Hemlock 03: Willowgrove (13 page)

“I wanted to talk to you about CBP,” I blurted awkwardly, deciding that some version of the truth—an extremely watered down, hole-riddled version—was the best approach.

I glanced at Stephen out of the corner of my eye. He inclined his head slightly, curiously. “And you thought you had to get me out here to do that?”

“I was scared someone might overhear if I met you anywhere else,” I admitted. “I’m taking a big risk just by being here.”

Stephen stopped and turned to face me. A stone angel was just visible over his left shoulder. Wind and rain and time had worn away most of her features, but her sightless eyes still seemed focused on us.

“What do you mean, you’re taking a risk?” The look on Stephen’s face was so earnest, so full of concern, that I almost wished I could be honest with him. Not for the first time, I wondered how my life would have been different if I’d had a brother like Stephen growing up.

He was staring at me, waiting for an answer. “Mac, are you in some sort of trouble?”

I shook my head. “I’m not—but someone I know is. They have LS.”

His brows knotted. “Your cousin?”

“No.” My voice was a startled squeak; I could practically see Stephen running down a mental list of the people in my life, and the list wasn’t terribly long. “Someone from school. Not anyone you know, but someone who’s been a good friend to me since Amy. Someone I care about.”

“I’m sorry.” Stephen hesitated for a moment, then added, “I’m not sure what this has to do with CutterBrown, though. Or me.”

I started walking again, more slowly this time. Movement was better: it gave me an excuse not to look into his eyes and made it easier to sling half-truths. Some people were harder to lie to than others; Amy’s brother was one of them.

“I remembered that CBP was working on a test to detect lupine syndrome. I thought, maybe, if they were working on a test, they’d also be working on a cure.”

“They’re not.” Stephen’s voice was gentle, but firm. “Every pharmaceutical company in the world has tried to find a cure and they’ve all hit brick walls.”

His black Acura came into view as we reached the strip of parking spaces.

“The best thing your friend can do is keep her head down and try to go unnoticed. Tell her to forget about a cure. The sooner she accepts that her condition is permanent, the easier things will be.”

Stephen’s words took me by surprise. Especially after what had happened to Amy. Especially when his grandfather was pushing for harsher laws against werewolves. “Most people would say she should turn herself in to the
LSRB,” I said slowly, “that I was wrong to want to help her.”

“Guess I’m not most people.” Stephen frowned as we reached his car. He glanced around the empty parking lot and his mouth hardened into a thin, straight line. “Please tell me you didn’t walk here?”

When I didn’t answer, a familiar, exasperated look crossed his face. I had seen him turn that look on Amy dozens—maybe hundreds—of times. “It’s the morning after a riot and there are God only knows how many still-drunk extremists running around Hemlock like it’s the Wild West. I can’t believe you walked out here alone.”

He looked like he wanted to say something else, then seemed to think better of it and just sighed. “Get in,” he said, pulling out his keys and heading for the driver’s side of the car. “I’ll take you home.”

I followed him to the Acura. I opened my mouth to tell him that I didn’t need a ride, that I had somewhere else I had to be, but my gaze fell on a messenger bag on the passenger seat. An ID badge with Stephen’s photo on the front was clipped to the strap.

“Shit.” Stephen reached into his pocket and pulled out a vibrating cell phone, then frowned as he glanced at the display. “I have to take this.” He gestured at the car before turning away. “Get in. There’s no way I’m letting you walk home.”

This time, I didn’t think of arguing. I trusted Stephen and didn’t believe he would intentionally lie to me about what CBP was working on, but when you got right down to it, he was just an intern. An intern whose father ran the
company, sure, but he might not know everything that was going on.

The faint scent of lavender ruffled my nose as I lifted the messenger bag and slid into the car. Ever since Thornhill, I had hated that smell. Tess had a bottle of lavender shampoo and I had begged her to throw it out because it reminded me of Warden Sinclair.

I glanced out the window. Stephen had wandered to the edge of the parking lot. I didn’t know who was on the other end of the line, but the conversation was obviously private.

