Dying to Tell (43 page)

Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock
.

The sounds echoed in her head. But they were far away this time. As if she had traveled through time and left them behind somewhere.

I’m the ruler now
, Skid said.
Amelia is going away forever
.

“Be quiet,” Amelia said. “I’m starting to remember...”

No
, Skid said.
Go back to sleep, Amelia. You’re too weak, you need me
.

He was right. She had been weak. The drugs had done that.

But without the medication fogging her head, another voice was whispering in her mind. Warning her not to trust the others.

You have to tell Sadie
, the voice said.
Sadie’s in danger. You have to save her this time.

Stop, you can’t go to Sadie
, Skid shouted.

Help me
, Bessie cried.

Viola was humming now,
ting, ting, ting.

“Shut up,” Amelia cried. “Go away and leave me alone.”

You can’t do this to us,
Skid said harshly.
We took care of you all these years.

That was what Dr. Tynsdale and the doctors had told her.

But she was starting to remember differently. How the others wanted to take over, wanted to make her disappear so they could live.

Amelia shoved open the door to the art studio and ran down the hall. “Hurry, you have to tell, hurry, run...” The voice, it was growing stronger, louder, screaming at her this time. Then she recognized whose it was. The voice the others had tried to silence.

It was hers. They hadn’t saved her, all these years.

Instead, they were trying to silence her for good.

J
ake was in a blind panic. Who had Sadie, and what the hell were they doing to her?

Frantic, he punched Nick’s number. “Sadie is missing.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, but I’m at her house, and her car is here, but she’s not. There are signs of a struggle.”

“Any indication of who took her?”

Jake’s throat tightened. “No.” He glanced around the studio, searched the table and counter, but there was no note, nothing to give him a clue.

“Maybe Amelia came back, and they took off together.”

“No,” Jake said. “Her car is here, and there was a struggle.”

“One of Amelia’s personalities could have attacked her,” Nick said. “After all, you said she shot her grandfather.”

That was true.

“Hang on,” Jake said. “My other line is buzzing.”

He quickly clicked over, praying it was Sadie. “Sheriff, this is Culvert from the CSU team.”

“Yes?”

“There was no sign that a body had decayed in that grave.” He paused. “But the blood you found at the mill matched your father’s.”

Jake’s mind raced. Maybe Sadie and her grandfather and Amelia had put his body in the mill while they dug the grave. But she hadn’t said that.

“Anything else?”

“We did find some other fingerprints in the mill, but they didn’t match anyone in the system. Could just belong to some teenagers hanging out there. You know it’s been ten years.”

“Yeah, I know.” Which meant they had nothing more to go on than they had before. Except he knew his father’s body hadn’t withered away in that grave.

He thanked Culvert, then flipped back to Nick and relayed what he’d learned.

“You know all this has got to do with what happened at the sanitarium,” Nick said.

“Maybe Dad found out what Sanderson and Coker were up to and went out to Walt and Amelia to tell them,” Jake suggested. “Then Amelia went ballistic and killed him.”

“And someone in town saw them at the mill, or knows what happened,” Nick said. “But why would they move Dad’s body?”

“I don’t know.” Jake cursed. “If they’d wanted blackmail money, they would have asked for that long ago.”

“That’s a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit.” Nick hesitated.

Jake sighed, weary. Dammit, he wanted to know what had happened to his father’s body. Wanted to tie up this case so Sadie could leave and he wouldn’t have to think about her anymore. “Did you have a chance to look at the notes I made?”

Nick nodded. “Good work, Jake. That tattoo on Foley and Giogardi is definitely military, and from what I’ve seen since I joined the bureau, it’s a sniper team associated with the CIA.”

“Jesus.”

“I know it sounds far-fetched that they’d conduct a project like this in Slaughter Creek and to children, but if you think about it, the town’s pretty remote. And a sanitarium is the perfect cover.”

“True. I’ve been thinking,” Jake said. “Tynsdale must have been in on the experiments. I questioned him early on, but Sadie trusted him. So did Walt.” He paused. “But he’s been monitoring Amelia and Grace for years. He’s prescribed their medication, so he could have kept them drugged to prevent them from talking.”

“Do you have an address for him?” Nick asked.

Jake had his phone number but no address. “Hang on a minute.” He searched the desk in the corner and found a small address book, then gave the address to Nick. “You check his house. I’ll check the hospital.”

He hung up and headed for the door, but suddenly Amelia appeared. Jake figured she would run when she saw him, but instead she launched herself at him.

“Sadie, where’s Sadie?”

Jake caught her arms. “She’s gone.”

Amelia’s eyes widened in panic. “What do you mean,
gone
?”

“Someone took her,” Jake said. “There are signs of a struggle.”

“It was him,” Amelia said in a hoarse whisper. “He’s back.”

Jake’s throat closed. “Who’s back?”

“Your father,” Amelia said. “He killed Papaw, and now he’s going to kill Sadie.”

Twenty minutes later, Jake was still reeling in shock. Amelia had hitched a ride with a trucker who’d put her out on the main road, and she’d walked the rest of the way.

“Your father did it all,” Amelia said. “He’s a bad man.”

Jake’s jaw hardened. She’d seemed coherent, but that statement made him pause. “My father is dead, Amelia.”

“No, he’s alive. I saw him at the hospital,” Amelia said. “That’s why I escaped. He came there to kill me, just like he killed Papaw.”

