When the PI found the witness in France claiming to have seen the daughter, Mrs. Lupo hopped on a plane to Besançon immediately. She’d gone straight to the French police, expecting their help looking for her daughter. Instead, because of the mother’s allegations of half-human, half-beast kidnappers—I had a sneaking suspicion that it was also because Mr. Lupo was an internationally known and respected vid director—the authorities placed Mrs. Lupo on a seventy-two hour mental health hold at the jail.
“This is nuts,” I mused aloud.
The thought of the poor, distraught mother finding only grief and heartache while looking for her daughter made me queasy. Curiosity got the better of me, though, and I continued reading the tragic tale of the Lupo family matriarch.
The therapist brought in by the French authorities diagnosed Mrs. Lupo with paranoia and something ominously called Acute Delusional Coping Syndrome. Whatever that was. These determinations had been made largely based on several of Mrs. Lupo’s more colorful statements; she’d accused the doctor of being “a spoke in the wheel of conspiracy” and “She-Satan’s minion.” The latter, while not really funny in these particular circumstances, made me laugh out loud. There was a note by the doctor about an addendum to Mrs. Lupo’s file, so I skipped ahead to see what it was referring to.
My heart sank the moment I flipped to the last page of the report and saw what was attached—the daughter’s death certificate. It had been issued by a Canadian medical examiner, dated the same day as the girl’s alleged abduction.
Sadness for the mother filled me as I quickly scanned over the document. I paused after reading the cause of death, which was listed as “Natural Causes.” Nydia Lupo had been fourteen-years-old when she died, what was possibly natural about that? Unfortunately, no further information was given about it.
Flipping back to the doctor’s report, I saw that Mrs. Lupo was finally released when her husband and her therapist from Canada arrived in Besançon. They’d told the police that the woman had escaped from a mental health facility in Alberta, where she was being treated for depression and a myriad of other illnesses brought on by the loss of her child.
The tale was so tragic, and tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn’t fathom the plight of the poor mother, and my heart broke for her. Warm, salty liquid was still pouring down my cheeks when I flipped to the final page of the doctor’s notes and saw the signature of Mrs. Lupo’s Canadian therapist on her release form: Selby Masterson. The same woman whose name was familiar to me in a way I couldn’t quite touch on. The same woman who’d spoken to the reporter about the farmer, Duquesne, and dismissed his tales of being probed by aliens as the ranting of an unstable man.
Okay, so the farmer never actually said he’d been probed; I just figured it was par for the course when the little green men took a human aboard the mothership.
“Who are you?” I said aloud, staring intently at the mystery woman’s loopy signature.
In my mind, there was no way that the woman’s involvement in two seemingly unrelated cases was a coincidence. The odds of Selby Masterson being both Mrs. Lupo’s therapist in Canada and a random townswoman familiar with Franz Duquesne’s tinfoil hat were slimmer than an anorexic ballerina. Particularly when I recognized her name, despite the fact I’d never visited Besançon.
“You’re the thread that connects the dots,” I told the piece of paper clutched in my hands.
With my marker—I wasn’t allowed pointy writing implements, for obvious reasons—I began scribbling a list of questions for Victoria. I wanted full background checks run on Zinca Lupo and her daughter, Nydia.
I was willing to bet my freedom that Nydia wasn’t actually dead.
In a case like this one, comprised of some of the weirdest elements I’d encountered—centaurs, alien abductions, mysterious disappearances, cattle thefts, and random power outages—a fake death certificate certainly wasn’t farfetched. Any decent forger could’ve easily made one, especially since it only had to pass muster in a foreign country, where the authorities weren’t likely to know what it should’ve looked like anyway.
As far as I knew, the search of TOXIC’s records hadn’t produced any results for Selby Masterson, since Victoria hadn’t included anything of the sort in the second batch of files she sent over. Still, confirming that fact firsthand the following day wouldn’t hurt. I added the question to my short list, along with a request for a full background scan on Masterson.
