Time Will Tell (10 page)

Chapter 22

“Gabe, get her out of the car,” Mary-Kate instructed, motioning over her shoulder at Lexi.

Gabe climbed out of the car and went to the passenger’s side. He opened Lexi’s car door and let her
step out of the car on her own. When she met his eyes, Gabe noticed how scared she looked.

“Why are you doing this, Gabe?” Lexi questioned, her cat green eyes filled with a look of scrutiny. “I trusted you, damnit. Dan didn’t want you to come back to his house to stay, but I told him we couldn’t just leave you in Ohio. I wanted to help you, and you betrayed me.
Again.”

“Lex
i, this isn’t what it seems like,” Gabe hissed at her quietly. “I have a plan, but you have to trust me.”

“What is it? What’s your plan?” Lexi demanded to know.

“I can’t tell you right now, but trust me,” Gabe whispered, as Mary-Kate climbed out of the car and stood along the sidewalk beside them.

“Hmm, what are we going to do with the children?” Mary-Kate questioned, staring into the backseat at Erica and Connor, who were staring at them with wide eyes.

“They’re coming with us,” Lexi said firmly. She leaned into the car and unbuckled Erica. Connor unbuckled his own seat belt, and both of the kids climbed out of the car and took Lexi’s hands.

Gabe was glad that Lexi was there. As much as he had tried to calm her half-siblings, they seemed to be so much more relieved to have her there with them.

Mary-Kate sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll let you have your way, since it might be one of your last wishes.” She smiled over her shoulder at Lexi. “Are you looking forward to being my mother’s blood donor?”

Lexi shrugged her shoulders, leading Erica and Connor down the narrow sidewalk. She
helped them pull their hoods over their heads, trying to protect them from the rain, which was falling down hard around them.

Gabe followed after Lexi, and Mary-Kate trailed behind all of them. When they reached the building, she opened the door and went inside. She walked past the nurse’s station, where there was nobody working.

Gabe knew that Briar Creek’s nursing homes were much different than nursing homes in other towns. The rules for visiting hours were less strict, mostly because there were less patients—and the patients who
did
need to stay there were usually so sick that they were nearly on their death beds, so no one cared if they had visitors after hours or not.

Mary-Kate led them down a wide hallway and around a corner until they reached a closed door. She pushed it open and gasped when she found that the bed was empty.

“What the hell,” Mary-Kate murmured. She turned to Lexi and Gabe. “My mom never leaves her room. She can hardly walk. They must have moved her to another room or something. Let me go find a nurse to see if they know where she is.”

As Mary-Kate headed off in the opposite direction, Lexi turned to him. “Gabe, where is Caroline? Did you come home earlier without her, or did you do something to her, too?”

“What do you mean did I do something to her, too?” Gabe questioned, feeling a knot tighten in his stomach. “Look, Lexi, I know I hurt Justin, but . . . what I’m doing right now, kidnapping you? The whole reason I did it was to make up for what I did do to Justin.”

“What do you mean?” Lexi asked, raising her eyebrows at him. “Nothing you could ever do could possibly make up for killing an innocent guy! He was just a teenager, Gabe. He was too young to die . . . and just because you got jealous, no less.” She rolled her eyes with disgust.

“If I didn’t kidnap you today, Mary-Kate was planning to let the whole town drink from Connor and Erica,” Gabe told her quietly. “The only way she agreed to not do that to them was if I kidnapped you. I did this for you—and for them.”

Lexi glanced down at her siblings, who nodded at her.

“Gabe is telling the truth,” Connor said quietly, shifting in his Nike sneakers uncomfortably. “Mary-Kate came to our house, acting like she was there to meet us and really get to know us. We were supposed to go get ice cream. But then she tricked us to take a ride with her, and she put us in the trunk of her car. Our mom’s still in the trunk.” 

Lexi’s jaw dropped open. She glanced over at Gabe. “Are they right? Darlene is still in the trunk?”

Gabe nodded and darted his eyes away from her guiltily. Even though he felt bad about leaving her stepmom in the trunk of the car, he also wasn’t sure what to do about her. There wasn’t enough room for her to sit in the car with them, and he knew that Darlene would probably try to do something to stop Mary-Kate from harming her children, which would put them in even more danger. “It’s safer for her in there. It’s safer for all of us, really. I’d hate to think of what would happen if she tried to stand up to Mary-Kate.”

“Well, maybe
someone
needs to stand up to Mary-Kate, instead of going along with everything she says, for once,” Lexi replied with a huff. Sighing, she said, “Look, you didn’t answer my question. I wasn’t even talking about Justin. Did you kill Caroline the same way you killed Rosie?”

“Rosie? Who’s Rosie?” Gabe questioned, eyeing Lexi with a confused look on his face.

“Oh, come on, Gabe. You don’t need to play dumb with me. I already know the truth,” Lexi replied, shaking her head angrily. “I met Mary, Rosie’s mom. She told me you killed her daughter. I just need to know . . . did you do the same thing to Caroline?”

Gabe shook his head. “The last day I saw Caroline was the day I nearly died in the fire at Huntington. You know, the fire that took down the rest of the school?”

Lexi gaped at him. “Do you have multiple personality disorder or something? You have to remember that you came back to Dan’s family’s house and then took off with Caroline when she went to Juilliard.”

Gabe shook his head. “No, that’s the thing, Lexi. I
didn’t
do that. It wasn’t me. It was my twin brother, Kevin.”

“Kevin?” Lexi narrowed her eyes at him. “You seriously want me to believe you have a twin brother, who happens to have the same name as the person you told me you were when we first met—the fake alias you created so no one would figure out your age and who you later killed off in a
fake motorcycle accident with my cousin.” She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m not an idiot, Gabe. I know that all didn’t really happen. And I might be a lot of things, but I’m far from stupid. But obviously you must think I am.”

