Curse (Blur Trilogy Book 3)

  Or maybe he gave her the book.

  “So, anything yet?” the senator asks us hopefully.

  I hate admitting it, but so far I have nothing—and that’s what I tell him.

  Tane says the same.

  Discouraged, we follow Senator Amundsen back to the living room to finish reviewing Petra’s pictures and social media posts, hoping for a cue, a spark, a trigger—anything that will bring on a blur.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  3:00 P.M.

  6 HOURS UNTIL THE DEADLINE

  No.

  This isn’t working.

  Not the photos, the posts, the videos.

  None of us have any blurs.

  We’re not getting anywhere.

  Before today, I’ve never tried to initiate a blur—only tried to get rid of them—so I’m not even sure how to go about doing it.

  Earlier, when we were in the facility under the parking garage, Malcolm told us that we needed to find a template for our conscious minds to interact with—

  Hang on.

  Yes.

  With our subconscious minds.

  I turn to the senator. “You mentioned that Petra was seeing that hypnotist in Gatlinburg?”

  “Yes. Dr. Carrigan.”

  “And you said that the last time she was there it actually caused her to have another hallucination?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, that’s what we need to do right now, get ourselves to have some hallucinations. How long of a helicopter flight is it to get up there?”

  “A little over an hour.”

  “From what airport?”

  “My chopper leaves from here.”

  I didn’t see a helicopter here when we drove up and when I ask him about that he tells me it’s hangared nearby. “It can be here in fifteen minutes.”

  “We need to go visit that hypnotist.”

  He pulls out his cell. “I’ll call my pilot.”

  Kyle’s phone rang.

  Since he was still at the wheel, Mia picked it up and checked the screen. “Okay, here we go. It’s Daniel’s dad. Should I answer it?”

  “Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Go ahead.”

  She tapped the screen. “Hello, Mr. Byers. It’s Mia. Kyle’s driving. Do you—” She turned to Kyle. “He wants to talk to you.”

  He accepted the phone from her. “This is—”

  “I want you to tell me exactly what’s going on here, Kyle.” The sheriff’s voice was explosive. “I just got a call from the Northern Georgia Tech campus police telling me that my son is missing.”

  “We’ve been looking for him.”

  “And the last anyone heard from him was last night?!”

  “We . . . I mean . . .”

  “You mean what? Tell me.”

  “I’m sorry.” Then Kyle quickly summarized their day, starting with the search for Daniel in the dorm room and talking through everything, right up to their trip to Gatlinburg.

  When he finished there was a long pause.

  For a moment he thought his phone might have dropped the call.

  Finally he asked, “Are you still there, Mr. Byers?”

  “I’m here.”

  Another pause. Then, at last, the sheriff said, “You called the number on the back of the debit card and pretended to be the card owner?”

  “Just to see if it would help us find Daniel.”

  “By finding Malcolm Zacharias?”

  “Yes.”

  “And have you?”

  “Have we?”

  “Found Zacharias?”

  “No. We’re hoping that maybe visiting this place in Gatlinburg will give us some answers.”

  “I want you to email me everything you have on Marly Weathers, Gatlinburg Holdings, and Malcolm Zacharias. Send it all. Even if you don’t think it looks important.”

  “Yes, sir. And I’m sorry we didn’t call earlier. We didn’t want you to worry.”

  “That’s not your decision to make.”

  Kyle didn’t know how to reply to that. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll have some deputies follow up on what you send me. And I’m going to fly down to Atlanta and work with the local authorities to find Daniel. Contact me immediately if you hear anything at all.”

  “I will.”

  When the call was over, Nicole asked Kyle, “Well?”

  “That went about as well as I expected.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Truthfully, it could have been a lot worse.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He’s gonna fly to Atlanta.”

  “Did he tell you we had to turn around?”

  “Hmm. No, he didn’t. Maybe he was just too distracted and upset to think about it.”

  He gave the phone back to Mia and she said, “So, what next?”

  “We email him everything we have. And then . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’m just thinking aloud here: He’ll probably have to fly out of the Twin Cities to get a connection to Atlanta. But that’s a three-hour drive from Beldon, so pulling that off today—I’d say it’s unlikely.”

  “Okay. Where does that leave us?”

  “The cops are looking in Atlanta, and now Daniel’s parents know what’s going on. There’s really nothing we can do on any of those fronts. I suppose we move forward and see if we can learn anything in Gatlinburg.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror at Nicole. “How much farther is it?”

  She checked her phone’s GPS. “It’s saying we should get there at six eleven.”

  “It’s all set,” the senator informs us. “The hypnotherapist’s name is Dr. Reginald Carrigan. He’s apparently given up his therapy though, and now has a stage hypnotism show there in Gatlinburg. It’s a tourist area, so there are lots of music venues and dinner theaters, that sort of thing. He’s a little eccentric, but don’t let that throw you off. He’s smart and he knows what he’s doing. The kidnappers warned me in that ransom video not to leave the house so I can’t come, otherwise I would. My pilot is on his way. He should be able to get you up to Carrigan’s place by five.”

