Undisclosed (21 page)

He looked around as if he had imagined it all, his matted hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, and then his gaze fell upon Jayde.

Jayde shook her head. “Maybe next time you’ll pay attention and trust us.”

Travis sat up, continuing to search the ground and his clothing.

WTH?

“They play on your worst fears,” she said.

“You mean it was all in my head?”

“Sort of. To you it’s very real, more real than any hallucination. They can’t read your mind; they just turn your mind on itself. It’s just one of the ways they control people,” she said. “You’re lucky—left in that state you might have hurt or killed yourself—many do.”

Lincoln remained outside, keeping an eye on Billy and Seth, while Mason and Ty stepped in.

“The others got away,” Ty said.

Mason tapped Ty’s chest. “And I thought you screamed like a girl. Looks like we have a new winner.”

Ty ignored him and grasped Travis’s hand, pulling him to his feet. Ty began brushing off the dust and dirt that had collected on Travis’s clothes.

“I can do that, thanks.” An expression of embarrassment flooded Travis’s face.

Travis noticed Jayde looked pissed. “I know—you told me so.”

She met his gaze and frowned, saying nothing. Instead, she just turned and walked out, Mason following close behind her.

Travis sat on the middle of the stone coffin, continuing to brush his clothes off.

“What’s up with her?”

Ty explained, “Well, other than the obvious, this all hit too close to home.”

“What do you mean?”

“You remind her of him. In fact, you remind all of us of him.”

“Who?”

“Connor.”

“Connor?”

“Probably said too much, we’d better head out,” he said. “You good?”

Travis regarded Jayde curiously; she had already begun questioning Joe.

“As good as you can be for being treated like a puppet.”

Stepping outside revealed that tempers had flared. Travis’s eyes widened when he saw Marcus trapped in the ground like a kid buried up to his forearms beneath the sand at a beach.

“… You lie to me again, and we’ll do more than slice tendons.” Jayde squeezed her foot down hard on Joe’s bloodied leg. “Now where is he?”

Travis took hold of Jayde’s arm and she brushed him off.

“No, I’m tired of playing around.”

Joe groaned, clinging to the upper portion of his leg.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She pressed down harder, pulling his hair back.

“You might want to rethink your next answer.”

“Screw you.”

“Wrong answer.”

She placed her entire weight on his leg. Joe yelled in pain.

She bent down to his level, still balancing on his leg. “What do you want with Travis?”

“Okay … Just. Step. Off,” Joe moaned, trying to form words.

“Don’t tell them, you idiot, you’ll get us both killed.”

“Shut the hell up.” Mason plowed his fist into Marcus’s face.

Travis tried to intervene. “Is this really necessary?”

Mason stepped up to him. “You better wake up and smell the coffee. You think they would have shown you an ounce of mercy if we hadn’t shown up?” Mason scowled and jabbed his finger against Travis’s chest. “We did it your way, now it’s our turn, and if you want to stay alive you’d better be prepared to get with the program.”

With that Mason turned and fired a silent round into Marcus’s skull, then walked away.

Travis stared in horror at the lifeless bloodied face. Regardless of what had taken place only moments ago, beneath the mess was still a face he had seen so many times before at school. It was hard to think any different. Reality came crushing down on him, a heavy strain that left a bad taste in his mouth. It was then, in that moment, Travis knew he had crossed over an invisible line. There was no going back—that he was sure about.

“So?”

“He’s being held at the Lab.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“And Travis?”

Joe narrowed his eyes and then let out a grizzly laugh. “He hasn’t told you, has he?” he said, gloating as if privy to information they weren’t. “He wasn’t meant to be there.”

They looked over at Travis, whose back was still turned.

“Then why were you at Dr. Evans’ house?”

He shook his head. “I can’t tell you. He’ll kill me.”

“Who?”

He said nothing.

Another gunshot rang out. Travis, still staring at Marcus, shuddered. Ty touched the earth by each of them and Travis watched as the earth began to resemble stirred soup around them. It opened and swallowed them down whole like sinking a weight to the bottom of an ocean. As the surface sealed, it looked as if no one had even stepped on the soil.

“You dumbass, you think you could have waited?” Lincoln yelled.

“Oh, stop bellyaching. As if he was going to tell us.” Mason began heading back.

The walk back to the doctor’s house was solemn, each of them remaining silent. They had made progress but at what cost? To them it was probably just another night, but for Travis it would be a night he wouldn’t easily forget.

When they reached the doctor’s home, he had half expected the place to be taped off with yellow police tape and swarming with cops; instead, everything was still quiet.

“So what now?”

“Mason and Ty will dispose of the doctor’s body, Jayde will go with you and we’ll meet back at The Black Hole,” Lincoln said. “I’m sure Jack will be keen to hear what we found out.”

Travis brought his bike to life.

Jayde got on the back and slid her arms around his waist. Travis let out a dull yelp as he felt her arms around his abdomen. Pain shot through his throbbing ribs.

“You okay to drive?”

Without glancing at her he nodded and they pulled away. It was the first time he had her on his bike and it certainly wasn’t under the circumstances he hoped it would have been. They never spoke a word on the way back, and Travis wondered if her mind was rushing as much as his. Maybe they had become numb to it all? Like military officers in the thick of war, it was just another day in the office to them. Maybe in time he would feel the same? Maybe, and yet tonight it was all too raw.

