Psychic Visions 08-Now You See Her... (35 page)

“Yes. I was,” she cried out. “I was probably given your blood.”

Billy glared at her. “Not likely. You got the preferential treatment unlike the others.”

“What preferential treatment? Don’t you understand? We were all prisoners. We all had a horrible life.”

“But you weren’t moved to the new facility though, were you? No, you were removed from the whole program then. You were freed.” She snorted. “They talked about leaving you for the last trip, only you never came. And we realized you’d been lying and that you were free.”

“No.” Tia couldn’t let her keep believing this. “I escaped. I actually thought I’d been left behind. I woke up to a completely empty building. The door was unlocked and I wasn’t chained at the time, but there was no one left inside the building. I don’t know why? Maybe they planned to come back for me – maybe they thought they’d locked me in and I was finally going to die for lack of food and water, but there was no one – and I mean no one left in the building when I managed to get out.”

Billy stared at her, so much hatred and anger on her face. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re lying. You have to be.”

“Why do I have to be?” Tia said in bewilderment. How had she not known this girl hated her like this? When had it started? Why had it started?

“He taught you to hate me,” she said sadly. “For that I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“He didn’t. You did.”

Tia didn’t understand. “I didn’t do anything,” she cried.

“No, except be you. They’d do anything to have one of us be able to disappear like you did. They loved to show us how they could make you do things.”

“And that should have told you how badly I was treated,” she said, her gaze finally noting the madness inside. Billy had tipped over the edge. “I’m so sorry. We were in this together. I was never better than you.”

“No, you weren’t. You aren’t. It did take me a while to see it though. The boss isn’t here right now, but he will be soon. If you thought I was dead…” Billy grinned. “At least he likes me the way I am.”

Tia didn’t know what to say. Once she’d escaped, she’d worried that Billy would be a perfect foil for a child predator. She’d not be on the wrong side of the law by age and the predator would always have a child to have sex with. What a horrible thought.

“What do you want with me,” she said, interjecting a flatness, a dullness to her tone.

“Payback.”

With that Billy laughed and turned, leaving Tia alone with the guy from McDonald’s. The guy who kidnapped Jeremy.

She studied him. He looked like he was all too willing to smack her up alongside side her head again. For some perverse reason, she wanted to push him. “Were you here too? A prisoner with Billy and me?”

“No, as you well know. Or was I someone else you couldn’t be bothered remembering, princess.” He snickered. “Of course I was the one who broke into your house. What kind of defense system was that? Shit that hurt when I ran into it.”

She stared at him. He’d been the intruder? It was too much. Her mind revolved around to his earlier comment. Princess? Jesus. Did everyone hate her? Now that she could see him up close, she wondered if he was a tech from the lab and had worked with Wilhelm. “Did you kill the doctor?”

She hadn’t meant to say that, but it slipped out before she could call the words back.

“No, Kyle did.”

She froze. “Kyle?” Surely not. He’d seemed like a lovely teenager. He’d been late to the program and…what? Frowning, she realized she couldn’t put a face to him. In fact, she didn’t remember anything about him. At least not enough to know something.

“Of course you don’t remember him either, do you?” He snorted. “Figures. Well, Kyle was sweet on Billy and after one particularly bad session Kyle lost it and the doctor just happened to be there. Kyle choked the life out of him. Of course Kyle had to be put down at that point.”

“What?” she exclaimed in horror. “Kyle wasn’t a rabid dog.”

“No, but neither could we trust him anymore.”

“You worked for Wilhelm though. How did you get onto Billy’s side?”

He snorted. “You really don’t get it do you. There were no sides. Once Wilhelm was dead, the place went ape shit and the prisoners tried to take over the lab. At least for a few days. Then the new boss found out and he came in with gas and put us all down. He didn’t know who was staff and who was a patient at that point, so we were all taken and made prisoners in his other lab until he could sort us out. Once I convinced him who I was…and he finally recognized me, then I moved up the hierarchy. And of course so did Billy.” He shrugged. “I know Billy hates you. I’m part of the reason as I helped Wilhelm spread the rumors of how you were treated so they
would
hate you. It made them try harder.”

She slumped back. “God, how could this be?”

“They all figured you’d been given special treatment or released,” he admitted. “Honestly, I had no idea what happened to you. We were all taken out but no one could find you. Figured you’d found a way to escape. Of course no one knew, so rumors were rampant that you’d been released.”

“I wasn’t on anyone else’s side,” she said wearily. “I was struggling to survive, the same as the rest of you. Always alone. Never included and always abused.”

“Once Wilhelm died, everything changed.” He waved his arm around. “There will be no special treatment here. Billy has had it in for you since the beginning. So it doesn’t matter if you’re one of us or not. You’ll get a heap more pain if you try to fight. The boss will be here soon. Then you’ll see.”

“See what?”

“See what you’re really up against.”

And he walked out.

*

Dean stood in
the middle of the conference room he’d been in earlier. A team was at the hotel room and the video cameras were currently being checked. So far nothing had led them to finding Tia or the lab she was likely being held in. Stefan had brought his painting to the station, then had walked out.

