The Orphans (Orphans Trilogy Book 1) (17 page)

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Over the next three days, each morning began with breakfast and Charlie’s test. After Charlie was unable to control the snake, he would reclaim his hiding spot in the woods and spy on the others while Malika gave the next lesson.

The first morning, Malika educated the orphans on the importance of being mindful of their own bodies. She instructed them to focus on each of their five senses, one at a time, to heighten their awareness of them.

The second morning, Malika taught the orphans how to practice walking meditation by using their breathing and heightened senses. She stressed that during the meditation, they should never be doing anything—even something as minor as taking a single step—without consciously putting forth the effort.

The third morning, there was no lesson, only the announcement that they were ready to begin sparring. Charlie didn’t watch from his nook. He couldn’t bear to. He trudged to his spot in the woods and plopped down on his tree seat.

Charlie felt a slight sense of relief that day. Unlike the days before, there was no new lesson for him to attempt and fail miserably at. Charlie’s relief faded quickly as the realization that there was nothing to save him from his rut, other than the things that he had already learned, settled in. What he knew was all that he could turn to. With that in mind, he reluctantly returned to square one.

“Find happiness,” Charlie said to himself. No sooner did he finish the thought than a vision flashed through his head that gave him the exact opposite emotional response. It was a vision from the night before, and it filled him with jealousy and other undesirable emotions.

The night before, Charlie had gone off into the woods to go to the bathroom. As he was making his way back to the church, he overheard Naomi and JP talking in the woods. Charlie wished they had just kept talking. They didn’t. Charlie watched as they embraced, their arms wrapping around each other, bodies touching from their toes all the way to their lips. Wanting to do anything to break them up, Charlie grabbed the closest rock he could find and bounced it off of a nearby tree. His distraction worked, immediately quashing the make out session. But it proved no more effective than the last bomb dropped in a lost war. While JP and Naomi stopped for a second to look around, they only returned to their lip-locking after deciding everything was all right.

Now, as Charlie sat in his tree chair, he imagined how it might feel for his chapped lips to meet Naomi’s. The thought had consumed him and kept him up the night before. Would it be like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together? Or would there be a surprising softness? Only JP would ever know.

The envy in Charlie swelled. How could he have been so foolish? How could he have thought he had a chance? After all, Naomi would’ve been the first girl to take an interest in him. Why should she be any different than everyone else?

Find happiness, he tried to remind himself over and over again. But the words were even more useless than ever before and only caused jolts of pain to shoot across his forehead.

Charlie attempted to change gears, to move on from Naomi, and to focus on letting go of his fear of failure. But instead of letting go of his fear, he could only draw attention to his failures. Each failure that crossed his mind was accompanied by another stinging jolt. He abandoned that plan and turned to the mindfulness exercises, his last resort. Unfortunately, they only threw more fuel on the burning fire in his brain. Charlie’s head pulsed harder than ever before. The pain was unbearable.

Charlie rolled off of his tree stump and down to the dirt ground. He clutched the back of his head in his hands as he knelt in a fetal position. He shot up to his knees and screamed in agony. He screamed even louder as he repeatedly pounded the earth, tiny shards of rock and pine needles embedding in the skin of his knuckles with each blow. He slammed both fists to the ground in one final violent thrust.

Charlie’s chest expanded and collapsed spastically as he huffed and puffed. Tears began to stream from his eyes. He had reached his edge. He had broken. It was done. He was done. But while Charlie had already decided to give up, someone else he knew was just getting started.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Dr. Huang listened
intently to the voice on the other end of his cell phone as he paced about the lab room at the San Mateo Coroner’s Office. He had spent most of the morning calling all of his colleagues, trying to find anyone who may have heard of any new types of drugs that could induce sudden cardiac failure. After more than a dozen calls, he had finally found someone who knew of such a drug.

Dr. Huang’s first call that day hadn’t been to any of his associates. The first number he dialed was Charlie’s cell phone, which he found on the teen’s social media page. Dr. Huang’s call went straight to voice mail. The second number he tried was for the Kim residence. Predictably, it also went to voice mail. Dr. Huang hadn’t expected to get an answer for either call. He knew as well as anyone about Grandpa Kim’s death and Charlie’s sudden disappearance. He had seriously contemplated reopening Alan and Mary’s file the day he found out that Charlie had gone missing, but he held off. He had made a promise to the teen and was determined to honor it.