  Still sealed in the cement-block room in the basement, Petra Amundsen watched the faces appear on the walls.

  Her dad.

  Her two kidnappers.

  The concrete became liquid right before her eyes, then seeped down and pooled into a shimmering puddle at her feet.

  She peered into it and all the visages merged into one, becoming a distorted reflection of her own face. Then, slowly, that became elongated, stretching in ways that could never happen in real life. It curled in on itself like it was caught in a whirlpool, but instead of waves circling around it, there were snakes.

  The face’s eyes closed, its mouth opened, and she heard her reflection murmur, “The handle. Take the handle.”

  Then, the image disappeared, the pool was gone, and the walls reformed. As the world organized itself around her again, her gaze landed on the bucket that her kidnappers had left for her to use as a toilet.

  Its wire handle was sturdy, designed to support the weight of five gallons of water.

  The ends were bent into small holes in the plastic, but if she worked at it, she might be able to get them loose.

  But then what?

  What good was a wired bucket handle going to do her?

  She didn’t know, but she did know that on the video the kidnappers had filmed for her dad, they’d told him that he needed to respond at nine o’clock on Monday night, and by now it had to be sometime in the late afternoon.

  This voice just now in her vision told her to take the handle. Getting it off the bucket couldn’t hurt, it might help, and she didn’t have any better ideas at the moment.

  Petra sat beside the bucket, tried to ignore the odor of the urine inside it, and began twisting the wire to work it free from the divots in the plastic.

  As the helicopter comes in over the trees, it rotates clockwise, then descends ont
o the evenly trimmed lawn just south of the mansion.

  “Call me when you get there!” the senator shouts to us over the sound of the rotors. “I’ll do anything I can from here to help you find her!”

  I nod, we climb in, buckle up, put on the radio headsets that the pilot has waiting for us, and then take off to visit the hypnotist in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  4:00 P.M.

  5 HOURS UNTIL THE DEADLINE

  We soar high over the Smoky Mountains.

  I’ve been hiking with my dad in the Rockies before, and these mountains aren’t nearly as rugged or majestic. They’re densely wooded rather than bare-peaked and snow-covered like the Rockies, but they’re still stunning as they cascade back magnificently, layer after layer, toward the horizon.

  Right now I can’t tell why they’re called the Smokies, but I figure that as it gets closer to dusk, fog might settle into the rolling valleys and deep, river-etched gorges.

  Although with the headsets on we can speak with each other, we’re all quiet and I assume Tane and Alysha are deep in thought, just as I am, processing what’s been happening.

  Once again, I think of Grandpa and his death out on that road near where I saw myself appear as a boy.

  How does that tie in with what’s happening now?

  Is it related somehow to Petra’s disappearance?

  The words from the dream that I had after being hit by the logging truck ring through my head: “He never meant to go. It all began right here. Follow the bats. Find the truth.”

  If it was talking about my grandpa’s death, I could understand what “he never meant to go” referred to, and even the part about it all being “here,” but what about the bats? What do they have to do with the truth?

  My thoughts of Grandpa lead me to think about my mom.

  She must be seriously worried about me.

  I’m sure that by now Kyle and the girls have found out I’m missing, and have no doubt let my parents know.

  Which might not be good.

  If my mom and dad sent out cops to search for me and the officers ended up somehow tracking things to Senator Amundsen’s place, the kidnappers might think that the senator contacted the police—and they would kill Petra.

  You need to make sure no cops are looking for you.

  Petra’s life might depend on it.

  It strikes me that calling my parents at this point would probably not just be smart; it might be critical to protecting Petra.

  However, I’m still not comfortable with the idea of using Malcolm’s phone to make the call.

  What about borrowing Dr. Carrigan’s? There’s no way the people who took Petra would be listening in on his line. You wouldn’t have to say anything about her specifically, or the senator, or even Malcolm. Just tell Dad not to have anyone search for you.

  As we skirt across the mountains, I make my decision.

  As soon as we land, I’m going to ask Dr. Carrigan if I can use his phone. Then I’ll call my parents and assure them that I’m alright.

  Mia was at the wheel now, with Nicole beside her.

  Kyle had kept Daniel’s phone with him, and, throughout the day, a handful of texts had come in from some of Daniel’s other friends. Other than that, things had been quiet.

  While they drove, he spent some time going through the recent emails and saw that, last night, Daniel’s mom had sent him more than fifty family photos. From what Kyle could tell they were all of his grandpa.

  It made Kyle curious, and he told the girls about it, then handed the phone up to the front so Nicole could review the pictures.

  “Do you think this might have something to do with his blurs?” he asked her.

  “Possibly. Remember last winter? Those blurs of the girl from the 1930s were all tangled up with Daniel’s memories of what happened when he was nine. The images, the pictures, they got lodged in his mind, but he repressed them. Trauma can do that.”

  “Well,” Mia interjected, “I’d say that was some serious trauma—realizing that a kid had been killed in the barn while he was in there at the same time? Who wouldn’t be affected by that?”

  “And then, earlier in Daniel’s life, there was the loss of his grandpa. After he died, that’s when Daniel went sleepwalking for the first time.”

  “How old was he when it happened?”

