Fated (24 page)

“Impressive,” Freddie said, and he leaned back as she frowned at the laptop. “He has a file on Mona O’Keefe. She was the first,” Freddie said in disbelief. “How could he have known about her?”

“She was the first that we know of. Freddie, he has a file on here about your mother. There’s even one that goes back fifty years. Something….” Hart squinted at the mix of Latin, Greek, and English. “There’s no name, but from what I can make out, it has something to do with Brightly’s mayor fifty years ago?”

“Don’t look at me, I’m not that old.”

“Did your mom ever mention my dad?”

With unseeing eyes Freddie stared out of the window, her mouth moving as if she were sorting through memories. “I don’t remember if he ever came to our house.”

“He might have talked to her after she moved to the retirement place.”

“And he believed her.”

“He probably didn’t at first. His notes start out very abstract, as if he’s researching an odd phenomenon. But when he talked to your mom about the Predator and fallen angels, I think it got him interested. Maybe he didn’t exactly
believe
it, but this is what he did. He picked and pried at things until they made sense to him.”

Freddie stared at the laptop screen. “There’s so many files there.”

“I know. I haven’t read all of them yet, and some of them are people he never talked to in person, and most he dismissed by the end. With all the Latin and Greek woven in there, I’m going to need more time to sort through this. So far I’ve only found your mother, Mona O’Keefe, and Drake to fit with our case.”

Freddie didn’t seem to be listening. She frowned at the screen, and then her eyes widened. She pointed, sounding wrecked when she said, “Hart.”

“DRTD,” he said. “What—”

“No, not DRTD. Dr. TD. Doctor T.D.”

“Doctor Tobias Darwin,” Hart said weakly. He hovered the mouse over the file, but he couldn’t bring himself to click it.

“Give it to me.” Freddie sat up, snatched the laptop away from him, and started to read. After a few minutes, she sighed and sank back in her seat, eyes closed.

“Clear?”

Freddie shook her head. Without opening her eyes, she said, “I can’t read all of it, but…. He mentions he met Toby twice, and he noticed changes. Things I’ve been noticing too. The way he lets people call him Toby instead of Doctor Darwin at work. The car. And your dad doesn’t say this, but the way he just completely allowed himself to fall head over heels for you? It’s not like him at all, despite your considerable charm.” She smiled briefly, but when she opened her eyes, her expression was stony. “Your dad knew about the stab wound. He thinks it was lethal and the Predator healed him.”

“Shit.” Hart rubbed at his eyes. He’d been fucking right; Toby
did
know more than he’d been letting on. God
dammit
. “This is so messed up, Freddie. I don’t believe in any of this.”

“Neither do I, but you’ve gotta admit there is some weird shit going on.” Freddie hesitated. “Does Toby have a—” She indicated the back of her neck. Hart felt himself go pink around the ears at the implication that he’d been up close and personal with the back of Toby’s neck. He shook his head. “Well, there you are, then.”

“But we don’t know how those marks come to be yet.”

“What does your daddy say about those?”

“Nothing,” he sighed. “Nothing that I’ve discovered so far anyway. Chances are he didn’t know about them. Man, this is a bit creepy, isn’t it?”

“No shit.”

“No, I mean… well, the whole Predator thing too. But the way Dad would watch these people, it’s almost as if he was stalking them.”

“He was investigating,” Freddie said. “Just like we are. Can I have another look?”

“Sure, yeah.” He turned his face toward the window, a heavy hurt settling in his chest. If Toby ended up being the one responsible for these deaths…. Nausea churned around his gut. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. It was too sunny outside, too bright, not at all how the world should be right now.

“Hart,” Freddie said, distressed, and he snapped his head around to look at her, not sure he could take much more of this. “There’s a file on you.”

…. A
ND
THE
blame lies with me. If you have gone through life thinking you were anything less than amazing to me, my son, then this is my doing. I am incredibly proud of you. Of what you have achieved and what you will continue achieving long after I am gone.

