Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (13 page)

“Let’s do this,” she said, squeezing my hand.

I nodded and we both took a deep breath.

We walked up to the large doors and rang the bell. It only took a few seconds before Dr. Mortimer opened it. He was surprised to see us, but then seemed happy we were there and invited us in.

“Welcome, um, to my house, Abby,” he said.

He was in jeans and a Boston College T-shirt. It was strange seeing him wearing casual clothes. I usually saw him in scrubs or suits.

Kate didn’t even try to smile like she usually did. She was dead serious and I could tell that he picked up on it.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“Well, sure. What’s wrong?” he asked. “Come on, let’s sit down.”

We walked to the living room and I looked around. The house was beautiful inside too. It had an open floor plan, with a loft upstairs, and the floors, beams, and even the ceiling were wood. It was decorated like one of those kicked-up mountain cabins in magazines, with studded leather sofas and white bear rugs on the floor.

“Just give me a minute. Make yourselves comfortable and I’ll be right back. Can I get you two sodas or wine or something?”

“No, we’re fine,” Kate said.

He was so fast going up the stairs it took my breath away. When he returned, he was wearing a sweater.

“Okay,” he said, pushing back his hair and sitting next to us. “Something terrible has happened. I can see it in your faces. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“You’ve heard about the college instructor being killed, right?” Kate said.

“No, I haven’t heard anything,” he said. “I’ve been sleeping most of the day, trying to catch up.”

“She’s dead, Dr. Mortimer,” I said. “This morning they found her floating in the river.”

“That’s terrible.”

I watched his reaction and it seemed sincere. He took Kate’s hand.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. Did you guys know her or something?”

“No,” Kate said. “But she was murdered. And Abby saw everything in her vision last night. She saw it all happen, Ben. Everything.”

He looked at me with large eyes. Horror filled his face.

“Whoa, what are you talking about here?” he said.

“The visions. The ones we talked to you about at the hospital. Remember?”

“Of course I remember. Is this true, Abby?” he asked.

His eyes were dancing between us, back and forth. He was nervous. I took a deep breath, gathering my courage.

“Yes. I saw her killed. It was awful.”

My voice was shaking as much as my body now and I was sure that the cold had nothing to do with it.

“You saw her being killed in your dreams?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Abby was the one who called me to tell me about it,” Kate said. “She found the body in the Deschutes this morning, exactly like she had seen in her vision.”

“Oh, my God, that’s awful,” he said, sinking into the sofa.

“I saw it all, Dr. Mortimer. I was there. I was there with the killer and I know who he is.”

Dr. Mortimer grabbed his head and our eyes locked. I could tell he was having trouble breathing. I knew that this was hard.

“Shhh,” he said suddenly, sitting up quickly and holding up his finger to his mouth.

But it was too late.

He was there, in the house, listening to everything. He had heard. And he knew that I knew. A door upstairs opened and as we all looked up, a tall figure stepped out from the shadows. My heart thundered in my chest.

“Hello, ladies,” he said, leaning against the railing up above. “What a pleasure to see you both again.”

A thick darkness surrounded him. There was no mistaking it. It was him. The killer.

Nathaniel.

CHAPTER 32

Nathaniel walked down the stairs slowly but with purpose, and soon stood in front of us. He was smiling in that same smug way I had seen in my vision.

“Please, don’t get up,” he said as he sat down in the opposite sofa.

He was all in black, and had his hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“You bastard,” Kate yelled and within a blink of an eye, she flew through the air and landed on top of him.

She started pounding at him with her fists and for a minute, it looked like Kate might take him down. She was always athletic and strong. But after the shock wore off, Nathaniel regained his composure and had the upper hand. And even though he was thin, he quickly pulled her down to the floor.

“Nathaniel, stop it!
Nathaniel!
” Dr. Mortimer yelled as he rushed up to them and pulled his brother off Kate. “Stop!”

Nathaniel’s eyes went dark, his pale skin glowing in the soft light of the house. My heart was pounding in my ears. I couldn’t stop staring at the blackness that was all around him. It made me cold inside. It was the same darkness that was at the bottom of the lake, the darkness of my dreams.