So far Stefan’s painting was the best clue they had to go on. The first time he’d seen it, his stomach had fallen to his toes in fear. How the hell had Stefan managed to make a hand look so lifelike and be so easily identifiable? Then again it was the scars. And he’d spent a lot of time kissing those exact scars.

He couldn’t imagine the other images Stefan could paint and he didn’t want to. This was painful enough.

“Are you sure there’s nothing there to identify her location,” he’d asked Stefan before he left. “Surely a window scene, something that would say anything.”

“No,” had been his only answer.

“Here are the morgue pictures on the other kids who died.” Jones walked in and dropped the file on the table. “At least for the seven we could confirm.”

“And the others?” Dean asked.

“No reports or no pictures on the reports.”

And Dean had to be content with that. It sucked, but there it was.

He’d also called the department shrink. It wasn’t that the shrink would believe any of this, but he could have valuable insights to this case.

He strode over to the table and sat down, pulling the images toward him. Dead men, children really, looked back at him. He turned off his emotional reaction and sucked in his breath. He had to find something in these images. There was nothing here to help.

The first image was cold and clear. The boy’s throat had been cut. There was no mistaking cause of death there. Except the slash also bisected a half dozen other scars. More attempts on his life? Had the boy tried to commit suicide? He looked for the coroner’s reports but they weren’t here.

The captain walked in. “Well…” he roared. “Who’s got something for me?”

Dean shook his head and didn’t lift his gaze off the second photo. There was something about that one that got to him. For all the similarities to the first one, it was still…different. Of course, different boy. Different age. Different scars. But also similar scars. How the hell did anyone get cuts like that on the neck and not die?

The one boy had obviously died. This second image was another dead child but older, skinnier. A huge Adam’s apple. The picture was a profile and that big bob in his throat stood out strongly. And of course there were scars along the temple, weird ones almost like burn marks and there were similar ones at the hair line. This boy had gone through hell.

He lifted his gaze, trying to remember if he’d noticed similar scars on Tia. In a way yes, but also no. Hers were different. Tia’s had healed better. This kid had bumpy scars. Something akin to keloidal scarring. It made his injuries look worse.

His heart aching for what he’d gone through, Dean quickly went through the other images, looking for similarities and looking for differences.

There were some of both. Most had scars of some kind but no visible injury that caused deaths. The drugs likely were the cause. Also autopsies hadn’t been done in most cases. Well documented medical illness had explained some. Did they have a serial killer in the midst, a budding one? Trying out his thing? Learning a style? Checking out different techniques? Was such a thing possible? Was it one of the doctors? One of the staff? One of the patients? Lord knew he was rooting for it to be one of the patients. At least someone was trying to fight back.

Most likely the damn doctor had killed those kids with his damn experiments.

He tossed the pictures down. The captain grabbed them up.

And if it wasn’t the doctor, the problem with the killer being a patient was he was killing other patients.

Dean’s mind worried on the problem.

What kind of mind would do that?

The answer was easy. A broken one.

Shit.

Tia was in big trouble.

T
ia lay back
down and worked on settling her senses. She should be able to go invisible here, but it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if she couldn’t get free. She’d use up her energy at an alarming rate.

That she couldn’t have. She needed to conserve as much as she could.

There’d been no other visitors since Billy and Torrence, her guard. And Tia was still trying to figure out how that worked. In that image Billy had looked dead. Of course, she could have been faking it. Actually, she could have been close to death when the picture was taken, then recovered.

They’d all been there at one time or another.

How they could have believed Tia had received different treatment she had no idea. She’d met them all at one time or another, and they’d all been friendly, or as friendly as anyone could be in those circumstances. Had the doctor and staff pitted the patients against each other?

For what reason? To see them fight each other? She pondered the mental reasoning for such a thing. Or they might have used her as a prize or the prime being and pitted the others against each other to get them to try harder. Maybe they offered a better location, better treatment to the winners. What was the punishment for the losers? She hated to think about it.

There were distant noises in the background. Like shots fired. She froze. Guns?

Voices raised and shouts could be heard. She sat up. A rescue? Or was she once again going to be left behind. No one knew she was here. Damn.

She’d have to get out on her own again. She’d been so scared the last time…it had been hard to stay calm enough to function.

But this time was different.

Could she even get free?

And if so, how? She stared down at the handcuff. Except it wasn’t quite a handcuff. It was like a chain with a loop over it. She studied it carefully then tried to open it. But it wouldn’t budge. She tried to make her hand as small as possible so she could slip out of it, but that wasn’t happening either. It was old but maybe that’s why it was holding. The old stuff seemed stronger. She got off the bed and took a look at the way it was attached to the old metal bed frame. It appeared to be looped through a leg. So how did the legs come off? Several frustrating minutes later, and she realized that the damn frame was bolted together.

And she wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it.

She was stuck. Shit.

With no window and the door too far away for her to reach, she was limited to the length of the damn chain. Anger built. She’d sworn she’d never get back into this situation again and yet here she was.