“Why the fuck would she go there? After all these years?” I ask.
“I tracked her car to Blue Corp first. I can only assume the Old Man gave her something to think about. She entered the parking lot of the asylum fifty-three minutes ago.”
“Is she still there?” Case asks.
“No, she just got back in her vehicle. But she hasn’t started up the car yet. She’s just sitting there.”
“He told her.”
“You don’t know that,” Case says.
“Please, Case. No visits in all these years and then today of all days, she gets an urge to talk to her mother? Do you have a visual on Atticus yet, Sheila?”
“No. Closed-circuit cameras behind the doors. He needs to get himself in front of one that’s connected to the internet. She’s still sitting in her car. It’s possible Atticus said something he shouldn’t have.”
“Fuck.”
“Call her,” Case says.
“And say what?” I throw up my hands. “‘Sorry, your life is a lie and everyone knows about it but you?’”
Case shrugs. “I don’t know. But if the girl I loved just learned the truth about her life, I’d call her and tell her every sweet thing I could think of to make her smile.” He turns away from me and goes back to his game.
“Keep an eye on her, Sheila. This whole day feels wrong. Everything is off.”
“You need to call her. She’s just sitting in her car. At the very least you should get her home and away from that creepy building. I’ll call Thomas and fill him in.”
The line goes dead and I let out a long sigh. Everything since I left Molly has gone wrong today.
The sound effects from the arcade game come back to life just as the jukebox starts up again. I pick up my phone, get up, and walk outside. I can’t take that noise anymore.
I lean against the building, my head bowed, just thinking about Molly. It is highly probable Atticus started talking in there. I should at least call her to see how much she knows. Maybe he told her something useful?
I tab her contact on my phone and listen to it ring. I’m just about to hang up after the fourth ring when she answers.
“Hello?” It comes off sad and lonely.
“Hey, gun girl,” I say, smiling as the words come out.
“Hey, Lincoln.”
“You OK?”
“Um,” she says, hesitating.
“I was just thinking about you. Wanted to check and see how your day is going.”
“Well…” She stops again.
Yeah, Atticus definitely told her something. “You want to know what I was thinking?”
I get nothing but some little breaths. My phone buzzes once, signaling an incoming video from Sheila, and when I tab it open, I can see Molly in her work car from the camera mounted on the rear-view. She’s crying. Tears are streaming down her face. “Molly?” I ask.
“Sorry,” she says, holding the phone away from her, so she can take a deep gasping breath and not let me hear it. She wipes her face with the back of her hand and I’m suddenly transported back in time. Back when she was so small, she barely came up to my waist.
She was five and I was twelve and we had just met for the first time. I knew what an Omega was. Thomas had gone through a few of them by that time. And Case had his too. But I was the last of us boys to get one.
I walked to the conditioning room angry as fuck. I was ready to pound my Omega to death, just like Thomas had. I vowed I’d never let anyone have that kind of control over me. Ever.
I was seething with rage when I entered that room. One second I was ready to explode with anger and then…
“The first time I saw you, you were standing over by a window. You had on an orange dress. It was solid orange at the top, but the skirt part was little orange flowers. And it hung all the way down to the ground.”
“What?” Molly asks on the other end of the phone.
“And your hair was more blonde back then. It was long, the tips almost reached your waist. And you were so fucking small, Molly.”
She sniffles into the phone. “I remember you too. I was scared.”
“I was angry.”
“I thought you’d kill me. They said you’d try.”
Jesus. They told her that? “Thomas told me I’d only have one chance to stop the Omega bond and it was at the first meeting. So I was going to kill you. But you know what?”
“What?” she asks back in a whisper.
“You turned away from the window and the light, Molly, the light from the sunset you were looking at, it followed you. That’s what I thought anyway. One moment your back was to me and your body was outlined by the orange glow over the mountains, and then you turned. And you were the light. It came from you, Molly.”
“He never even gave me a name, Lincoln.”
Fuck. Atticus did tell her. And those few words say everything. Those few words are a list of all the truths she never wanted to know. They say, He never loved me. They say, I was nothing but a lab rat. They say, What did I ever do to him?
“I gave you a name, Molls. I gave you a name. Do you remember what you said to me when you turned around and became my light?”