She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,219

or your mother, and while I was in that room, I stole everything you see here—your mother was home packing our lives into our SUV. We planned to run.”

“But they caught up with you,” I said softly.

“I figured you’d remember. Something that traumatic gets etched into your brain, it never leaves. I had to think fast, I still didn’t really know what we were up against. I left you with Jo, hoping they’d chase after me. And they did, but I eventually lost them. Elfrieda Leech, our guidance counselor, she had first told us about the study, said it was an easy way to make money. At the time, she had no idea what we were all getting into, but once that became clear, she helped me broker a deal—they leave you alone, and I don’t go public. I drop off the edge of the earth. You would stay with your Auntie Jo, and she would watch you for them, report back. Unlike Stella and David, you hadn’t shown any kind of special ability, nothing useful to them. They had no need for you, so they let you be.”

I said, “They kept Stella in that house and locked David up.”

My father whistled. “Those two were a completely different story. They locked David down tight once they figured out what he could do. He was the perfect little killing machine. At that point, the rest of the people involved in the study—Penelope Maudlin, Lester Woolford, Dewey Hobson, Cammie, Dalton over there, everyone ran, scattered. We think they used David to pick us off, one by one. That’s probably how they they got Perla to drown herself and Garret Dotts to hang himself. Not accidents or suicides at all, but suggestions by David, which they had no choice but to carry out, his ability in full use. He was young, probably didn’t understand what he was doing. Not in the beginning, anyway. But I think he grew to like it. Charter had what they wanted. They didn’t need us adults anymore to create more children for them. We became liabilities.”

My eyes drifted across the room to Darby, still clutching her mother’s leg.

Cammie said, “They don’t know about her. I was off their radar when she was born, and I plan to keep it that way.”

“Can she do…something?” I asked.

“Can you?” Cammie retorted.

I was about to ask her who Darby’s father was when I spotted the worry in Preacher’s eyes. The answer was painfully obvious.

My father looked up at the clock on the wall in the kitchen. “We’ve got forty minutes. Do we stay and fight or keep running?”

“We leave here, where do we go?” Cammie said.

I thought of Stella in the other room. She’d wither away and die if I didn’t find a way to help her soon. She’d die in that bed while the rest of us died out here, perched in windows and doors in some desperate last stand. Worse, if what my father said was true, they’d kill him, Hobson, Cammie, and Dalton, then drag Stella, me, and Cammie’s daughter away somewhere, lock us up like they did with David. Staying here, all the guns, that did nothing but buy us a little time.

“We’ll get slaughtered if we stay here,” I said softly. “I need to use your phone,” I said. “I’ve got an idea.”

“No calls,” Preacher said.

My father nodded at the extension hanging on the wall in the kitchen. “Go ahead.”

Preacher grumbled but did nothing to stop me as I crossed the room, picked up the line, and dialed.

When I hung up five minutes later, my father glanced back at the clock, then forced his beaten body to stand. “They’re coming from the pass and the ferry. I’ve got another way off this island, but you all need to trust me.”

Cammie and Preacher started to gather the weapons on the counter.

My father said, “Cabinet above the refrigerator. There’s a leather duffle bag up there—grab it—we take the documents, nothing else. They’re our only real leverage.”

“We need the guns,” Preacher insisted.

My father shook his head. “Too much weight.”

14

“Pull your shit together, Fogel,” she muttered, surprised by the sound of her own voice. She wiped the tears from her eyes with the palms for hands, then wiped the snot from her nose on the sleeve of her jacket.

Fogel stood up straight.

She sucked in a deep breath through her nose and let it out through her mouth.

Her eyes landed on the display of Trudeau’s MacBook, open on his desk.

White text superimposed