The twisted dead, p.17
The Twisted Dead, page 17
They let the music wash over them. To Keira’s surprise, it actually seemed to help. The steady rush of countryside around them and the ceaseless, off-tempo drums seemed to focus her mind and blur out external distractions.
Every few minutes one of them would reach for the stereo and turn the volume down to suggest a new idea.
“We could plant listening devices in his room,” Zoe suggested at one point. “Get a confession on tape.”
Mason only shook his head. “It wouldn’t be admissible in court. And that’s assuming he gloats, out loud, about his crimes while sitting in his bedroom.”
“I could easily see him wanting to monologue like a villain,” Zoe said.
“What if I wore a listening device?” Keira asked. “I could confront him about it. Try to get him to admit something.”
“You run into the same laws, unfortunately. Illegally obtained evidence can’t be used in court.”
They lapsed back into reflection as Harry’s music flowed around them. Keira was the next to break their silence. “What if we claimed he’d confessed to us? I can’t risk getting on the police’s radar, but you and Zoe together might make a convincing pair of witnesses, and it saves you from the ugliness of pretending you hid knowledge of a crime for more than a year.”
Mason adjusted his grip on the wheel. “It’s an option. But if Gavin denies it—which he will—it becomes a case of he said, she said. Or he could claim he was lying for attention. Or any of a dozen other excuses. Without other evidence, it would never get to court.”
They continued batting back options for nearly two hours. By the time they pulled into the same rest stop they’d eaten at the day before, they were no closer to having a workable plan.
Their original waitress was tending a different section but passed by them when she saw them. “Catch many ghosts, then?” she asked Keira.
She smiled. “Not as many as I was expecting to be honest.”
“Oh well.” The server chuckled. “There’s always next time.”
Over by the bar, Bob lifted his drink to salute her.
They ate lunch quickly, still debating, in hushed voices so patrons at other tables weren’t as likely to hear, then got a box of hot chips take-away to eat on the second stretch of their drive.
“The problem with any kind of elaborate plan is that it leaves Gavin out in the community and unsupervised,” Zoe said as Mason turned their car back onto the road. “That’s risky.”
“We can’t keep him under surveillance.” Keira took a chip from the box perched between them and broke it in half. “There are only three of us. It would be impossible to watch him around the clock, every day of the week. At least, not without having a nervous breakdown from it.”
“Especially not if it goes on for months,” Zoe added. “Let alone years. But what about spreading rumours about him to other people in town? We wouldn’t need any kind of legal proof to make people wary of Gavin. Fifty sets of eyes, even just eyes watching him out of curiosity, is better than three.”
“That’s more likely to provoke him, I think.” Keira chewed on her lip as she considered it. “It could make him feel cornered. Paranoid. It might force him to lash out.”
“Actually…” Zoe picked up a chip and pointed it at Keira. “Why don’t we lean into that? Set up one of us as bait. Not you, since it needs to be someone who can file a report with the police. And not Mason, since he’s big enough to give Gavin second thoughts. It could be me, though.”
Mason was looking uncomfortable. “I don’t think I like this plan.”
“But you said it yourself—I’m part of that demographic Gavin’s looking for. Someone he considers weaker than himself. Someone who would probably be filed as a runaway if I vanished. And Gavin already loathes me. I’d just need to push enough of his buttons to provoke an attack—and, trust me, I’m very good at pushing buttons—and we can get him for attempted murder.”
“There’s only one problem with that,” Mason said. “The part about the attempted murder.”
“You guys would be waiting in the wings to stop him before he got too far. We wouldn’t let him actually hurt me.”
“But there’s still a chance he would.” Mason shook his head. “No matter how cautious we were, there is still no way to guarantee a scenario like that would be safe. And even if we did manage to pull it off flawlessly, the end result is likely to be less than a year of jail time. A provoked, spur-of-the-moment outburst that leaves no injuries is considered much less serious than a premeditated attack.”