“No, Lexi. I don’t think you’re stupid, because I’m telling you the truth. I really
do
have a twin brother named Kevin,” Gabe insisted, feeling a sense of desperation take over. He wanted Lexi to believe the truth; he
needed
her to believe the truth. Even though he had no doubt that it was going to be difficult for her to ever trust him again, getting her to believe the truth would be a good start.

“You really are a much sicker person—err, vampire—than I ever thought you were. You probably
did
kill Caroline. Not that you would tell me the truth, even if she is dead,” Lexi said, shaking her head with disgust. “I can’t believe I ever trusted you. I should have known that you were up to no good when you tried to kill me and then said you did it to protect me. I just wish my mom hadn’t convinced me to trust you. If it weren’t for her, I probably would have cut ties with you a long time ago.”

When Gabe met her eyes, he could see everything she felt towards him inside of them. She truly despised him. It seemed like it would be nearly impossible for him to change her feelings towards him, no matter what his intentions were.

“Well, this is just lovely,” Mary-Kate’s voice came from the other end of the hallway, as she approached them. “The nurse said my mother’s not in her room because she’s been checked out of the facility.”

“Where is she, then?” Lexi asked. Her voice sounded relieved.

“I don’t know,” Mary-Kate replied. “But we’re going to find out. My father is the one who checked her out.”

“Why would Greg check her out?” Gabe questioned. It didn’t make any sense why Greg Lawrence would want his wife to leave the nursing home, where the nurses were taking such good care of her.

“Not that father,” Mary-Kate replied, meeting his eyes. “My
other
father. Benjamin Hunter.”

Chapter 23

Kevin was in the backseat of Caroline’s car, staring out at the falling rain, when Dan’s cell phone rang loudly.

“Hello?” Dan asked into the phone on the third ring. There was a long pause for a moment before he said, “How do you know Mary-Kate kidnapped Lexi?”

Kevin froze in the backseat. He was curious to see where the conversation that Dan was having was going. Even more than that, though, he was wondering who the conversation was with—and how they knew what had happened to Lexi.

“Well, that can’t be possible,” Dan said into the phone. “He’s with us.”

Kevin felt a lump form in the back of his throat. It almost seemed like Dan was talking about Gabe, but Dan was right; there was no way that could be possible. The real Gabe was dead. He had died in that fire at Huntington.

“Okay, we’ll be there in about fifteen minutes,” Dan said into his phone before shoving it back inside his pocket and turning to Caroline. “That was Ben Hunter—Lexi’s dad. Someone told him that they saw Mary-Kate driving around Briar Creek with Lexi—and Erica and Connor—in the backseat. They also said that they thought they saw Gabe in the car, but obviously they were wrong about that, since he’s with us.”

“Umm, I’m still in the car,” Kevin spoke up from the backseat. “I don’t appreciate you talking about me like I’m not even here.”

“Whatever, man,” Dan said. “I don’t have time to worry about your feelings right now. We have to find Lexi.”

“Well, at least there’s something we agree on,” Kevin muttered under his breath. He wasn’t going to tell Dan the reason that he wanted to find Lexi was because he wanted to drink from her, though. Kevin knew that it would upset Dan . . . and that wasn’t something he wanted to do, especially since he wanted to get his girlfriend alone.

“Anyway, I told Ben we would meet him at 129 Chester Ave,” Dan went on. “I guess he’s holding Mrs. Lawrence there. He’s hoping he can make some sort of exchange with Mary-Kate. If she gives up Lexi and the kids, he’ll give up Mrs. Lawrence. I’m not sure how that’s going to work out.”

Caroline turned onto the road that would lead them to Briar Creek before glancing over at Dan. “I thought you said Mary-Kate Lawrence got stuck in the 1800s. How could she have taken Lexi?”

Dan shrugged. “Someone must have wished that she would come back. It was probably her dad or something.”

Kevin smiled to himself. What no one knew, except for him, was that he was the one who had wished for Mary-Kate to come back. He had overheard Lexi and her friends mention that Mary-Kate had gotten stuck in the 1800s. He knew that, like Lexi, Mary-Kate was of the Hunter bloodline. Since he wanted, more than anything, to taste Hunter blood, he wished that she could be there at that moment.

Maybe this whole night was
n’t turning out to be that bad, after all. Maybe he had brought Mary-Kate back from the past for a reason. Kevin could tell Mary-Kate that she owed him for bringing her back from the past. Maybe she could find a way to help him drink from Lexi Hunter—or maybe she would even share her own blood with him. Kevin doubted Mary-Kate’s blood would taste quite as good as Lexi’s, but it would have to hold him over until he could drink from Lexi.

Kevin was feeling awfully thirsty, too. Even though it hadn’t been that long since he’d drank from Caroline, he was used to drinking blood more regularly. If he didn’t start to drink more often soon, he was going to get weaker . . . and Kevin couldn’t afford to get weaker. He had been working on making himself a strong
er vampire for years. He wasn’t about to let that go now.

Hunter blood would do the trick, though. Kevin just knew it. If he could drink from a Hunter, he would become more powerful.

“Are you okay Caroline?” Dan asked from his place in the passenger’s seat. “Nothing bad has happened since the last time we spoke to each other, right?”

Caroline hesitated for a long moment, and Kevin got the feeling that they were talking about him. What had Caroline told her brother about him, though? The idea unnerved him.

Finally, Caroline replied quietly, “Everything is fine, Danny. We’ll talk later.”

Kevin slumped down in his seat and stared at the back of Caroline’s head. He didn’t want Caroline to talk to her brother about him later. In fact, he didn’t want them to talk about him at all.

What Kevin wanted, more than anything, was to put an end to annoying Caroline Nichols’ life.