It had to be her delusions talking. “Amelia, you and Sadie and your grandfather buried my father.”

“I know,” Amelia cried. “I don’t how he did it, but he survived. If he has Sadie, he’ll kill her.”

“Dr. Tynsdale knew what happened that night,” Jake said.

She nodded, trembling as she spoke. “Yes, but he promised to keep it secret, since I was his patient.”

Jake grimaced. Poor Amelia. She had been the victim of some twisted doctors, and her psychiatrist might have been working with them to keep her drugged all these years to keep her quiet.

“He might take her to the grave site,” Amelia said. “And bury her where we left him.”

A chill ran down his spine. She was talking about his father, but he was thinking about Tynsdale.

“Or”—Amelia folded her arms around herself and shuddered violently—“to the basement.”

“What basement?” Jake asked.

“In the hospital, it was dark—no one knew about the room with the chimes.”

“What chimes?”

“They played musical chimes to hypnotize us. I don’t know why, but they called us the chimes too.” She clutched his arm again. “Please save Sadie, Jake.”

Dammit, he needed to take Amelia in. But he didn’t have time. He phoned his deputy, but Mike didn’t answer, so he left a message for him to call him back, that he needed him to watch Amelia.

Desperate, he called Ms. Lettie and explained that Amelia was at the studio. “Will you come and stay with her until I find Sadie?”

“Of course—I was on my way there anyway. I’ll be there in a minute,” Ms. Lettie said.

Amelia curled up on the sofa, rocking back and forth, her eyes stricken. “Save Sadie, save Sadie, save Sadie...”

Jake knelt in front of her and spoke softly to calm her. “Amelia, tell me more about the basement,” he said. “What was down there?”

“There’s a secret door,” Amelia whispered. “Near the back of the hospital. And the walls are soundproofed so nobody can hear us cry.”

“How do you know that?” Jake asked.

“They told us,” she said in a haunted whisper. “It won’t do any good to scream, they said. No one can hear you.”

“What else happened?” Jake asked.

Amelia emitted a low moan. “They tied us down and shocked us. And they played the chimes so we would do whatever they said.”

“That sounds like brainwashing.”

Amelia nodded, then rambled on for several minutes about the noises and lights and the drugs that had made her see things.

“Who did this to you?” Jake asked.

“The doctors,” Amelia said. She covered her ears with her hands and began to moan. “Make the noises and the voices stop.”

Ms. Lettie’s car barreled into the drive, then she hobbled in as fast as she could. “Oh, Lord, Amelia, honey, I’ve been so worried about you!”

She threw her arms around Amelia, who sank against her. “We have to save Sadie...”

“I called my deputy—he should be here soon,” Jake said, wondering why in the hell Mike hadn’t answered. If he was off with a woman, Jake was going to fire his ass.

He left Amelia with Ms. Lettie, then raced toward the grave site. He had to hurry.

Struggling to rein in his fear, he sped down the graveled drive leading toward the river, tires spitting gravel. By the time he reached the mill, sleet was pelting the windshield.

Gun in hand, he climbed out and searched the grave site, but no one was nearby. The crime scene tape flapped in the wind, and the sound of thunder was growing more ominous as storm clouds rolled in.

He punched his hand into his fist in frustration. Amelia was mentally ill. Could he believe anything she said?

Was he wasting time, following her lead? She could be lying to throw him off.

Still, Sadie was missing, and he had to check it out, so he slipped into the mill and shone the flashlight across the rotting wooden floor, the boards creaking as he crept through the building.

But just like the grave, the building was empty.

He rushed back to his car, his conversation with Amelia echoing in his head. She thought he’d take Sadie to the grave or the hospital.

He had to check the sanitarium next.

He phoned the hospital and asked to speak to one of the security guards. “Listen, have Dr. Tynsdale paged, and if he shows up at the nurse’s station, detain him.”

“What’s this about?”

“I’ll explain when I get there.”

He took us to the basement
, Amelia had said.
That’s where they hurt us.

The horror of what she’d said hit him like a fist in the chest, and the worst possible scenarios pummeled him.

Sadie being tortured. Drugged.

Dead.

At the hand of a man she had trusted and treated like family.

God, he’d been so angry at her, had felt so betrayed. But he didn’t want her to die.

His phone buzzed, and he snatched it up. “Nick?”

“Yeah, I’m at Tynsdale’s, but nobody is here.”

“Look around, see if you find any evidence of the experiments, or any signs of where he might take Sadie. Maybe he owns some other property somewhere.”

“Will do,” Nick said.

“I’m on my way to the sanitarium.” No way was he going to tell his brother Amelia’s accusations yet. Nick might be a federal agent, but he was still Jake’s little brother. Jake would protect him from her rants until he found out whether or not they were true.

Jake hung up, turning on the defroster as the hail grew stronger, making visibility difficult. He cursed, braking to keep from sliding into a ditch. Headlights nearly blinded him, and he passed a couple of truckers and veered to the right to avoid a car that crossed the line.

Darkness swallowed the winding road that led to the sanitarium, the miles crawling by as he sped into the parking lot.

Jake checked his weapon, pulled his coat around him, then headed inside. Amelia had told him there was a secret entrance, that the basement had been soundproofed so no one could hear their screams.

He hoped to hell he could find it. Every second counted.