  “Five.” Nicole looked up from the photos. “You know, all this kind of makes me think of the story of Cain and Abel. After Cain kills his brother, the Bible says that Abel’s blood was crying out to God from the ground. That’s sort of what’s happened with Daniel all the other times when the blurs have occurred.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Well, dead people appeared to him. Their blood was crying out for justice, or, I don’t know. Maybe not. It’s just a thought.”

  “No,” Kyle encouraged her, “keep going. You might be onto something.”

  “Daniel doesn’t see ghosts, exactly, but . . . Well, when I was on the swing last night he was telling me about memory sparks. Maybe that’s what he was trying to do with these pictures: help spark his memory.”

  “Wait—doesn’t Cain say something about not being his brother’s keeper?”

  “Yeah. Cain said to God, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ But it was more sarcasm than anything.”

  Mia changed lanes and accelerated past a slow-moving RV. “I’m not thinking it’s really the best call to be sarcastic with God. And if you ask me, we’re all our brother’s keeper.”

  “Good point.” Kyle turned to Nicole. “So you think the blood of the dead cries out to Daniel?”

  “I mean, it’s one way to look at things.”

  “Is the blood of his grandpa crying out to him now?”

  “Maybe.”

  Mia merged back into the right lane, and then said, in an uncharacteristically worried way, “Seriously, though, do you think Daniel’s okay?”

  “I’m praying that he is,” Nicole replied.

  “So am I.”

  “I didn’t know you prayed,” Kyle said.

  “Normally, I don’t. This time I’m making an exception.”

  Dr. Adrian Waxford was near the Tabanidae research room, planning how much of his research to share with the general when Henrik arrived, leading the handcuffed Malcolm Zacharias down the steps and into the hallway.

  Zacharias’s face was bloodied and bruised.

  Henrik looked satisfied and sadistically pleased by the man’s condition.

  “Sergei’s with Deedee and Petra,” Henrik informed Adrian. “I dropped him off at the house.”

  Earlier they’d spoken about taking Zacharias up to the fourth floor, but Adrian anticipated that Henrik would want to spend some time down here with him first.

  Adrian faced Zacharias. “I recognize you from the facility in Wisconsin. You’re the one who helped Hollister escape last December.”

  Zacharias let his tongue glance across his swollen lip. “What you’re doing with these men isn’t right.”

  “I’m afraid that at this time in history, right must lie in the eye of the beholder.”

  “If that were true, there wouldn’t be such a thing as good or evil. It would all just be opinion. That’s not the world I live in. That’s not a world worth fighting for.”

  “Mr. Zacharias, I’m trying to extend to these men the punishment that our government doesn’t have the temerity to carry out. Would you really have our justice system continue to fail as it has, when we have the ability to correct it?”

  “You mean corrupt it. Everyone who abuses power justifies themselves. They always have their reasons. Terrorist bombings, war, genocide—it’s always done in the name of what the person in power claims is right.”

  “In August 2015, James Holmes, the Aurora theater shooter who killed twelve people at the opening showing of The Dark Knight Rises, was sentenced to twelve life sentences plus 3,318 years in prison. What was the point of that?”

  “It was a symbol
ic sentence.”

  “But symbolic to whom and for what purpose? A three thousand-year sentence? Does that seem just to you? That’s a mockery of justice. To give someone a sentence only to make a statement, but without any intention of having the person serve their time—where’s the justice in that? Tell me and I’ll stop this research right now.”

  “Adrian, where is Petra?”

  “Ah, yes. That’s right, you have ties to her father. Well, her whereabouts need not concern you. Now, we’re going to be needing you to tell us the identity of the person who employed you. We know it’s someone who goes by the name of Sam.”

  “Then you know as much as I do.”

  “And, see? I’m thinking there’s more that you can bring to the table.”

  “Maybe there is, but I should tell you, I’m pretty good at keeping secrets.”

  At that, Henrik, who’d been standing by listening, scoffed. “And I’m pretty good at prying them out of people.”

  “Well,” Adrian said to him, “I should leave you to it then.”

  Henrik led Zacharias down the hall toward the tattoo room.

  Where he kept his needles.

  The bucket’s metal handle was proving harder to get off than Petra had anticipated.

  She was able to pry one end loose, but the other was stubbornly refusing to let go of the plastic.

  Night was coming, and with it, the deadline.

  One thing was certain: She needed to get free and contact her dad to make sure he didn’t cancel tomorrow’s meeting. A lot was riding on it and, if he gave in to the kidnappers’ demands, it could mean that some very bad people would get away with some very bad things.

  In the video when her mouth was taped shut, she’d tried to communicate with him, but she wasn’t confident that the message had gotten through.

  With renewed focus, and as the chimeric snakes returned and slithered across her feet, she set to work again on the recalcitrant end of the wire handle.

  We emerge from the mountains and soar over the city of Gatlinburg.

  It’s not huge, but there’s a lot of traffic and I’m glad we’re in this helicopter instead of stuck on the road down below.

  As we reach the outer fringe of the city, the pilot points at an empty parking lot near a shabby-looking theater, and then takes us down.