The Masked Truth (10 page)

“What if it’s Aaron or Brienne?” she whispers.

“We’ll know that once we hear a voice,” Max says.

She glares at him. “You mean, when they’re shouting for help? Or pleading for their lives?”

“No need. If they’re like you, they won’t stop talking.”

He gets a real scowl for that. I whisper that we should retreat to a room and listen. He agrees. Aimee doesn’t—she’s certain the sound is the other kids, that our captors would make more noise as they search. She’s mid-explanation when Max lopes off, waving for me to follow. I do, and she reluctantly comes after us.

The first door we check is open. Inside is an actual office, or the beginnings of one, as if someone has started moving equipment in, preparing to take up residence. There’s a desk, a printer still in the box, a bookshelf and moving cartons. And what do I see when I look at them? Nothing except obstacles to stumble over and places to hide.

We get into the room, and I scoot behind the desk, Max vaulting over it, both of us stopping as we almost crash into each other, his lips twitching as if amused that we’ve both managed—in a single sweep of a dark room—to spot the biggest item and race behind it.

“Good idea,” Aimee whispers. “You two stay there. I’m going to get a better look.”

I leap up to stop her, but she’s already out the door and Max is ready to grab me back. He doesn’t need to. If she’s going to run headlong into danger, I can’t stop her. I can only hope she doesn’t lead danger back here.

I think that, and then I hate myself for it.
Ah, self-loathing, I missed you for a few moments there
.

But I’m not the only one thinking it, because Max grunts, exasperated, then hops over the desk and shuts the door all but a crack, enough to let her back in if she comes running but not wide enough to welcome her back if there’s a posse on her tail.

I strain to hear her footsteps. She took off her pumps when we left Lorenzo. They’re on the floor here, and wherever she is, she’s moving silently.

A distant click, like a door. Then Aimee says, “Oh, it’s you.” I wince at the loudness of her voice, and Max mutters a curse. Then Aimee inhales, sharply enough for the sound to carry.

“N-no,” she says, and I hear her then, as she backs up, and I grab the side of the desk, ready to scramble over it, knowing she’s made a mistake.

“Don’t. Please—”

The gun fires, and I’m over that desk before Max can stop me. Then I freeze.

Max vaults the desk, and he’s at my side, not pulling me back, just standing with me, listening to Aimee whimper. My gut seizes and my legs tremble, and I want … I don’t know what I want. To hide. To save her. To save her and to hide, to help her and yet not to do something stupid and pointless, like run out there and get myself and Max killed.

“Why?” she says. “Why me?”

“Because your job here is done, Aimee.” It’s Gray, his voice moving closer. “These kids aren’t going to need therapy. And we don’t need any loose ends.”

The gun fires again. I jerk back. Max grabs me. Then I see the door, still cracked open, and I go to close it, but before I do, I look. I need to look. I peer through the crack. They’re right there, ten feet away, at a junction. Aimee on the floor, dead. Gray stands over her …

Before I shut the door, I see that Aimee must have mistaken Gray for Aaron—he’s about the same height and wearing the same color clothes. Then she’d noticed the mask.

Max’s fingers close tight around my arm, and he guides me back behind the desk.

He talks to me, whispering so low I can barely hear him through my shock. I don’t think it matters what he’s saying. His tone is soothing but firm, and it says that we’re going to get out of here, I need to trust that we’ll get out of here.

After a moment, the numbness fades and I hear his words. He’s not telling me vague reassurances that we’ll get out. He’s outlining the steps, giving me a concrete footing.

“Promise me something,” I whisper when my mental feet are firmly on the ground again.

A quirk of a smile as he whispers back, “Depends on what it is.”

“I need to know that if something goes wrong—if we’re out there, like Aimee, and I freeze up in a flashback—you’ll keep going.”

He pauses. “Is that what happens? Flashbacks?”

“That’s not the—”

“Is there a trigger? Blood, I suppose, obviously, and guns.”

“Max …”

“Is there something that will snap you out of it? Talking to you? Squeezing your arm?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Actually, yes, it is.” He pops his head over the desk. “Seems quiet. We’ll talk later. With any luck, we won’t need to.”

