guy?”

Ian smiled. “I thought you would never ask.”

Cameron rounded a corner and entered the hallway that led to Victor’s office. Behind him, Kara kept her distance. Three quarters of the way down the hall, Cameron stopped at the doorway, spotting Kara before he had a chance to place his thumb against the plate. “Why did you follow me down here?” he asked. “I told you I would be right back.”

“I know, but that phone call you received sounded serious, so I figured I would just come with you to see whether I could help.”

“That’s really nice of you, Kara, but you can’t be here. Victor’s already pissed at me about Celaine and Ian, and, well, I need to make it up to him somehow, even if it’s just through baby steps.”

“Why, Cameron?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you care about what Victor thinks so much? I understand that you think he saved your life as a teenager, but open your eyes. Cameron, he’s been using you for years.”

“Stop it,” he said, scowling. “He rescued me. He gave me a home, a job, a family.”

“A family? How skewed must your beliefs about families be to even remotely believe that Victor is anything familial to you?” She reached her hand out for him to take it, which made him draw back and recoil into himself. “Real families don’t just cast members aside when they feel like they aren’t useful anymore. They don’t make them feel like shit when things happen that are out of their hands. Cameron, you’re brilliant, and Victor saw that and only that. He never cared about you as a person. All he cared about was what he could get from you. He’s been using you to further his own interests. You’re nothing more than a means to an end.”

“You’re lying,” he said, trembling, his eyes watering.

“No, sweetie, I’m not. He used you; he used me; he used all of us.” She stepped forward and placed an arm around his back, rubbing it in a circular motion. “And I have a feeling something big is about to happen. Perhaps you do, too. Whatever it is, it’s imperative for us all to find out if we are to stop the madness before it has a chance to do any damage. Please, Cameron, let me go in there with you. If we find nothing, then great, but I think you know that won’t be the case.”

He stood staring blankly down the hallway, the wheels turning in his head. His body shook and his forehead glistened with sweat. “No,” he said after contemplating the possibilities. “I’m sorry, but I can’t, Kara. He’s like a father to me.”

“Open the door, Cameron,” Drew said, appearing from behind him.

“You, too, Drew?” he asked, turning around. “Come on, man. I—” he paused, his eyes widening in shock at the sight of the revolver in Drew’s hand.

“Open the door,” Drew repeated, almost in as much shock as Cameron.

Cameron turned around to look at Kara, who seemed unaffected by the scenario unfolding. “You—you tricked me. All this time I thought you wanted to be my friend. I—I thought you actually cared about me, but you were lying to me the entire time.”

“I do care, Cameron,” she said softly. “I feel badly for you and everything you’ve been through, but I care more about what Victor is up to and what that may mean for everyone.”

“You feel sorry for me?” he asked, shaking. “Well, I don’t need your pity.” He turned around to face Drew. “I don’t need any of your pity. I’m brilliant; my work has meant something. Victor—”

“Couldn’t give two shits less about you,” Drew said. “You’re nothing but a tool for him to use when it’s convenient.”

“Liars!” Cameron yelled. “Both of you.”

Kara grabbed him and pushed him against the door, reaching for his hand to grasp his index finger. He struggled, elbowing her in the stomach. “A little help here would be nice,” she called out to Drew as Cameron continued to try to break free. Drew joined them and placed the revolver against the back of Cameron’s head. Upon feeling the steel firmly against his scalp, Cameron froze. Any trace of a fight left him just as instantly as it had appeared, leaving him empty. “I meant a little help with restraining him,” Kara said. “But this works too. Now, Cameron, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. The door will open for you whether you’re alive or not.”

A sound escaped Cameron’s throat that resembled something of a sob mixed with a sigh as he raised his hand to the plate next to Victor’s door and pressed his index finger squarely in the middle of its smooth glass.

“No funny business,” Drew said, drawing a confused glance from Kara.

“What? I’ve always wanted to say that, but just never found myself in the appropriate situation.”