I was also eager to learn more about Mr. Lupo. What was his story? If the daughter was actually alive—and I was nearly positive that she was—and the mother was telling the truth, why had her father basically given her away?
A thought occurred to me: Is the daughter Talented?
Were the Poachers currently operating in Canada? Was Selby Masterson affiliated with the Poachers? If so, where did she fit in? And what did that mean?
Thoughts of the Poachers brought the terrible memories of the auction flooding back through my mind. My heart had already sunk so far while reading about the plight of Mrs. Lupo that it was resting among my toes. But my next thought took it underground.
If Nydia’s father was complacent in her abduction, that would mean he essentially sold his daughter to the Poachers.
I shook my head to banish the horrifying conclusion. The only way to help Nydia was to fit the puzzle pieces together, so I pressed on.
Selby Masterson was the key to it all, I felt certain of it.
Why was her name instantly familiar to me? Given the fact she wasn’t UNITED, I’d probably seen or heard her name back when I was either at the McDonough School or pledging the Hunters. Did that mean there a link between the Poachers and TOXIC?
You’re not positive that Selby Masterson was part of TOXIC, I cautioned myself.
Ugh. My brain was struggling with information overload. There were still too many unknowns. Until I remembered, or Victoria uncovered, Selby Masterson’s origins, it was going to be borderline impossible to make sense of it all.
Unfortunately, I needed it to make sense, pronto. Victoria had been very clear about that. My freedom hinged on my ability to solve this mystery for UNITED.
The conversation with Victoria instantly began replaying in my head. The exchange had bothered me all day. Victoria wasn’t a fan of lying; it was beneath her. But she didn’t have a problem withholding information. It was obvious that Victoria had been skirting around something, prompting me to dissect each and every word for a hidden meaning.
Why did she assign this particular task to me? I wondered. Without a doubt, Victoria always had a careful line of reasoning behind every decision she made.
Standing, I began pacing the cell to burn off my nervous energy.
Everything Victoria had told me was true; I believed that much. There were spies in UNITED. Someone was hacking the organization’s secure databases and disseminating classified information to the world. The cattle thefts and power outages were definitely connected to each other, and were almost certainly part of a larger puzzle. But I also believed there was something Victoria wasn’t telling me. Some reason she’d been so adamant that I make sense of the nonsensical.
Ugh. That woman was more cryptic than an Egyptian hieroglyph, and about as transparent as milk.
Without warning, my cell door opened with a whoosh of air. Startled, I swung around to face the intruder, the marker clutched in my fist like a knife.
“Why aren’t you sleeping, inmate?” Konterra demanded.
“I’m not tired,” I shot back, too caught up in my own head to tread lightly.
Konterra blew out a shaky breath. “I don’t care whether you’re tired or not. It is time to sleep.
I sighed. “Look, I get it. You’re just doing your job, adhering to protocol and all that. But, contrary to what you might think, you can’t force a person to sleep if she doesn’t want to sleep.”
Konterra’s gray eyes narrowed on my face. She’d yet to take more than two steps inside the cell—about as far as she
ever dared to venture into my lair. Suddenly, the guard’s expression turned smug.
“Actually, I can make you sleep, inmate. That’s why we have sedatives.” Her gaze flitted to the marker still clutched in my fist. “Warden Cali only promised Councilwoman Walburton that you wouldn’t be drugged if you were behaving properly. Aiming a weapon at a guard is certainly not good behavior.”
She reached for the communicator on her belt.
I held up my hands in a placating gesture, dropping the marker in the process. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. Victoria gave me—”
“Councilwoman Walburton,” the guard snapped. “The inmate will address her superiors by their proper titles.”
Yikes. This was not going well. I made a mental note to ask Victoria about a replacement babysitter. Or possibly bribing Yocum into pulling round-the-clock duty. Either way, Konterra had to go. Her knee-jerk reactions and power trips simply didn’t mesh with my own impulsive tendencies and dislike for authority.