“Max, I asked you—”

“I ignored the request and will continue ignoring it.” He pushes to his feet. “We can circle back to avoid seeing—”

“No. We’d need to go all the way back around, because I’m not sure how else to get to the therapy room. You want to see what a flashback looks like? How I might endanger your life by freezing up? Then we’re going past Aimee for a full demonstration.”

I’m being sarcastic, but he nods. “Good idea. They’re long gone, and this gives us a safe opportunity to test how to deal with it.”

I shake my head and climb over the desk.

Aimee is dead. Aimee, Gideon, Maria, and if we don’t get to a phone Lorenzo will join them, if he hasn’t already. I don’t think about that. About the likelihood that no matter how fast we move, it’ll be too late for Lorenzo. I have to keep telling myself that we can save someone. Because I didn’t save Maria or Gideon. Or, now, Aimee.

The sight of Aimee’s body does not send me tumbling back into the horror of the Porters’ murders, possibly because I’m too busy keeping my dinner down. Gray shot her in the chest the first time, but it seems that a random shot to the chest doesn’t instantly kill. Like the Porters.

They had names. Claire and David. Does it make it easier to lump them together as “the Porters”? Maybe. I don’t know.

Is it okay to make it easier? Or is that hiding? I don’t want to hide—really, really don’t want to hide—but I do want to be okay. When I hid under the bed, I was doing both, hiding and “being okay,” except in the end I wasn’t okay, was I? I’m alive, though, and that’s more than they got, so I should be grateful.

Round and round we go, guilt nipping at my heels with every step I try to take toward “being okay,” which means maybe I never will be, and I should have talked about that
more with Aimee. And now she’s dead, and I shouldn’t think that, shouldn’t think how her death affects me, because that’s wrong, wrong, wrong. Like thinking that I’m sad the Porters are dead because it means I’ll never get to babysit Darla again.

But all that—all that thinking, the endless thinking—it comes later, after we’re past Aimee, because when I see her, I can’t think anything. Can’t form thought, really. Because when the chest shot didn’t kill her, Gray …

I’ve heard the term before. I can even remember the first time. Dad was playing poker with three coworkers. His regular monthly game, always at our house, because “You’ve got a nice house, Jim. A normal house. Hell, you’ve got a normal life too. Good wife. Nice kids.” I remember them saying that, or variations thereof, and I never quite understood what it meant, but I think now it was exactly what they said: that we seemed normal.

We
were
normal—it wasn’t a facade. My parents loved each other and they loved us, and we weren’t rich, but if I wanted something and it was a reasonable request, I got it. Not an extraordinary family in any way. Very ordinary, except, maybe, not so ordinary after all, because you don’t get that nearly as often as you should, and maybe that’s what I’m paying now, the price for normal, first my dad and then the Porters and now this.

It’s like being home-schooled, never mingling with other kids, never building up your immunity to the sniffles and sneezes that everyone else takes for granted, and then you go out in the world and a common cold knocks you flat on your back. Maybe my oh-so-normal life meant I wasn’t ready for trauma, that I wasn’t—as I joked to Lorenzo—inoculated against it.

The poker game … I crept down that night after a bad dream. They were talking, and I sat on the step to listen,
because it was stuff about police work that Dad never brought home. They were discussing a crime scene—a suicide—and how the man’s brains were splattered on the wall, and it was then, as they said those words, that Dad spotted me on the step. He raced over with “You shouldn’t be down here, baby,” and I said, “What does that mean? Brains splattered on the wall?” and the look on his face, the horror that I’d overheard, wiped away fast as he scooped me up and said, “It’s just an expression,” and “Hey, guys, Riley’s down here, okay?” and they stopped talking, and he said, “Come on in and get some chips, and then we’ll take you back up to bed.”

Brains splattered on the wall
.

It’s just an expression
.

I’d heard it a dozen times since then. In a TV show, back when I could watch cop shows, before they only reminded me of my dad, every shot making me see him in front of it, the gun firing, Dad flying back, me wondering exactly how it happened—because no one tells you exactly how it happened—how long did he live, was he in pain, was someone with him? I really hope someone was with him.

Brains splattered on the wall. I’d read the line in books too, because even after Dad died, I could read those scenes—they were just words on a page, no sound, no image to trigger thoughts of my father, of the bullet hitting him.

Was someone with you, Dad? Did they hold your hand when you died?