Dr. Mortimer had a strange shadow around him too, but it was nothing like Nathaniel’s. How could I have been so wrong?

“Everybody needs to calm down,” Dr. Mortimer said. He pushed his brother back and Nathaniel fell into the sofa. “Kate, Abby, please sit down again. Let’s all talk.”

And then I got a strong feeling, something that told me that Dr. Mortimer had known. He had known that his brother was killing people and that was probably why he carried that darkness around him. It was guilt. He hadn’t stopped Nathaniel, hadn’t stopped the murders of innocent people. Blood was on his hands too.

“There’s nothing to discuss here, Ben,” Kate said. “It won’t matter what he says. He’s a cold-blooded killer. A heartless murderer!”

Nathaniel smiled, his dark eyes darting back and forth between the three of us.

“You just don’t understand,” he said calmly. “You’re making me out to be a monster and that’s not it at all. In society, some have to be sacrificed for the good of the whole. It’s natural. It’s evolution. It happens all the time. You and your beliefs can’t change that.”

“What are you even talking about?” Kate said.

Her face was dark, anger was bubbling up. She seemed almost out of control. I hated seeing her like that and it scared me. I didn’t know what she would do next.

“I’m talking about saving humanity, Kate. You don’t even realize that I’m about to become mankind’s salvation. I am this close to solving the greatest mystery of all.
Death
.”

Dr. Mortimer sighed heavily.

“Not this again, Nathaniel,” he said.

Nathaniel laughed sarcastically.

“And you call yourself a man of medicine. Benjamin, don’t you think your patients, the ones you can’t save, might be interested in my research? I would think that you of all people, surrounded by death on a daily basis, would understand. I’m on the verge of conquering death here, once and for all. Isn’t that what you try to do in your own modest way, with only limited success?”

“You’ve gone insane,” Dr. Mortimer said, shaking his head. “Absolutely insane.”

“But wait,” Nathaniel said, looking at Kate and then at me. “What am I thinking? I don’t have to tell you two about the amazing things I’ve done. You have already received the benefits of my miraculous research.”

“What sort of gibberish are you talking about now?” Kate said. 

His eyes shot back over to her like a rattler ready to strike. 

“Abby, of course,” he said, extending his hand and pointing to me. “I gave your sister life. And I gave her back to you.”

For a moment, I forgot how to breathe and I felt like I was drowning again. I just stared at him, my body in shock. What was he saying?

Kate was lost, too. Dr. Mortimer stood up, ready to attack. But I stopped him. I had to know.

“No, leave him alone,” I said in an even voice, forcing myself out of my stupor. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

***

He told us everything.

It started four years ago, when his company developed a serum that was supposed to help cancer patients. Dr. Nathaniel Mortimer was in charge of the testing and research at various hospitals across the country.

“Having reached a dead end, as it were, one day I injected the serum into a patient who had just died. I figured I had nothing to lose. She had been dead for more than 20 minutes. And then, shortly after, she came back to life.”

“It was just a coincidence,” Dr. Mortimer interrupted.

Nathaniel ignored him.

“She didn’t end up living too much longer. Cancer destroys the body and the serum wasn’t able to stop that. But imagine my excitement. I had brought someone back to life. But I didn’t know if it was a fluke, if what I had invented was really an antidote for death.”

“This is preposterous,” Dr. Mortimer said, shaking his head again. “Just something out of one of those old horror movies we watched as kids.”

Nathaniel smiled at his brother and kept talking.

“Imagine, beating death. Ridiculous sounding, and yet that’s exactly what happened. I realized I would need to do more research, collect and analyze the data. I started to visit emergency rooms, waiting for accident victims, people who had just died but who were otherwise healthy.”

Nathaniel’s eyes drilled into mine.

“Like you, Abby,” he said. “You were one of my test subjects.”

It was like he had punched me in the gut. I heard Kate gasp and Dr. Mortimer sigh. Nathaniel was saying that I was some insane mad scientist’s experiment. I just sat there, unable to respond, staring at him with my mouth hanging open and my stomach on the floor. I couldn’t move.

