She gives her head a little shake and then begins to read out loud. “‘Lincoln Wade, the only remaining member of the Wade family, was abducted as a ten-year-old child, along with several dozen other children from the Cathedral City area. The Wade family offered rewards for years, before dying in a fire that destroyed the family home. Lincoln Wade and Case Reider were found wandering along Wolf Pass Highway in the dead of winter when they were fifteen. After many months of questioning and therapy in the Cathedral City Psychiatric Hospital for Children brought forth no answers, the Reider family adopted Wade and the boys went home.’”
She stops reading, but I continue for her. I know that report by heart. “‘Both Reider and Wade exhibited strange behaviors and were monitored by local mental health authorities until they turned eighteen. But no kidnapper was ever found and no reason for their long disappearance was ever offered by either boy or the Reider family. Reider went to a local university and graduated with a degree in computer engineering, while Wade faded from public record.’”
“But…” she stutters. “You’re here. You came back?”
“I never left. They just figured it was better to leave me out here alone in the dark than get in my face after I gave them an ultimatum.”
She swallows hard, wanting to ask, but forcing herself not to.
“I broke into the psychiatrist’s house the night before I turned eighteen and told her if she didn’t close our case I’d come back for her.”
“Come back… and do what?”
“Use your imagination, Molly.”
She’s silent for a moment and then her expression goes from confused to angry. “Then what the fuck is going on? Why did you come find me last night? Why did you tell me to find you?”
I shrug. “A moment of weakness. Now, if you have everything you came for, then—”
“No. You’re not getting off that easy. You tell me some sob story about your childhood—”
I reach through the bars and grab her coat, scaring the living fuck out of her, and then pull her into the cold metal gate. “Watch. Your. Mouth. Detective. And don’t even pretend like you know my sob story. Because what they said in that paper was the scrubbed version of events. The court put a gag order on the really fucked-up shit.”
Chapter Twenty-One - Molly
“Wait,” I say, as he lets go of my coat and starts to turn away. “Just wait a minute, OK?”
“Why?” he asks, giving me a sidelong glare. “You didn’t get the message? I’m a danger to society, Masters. And your job is to protect it. We can’t be friends. We’re enemies—then, now and forever.”
What does that even mean? Then? Now? Forever? But I let it go, trying my best to stay focused even though every time he’s around, I lose my head. “You’re killing those scientists, aren’t you? You’re setting them up to look like suicides and then you’re killing them.” As soon as the words come out I know I’ve made a mistake, because any bit of softness in his expression is immediately gone.
“I never touched them, Detective.” He laughs. But that laugh, holy shit, it sends a chill down my spine. “And no matter where you’re looking or how much you think you’ve got figured out, you’re still in the dark.”
“How would you know? You said you didn’t do it.”
“It’s not about who did it, Masters. It’s about why they did it.”
He’s toying with me.
We watch each other for a few moments. The only sound is the wind passing through the pine trees and the birds. It’s a nice day. The sun is out, the sky is blue, and the temperature is mild.
But down that tunnel he so badly wants to retreat to, it’s black. That’s his world, I tell myself. He’s darkness and he’s giving me a chance to leave.
I should take it.
So I turn away and begin to walk.
“I know who you are,” he calls out after me. It comes out desperate. Like he can’t let me walk away. A ploy to keep this interaction going. “I felt it back there out on that highway. I know more about you than you know about yourself.”
My heart skips as I think of all the possible ways he could be keeping track of me. Cameras in my house? Tracking on my phone? I whirl around and face him again.
“Don’t hate me, Molly,” he says, pulling out his phone and pressing a tab on the screen that makes the rusty gate begin to lift up. “I want you to walk away, I really do. But not before I get my say. Because I never asked for this. I never asked for you to come find me. That was all you. That part was always you.”
“No,” I say, backing up and never taking my eyes off him. “You told me to come find you, Lincoln.”
“You’re wrong. I told you to run. I told you to never look back. I saved you and you don’t even know it. But then there you were out there on the road. Saving me back. And once I accepted the fact that you were really here, I did my best, Molly. I did my best.”
He takes a step out of the tunnel, and my gun is out, pointed at his chest in an instant. But a wave of revulsion hits me in my stomach, enough to make me double over and start to retch.
“Sorry about the inhibition sickness. But fair is fair, right? It’s only temporary, anyway. Not like mine.”
He walks forward, grabs the gun out of my hand and throws it on the ground. The waves of revulsion in my stomach ease.