~~~~~
Caleb had come back from that three week trip with Dr. Sutton with as little communication as he had offered them during his time away. He didn’t talk about where he had gone or the people that he had met. He didn’t tell them anything other than the fact that he didn’t want to have anything to do with Dr. Sutton or any answers that he could offer him. He said that he knew everything that he needed to know and that he was ready for his life to go back to normal. He didn’t want to talk about it.
Katherine was fairly confident that the not wanting to talk about it was an initial bad reaction to whatever it was that he had learned. She thought the fact that her best friend was walking around looking rather like he was in a combination of numb shut down and shock mode meant that he would eventually start talking (or he would bottle whatever it was up so tightly that he eventually exploded). All options on the table (so far as Katherine could see) ended up with her finding out one way or another, so she decided to be patient and let Caleb tell her in his own time. It wasn’t as though she didn’t have years of experience in that area.
She almost confronted him when she got a phone call from Drake wanting to know why Caleb was sending David cryptic messages about not going anywhere with Dr. Sutton without any further explanation. She couldn’t explain that, so she told him that she would let him know what she could when she found something out and left it at that.
Caleb received one phone call from Dr. Sutton. The message was simple. “I wish you would reconsider.”
Caleb hung up on him and gave Katherine his patented “don’t ask me” expression. She only knew that it was Dr. Sutton because she had been the one to pick up his ringing cell phone. (She only knew what the other man had said because she had been sitting so close to Caleb when he answered it.)
There were no more messages. Caleb insisted that the man hadn’t tried to contact him again. That simple wish that he reconsider (as it turned out) was the only warning that he had been given.
Three days later, Sylvie Twist went missing on her way home from school.
If Katherine hadn’t been with Caleb when his instructions for his sister’s continued safety came, then she was very sure that she would have been left behind with no explanation the same way his parents had been. As it was, she had refused to let him go without her. Thus, they had found themselves inducted into Caleb’s new “cell” (or Caleb was inducted while she had been tolerated as if she was additional baggage that he had insisted on bringing with him).
David (with Drake tagging along much like Katherine had) joined them a few days later.
~~~~~
Caleb was standing in the doorway of the cabin as the low light from the room behind him filtered out to cancel the darkness that it encountered. Where the light visible from the cabin ended, the light from the moon and stars took over.
It didn’t look like the best time to go walking off into the darkness, but that was, apparently, not a sufficient deterrent for Katherine. She was walking with her messenger bag slung across her shoulder and tucked underneath her opposite arm. The goodbye conversation between the two of them must have been completed satisfactorily (or at least enough so that the two of them were ready to part without further interaction). She didn’t turn around, and Caleb didn’t call out any final messages at her retreating form. He just watched silently as she eventually disappeared due to a combination of lack of light and distance.
He didn’t move. He stayed in place with his eyes still staring at where his best friend had last been visible for long enough that another occupant of the cabin came looking for him.
“You gonna stand there all night?” David asked coming up behind him and blinking out into their surroundings as if checking for any sign of the woman who could no longer be seen.
Caleb shrugged.
“Silence is probably not your best option right now, Caleb,” the other man told him with a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure that no eavesdroppers had made their way into the room behind them. “We’re going to have to figure out what we do next.”
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