I’d even heard kids at school say it, when a boy shot himself.

Brains splattered on the wall
.

It’s just an expression.

Only it’s not. Not just an expression, Dad, but I know why you said that, because the truth … the truth …

When the bullet to Aimee’s chest didn’t kill her, Gray shot her in the head. In the forehead, a perfect hole between her wide brown eyes. And I see the wall. I see …

Brains splattered on the wall
.

And it’s not just an expression.

I’m staring at it, and I hear my biology teacher’s voice, me madly scribbling the notes I would review again and again until the words were emblazoned in my memory.

The brain is composed of three primary sections. First, the forebrain, which contains the hypothalamus, thalamus and cerebrum. Next, the midbrain, which is the tectum and tegmentum. Finally, the hindbrain: the pons cerebellum and medulla
.

Which parts are these? What am I seeing on the wall?

A person’s life. A person’s
self
. That’s what I’m seeing. We can talk about the heart and the soul and “what’s inside,” but it comes down to this: our brains. Everything we are is in there, everything we’ve been and want to be, and now it’s splattered on a wall like someone spit out a mouthful of oatmeal. A life reduced to this.

He shot her between the eyes. He walked over to her as she looked up and said, “Why?” and he shot her. Let her see the gun coming. Pulled the trigger and splattered her life and her self on the wall behind her. While he looked her in the eyes and watched her die.

“Riley?” Max is beside me, leaning down, temporarily blocking my view of that horrible wall. He’s checking to see if I’m still there, if I’ve teetered over into a flashback.

I blink. He nods and moves away, and I see the wall again and say, “How can someone do that?”

“Hmm?”

“How can—?” I cut myself short and shake my head. “We need to go.”

“No, we can …” He looks around. “There’s a room over there. If you want to talk.”

I’d laugh at that if I could, and if it wouldn’t be horribly cruel.
We’re running for our lives, but if you’re feeling traumatized right now, Riley, we can talk
.

It’s sweet, if inappropriate, and maybe it’s a little bit of shock too, Max not thinking clearly, and when I look at him, he’s staring at Aimee’s body and there’s a horror in his eyes that makes me realize just because I’m the one with PTSD doesn’t mean he isn’t suffering some
current
traumatic stress right now.

“Lorenzo,” I say, and his head jerks up, gaze wrenching away from Aimee.

“Right,” he says. “Lorenzo.” The reminder that the clock is ticking for Lorenzo, and we need to get that phone for him, and neither of us can afford to freak out until we do. Save the therapy for later. It’s time to move.

The therapy room door is wide open. There’s been no sign of Gray or Predator. We’re constantly listening for them. Even without asking Max if he is, I know the answer, because whenever we hear footsteps, he glances that way, tracking them even as we move.

A moment ago I heard footsteps on distant stairs. Heading up to the second floor.

How many sets of stairs are there? We passed near one, and I recall Aimee saying something about another when she showed me around.

I wish I’d listened more when she showed me around.

I wish I’d listened to her more in general, not just the therapy but when she tried to talk about herself, her life. The other therapist never did that. He’d drawn a clear line there.
I am your therapist, and this is all about you
. Aimee had taken a different tack. When I withdrew, she’d tease me out with talk about herself, trying to distract me from my inner monologues. It had never worked because …

Because I wasn’t interested. Because part of me had resented her showing that personal side of herself.

I don’t want to be your friend, Aimee. I have friends. Well, I did, before the shooting
.

Some had wandered off. They didn’t know what to say. And I gained a few more, the popular girls, until I realized they were only coming by hoping some of my so-called celebrity would rub off while they were being nice to the poor traumatized Riley Vasquez—double-duty pity visits for the win!

But I do still have friends,
good
friends, even if I’m not the best one in return these days. Lucia and the others, my real friends, they’ve stuck by.

Then there’s Shannon. She came by every day that first week and I wouldn’t see her, so she stopped coming, but she kept sending me care packages. Even after I was back in school, where’d we pass in the hall, she sent me comic books and novels and candy, exactly the sort she knew I liked, because we’d been best friends for so long. There’d be little notes like “Thinking of you.” Except she wasn’t really thinking of me. She was thinking of how she’d narrowly escaped
being
me that day at the Porters’, how it was supposed to be her.