My enjoyment of life has finally caught up with me. I can feel it in my heart: I don’t have long. If your mother were here now she would tell me to say these things to you in person, but this is no longer who we are, you and I. It doesn’t matter. I have never stopped loving you. I care for you deeply, more than I can say in any language, dead or alive. Always remember that. And always, always remember, I never wished for anything less than your complete happiness in life. Who you have become humbles and delights me. You are my greatest joy.

If you are reading this, I am gone. Don’t mourn the years we’ve missed. Think of those we’ve had. This also means that you have read my research on the Predator. I know what you are working on, so I hope you find at least some of it useful.

The myth has been watered down over time, and much isn’t commonly known anymore, but yes, the Predator is supposed to heal the sick. A two-edged sword: a healing leaves its mark. You can find everything you need on this computer, heaven knows you know your way around it better than I do. The answer lies with the Guardians of Shadow Mountain.

Watch out, son. The danger doesn’t come from the Predator, but from he who hunts him. Remember, the threat is never in the weapon, it is in the human who wields it.

With all my love, always,

Jonathan Hart.

Before Hart could think of a single thing to say, Alex knocked and opened the door. Eyes on the laptop, he wrung his hands, then dropped them and cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m going home, and I need to lock up. I wouldn’t mind leaving you here, but it’s against university policy, you understand.” His eyes caught Freddie’s, and a steady blush rose to his cheeks. “If you, uh, want to take some of these things home, I can help you carry them to your car.”

“Actually, we’re taking the laptop.” Hart stood, his bones protesting from hunching on the uncomfortable couch for so long. “We’ll come back for the rest another day.”

“Uh.” Alex’s eyes flicked to the laptop again, and for a moment Hart wondered if it was university property and he’d need a warrant. If he did he would sit next to it until the warrant came through because there was no way he was letting this thing out of his sight. But all Alex said was, “Yes… he… that was for personal use. I rarely saw him use it. If anything needed to be done on a PC, he had me do it.” Alex looked away.

“Is there anything you’d like for yourself right now?”

“I—” Alex’s gaze landed on a box with a photograph on top of the pile. In the simple frame stood his father, smiling, with his arm around Alex, posing by the little creek that ran behind the university.

“Oh, yes, of course.” Hart lifted the photograph out of the box and held it out.

“Um, no, not that. I have that photograph on my phone, I just—” Alex stepped forward and pulled a little metal statue from the box. It was of a man who held a book open in one hand while he seemed to pour something from a cup into his skull from the other. “This is
Fons
Sapientiae
, which means fountain of wisdom,” Alex explained, his eyes darting from Hart to Freddie and away again. “He stands on a square in Belgium, in Leuven to be precise—a lovely university town—and he represents a student who, while reading, literally pours knowledge into his mind. He… your father took me there. He said he had wanted to go to Europe with you, but he was….” Alex flinched and spoke in a rush. “He was running out of time. I’m sorry. He forbade me from calling you, and I realize now I should’ve anyway. I didn’t know it was so serious. I just figured he was a bit melancholy, you know? I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t—” Alex tried to give the statue back, but Hart shook his head.

“It’s yours, please. Keep it.” Without looking at either Alex or Freddie, he gathered the laptop and left for the car.

Freddie pulled open the passenger door a few minutes after Hart had climbed behind the wheel. She had a look about her that made Hart think he should cut her off before she had a chance to even open her mouth.

“So my father thought the Shadow Mountain monster wasn’t the culprit of these strange deaths.”

“Oh?” Freddie’s eyebrows lifted in interest, and she apparently forgot whatever it was she’d been about to say. “What did he write?”

“See here.” He turned the laptop he’d been staring at blindly so Freddie could see what he pointed at. “
He who hunts him
.”

Freddie narrowed her eyes at the screen, but they lost their focus. “Someone is hunting the Predator?”

Hart rubbed at his mouth. “Let’s….” He hesitated and took a deep breath. He couldn’t quite believe he was about to say this. “Let’s pretend for a moment the Predator is real, and he heals people. Just for the moment, assume that’s true. Or in any case that our killer accepts this as truth.” Freddie nodded at him, and he closed the laptop again, settling back in his seat. “Someone has an incurable disease. They somehow manage to contact this… creature. He does his thing”—Hart wiggled his fingers—“and he heals them. What if someone isn’t hunting him, but the people he has healed?”