Kara shook her head while the light under the plate changed to green once the scan of Cameron’s index finger was completed. With the internal security system granting Cameron approval to gain access to the office, the door slid open and Kara and Drew ushered him inside. They allowed the door to slide to a close behind them before they spoke again.

“This is it?” Drew asked, disappointed. “I was expecting some secret lair with pickled heads in jars and beakers of chemicals sitting in the corner next to a book containing the answers to all our questions. We’d open the book to Victor Price’s disembodied narration, and everything would begin to make sense again.”

“You watch entirely too much television,” Kara said, smacking him in the arm. “Besides, you have to dig to find treasure. It’s not just scattered along the shoreline.” Kara walked around the immaculate office and inspected the bookshelves and filing cabinets as she made a circle around Victor’s desk.

“See, absolutely nothing,” Cameron said. “I bet you feel stupid.”

“Not so fast,” Kara said. Undaunted, she circled back around the desk and stopped in front of the filing cabinet where she attempted to open it, finding it resistant to her efforts. “Key.” She held her hand out to Cameron.

“What makes you think I have a key?” he asked with a sneer.

Drew shoved the cold barrel of the revolver into the skin on the back of Cameron’s neck. “You heard the lady. Where’s the key, Cameron?”

Shaking more from anger than fear, Cameron reached into his pocket and pulled out a carabiner that held numerous keys of various shapes and sizes. He moved several keys to single out a small, gold one close to the center of the cluster.

“Open the filing cabinet,” Kara said. Cameron opened his mouth to say something, but a stern look from Drew quashed any thought he intended to vocalize at that moment. With a shaky hand, he inserted the key into the lock on the side of the cabinet and turned it. A loud grinding noise from inside the cabinet indicated its locking mechanism giving way, and the first drawer popped open a couple of inches. Kara grabbed the drawer and pulled it open the rest of the way. Inside, a slew of manila filing folders were arranged neatly in a row that ran the entire length of the drawer. Some were thin, containing nothing more than a handful of documents; others were filled to capacity and then some. Kara eyed the larger files near the far end of the drawer. She guided her fingers down each of the folders until she arrived at the last three, the bulkiest ones, and moved the other folders down with her hands to allow her enough room to inspect the labels on the ones she’d singled out.

Blake Cohen
.
Ian Grant
.
Celaine Stevens
. Curious, Kara lifted each of the three folders from the drawer and took them over to Victor’s desk, where she set them down. “You. Sit,” she instructed Cameron, who complied only after receiving yet another hardened look from Drew. Kara opened Blake’s file first. At the top of the stack of documents in the file, she saw black and white photographs of Blake sitting at a bar in a pub setting, of him standing outside the same establishment smoking a cigarette, and of him getting into a car parked in the parking lot located in the back of the pub. “Surveillance photographs,” Kara said to no one in particular. She lifted the photographs and gasped at the images underneath them.

“What is it?” Drew asked, concerned.

Kara’s eyes watered, the tears catching in her eyes as though refusing to fall. “Autopsy photographs,” she said in a voice so soft Drew had to strain to hear her. Below those photographs were nothing but printed documents, which drew a sigh of relief from her. Records, including Blake’s medical records after coming to The Epicenter, a criminal background check, driving records, and information about his life before coming to The Epicenter presented themselves within the documents she thumbed through. Toward the back of the stack, Kara paused at newspaper clippings detailing an explosion on a bridge caused by The Man in Black. As she skimmed the article, memories flooded back to her of her sister who had died in another explosion on a busy bridge during the same year the article had been printed. “This is odd,” she said.

“What?” Drew asked.

“This article. It’s about the attack on the Washington Bridge, the one where Blake’s brother Hank was killed.”

“Yeah, he was Blake’s brother. Why is that so odd?”

“Because this article was cut out of a newspaper, and the attack occurred two years before Blake was recruited to join The Epicenter. How would Victor even know to save it two years before Blake arrived?” She looked up at Cameron, noticing that he had begun to wring his hands together, a nervous tic she also had herself.

“Maybe it was Blake’s,” Drew said, offering an explanation. “He could have brought it with him when he came here.”

