Hardwired (17 page)

Thirty-five

Chris was kneeling in front of Carly, running his hand along the side of her face as he tried to ease her pain. She all but ignored him, sat there with her hands locked around her knees, refusing to answer any of his questions.

“Carly?” I knelt down beside Chris and ducked my head to meet her eyes. I needed Carly to know that I was going to keep my word, that I'd been where she was and somehow, someway, I'd get her through this. “I'm going to take you home now. Nick and Joe are waiting outside.”

“I won't leave without Cam,” she said as she crawled over to her brother, picked up his head, and laid it in her lap. “You promised me we'd bring him home.”

The sadness in her tone splintered me, adding another layer of unbearable weight to my already sinking shoulders. Cam wasn't the only one who deserved a chance to go home. There were ten boys in that room—five who I'd promised freedom to—and I'd left them in there to die. My mind flickered to Ryan and his reluctance to tell me his name, his hesitancy to trust anybody. I'd harnessed his fear and used it against him with barely a second thought.

“We won't leave him here, Carly. We won't leave any of them here,” I promised.

“Lucas,” Chris whispered. I followed his eyes to the corner of the room, to the cramped space I'd first found Carly huddled in. Lying there on the ground was what looked like a bat. Or the wooden leg to a table. I'd have to pick it up to be sure, but it was caked in dried blood. And if I wasn't mistaken, that was hair.

Ms. Tremblay saw it too. “This is my fault,” she muttered to herself. “If I'd just taken Joe's calls. If I'd called the Dentons myself. This is all my fault.”

I nodded, not even considering easing her guilt. It
was
her fault, her's and every government official's who developed these facilities. “There's nothing left in here for Carly,” I told her. “I need to get her home.
You
need help me get her home.”

Ms. Tremblay nodded and reached out to Carly, whispering soft words of encouragement as she helped her off the ground. “You need keys to unlock the front door,” she said.

I held out my hand. Ms. Tremblay had keys; I'd watched her use them to let us in.

“I don't have them. I left everything—my keys, my staff ID, everything—in my room.”

“Who else has keys?” I asked, cringing as I anticipated her answer.

“All the guards have a full set. There's a master key. It's the only one with a code sequence that starts with a number nine. It opens every room in this building, including the outside gates.”

It took some convincing, but I finally managed to get Carly to move. She was shuffling along beside me, her hand locked in mine. Ms. Tremblay had wandered off, muttering something about the master key. I doubted she'd find it. She seemed quite sure that she'd left everything useful back in that room, more concerned about getting herself out than taking her purse and keys. I'd let her look anyway. Something in her eyes had told me she needed to keep moving, to try and do something useful to keep her mind off the horror unfolding around her.

It was surprisingly easy to find our way back to the staff lounge, like some sick, magnetic pull had us turning in the right direction. Every. Single. Time. The faint glow of that lone emergency light came into view, a beacon daring us step closer.

“We should get some more flashlights if we can,” Chris said, the narrow beam of his light skirting across the floor. “Who the hell even knows what time it is anymore, and I don't want to spend my night trudging through the snow in the complete darkness.” We only had one flashlight between the three of us, and it barely worked. We'd found it stuffed inside a moldy crate in the back of a utility closet with a bunch of other half-broken items.

“And we're going to need something to dig out the glass in the lock.” I said, cursing myself for not grabbing that blood-coated club we'd found in Cam's old bunk room. Maybe I could've use it to pry the glass loose, or at the very least shatter it free.

The sound of crushed glass beneath my shoes had me reaching back, swiping the flashlight from Chris's hand. The light above the door had been smashed, and the chunk of glass I remembered seeing wedged into the lock was gone.

Chris started moving, his shadow creeping away from my line of sight. “Wait,” I called out, training the flashlight at the floor. He looked down, his eyes narrowing as he traced the outline of the shoeprint with the toe of his sneaker.

“No blood,” I whispered to Chris, remembering that the kids in that room had been stripped of their shoes and socks, the sharp glass just waiting to meet their bare feet.

Chris eased the door open, both of us waiting for the echo of feet, the flare of a Taser gun, something to come at us. Wanting to draw someone out, I kicked a pile of glass into the room, hoping they'd mistake it for me. All I got in return was silence.

With more courage than was probably wise, I ducked my head inside, shining the flashlight from side to side, my eyes skirting over the bodies sprawled across the room. They were huddled close together, making it nearly impossible to distinguish one body from the next in the dark.

A boot came into view and I dropped to the ground, making myself as small a target as possible. I crawled into
the room and ran my hand up the guard's legs, feeling
around his utility belt for a flashlight. Keys were no longer my first priority; I needed to flood this room with light so I could see what had happened.