“Ugh.” Zoe scowled as she shoved the chip into her mouth. “The legal system sucks.”
“It does, though maybe not for those exact reasons.” Mason sighed. “All of these ideas are far more complicated and risky than the original plan of letting me act as a witness.”
“I’m still not budging,” Keira said, and Mason sent her a rueful smile in response.
“We could probably drive the whole Kelsey family out of town if we tried hard enough,” Zoe continued, picking at where food had gotten stuck between her teeth. “But that’s not exactly going to help, is it? It’d just make Gavin some other town’s problem, and that hardly seems fair.”
“Agreed.” Keira glanced into the rearview mirror to meet Zoe’s gaze. Beyond her friend’s head, through the back window, she saw a white van farther down the road.
Mason started talking about ethics, though Keira barely heard his words.
She couldn’t drag her eyes away from the white van. It had a small emblem in the centre of its hood. It was too far away for her to make out the details clearly, but her stomach turned into icy, aching knots at the sight of it.
It’s them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Keira dug her fingertips into the fabric seat sides, as though bracing for a collision.
“Keira?” Mason had noticed the change in her posture. He watched her from the corner of his eye. “Did something happen?”
She wasn’t sure she had enough breath to speak. “The van behind us. I think it’s them. Artec.”
Zoe swore quietly.
“Keep still, both of you.” Mason glanced into the rearview mirror. “Keira, do you think they’ve seen you?”
Her muscles were locked into place. “I don’t know.”
Mason reached for the mirror and covered it with his hand to block the reflection. Then he tilted it, angling it towards the ceiling so Keira could no longer watch the van and, more importantly, the occupants in the van wouldn’t be able to see her. “Don’t turn your head,” he said, his voice soft but tense. “Stay facing forward. They won’t be able to get a clear look at you. I’ll take the next turn off.”
Behind Keira, Zoe’s breathing had grown quick. Like Keira, she was sitting completely still, afraid of moving in case it drew attention. “The more important question is if they recognise this car.”
“They shouldn’t.” Mason frowned. “Unless they’ve been watching us without our knowing.”
“I saw another of them yesterday,” Keira said. Her grip on the seat tightened. She knew it was safer to have the mirror turned away, but not being able to see the van felt so much worse. “They drove past while we were stopped to look at the oversized owl. I didn’t think they’d seen me, but maybe…”
“Don’t panic.” Mason’s gentle, calm voice was betrayed by white knuckles gripping the steering wheel. “It might be a coincidence. Artec’s headquarters could be somewhere in this region, and they send out vans regularly.”
“He’s right,” Zoe said. “If they were truly trying to follow you, I’d think they would do it covertly, not while covered in their company branding.”
That was true. But it didn’t help quell the rising panic in Keira’s chest.
Everything about that symbol was bad. She felt it in her blood, in her nerve endings, in the subliminal part of her mind. She needed to get away from it. And fast.
A turnoff appeared ahead. Mason put on his indicators. “This will give us some answers,” he said. “Depending on whether they follow us or not.”
“What happens if they do?” Zoe asked. Keira could feel her eyes boring into the back of her head. “Do we lead them on a high-speed chase or…?”
Mason cleared his throat. “To be honest, I’ve never gone very far over the speed limit in my life. But I’m prepared to try.”
“We are involved in a life-or-death situation,” Zoe whispered, “and you are still somehow the most boring person I know.”
“Thank you.”
They glided into the off-lane to exit the freeway. “Cover your face,” Mason said to Keira. She raised a hand and pretended to fidget with her hair as she used it as a shield.
“I think they’re staying on the freeway,” Zoe said.
Mason shifted slightly forward in his seat, putting himself between Keira and the van. Their car slowed as the road peeled them away from the freeway.
Through her fingers, Keira glimpsed it: the white van, cruising comfortably along the freeway. The symbol, black on the van’s white paint, stood out clearly on the side panel. Its leaf design twisted in a hexagonal pattern. Bile rose in the back of her throat as clammy sweat pearled across her skin.
