Wake Up Missing (23 page)

The door at the end was unlocked, the long wood-paneled hallway empty.

I pushed open the first door, to Dr. Gunther's office where we'd first read those files. And my heart stopped.

He was there. Sitting at his desk, his face hidden behind his computer monitor.

I froze.

And waited. He must have heard the door, must have seen it swing open. But he didn't move.

I leaned forward, then took a silent, slow step and looked around the computer monitor.

His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling with slow breaths.

Asleep.

I backed slowly out the door and pushed it shut but not all the way—the latch might click and wake him.

I should have run, but I couldn't. I couldn't let their awful
secret stay buried forever in the swamp. What if they moved someplace else and found new kids for their project?

I waited outside Dr. Ames's door and counted—five, six, seven seconds—there was no sound from inside. I had to do it—do it
now
and run. Were the others still at the dock? How long would they wait for me?

I pushed open the door. The office was empty, the desk clear and dusted. The screen saver of Dr. Ames's laptop cast eerie, twisting blues and greens on the walls.

I stepped up to the desk, closed the laptop screen, and pulled the plug. Someone would be able to power it up later—if we made it.

I hugged the laptop to my chest and turned.

“Catherine?”

Dr. Gunther stood in the doorway.

I thought about flying at him, shoving his skinny, old body into the doorjamb. Could I push him and get away?

But his eyes were as big as mine. They moved from my face to the laptop in my arms. He turned his head, looked away from me down the long hallway, and stepped back from the door, out of my way.

Was it a trick? Would he let me pass?

I took a hesitant step toward him. Then another.

He stepped back again. There was a sound from down the hallway. He jerked his head and gasped. Then he moved faster than I thought he could, into the room. He pulled the door closed behind him, pushed past me to the window, threw it open, and turned to me with wild, haunted eyes.

“Run!”

I didn't ask why, didn't stop to think. I climbed out and stumbled in the flower bed below the window, but I clung to the laptop, and I ran. The boat roared at the dock. Quentin and Sarah scrambled to untie the ropes that secured it.

I looked over my shoulder.

Dr. Ames burst out the clinic door.

My legs burned, my chest ached, and I ran. I thought of my time on the treadmill. I was strong. I could do this.

Fifty feet to the boat. Forty.

Calm as ever, his boxes stacked beside him, Trent stood at the controls. He pushed the throttle, and the boat started to pull away.

“Wait!” Sarah screamed.

I tripped and almost fell, but I held the computer, stumbling forward even faster.

Thirty feet away.

Twenty. My lungs burned, and my head throbbed, but I kept running.

Dr. Ames was getting closer.

“Come on!” Quentin hurled the last line into the boat. He stood on its deck, reaching out for me.

“Catch!” I threw the computer toward him and then jumped, clinging to the railing. My body crashed into the side of the boat, and my feet splashed into the swamp, but I held on with slipping fingers until Quentin's strong arms pulled me in.

“Go!” he screamed at Trent. And the airboat took off.

I looked back. Dr. Ames was frantically untying his airboat, alone—he wasn't waiting for Dr. Gunther. I didn't hear his boat power up—ours was too loud—but I saw the propeller start to spin. “He's coming. Go faster!”

Trent frowned at the controls. “Planing at high speeds is only advisable in larger, open spaces.”

Quentin shoved Trent from the controls and pushed the throttle. The fan screamed behind us. Kaylee was still in the seat
where Sarah and I left her, but her eyes were open wide and terrified. No one could have slept through this.

“He's coming!” Sarah screamed from the back of the boat.

Quentin shoved the throttle forward as far as it would go, but the river turned sharply—we were back at the bend not far from Molly's camp—and the boat spun out of control.

“Hold on!” I grabbed the railing with one arm and reached for Kaylee with the other, as the airboat lurched and tipped.

The motor died.

“It's swamped!” Ben climbed over the rail and jumped into the water. It was only up to his thighs. Quentin came after him.

“Come on!” He reached up and eased Kaylee, whimpering, into the water, barefoot and still in her pajamas. “Up here!” He pointed to a mess of mangroves. “He won't be able to get the airboat up here. If he wants to follow us, he'll have to leave it and maybe . . .”