I found a flashlight tucked behind the extra air cartridges for the Taser gun the guard still had clutched in his hand. I tossed it to Chris, motioning for him to keep it turned off. I wanted each of us armed with a gun and a flashlight before we made our move.

“Utility belts,” I whispered to Chris. He dropped to the ground and made his way around the opposite side of the room, searching each body as he went.

In a matter of minutes, Chris and I had five flashlights, three stun guns, and a rather impressive-looking knife in our possession. But no keys. I patted down every single body I came across—guard and resident alike—but found nothing. Not one lone key.

On Chris's cue, we hit our flashlights at the same time, and light illuminated the room.

“Holy crap.” I wasn't sure if it was Chris or I who said that, but it didn't matter. It aptly described what we saw.

The five guards and the medic were all still there, each one face-down, blood pouring from every opening in their bodies. They'd been bludgeoned with something, something large enough to do some serious damage. I swept my flashlight across the floor and saw it—a weapon similar to the one I'd seen back in Cam's bunk room. Someone had dismantled the only table in the room—the bolts where they'd pried it from the ground were still sticking out—and used the legs as clubs.

“Ryan,” I called out, praying he'd respond. Needing him to respond. I'd targeted him, seen the broken look in his eyes and used him anyway. Of everybody in here, it was his eyes that would haunt my dreams and leave me begging for a forgiveness I didn't deserve.

“Can we go now?”

I whipped the flashlight in the direction of Ryan's voice. On either side of him were the twins, both alive. Bruised and bloody, but alive.

I took a tiny step in Ryan's direction and he shrank back, melding himself with the wall. He looked terrified of me, and I hadn't even touched him. Slowly, I squatted down and ducked my head to meet his eyes, hoping he'd see that I meant him no harm. “What happened?”

His gaze skirted to Carly and I snapped my fingers in front of him, refocusing his attention on me. I was afraid of this, afraid that once they let a tiny piece of the anger out, they wouldn't be able to pull it back in. And Carly was an easy target. The girl who wasn't even supposed to be here. The girl who'd set everything in motion.

I stood up and tucked her behind my body. “You look at me, not her,” I said. “She's with me, got it? Now, tell me what happened.”

My response was met with another repetitive request from Ryan, this one more forceful. “Can. We. Go. Now?”

I thought about questioning him, but something about the way he was huddled there, his back against the wall, sandwiched between the only two other kids alive in that room, told me he'd all but given up.

Chris shone his flashlight at the door before swinging it back toward one of the dead guard's feet. “The floor in the hallway is covered with glass, so you may want to take their boots.”

I stopped Ryan as he went to pass by me. I'd promised him his freedom, and after everything I'd put him through, I sure as hell was going to deliver. “Wait for us by the front door. There are people outside, friends of mine, who'll help us.”

Thirty-six

We did what we could—closed their eyes and tried our best not to disturb them—but in the end, the sight of all those kids lying there, four boys still attached to the probe end of a stun gun, did me in. There was no panic here, no sense of urgency to save myself like I'd felt in the van. I had time, as much time as I needed, to check for pulses, but I couldn't bring myself to do it, couldn't face the fact that in my attempt to cause a mere distraction, I'd killed them all.

I'd barely made it to the hall before I heaved up the contents of my empty stomach, the caustic bile no match for my guilt.

Chris was still in the room, methodically checking each body, while I stayed in the hall, slumped against the wall, too much of a wuss to even face what I'd done.

“All dead,” Chris said, inducing another wave of nausea from me. “If it makes you feel better, I think the guards did most of the damage.”

It didn't. Plus, it still made me puzzled about who killed Murphy.

“Do you think Cam did this?” Chris asked as he handed me a rag. I looked at the white cloth, wondering which dead body he'd lifted it off of. My eyes settled on the jagged edge of his T-shirt, and I realized what he'd done—ripped a piece off his own shirt and given it to me. For the second time that day.

“Who else could have done it?” I whispered, not wanting Carly to hear. She was still standing inside the door; she hadn't moved from that spot since the first beam of her flashlight lit up the room. I think it was shock, or maybe fear, that had her immobilized. Either way, the look on her face as she took in the room was bad. “You saw the table leg in Cam's room. It was covered with blood.”

“Yeah, that's what I was thinking, but there's no blood on the floor out here,” Chris said, swinging his light across the glass-ridden tile, then down the hall. “I don't remember seeing shoes on Cam, not to mention he'd left all his clothes behind. Anybody walking out of here in bare feet would have left one hell of a trail.”