But the distance between them was increasing, and the van stayed straight ahead on the freeway.
Mason released a held breath and his grip on the wheel relaxed a fraction. “Okay. That’s a good sign, I think.”
“They didn’t try to look at us as they passed,” Zoe said. She slumped back into her seat. “I was watching. I figured, if they knew you were in the car, they’d at least turn their head to glance at you. But they didn’t.”
“Okay.” The queasiness still wouldn’t dissipate, but Keira forced a smile. “Thank you.”
A service station had been built close to the exit, and Mason let the car coast into it before pulling into one of the empty parking spots. He turned the engine off, then swiped the back of his hand across his own face.
“So,” Zoe said, still slumped in her seat. “That just leaves us the question: What are the odds that we see two vans in two days? How close exactly are we to Artec’s headquarters?”
“We could look up businesses in the area,” Mason suggested. “There might be a commercial area or a business park nearby. It might help us narrow our search.”
“Or, here’s an idea: We could get back on the freeway. Try to catch up to the van. Then we could follow it and find out where it goes.”
“No,” Keira said quickly. Her skin prickled uncomfortably, and she ran her hands across her forearms as though she were brushing invisible cobwebs off. “We absolutely cannot do that.”
“Keira’s right. They may not have noticed us, but we don’t want to risk changing that by tailing them.”
“They have their logo on the vans.” Zoe frowned. “But not the business name. That’s kind of weird, huh? If you go to the effort to advertise your company on your vehicle, wouldn’t you want to tell people who you are?”
“True,” Mason said. “No phone number. No website. Not even a slogan. You either recognise them by the logo, or you don’t recognise them at all.”
Zoe shuffled back in her seat. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Everything about them is shady, shady, shady.”
A truck trundled past them slowly, pulling into a bay to refuel. Keira focussed on her breathing and getting it back to a more comfortable pace. Mason ruffled his hair back out of his face then asked, “What would you like to do, Keira? Would it help to stay here awhile?”
“No. Thanks. It might be good to get back on the road.” She rubbed itchy palms on her jeans. “I don’t think I’ll feel properly safe until we’re home.”
“I can understand that.” Mason started the car again. “We’re only a couple of hours away now.”
Keira still couldn’t quite relax as they returned to the road. Nor could she keep her eyes off the vehicles around them. She kept flicking her eyes from the now-corrected rearview mirror to the lanes on either side, half believing that at any moment another van might emerge from the traffic like a shark out of deep water.
“Music?” Zoe offered. She’d leaned forward to be closer to Keira. “I won’t even put on Harry’s third album. Promise.”
“Thanks, but I’m good.”
Zoe cleared her throat. “This is probably awful timing, considering how we all want to get home, but did you still want to stop to the cemetery where Evan is buried?”
“Oh.” Between the Gavin situation and the white van, Keira had completely forgotten. Evan’s spirit hadn’t been at the campus, but there was still a chance he’d become tethered at his final resting spot, his grave. A small chance…but a chance nonetheless.
She glanced at Mason. He gave her a soft smile in return. “It’s okay. Let’s just go home.”
Home was somewhere Keira very badly wanted to be at that moment. Blighty felt like a different world: smaller, safer, hidden away. A place where white vans and men with skull-like masks would never find her.
But if she didn’t follow through, she knew there would always be the what-if lingering over them. Especially Mason. He would always wonder. And with Keira’s life as precarious as it was, she couldn’t guarantee that she’d get another chance to travel out of town anytime soon.
“No,” she said, and put some conviction into the words. “Let’s finish this off properly. We’ll go to the cemetery. Do you know the way, Zoe?”
“Yep, I gotcha. It’s only an hour from Blighty and won’t even make our trip that much longer. Take the next exit, Mason.”
They left the freeway shortly before it would have connected them to Cheltenham and wove through several smaller roads that branched from town to town. Keira found the quieter roads easier; there were fewer cars to watch. Although she kept a close eye on the vehicles behind them, none tailed them for more than a few minutes at a time.