In the end, Dr. Huang waited the full fourteen days that he had agreed to wait so that Charlie could do what he needed to do. Dr. Huang had even held off reporting his findings from Grandpa Kim’s autopsy, which included a troponin measurement—not from a rapid test, but from a more exact testing—that was the highest he had ever recorded, because he knew the results would cause a stir. But now that his and Charlie’s negotiated time had passed and he still hadn’t heard from him, Dr. Huang had done what he needed to do. He had reopened Alan and Mary’s files and put in a request to exhume their bodies for further examination, and then he started making his calls.

Dr. Huang took notes as his friend relayed what he knew about a diabetes drug that had been banned during
fda
trials because of its tendency to cause heart palpitations. His friend explained that the drug occasionally caused blood sugar levels to free-fall and in larger doses was believed to be fatal. The good news was that the presence of the drug was easy to identify. All that was required was a simple glucose test. It was yet another analysis that Dr. Huang hadn’t considered conducting—with good reason, given that none of the victims were known to have any diabetic history.

Dr. Huang thanked his friend, and then hung up the phone and got right to work. He readied rapid tests for Alan, Mary, and Grandpa Kim. There was no doubt in his mind that whatever had led to Alan and Mary’s death had also contributed to Grandpa Kim’s. But he was right and wrong at the same time: right about their connected cause of death, and wrong for thinking that he had actually found his break. All of the test strips came back negative. The glucose levels were normal.

Dr. Huang let out a heavy sigh. He was out of options for calls to make. He would have to wait until Alan and Mary’s bodies were exhumed before he could confirm what he had with Grandpa Kim’s full examination. None of the old man’s internal indicators had been consistent with myocardial infarction. There wasn’t even one area, let alone a speck, of black on his heart, a sign of dead tissue. Nor were there any hardened walls of plaque or the strawberry-colored clots that a medical examiner would expect to find. Grandpa Kim’s heart wasn’t just healthy for someone his age, it would have been considered healthy for someone twenty years younger. The findings heavily supported the fact that drugs and foul play had to be involved. But Dr. Huang still didn’t know what, how, or who.

Dr. Huang was trying to decide on his next course of action when his cell phone chirped. He had a new email. He hoped it was a positive response to one of the messages he had left earlier, maybe another drug lead or just anything he could work with. It wasn’t. The email was a form response that let him know that his request to exhume the bodies of Alan and Mary Kim had been denied. No reason for the denial was given.

Dr. Huang shook his head. It didn’t make any sense. He had never had a single request rejected without a detailed explanation of the reasons for denial. He pocketed his phone, and then grabbed a seat at the lab computer station. He opened the Kims’ file. Much to his surprise, their file had been switched back to closed. He clicked the toggle button to reopen the file, but all that he got was a pop-up that told him he was unable to execute the change. The file was permanently locked. He attempted to put in another request to exhume the bodies, but that was also disabled.

“What the hell is going on?” Dr. Huang said to himself, his confusion turning into anger. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.” He hopped up from his seat and stormed out of the lab.

Dr. Huang went straight for Coroner Stevens’s office, which was in the wing on the opposite side of the building from his. He pounded on the Coroner’s door. “Why’d you lock me out of the Kim file?” Dr. Huang said as he continued to beat on the door. “Answer me.” But there was no response.

After a minute, Dr. Huang marched to the receptionist’s desk at the front of the building. “Where the hell is Coroner Stevens?” Dr. Huang demanded.

“Is everything okay?” the startled receptionist replied.

“No. Where is he?”

“He stepped out a half an hour ago. He said he had a meeting. It sounded important. Apparently, a private donor is interested in giving money to help upgrade some of your equipment. You should be happy.”

“I’ll be happy after I talk to him,” Dr. Huang said. “As soon as he gets back, make sure to tell him to see me. I’ll be in my office.”

“I will. But he said it might be a couple hours.”

Dr. Huang didn’t respond. He just started for his office. He had an idea, a new angle. He had a decent relationship with the head of tech support. He figured his friend might be able to help him get back into the file. It wouldn’t take too long, and then he could resubmit his request.

Dr. Huang strode down the hall and into his office, shut the door behind him, and took a seat at his desk. He had been so focused on what he needed to do that it wasn’t until he heard the grating racket of someone forcefully clearing their throat that he realized he wasn’t alone.

Dr. Huang looked up to find three men, all in black suits, in his office. Two of them wore glasses and faced him. The third had his back to the medical examiner and appeared to be examining his framed diploma.

“Johns Hopkins,” the man said as he slowly began to turn around. “That’s really impressive.”

Dr. Huang recognized the man as soon as he saw his face. It was Terry Heins. Dr. Huang immediately put two and two together. Charlie had said that a very powerful man was behind his parents’ deaths. Terry Heins was an incredibly powerful man. “It was you,” he said, his voiced slowed by shock.

