Suspicious Minds (Stranger Things Novels #1) - Gwenda Bond Page 0,40

a tall female doctor who gave Ken one look and said, “We’ll have to get Brenner.” The orderly did nothing, and she shoved him. “Get Brenner! And tell him to bring some sedatives.”

Ken turned his face toward the floor so he could grin.

Go, Terry, go, he thought. You can do this.

4.

Terry discovered that having comrades-in-arms and a shared plan made everything feel different.

She had both less and more weight on her shoulders.

Everyone else believed Brenner might be into something he had no business messing with, too. Meeting Kali followed by the revelation of Alice’s monsters—and Brenner’s electroshock—just gave her more reasons she had to get to the bottom of this. People in this area were conservative, generally speaking. They wouldn’t approve of government-funded acid trips. That might be enough to end the whole thing. But even Terry knew they needed proof that wasn’t their word against his. And they still didn’t have a real idea of what was happening.

Ken had promised she’d know when his distraction came—they’d agreed he would time it early enough in the acid trip that she’d still be on the uphill swing, and not the downhill tired paranoia spiral. And he didn’t lie. A fire alarm screamed and then a young orderly knocked on the door to the room.

“Is there an emergency? A fire?” Brenner demanded. He’d been pleased at her report that no one knew she’d placed the bug—and he’d seemed to already know it was there. Bless Gloria’s quick thinking in actually doing it.

“I, uh, I don’t think so. I have a patient emergency.” The orderly was flustered and babbling. “Dr. Parks sent me to get you. Come quick! Oh, and she said bring sedatives.”

“Prepare them,” Brenner barked to the orderly attending him, their looming, bearded driver as usual. He walked over to Terry and crouched beside the cot where she reclined. “I want you to stay here and relax. The alarm is all in your mind.”

“All in my mind,” she said, as blissed-out as she could manage. “Like pretty music.”

“Let’s go.” Brenner waved for the orderlies to come. Terry watched through slitted lids. She was up as soon as they cleared the door.

The hall was busy with staff evacuating or asking whether they had to evacuate. A security guard passed Terry and said no to one of them, that the alarm system had been manually triggered and there was no evidence of a fire. The threat was being investigated and the alarm would be off soon.

She kept her head down and hurried along the wall. A glance into a door and there was Alice, grinning, an enormous machine like a portable iron lung beside her.

The route to where she met Kali felt burned into her brain, but she made a wrong turn. Then another. She’d almost given up hope when she recognized the corridor, the wing separated by the keypad. She hurried to it and entered the code Alice had given her.

The keypad beeped and the door released with a click.

Terry rushed through, past the doors of empty rooms until she reached one with bunk beds and a little table with crayons on it. But Kali was nowhere to be seen.

At least that probably means she’s not staying here. Terry hadn’t been able to get the horrible idea out of her mind, unlikely as it seemed.

So the next step was to try to find Brenner’s office. If Kali called him Papa, it must be close by, right? She was either his daughter or important to him in some other way.

Terry turned back and tried the other hall past the keypad. She came almost immediately to another set of doors with yet another keypad, where the code also worked, and was encouraged when this hallway had offices instead of exam rooms. There were placards with names beside the doors.

She scanned each one, praying the letters would stop vibrating and dancing and knowing the acid meant they wouldn’t.

DR. MARTIN BRENNER. She traced her fingers across the raised letters.

Hallelujah. She tried the door and it opened, unlocked. The fire alarm abruptly stopped, but she knew Ken would do his best to stretch out his disruption. Still, she didn’t have endless time. They couldn’t afford for Brenner to know what they were up to.

Not yet.

She tried his middle desk drawer and it was locked. Gloria called that.

But then how many files could it hold? There was a tall wooden filing cabinet behind the desk. She said a silent prayer and pulled at the second drawer