The area felt nice. Farmland was interspersed with wooded, untamed areas, and they passed over several rivers. At least one of them, Keira was certain, had to be the same river that wove through Blighty. She tried not to think about it too much.
“It’s just up ahead,” Zoe said. “Should be on our right. Pleasant Grove or something just as trite. It’s one of the main cemeteries for the area; it shouldn’t be hard to find.”
“Mm. Looks like we’ve already found it.” Mason nodded to their right, where a high brick wall fenced a large area off from view.
The bricks looked fresh and neat. Their bright coppery colour contrasted hard with the evergreen trees and bare, deciduous branches visible over their top. Keira was so used to Blighty Cemetery’s graceful aging that she’d almost forgotten it was possible for cemeteries to be modern.
The wall was too high to see over and seemed to stretch forever. Trees and shrubs had been planted between it and the road as a screen, and they were all neatly maintained. Mason let the car coast forward until the bricks began to turn inwards in a smooth arc that invited them into the cemetery.
The two fences curved towards one another until they ran parallel on either side of the drive and ended in a tall, square steel gate. The frame was high enough that a small truck could travel through. The gates themselves were opened, welcoming visitors into a view of tightly maintained, gently rolling lawns and a neat parking area.
“Stop,” Keira said. Mason pulled off the side of the road into the narrow strip of grass between it and the brick fence. The open gateway stood ahead, and Keira slowly climbed out of the car without tearing her eyes from it.
The iron was clean and shone in the day’s cold light. The gates themselves held straight bars that twisted into a geometric pattern in the middle. The archway above them, although narrow, mimicked the pattern. Only, in its centre, it held an emblem.
An emblem that was strikingly, horrifyingly familiar.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“You’re kidding.” Zoe kept her voice to a whisper as she climbed out of the car behind Keira. They both stared up at the archway and the too-familiar logo presented there.
Mason joined them, running his fingers through his hair, his eyes tight with concern. “This is really it.”
Keira couldn’t breathe.
Get out of here, the voice in the back of her head whispered. This is a bad place. A dangerous place. You can’t be caught here.
They’d found it, though. The source of the people who had been hunting Keira. The people who were so desperate to catch her that they had brought out helicopters to scour a mountain range for her. The people with the skull masks and the massive, unnatural, snarling dogs.
And they’d stumbled on it by accident.
“It’s so simple,” Zoe muttered. “A cemetery. Why didn’t I think of this before? It’s so obvious it almost feels like a bad joke.”
Keira managed to draw a thin breath and felt it ache as it passed the lump in her throat.
Mason lightly touched her arm, and she flinched. He drew back. “Sorry. I just wanted to ask—should we leave?”
Yes, her mind responded. Keira’s tongue refused to move. She couldn’t take her eyes off the sharp, polished gates.
“We can’t leave yet, can we?” Zoe said. “Not when we’ve finally found them. The cemetery where Evan was buried of all places. I still can’t get over this. How did I not think to look into death-related industries before?”
An engine rumbled somewhere in the distance. Keira’s pulse jumped as adrenaline coursed through her veins. She darted back, desperate for some kind of cover. Her shoulder blades hit the brick wall. It was shockingly cold compared to its warm hues.
Mason and Zoe glanced at each other, then moved to follow Keira and pressed against the brick to either side.
The engine was only a soft rumbling purr but growing louder. Keira wanted to sink into the earth. To crawl behind some plant. To find shelter of any kind, but there was none around save for their own car a few feet away.
An SUV emerged from the gates. Faint pop music floated through the slightly opened windows. A greying man was fighting to get directions on his phone while his sunglass-wearing wife drove. In the back seats, a girl in pigtails stared out the window at Keira and her friends. She blinked twice, then gave them a gap-toothed smile. Keira, still hunched against the brick wall, could only stare back.