Terry chuckled. “I really expected you to be a little smarter, with your degrees and all. I thought there might be some kind of back and forth. But you just came out and told me everything I needed to know. He did come to see you.”

Dr. Huang immediately regretted not playing his cards right. He should have tried to bluff, but instead he had totally showed his hand. He had sealed his fate. He was next—that is, unless he did something about it.

Dr. Huang did his best to maintain his composure while his stomach turned itself into a balloon animal and his toes curled tightly in his shoes, a necessary, even if only nominal, release of all of the tension that was building in his body. His eyes shifted to the closed office door. But before he could even decide if it was worth the shot, if there was any way he might make it, Max slid in front and blocked the exit. He wouldn’t be leaving.

Dr. Huang knew that he could try screaming. But he also knew that given where his office was, it was most likely no one would hear him. That meant he only had one option: a literal call for help. He reached for his desk phone. His fingers barely had a chance to wrap around the receiver before Cain’s fingers latched onto his wrist and squeezed with a force stronger than Dr. Huang had ever felt or imagined was humanly possible. Dr. Huang couldn’t help but let go of the phone as an overwhelming pain shot up his arm.

Max moved from the door, slipping behind Dr. Huang. He restrained the medical examiner, gripping him by his arms, and pulled him out from behind his desk.

“I applaud your effort,” Terry said.

“You’re not gonna get away with any of this,” Dr. Huang said as he struggled against Max’s grasp.

“You might be surprised,” Terry said, “but you aren’t exactly the first person to tell me that. I will get away with this, and so much more.”

“You can buy off Coroner Stevens,” Dr. Huang said, “but you can’t buy off everyone.”

Terry found Dr. Huang’s words to be particularly funny. “Buy off Coroner Stevens?” Terry said as he tried to contain his laughter. “I couldn’t think of a bigger waste of money. No, all I did was get him out of the way for an hour or two. See, I understand people. And he’s just like every other elected official. All they really care about is donations. You dangle a carrot, and the donkey will come right away.” He checked his watch. “I actually have more carrots to dangle. So, if you don’t mind, we’re going to wrap this up quickly.”

Dr. Huang was resigned to his fate. He knew there was no way he could save his life short of cooperating, which his morals would never let him do. But there was one thing he needed to know. “Just tell me how you do it. What drug do you use?”

“Of course you want to know. It’s your job. You’ll be disappointed to discover that no drugs were involved. Just my handy associates. Of course, that’s only where the disappointment begins.” Terry patted Cain on the back, letting him know he was free to begin.

Cain smirked and flipped his glasses on top of his head.

Dr. Huang’s legs gave out as he caught sight of Cain’s eyes, which glowed like two hot coals. Tiny blue flashes ricocheted across the flames in his jet-black pupils. Dr. Huang’s eyes darted nervously from Cain to Terry as Cain approached. “What the hell is he? What’s he gonna do?”

Terry’s only response was a menacing grin.

Dr. Huang craned his head, attempting to avert his gaze as Cain drew even closer. Cain grabbed the doctor’s head and squeezed his temples in a vise grip.

Dr. Huang let out a weak moan.

Cain wrenched Dr. Huang’s head straight and stared deep into his eyes. The bright orange flames pulsed.

Dr. Huang was overcome by a piercing pain in the center of his brow. He could feel his corneas bulging to the point of bursting. He went to scream, but Max silenced the doctor, covering his mouth with his hand.

Less than a minute later, Cain had completely absorbed the doctor’s spirit with a blinding flash. Max helped the now-docile doctor back into his desk chair.

Terry retrieved his phone and dialed his secretary. “Do me a favor and tell Coroner Stevens that I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to cancel. Tell him that I can’t—hold on a second. I have another call.” Terry checked his phone’s caller
id
, and then switched lines. “I only want to hear news if it’s good.” He listened for a moment. “I’d say that qualifies as good, now make it great. Find them and deal with them.” Terry grinned, switched back to his secretary, and continued. “Change of plans. I’m feeling generous. Tell Coroner Stevens that I’ve decided to give him the money.” He hung up his phone and slipped it back in his suit pocket.

“They’ve confirmed the location of the van?” Cain said.

“Close enough,” Terry said. “It was last seen exiting the freeway near the California-Nevada border. They’ve called in some additional support and are about to begin combing the area. It shouldn’t be long before they find them.”

“I’ll put together a list of all of the abandoned churches within a twenty-mile radius and get it to them. I have no doubt that she has the pests holed up in some place like that. Angels like her are nothing if not predictable.”

“Perfect. Soon enough, she and the little thorns in my side will all be removed.”