Taking a calming breath, I counted to ten in my head and started over.
“Councilwoman Walburton gave me that marker to make notes,” I said evenly. Moving my hand as if in slow-motion—sudden movements seemed like a bad idea—I gestured towards my bed, where Victoria’s files were scattered about. “She asked me to do some research for her. It seemed important, so I stayed up to work on it.”
It might have been my patronizing tone. Or maybe it was the fact that Lynn Konterra feared me enough to wonder in that moment if she had a change of undies in her locker. Whatever the case, the agent drew her weapon with one hand and her communicator with the other.
Before I knew what was happening, the gun was trained on the center of my chest.
“Whoa,” I said, raising both my hands, palms out. “There’s no need to shoot me, it was just a marker.”
The guard kept her weapon exactly where it was, indecision warring in her eyes. There were two settings on the gun itself; one shot tranquilizer darts, while the other fired very real bullets. While the former wouldn’t be pleasant, I began worrying about Konterra going off the rails and using the latter.
“Really?” I asked, exasperation lacing the word. “You’re seriously going to shoot me because I had a marker in my hand? We both know you don’t want to deal with the consequences of doing that. Just put the gun down.”
I was beyond tempted to put a little extra something behind my words, but figured I should avoid using my talents, if I could help it.
Konterra shot me a steely gaze, the intensity surprising me. For some reason, my words had given her a measure of courage. She wrapped her index finger around the trigger.
“What consequences?” the guard asked, smirking. “You only have a few days left, anyway.”
Before I could begin listing off the repercussions she’d face for shooting Victoria’s pet—let alone what Erik’s wrath would entail—Konterra raised the communicator to her lips. She paused before pushing the button.
“You raised a weapon to a guard,” Konterra sneered. “At the very least, that is cause for me to call in the wranglers.”
The wranglers were Vault’s badass men in facemasks and riot gear whose job was to battle disobedient inmates into submission. Konterra snickered, her confidence bolstered by the thought.
“Once they arrive, you’ll be nothing more than a drooling pile of hair,” she continued. “Then, we’ll get the truth about that girl you’ve been protecting—Kenly Baker, is it? The wranglers have ways of making little girls spill their guts. We’ll finally hear all those secrets you’re hiding in that manipulative mind of yours.”
Konterra’s finger hovered over the alarm button on her communicator. “Or, I can call a doctor down here and have you sedated. You know, make you sleep, since you don’t seem to think we can.”
Even without Konterra projecting loudly from beneath her tightly-braided, dishwater blonde mane, I knew the second option was how she truly wanted this to end. According to the angry thoughts flying through her mind, Konterra had been continuously lobbying Warden Cali to overrule Victoria’s orders and keep me pumped full of their zombie-inducing cocktail. Konterra was also well aware that calling the wranglers to my cell was likely to draw Victoria’s ire, and she had no desire to piss off the head of the UNITED council.
Yeah, I was definitely going to have words with Victoria about replacing Konterra.
Since neither of the guard’s options were tempting, I decided to try reasoning with her, possibly even lacing my words with a small dose of compulsion. Nothing too serious or obvious, just enough to calm her down and make her leave me in peace.
Unfortunately, the guard started speaking again before the first reassuring word was past my lips.
“You know what, inmate? Never mind. This is my shift. You are my prisoner to deal with as I see fit. I make your choices for you. All of them.”
Konterra sneered at me again, except I felt more joy than fear leaking off of her this time. Honestly, it was rather alarming.
“You are going to gather all those papers.” Konterra nodded towards my bed. “Then, you are going to stack them neatly in the center of the cell. Another guard will be by shortly to make the rounds of Level Five. When he gets here, he will take those papers away. And I’m going to stay right here the whole time, to make sure you don’t try anything.”
Okay, this isn’t going to end badly, I thought. It’s better to give up the files than be shot, sedated, or tortured by thugs.