“It’s possible, but I find it doubtful that he would have saved something like this,” Kara said. She frowned at the article as though it were a piece to an entirely different puzzle, tucked it back inside the folder, and set the folder aside. Underneath Blake’s folder was Ian’s file, the thinnest one of the three. Upon opening it, Kara found records of Ian’s surgery at The Epicenter and, much like Blake, records containing personal information. Quickly, she skimmed through those records until she reached the end of the file, where she found photographs and news articles. “I think this was Ian’s dad,” she said, scanning an article, even more perplexed than before. “I remember him saying he died in a bombing at the Flamingo Casino. But that happened ten years before Ian ever came here.”

Drew picked up a figurine from Victor’s desk and inspected it, turning it over from side to side. “Victor must be somewhat of a science fiction fan,” he said to Cameron, who was becoming visibly more shaken as the minutes went by. “What are these? Cyborgs? Robots?”

“Put it down, Drew,” he said. “Victor handmade them, and I know he’ll be pissed if one of them gets broken.”

Drew laughed. “I’m thinking breaking one of these is going to be the least of my worries as far as Victor is concerned, considering we just broke into his office and I’m holding a gun to his pet’s head.”

“Quit calling me that, and put the figurine down now.” His shaking had grown more profound. A bead of sweat tricked down his face.

“Gee, Cameron,” Drew said. “You would think we were interrogating you by the way you’re reacting.” He set the figurine down and picked up another, further aggravating him. Drew glanced up at Kara, who met his eye and nodded her head to proceed.

“Who is Phillip Grant?” she asked as she picked up a photograph that had been published in a newspaper that seemed just as old as the one detailing the attack on the Flamingo. Its edges had yellowed, and the paper seemed as frail as an autumn leaf. “A relative of Ian’s, maybe? And why has his face been drawn through with an ‘X’?”

Across the room, Drew had moved from the figurines on the desk to the numerous ones situated on the bookshelf. Instead of glaring at Kara, Cameron’s eyes were transfixed on Drew as though he wanted to jump up from the chair and pull him away from what he was doing. Kara returned her focus to the photograph and the caption underneath it. “Labinski. That was Liam’s last name,” she said, glancing up at the photograph above the caption. “His face has also been scratched out.” Her finger glided to the next name listed under the photograph. She gasped as her finger began to quiver, the realization hitting her like a freight train.

“Kara,” Drew said her name, but it didn’t register with her for several seconds. Eyes wide, she looked up from the photograph at Drew. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“It’s George Stevens,” she murmured.

“George Stevens as in Celaine’s father?”

Kara nodded.

“Has his face also been drawn through?”

“Yes.” She read the rest of the caption, pausing at the end. “All three of them were doctors at Hope Memorial Hospital.”

“That’s strange,” Drew said, picking up another figurine, much to Cameron’s disdain.

“I think it’s more than just strange. There’s meaning behind it. There has to be.”

“You want to fill us in on that meaning, Cam, ol’ buddy?” Drew asked.

“Go to hell,” Cameron said, a slight tremble evident in his voice.

“Why, so I can keep you company?”

Kara placed the article back inside the folder and turned to the thickest file—the one labeled with Celaine’s name. She took in a deep breath, bracing herself for what may lie inside, and opened the folder. On top, she found a series of surveillance photographs taken by Blake, showing Celaine walking down an alleyway with Chase by her side. A medical report detailing Celaine’s operation and subsequent cardiac incidents were next, and Kara set them aside as she spotted more photographs further down inside the file.

“What in the hell?” she asked to no one in particular. “Whose house is this?” Curious, she turned the photograph over and read the caption: Stevens’ residence.
No, this can’t be her parents’ home, can it?
she thought as she thumbed through other similar photographs depicting different angles of the house and the vehicles situated in the driveway. Kara turned the photographs over and moved on to the other documents, finding herself taken aback by what she found in front of her. Her stomach churning, she weeded through high school transcripts, including one from Celaine’s transfer to Iowa, her school photographs, and several news articles from the bombing at The Lakes.
My god, he’s obsessed with her
.