“Maybe he grabbed shoes from somewhere else?” I proposed, grasping for explanations I knew were absurd.

“I doubt it. There are only three sets of shoes missing off the guards, and Ryan and the twins just took them.”

“I don't know. No way was it Ms. Tremblay,” I said, remembering her reaction when I'd told her about Murphy dead in the isolation unit. Plus, she didn't strike me as the overly violent type; more of a psychological tormentor. As much as I never thought I'd believe it, she wasn't that different from us. She hadn't wanted anyone to die, was actually trying to save people. But like with everything Chris and I had done so far, she'd failed. Turned all of her intentions into some warped version of a singular good thought.

“All six of the guards in this facility are accounted for,” Chris said. “Five dead up here, one dead downstairs. The medic too.”

“Please tell me you have some idea of where to go from here?” I begged. I was spent, my mind incapable of forming a coherent thought, never mind a back-up plan.

“What do you mean, ‘where to go from here'?” Chris asked. “You gave Ms. Tremblay Joe's files. We found Carly, and Cam is dead. We're done. Nothing else to do but leave.”

I nodded, one hundred percent on board with that plan.

“Carly?” I reached for her shoulder, gently guiding her out of the room.

“I just want to go home,” she said, tears clouding her eyes. “I want to go back home and forget any of this ever happened.”

The pain I heard in her voice ripped me in two. She'd never be able to unsee Cam hanging from the end of that bedsheet. Shit, I still saw Tyler's empty stare every time I closed my eyes. Every time I walked by the music store he used to work at on the weekends. Every time I looked at my mom or Suzie. Carly could beg, plead, drink herself into a stupor, but that image would never go away.

“I'm going to take you home. I promise,” I said. “But I need to go back in the lounge for a second and look for keys to the front gates. I need you to stay here, right here, while Chris and I do that, okay?”

Without a word, Carly reached into the pocket of her
sweatshirt, pulled out a set of keys, and dropped them
into my hand. Digging her hand back into her pocket, she pulled out another set, then another, until all six sets lay in the palm of my hand.

“Where did you get these?” I asked.

“From them,” she said. “From the guards in there and the one in the basement.”

I shook my head, trying to wrap my brain around what she was saying. I'd been the first one into the lounge, had crawled across the floor checking the guards one at a time. But Carly hadn't moved an inch until I'd dragged her out. How did she end up with all their keys?

I looked at Chris, hoping he knew something I didn't. Maybe Carly had helped him search the guards while I was puking. Maybe he'd found the keys and tossed them to her as he continued checking the bodies. Maybe Ryan had handed them to her on his way out.

Maybe I was losing my mind.

“If you had these keys this entire time, then why the hell did you let Ms. Tremblay go off looking for them? Why did you let Lucas and I paw through the guards' pockets?”

“Because Ms. Tremblay's not one of us. She doesn't get to come out of here alive.”

“What?” I dropped the keys I was holding to the floor and wheeled around to face her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I know who she is, and I know what she did to Cam. She's the one that had him thrown in that isolation cell to begin with, would've gladly left him locked up there forever. Cam deserved a second chance. She doesn't.”

“Did Cam do this?” I asked, flicking my hand toward the lounge door. God knew how long she'd been sitting in the bunk room with her brother; she could have easily seen the keys in his room and taken them.

“No,” she replied, setting off a new round of sobs. “He's dead.”

I took a deep breath, reminding myself to be patient. “I know he's dead, Carly, but do you think he was capable of killing the guards?”

“No, Cam didn't kill anybody. Why does everybody keeping thinking he did?”

“Maybe because he already has,” Chris muttered, drawing a warning glare from me.

“You don't know him at all. You think you do, but you don't. Nobody does.”

“I know you're scared, Carly, and I get that you're just trying to protect your brother, but I need to know. Did Cam have these keys? Did you find them in his room?”

“It wasn't him,” she replied. “He doesn't want to hurt anybody. He just wants to be left alone.”

Her response had me wondering exactly how close she'd come to Cam in those last few hours, how she could possibly know what Cam had wanted. “How do you know this?”

“Because he smiled when he saw me. For a second I thought he knew who I was. That he was actually happy to see me,” Carly said. “But I don't think he was happy at all,” she continued. “I don't even think he really saw me. He was just … I don't know, happy to be free.”

Free? “Wait. What? When did you talk to Cam?” Other than finding him hanging from the bedframe, the only time Carly and Cam had been within eyesight of each other was in the isolation unit, and then they'd had six inches of soundproof glass between them. “When did you talk to Cam?”

“In his room, right before he killed himself.”