I checked his ID badge and frowned. It had his picture and name along with a four-digit employee number, but no magnetic strip. It wasn’t anything that could help us get inside CutterBrown.

Get inside CutterBrown?
scoffed a small voice in the back of my head.
Aren’t you supposed to be leaving town this morning?

I told the voice to shut up. At the other end of the parking lot, Stephen had begun to pace. He looked angry and frustrated.

Anger was good. Anger meant he wasn’t paying attention to me.

Feeling slightly guilty, I unzipped the bag. I didn’t know what I was hoping to find. A laptop, maybe, or a stack of files and memos. Instead, all I found were a couple of books. I pulled one out.

Managing an Epidemic.
Our school library had the same book—I had borrowed it after finding out Kyle was infected. I frowned. It wasn’t exactly light reading. I started to slip it back, but a piece of paper sticking out of the middle of the
book caught my eye. A slice of a photo was visible on the top of the page. A black-and-white picture of an imposing old building. A building with a peaked roof and ivy-covered walls. I remembered looking at the harsh angles of that building in the early morning light and thinking it was a photographer’s dream.

Willowgrove.

Only half of the picture was visible, but I didn’t need to see the whole image to recognize the old, repurposed sanatorium.

I couldn’t breathe. My lungs, my heart, everything in my chest was turning to ice and the ice was threatening to crack.

I forced myself to look up, to make sure Stephen was still engrossed in his conversation, and then I slipped the piece of paper from the book.

It was a pamphlet for an art exhibit. Some sort of retrospective by a group of Colorado photographers. The Willowgrove in the picture wasn’t exactly the one I had known. The ivy was so overgrown that it threatened to pull the walls down, and the doors and windows were all boarded up. It was the sanatorium—there was no doubt of that—but the photo had been taken sometime during the decades the old hospital had stood empty.

Before Sinclair.

Before Thornhill.

My eyes drifted down to the location of the exhibit.

Flagler Public Library
.

The name of the town was a knife in my stomach. Flagler was a forty-minute drive from Thornhill and was so small it barely registered on the map. Most of the camp’s personnel who chose not to stay in the staff dormitories had lived in Flagler and commuted—at least that’s what Jason had once said. Without the nearby camp and the jobs it provided, Flagler would have been a ghost town.

I turned the pamphlet over. A phone number and what looked like a room number had been jotted on the back in Stephen’s looping, off-kilter handwriting.
Chicken scratches
—that’s what Amy had said any time she had been forced to decipher a note he’d left.

I glanced up. Stephen was walking back to the car, his face set in hard, grim lines.

Hastily, I shoved the book back into the messenger bag and tucked the paper into my jacket pocket.

I pushed open the passenger door and climbed out of the car just as Stephen rounded the hood.

He shot me a piercing look. “What’s wrong?”

I stared at Amy’s brother. Everything about him suddenly seemed different. Suspect.

My hand shook as I shut the car door. A thousand questions flew to my lips, but I choked them back. I wouldn’t be able to trust anything he said. Stephen had been at Flagler. He must have been at Thornhill: the camp was the only reason anyone would go there.

Someone had sent those men after Serena. If CutterBrown had been working with Sinclair, then they had the
most to lose if the truth ever came out. It would be a public relations nightmare. Admitting I knew anything about Thornhill could be suicide.

Would be suicide
, I amended, thinking about the explosion at the transition house.

“I have to go.” Four words that shook as they left my lips. “I don’t need a ride.”

Before Stephen could respond, I turned and headed for the gates. My legs trembled, but I crossed the distance in record time, walking so fast that I was practically running.

“Mac! Wait!”

Stephen caught up with me as I reached the street. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop.

I stared into his blue eyes—the icy-blue eyes he had inherited from his father.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” His voice was filled with something. Worry or suspicion: I couldn’t tell the difference.

I tugged my arm free and tried to throw up walls to keep my thoughts and emotions from showing on my face. “Like what?”

“Like you’re scared of me. Mackenzie, what the hell just happened?”

“Nothing.” The urge to slip a hand inside my pocket, to make sure the pamphlet was still there, was almost overpowering. “I’d rather just walk home. Walking is good. I’m totally fine.”