In the morning, once Victoria learned that the files were no longer in my possession, she’d rectify the situation. And, if karma was real, the councilwoman would sharpen her razor of a tongue on Konterra’s hide in the process.
The thought made me smile.
“Okay, sure,” I agreed. “Do you want me to start gathering them now? Or, how does this play out in your head?”
“Do you know why this is how I’ve chosen to punish you?” Konterra asked, answering my question with a question.
I shook my head, not truly caring anymore. From the way Konterra’s communicator was angled, I was able to read the time on the display. It was 12:47 a.m., so Erik’s meeting would be over any minute. He’d be back in our apartment soon. Then, I could lie back on my bed and talk to my boyfriend for the rest of night, without having to make excuses to Victoria about not getting her work done instead.
Best. Punishment. Ever.
“I want you lucid and fully aware, so that you can truly appreciate what I’m about to tell you,” Konterra sang, drawing my thoughts unwillingly from Erik. “I want you to sit inside this cell, with nothing but time to think about your fate. It will drive you mad.”
The guard was fully grinning by now, and the first tinges of concern began to edge in on my happy thoughts. Truthfully, I just wanted her to stop talking and go away.
“Then, right before shift change,” Konterra continued, “when your buddy Yocum returns? That’s when I’ll sound the alarm. That’s when I’ll tell Warden Cali you threatened me with a weapon. That’s when you’ll be drugged and thrown in a minuscule cage downstairs. Maybe I’ll even shoot you with a tranq dart myself before they arrive, simply so that my face will be the last thing you see. You’ll not only miss your daily visit with Councilwoman Walburton….” Konterra paused dramatically, her grin bordering on maniacal. “There will be no reunion with Prince Charming.”
By this point in the woman’s diabolical diatribe—she was such a clichéd villain, spelling out her plans ahead of time—my temper was beginning to overshadow logic. I was already past bothering to invade her mind to learn whatever it was she was dying to share with me. The urge to attack Konterra was verging on insurmountable.
Deep breaths, Tals, deep breaths, I coached myself. I had to regain control before I did something stupid.
Because, unfortunately, the guard was correct. If she told the wranglers that I’d pointed a weapon at her, they wouldn’t wait to hear my side of the story. Before I’d be able to get a
word out, the felt-tipped marker would be turned into a samurai sword that I attempted to behead my guard with.
And, no matter what, I refused to miss my visit with Erik. Mental communication was great and all, but nothing in the world compared to seeing him in the flesh.
“Is there a problem here, Lynn?”
A male guard, one I recognized from my outings to the exercise cubicle, appeared behind Konterra in the open doorway to my cell. His expression was more puzzled than anxious or suspicious. He even offered me a small nod.
“Lyons, is there a reason you’re out of bed?” he asked. “I know we don’t give you something to sleep, but you still should be getting some rest.”
Ugh, here we go again, I thought, my anger dampening some. At least the newcomer seemed reasonable, not at all like my own personal tormentor.
“Everything is fine, Les,” Konterra replied. “Actually, you’re just in time. I was about to explain to the inmate what’s in store for her.”
Les’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“Okay,” he said slowly, drawing out the syllable. Les seemed as lost as I was.
“Start collecting the papers,” Konterra barked at me.
Turning my attention to Les, I pointedly ignored Konterra. “Victoria gave me these files to—”
“Don’t call her that!” Konterra screeched, her tone so shrill that Les recoiled. “The councilwoman isn’t your friend, inmate. She doesn’t even like you. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Lynn…” Les began tentatively. “You can’t—”
But the irate guard was like a speeding train with no brakes. Konterra simply cranked up the volume on her voice to max, until I could no longer hear Les speaking.
“She plans to execute you!” Konterra hollered. “Yeah, in four days, you’re dead. Just like you deserve. Enjoy thinking about that, without any distractions. While you’re at it, enjoy thinking about ‘Victoria,’” she used air-quotes when she said the name, “betraying you. Because she’s the one who wants you dead.”