“Liar!” Dr. Mortimer yelled. “Abby and Kate, don’t believe this. It’s pure fantasy. It’s nonsense!”

He grabbed my shoulders.

“Abby, you’re alive because we worked on resuscitating you for over 30 minutes. You’re alive because you fell into a frozen lake that shut your system down and you didn’t need much oxygen to survive. Your survival has nothing to do with Nathaniel. Don’t believe him!”

“Benjamin, you’ve always been such a nonbeliever,” Nathaniel said. “But it doesn’t matter what you think. The truth is Abby was dead, I injected the serum, and now she is alive. I saved you, Abby. I brought you back to life.”

“No, Nathaniel. You didn’t bring her back! Why do we have to keep going over this?” Dr. Mortimer said, his voice booming through the house. “It was an act of God. And you, clearly, have nothing to do with God!”

“Perhaps,” he said, smiling. “But I have everything to do with Abby surviving that accident. I just don’t know why it scares you so much. You should be embracing this. You should be as excited as I am.”

I couldn’t stop shaking. This was all too much.

“Ben, was Nathaniel at the hospital that night?” Kate asked.

Her voice was unsteady. She didn’t want to believe it either, and yet, as crazy as it sounded, we both feared it could be true.

Dr. Mortimer looked at her, his eyes wild.

“Yes,” he said. “He was there that night. I told you, he works with St. Charles through his company. He was there, but he was in the lab.”

He shot a hateful look over to Nathaniel.

“You weren’t down there. I didn’t see you down in the ER.”

“Of course you didn’t,” he said. “I’m not a fool. Besides, I waited until you moved on to another patient. It was an older man who was having chest pains. Remember?”

“I didn’t see you either, Nathaniel,” Kate said.

“Oh, but I saw you. You must have thought I was an intern, the one checking Abby’s pulse and breathing after she returned.”

The room was spinning and I needed to get out, leave all this behind. I stood up and looked over at Kate.

But I thought for a minute. I still had a question. I needed to know how someone who was trying to save people had all of a sudden decided to become a murderer.

“How could you do it, Nathaniel? How could you kill those innocent people? You’re supposed to help people and heal them,” I said.

He wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked at me. And at that moment, it felt like we were the only ones in the room.

“I needed to, Abby, for the research. It’s as simple as that. For years I waited for accident victims in hospitals. But it was taking too long. After my breakthrough success with you, I realized I needed to narrow the experiment, to test only drowning victims, or people who died from asphyxiation. And then go from there with certain blood types and body weights and other variables. It’s just the beginning, the research. I’m logging all my results. Keeping precise records. I’ve been trying to reenact what happened with you.”

I was stunned. He really was insane.

“It wasn’t hard to wrap my arm around a neck or two, or slip a bag over a head so they would pass out. Some I took to the river to finish the job. But the second they died, I was right there, ready to give them back their lives. I injected the dosage. I wanted them to live. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen that way. Not yet. But I know I can do it again.”

This was all so unbelievable. As I stared at him, it was clear that he didn’t care one bit about the people he had killed. Throughout the whole account, his voice had remained surprisingly calm. But his eyes betrayed his insanity. They danced wildly in his head to music normal people couldn’t hear.

 “You’re crazy,” Dr. Mortimer said. “You need to be institutionalized. You need help, Nathaniel.”

 “Abby, I still would like to run some tests on you. I need to figure out why it worked on you and not the others.”

“You’re not doing anything to her,” Kate said, moving toward him.

I was worried she would start attacking him again, but instead I was surprised to see her leave the room.

“That’s it, I’ve had enough,” Dr. Mortimer said.

He walked over and Nathaniel stood up. Dr. Mortimer was larger than his brother, and I had a feeling that under normal circumstances he could probably take him. But nothing about Nathaniel Mortimer was normal.

The two men stared hard at each other without speaking, their eyes full of hate and disgust. The house felt electric, violent. Time seemed to stand still.

“The police are on their way,” Kate said, coming back into the room.

“You called the police?” Dr. Mortimer said.

“Of course I did,” she said. “He’s a killer, Ben!”