“You’re obviously not fine.” Stephen’s voice was slow and careful; it was the kind of tone you’d use with an idiot or
someone who was up on a ledge. He started to slip the scarf from his neck and froze when I tensed. His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply. “You look like you’re going to throw up or pass out. Just let me drive you home—or at least wait while I call your cousin to . . .” His voice trailed off as engines approached on the street behind me.

Great
, I thought, turning and glancing in the direction of the interstate,
another Tracker caravan
.

But instead of an RV, a green transport—the kind soldiers rode in—rumbled past. A dozen more followed in its wake. Like the Trackers and news vans I had seen earlier, they were headed toward the center of town.

A National Guardsman leaned out the back of the last truck.

“Jesus,” muttered Stephen. He walked past me and stepped out onto the street, staring after the trucks as they disappeared around the bend. For a second, he forgot all about me.

I backed away from the street and whirled. Stephen yelled my name as I ran back into the cemetery, but he didn’t follow.

Fern Ridge was surrounded by a brick wall, but there was another gate on the far side, one that was used by the groundskeepers and gravediggers.

Muscles aching and lungs burning, I reached the wall and slumped against the bricks.

I pulled the crumpled paper from my pocket. My hand shook as I tried to smooth out the creases. The date of the exhibit had been July 29—just weeks before Thornhill had
opened its doors. I had suspected CutterBrown was involved with the camp, but part of me had desperately been hoping I was wrong.

And never, in a million years, could I have imagined that Stephen would somehow be involved.

“I’m not leaving Hemlock.” My words were a whisper. Serena and the others had to get away—now, with the National Guard in town, more than ever—but I wouldn’t be going with them.

Amy’s family had been involved with Thornhill. I had to find out how deeply.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “What did you know, Amy? Is this the reason you’re still here?”

The wind through the trees was my only answer.

I
RETURNED TO THE CHURCH TO FIND FOUR ANGRY WEREWOLVES
and one seriously pissed-off Tracker.

Kyle, especially, was furious. He couldn’t believe I hadn’t told him about the logo last night or that I had gone to the cemetery to meet Stephen by myself.

My excuse—that I had thought Amy’s brother would be more likely to talk to her best friend than a group—fell on deaf ears. I understood why they were upset—I would be furious if the situation had been reversed—but I didn’t regret going.

After what felt like an eternity of apologies and lectures, we reconvened in the front of the church—all of us but Serena, who was sleeping fitfully in the pastor’s office. Eve and Trey sat on the pews, Jason and Kyle on the steps leading to the pulpit. Me? I paced between them because I was too full of too many emotions to stand still.

“So this friend of yours—Amy—you think her father was working with Sinclair?” Eve pushed a red curl away from her forehead and climbed up onto the backrest of her pew. She
was so short that her cherry-red Doc Martens hung a few inches above the bench, but I knew better than to judge her on her size; Eve was one of the toughest people I knew—both physically and mentally.

She looked remarkably well rested for someone who had been on the road all night—not that I was about to tell her that. Though my attitude toward her had changed inside Thornhill, she was still Hank’s protégée, the adopted daughter my father had taken in after abandoning me. That made my feelings toward her . . . complicated.

“I saw the CutterBrown logo in the camp, and Stephen—his son—was in Flagler.” I twisted Amy’s bracelet around my wrist. “CutterBrown was already working on a test to detect LS. If they could develop a cure—even just a treatment—it would be worth millions.”

“Billions,” corrected Jason. “But that doesn’t mean they were testing one at the camp.” His eyes glinted like pieces of broken glass. “All the logo proves is that Sinclair might have been using one of the drugs CBP already makes—a sedative, a chemo drug, anything. And all the pamphlet proves is that Stephen was in Flagler.”

After I had gotten back to the church, I had called the number on the back of the pamphlet. It had been a motel: the Flagler Motor Lodge. The girl working the desk even remembered Stephen—once I had given her a description. I’d gotten the impression that there was a shortage of young, handsome men checking in and out.

I shook my head. “Flagler isn’t exactly a tourist destination. Why would Stephen have been there unless there was
a connection between CBP and the camp?”