Chapter Twenty-One

Travis stood beneath the shower, hands black with blood and dirt, watching as the crimson water swirled its way down the drain. How many times had they washed blood from their hands? Under the lights of the shower he could see the brutal damage that had been inflicted to his body. Large patches of red and dark circles of purple all over his ribs throbbed. His body looked like it had been pounded like a slab of butcher’s meat. As water poured over his head he began to taste the dried blood as it became wet again. Its sticky iron made him want to gag. He’d tasted it far too much lately.

Stepping out, he wrapped a towel around his waist. His body, while eased by the warmth of the shower, now revealed the depth of the evening’s assault. Aching in places he hadn’t felt before, he clung to his ribs. Back in the room he had woken up in only days before, it felt strange and yet now oddly comforting. A set of dark folded clothes was at the end of the bed; he gave a quick look around and then slipped into them. Taking a seat on the edge of the bed he lay back and closed his eyes. His body was exhausted. All he wanted so badly to do was close his eyes and sleep, but images of the doctor and Marcus tormented his mind.

He had been in trouble before, and he’d known what it felt like to be guilt-ridden, but this was something else. He was now a witness to murder.

Just as he felt himself drifting off, there was a gentle knock at the door.

“Yeah, come in.”

Jayde walked in. She had changed her clothing too, and he had seen her now in several outfits; no matter what she wore she always looked good in it. Her hair was pulled up loosely into a hair tie.

“Did everything fit?”

Travis sat up and turned his arms to show her. Jayde paused as if she had seen a ghost.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, for a moment I thought …”

“Connor, right?”

She sat down beside him. “Let me guess, Ty?”

He nodded affirmatively.

“Yeah, those were some of his clothes.”

“Was he your boyfriend?”

“You could say we had history.”

“Where’s he now?”

She shuffled in her seat. “We haven’t seen him in over a year and a half.”

“What happened?”

“He was on a job—investigating a series of unusual disappearances and deaths that were happening at a university in Ohio.”

She got up and walked over to the far wall where a shelf was, her fingers slid along the line of dusty thick books. She stopped and pulled out what looked like a dark rawhide book. It was tied together on the spine and closed with leather twine.

“We’d always worked investigations together. That’s a rule we stick by and it’s what’s kept us alive. We were all tied up on another case and he wouldn’t wait, he said he would go ahead; a simple job. In and out,” she said. “I told him to wait, but he wouldn’t listen.”

She flipped through several pages, stopped and then handed the book to him. Travis examined a ripped-out newspaper cutting stuck to the inside. Yellowed and crinkled, the text was fading as if the damp moisture of the basement had begun to wear it thin. It read:
Three Ridges Ohio University Students Found Dead, One Girl Still Missing—Police were questioning a long list of people Sunday in the mysterious deaths of three Ohio State University students whose blood-covered bodies were discovered late Friday evening in the unoccupied tuberculosis ward. One student is still unaccounted for;
the search continues. Many students and teachers claim to hear voices coming from the building and others say they have seen strange lights and shadow people. This is the second in a series of gruesome, unexplained deaths that the
university has had over the past four weeks. Many students have left the
university out of fear, and parents are demanding answers. A police spokesman said 12 officers have
been assigned to the case. “There is a long list of people we are talking to and it will take several days.” The search continues for the missing girl.

Travis flipped through a few more pages; each one was filled with similar clippings of unexplained deaths, strange sightings and paranormal events occurring all over the country.

“So this is what you meant by hunting them and their botched genetic experiments?”

“Yeah, the unexplained, paranormal and folklore. They’re breadcrumbs that help us track them down. Sometimes a lead goes cold and other times we get lucky.”

Travis continued thumbing through the pages.

“Anyway, after we hadn’t heard from him in several days, we began investigating further and discovered that the place had been a lunatic asylum as far back as 1874, before Ohio State got their hands on it,” she said. “We scoured the place, but couldn’t find even one person who had seen or spoken to Connor.” She exhaled, her expression changing as if she was unearthing something she had tried to forget.

Travis felt stricken with guilt over his decision to visit the doctor alone. He looked up at her standing beside his bed and touched the tips of her fingers.

“Jayde, I’m sorry. If I had known—”

“It’s okay.”

He went to get up but felt an overwhelming surge of pain go through his side. He winced and gripped his side—his face contorting from the pain of breathing.

Jayde immediately caught him, lowering him back to the bed. She lifted up his top and saw the state his body was in.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said, lifting the top off his body. “Lie back.”

Travis lay back, resting his head against the pillow. Jayde laid her hands gently on the bruising. They felt warm and tender.

“You’ll feel some heat.”

A few seconds passed and then he could see an illuminating glow of blue emanating from her hands. It gradually got brighter, until he had to squint his eyes just to make out the shapes of her hands. The light lit up her face—her eyes had changed, and Travis noted that what once scared him no longer did—now all he could see was how beautiful she looked. It felt as if someone had covered his body in hot stones. Her hands stayed there for what only seemed like a minute and then she lifted them off. Travis looked down at his body in surprise; all the bruising, cuts and grazes were gone. He sat up straight and examined himself, touching his mouth; even the cut on the side of his lip was gone.

So that’s how you did it before,
Travis recalled.

Out the corner of his eye he could see her studying him. He quickly met her gaze and she turned her eyes away and got up.

“Well,” she said.

Travis took her hand. She turned to him and their eyes locked. He gently pulled on her hand until she sat down again.

Fine lines formed between his eyes. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“No, I mean it, for everything.”

He looked deeply into her eyes.

“I never said it before—I should have. If it wasn’t for you and the others, well …”

She smiled.