SOPHIA: Do you know what it’s like to wonder if they’re right?
13
TWILIGHT CAST EVERYTHING in an eerie gray when we met Liam by the LARC, but if anything, Abby seemed more at ease than in the daylight. “Got us a key?” she demanded.
Liam produced a key ring. “I have to get these back into Dr. Kapoor’s coat pocket before morning or we’ll all be strung up for the birds,” he warned. “And be careful. Mikhail’s around here somewhere.”
“Is he dangerous?” Abby asked.
Liam looked troubled. “He was weird with Sophia,” he said. “And I’ve heard Dr. Kapoor tell Hardcastle something about not wanting to run into the warden while she was alone.”
“If she’s afraid of him, why employ him?” Abby wondered aloud, but Liam didn’t have an answer. She glanced over at me. “You going to be all right?”
I’d told them my sudden exit was indigestion. I didn’t think either of them believed me—but I’d heard Liam mutter something about a panic attack to Abby, and even that was better than the truth. Normal people had panic attacks. They didn’t have whatever it was that I did.
“Ready to go find some answers?”
“I’d settle for knowing what questions I should be asking,” I said.
She grimaced. “Sounds like something my boss would say.”
Inside, our shoes squeaked on the tiles. Good thing there was no one here to notice. “This way,” Liam said, stepping into the lead after shutting the door behind us. He brushed past Abby, and she stepped back with an annoyed look. Some people were like oil and water, and I was starting to suspect these were two of them. But I didn’t need them to be friends.
The light through the windows made it unnecessary to even turn on the lights. “I’m not used to this sneaking-around-before-dark thing,” Abby murmured as she walked beside me.
“Maybe we should have waited for the mist,” Liam said.
“You mean do the one thing that you’re warned not to from the moment you step on Bitter Rock?” I asked.
“Yeah, that,” Liam said with a little laugh.
“In my experience, there are three reasons for a rule like that,” Abby said. “One, everyone’s hiding something. Two, something supernatural is going to eat you if you disobey.”
“And three?” Liam asked.
“They don’t want you falling and breaking your neck with zero visibility, a bunch of sharp rocks, and no hospital in reach except by airlift,” Abby said.
“Fair. This is it,” Liam added, pointing at the door to the records room.
I knew the LARC kept paper records because I’d filled out a bunch on the first day. The internship was unpaid, which meant I didn’t have to add social security fraud to my résumé, but I’d had to supply a fair bit of personal info, most of which I’d made up on the spot.
The door was locked—with a standard lock rather than a keypad this time—and Liam spent several minutes trying various keys from the big ring before Abby jimmied it with a department store gift card (“More flex than a credit card, so it works better,” she explained). When she flicked on the light inside, I let out a breath. I don’t know what I had expected. Shadows and cobwebs, padlocks, something. Instead there was an orderly bank of filing cabinets against one wall. Metal shelving on the opposite side held boxes labeled in neat handwriting.
“Here we go: ‘Employment Records, Archived,’” Abby said, indicating the farthest file cabinet. “You want these, or the boxes?”
“Those’re all just old office supplies and that sort of thing,” Liam said. “No one stores anything important in here.”
“It’s not like they’re going to write ‘Damning Evidence’ on the side,” Abby pointed out.
“I’ll take the files,” I said. I wanted to be the one to find my mother’s file. To see her name. That belonged to me.
I opened the first cabinet, and Liam went to the opposite end of the row. I trailed my fingers over the tabs of the files, my eyes skipping over strangers’ names. I opened the next drawer and the next. Nothing. No Novak, Joy waiting for me to find. As if she had been snipped out of the history of the LARC entirely.
“She’s not here,” I said. I hadn’t meant to whisper, but it was as if there was a weight bearing down on me, diminishing even my voice. “Maybe—” Maybe I’d been wrong. But I knew she’d been here. There was the photo. There was the bird. There was the damn story—The Girl in the Boat, my