“Why would someone do that?”

Hart shrugged. “We figure that out, we find our killer, I think. Could be a freak who believes these people should be dead anyhow, a crazy guy thinking they’re zombies, I don’t know. I just don’t see why the Predator—and I hate that stupid name—would heal people only to kill them later.”

“If he is supernatural, he could get some kind of strength out of the healing. Or the killing, if it is him doing it.”

The body in the morgue flashed before Hart’s eyes, the bruising, the broken nails…. He didn’t want to think about the sheer panic of dying alone in the all-encompassing darkness of a buried coffin, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “Jesus Christ, this shit is so insane.”

Beside him Freddie shifted, took the laptop, and stuffed it in Hart’s bag. “Lieutenant, you look wrecked. You need to go home, get some food, and rest. It’s—Your father’s burial is tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Hart said, feeling the last of his strength seep from his bones. He longed for the tranquil solitude of his own home, the low buzz of the fish tank’s filter, the quiet presence of Isaac. Either by his side or in the house across the street, it didn’t matter. Just knowing he’d be a text away would’ve lifted his heart.

“Nobody’s going to be there with you at the graveyard?” Freddie asked, her voice low.

“That’s how I want it,” Hart snapped. Wincing, he added softly, “There’s a service on Sunday.”

Freddie stared at him in silence and then asked, “Are you going home next week?”

“I think the answer to these murders lies on this side of Shadow Mountain. I need to talk to the captain and see if he wants me here in Brightly until this case is solved, or if he wants me back in Riverside.”

“Okay. But at least drop me at the station and then go home, seriously. Don’t think about this for a little while, all right? If nothing comes up, I’ll see you at the service on Sunday.”

Hart’s head snapped up in surprise. “You’re coming?”

“Yes, of course I’m coming. What did you think? Now get a move on, I got a date tonight.”

“A date?” Hart demanded as he started the car and eased it from its spot. “Who with?” No matter how he poked and prodded, Freddie wasn’t giving up a name.

But when he pulled in to the station’s parking lot, Freddie didn’t move.

“What’s up?”

“Hart, have you considered…. What if it’s one of the healed people? What if it messed with their minds? Mama said she thought she was meant to forget it happened to her, and she didn’t, and then her séances started. What if—” She clutched her hands in her lap. “What if it’s Toby?”

Cold sweat broke out over Hart’s back. “It can’t be,” he said, even though he didn’t have an airtight reason. “I mean, the car bomb, that couldn’t have been him. And he was working the evening Drake was attacked, I… checked. And he doesn’t have a—” Hart waved at the back of his neck.

“But neither does my mama, Hart. What if the mark is sort of a sign that the body can’t cope with the healing? Who did you see the strange mark on? The one that wasn’t a tattoo, but wasn’t like Drake’s either.”

“Hiatt and Martin. The paralysis and typhoid cases, both healed, both marked, both dropped dead for no reason. Mona O’Keefe and Arthur Nash could’ve had a mark. Her body showed no signs of assault, but his did. And the guy who had the car accident and was found dead in his basement did have a mark, but no sign of assault.”

“And the guy who healed from liver cirrhosis did show sure signs of assault, but he had no mark. And Ben was attacked, and his mark was fake.”

“And the guy who was buried alive had a fake mark too. Where are you going with this, Freddie? If the fake marks are assaults, then what do the real marks mean? Why are those people dead too?”

“Neither Hiatt nor Martin were assaulted, but they had both been healed.”

Fuck, his head was starting to hurt. And where did Toby fit into all this? Did he know something? Was Hart blinded by whatever was going on between them?

Freddie must’ve been thinking along the same lines because she quietly went on, “What about Toby? I mean, I don’t want to believe he’s got anything to do with this any more than you do, but all we have is your dad’s notes, and he’s dead.” Freddie halted, squeezed Hart’s knee. “Sorry. But the fact is, he can’t tell us what he believed in. And then there’s the word of my mama, who still tells me to change my underwear before school. And that’s on a good day.”