He didn't finish the sentence. Maybe what? Maybe we'd get away?

Not with Trent, who was already looking longingly back at his boxes sliding into the muck as Sarah guided him into the swamp. Not with Kaylee, who could barely walk. But I clung to her and held her up. “This way!”

We stumbled through the mud, up over the mangrove roots, but we hadn't gone more than a dozen yards when Kaylee simply went limp. Even together, Sarah and I couldn't hold her.

Kaylee whimpered. She couldn't speak, but I imagined her words, drifting up to us.
I can't go any more. I can't.
And she closed her eyes.

I eased her to the ground and stood. “Maybe we can wait it
out here,” I said, but I already knew it wasn't true. Quentin had climbed into the higher branches of a mangrove. He looked out to the swamp, and his face fell. “He's off the boat. He's coming.”

“Of course he's coming!” Sarah cried and sank down next to Kaylee. “All of this—this running and hiding and snakes and practically dying of thirst and these mosquitoes . . .” She slapped at one, so hard it left a red mark on her arm. “None of it matters. He'll never give up. He's never going to let go.”

“What if we don't give up either? Then what?” My head throbbed, but I kept screaming. It didn't matter if Dr. Ames heard. He knew where we were, and he was coming. “What if we fight. What if—”

An osprey screamed overhead, and the words caught in my throat. Another osprey flashed in my mind, from our first day with Molly. That osprey dove for a fish and sank its talons in so deep it couldn't let go—not even when the fish was too big. Not even when holding on meant being pulled under. It died instead of letting go.

Branches cracked, and Dr. Ames's sweating face appeared below us.

“Come on!” I heaved Kaylee to her feet. “It's not far, but you have to come.” I scrambled through the weeds, into the mangroves off to our right. I don't know how I knew the way—but I knew. It felt like I knew the swamp then, the way Molly knew it—and the others followed.

“Cat, watch out!” Sarah gasped. But I'd already seen the alligator—Lou. I knew she'd be there. I was counting on it.

“Up here!” I left plenty of space. We looped a wide circle
around the alligator's nest and climbed into the trees on the other side. She shifted in the dry grass and sticks, big yellow eyes following us everywhere. But she stayed on the nest.

Kaylee collapsed at the base of a mangrove, and I eased her to the ground as Dr. Ames came crashing through the trees. He stopped when he saw us. No more running. No more hiding. We stood side by side, facing him.

“Let's stop this now.” His chest heaved with every breath. His clothes dripped sweat and swamp. “I don't know why you're running, or where you think you're going, but . . .”

He took a step forward and sank into the muck up to his ankles.

“We're running because we know.” The words came from my mouth, but they sounded stronger than I felt. Level and even and sure.

“Oh, really? What is it you think you know?” His voice mocked me.

“We know what you did to Trent and Kaylee, what you were trying to do to us. We know everything.”

He laughed and tugged his foot from the mud with a sucking slurp, then took another step in our direction.

One-Eyed Lou shifted on her nest again. The muscles in the alligator's thick body rippled, and her mouth opened slowly, in warning. Sarah's face lit up with alarm, but right away, her eyes moved back to Dr. Ames, then to me, and I knew she understood.

Dr. Ames never saw the nest. He never saw One-Eyed Lou or her babies. All he saw was the six of us, there in front of him, finally, with nowhere to run.

He never lost his focus. We were his prey, and we were cornered.

He took a flailing step forward, stumbling through the uneven mud.

And then another. “Come. With. Me.” He pulled the gun from his belt and held it up so we could all see. “Now.”

My heart was racing, and I could feel blood pounding in my temples, but I met his eyes. And I shook my head. “No.”

His face burned so angry, so hot, I thought it might burst into flames. Sarah was right. Dr. Ames would never let go.

He lunged forward and surged through the weeds, straight at us. Straight into the alligator's nest.

Lou's tail whipped his feet out from under him and threw his body into the air.

It all happened in a heartbeat.

Dr. Ames's face twisted in surprise, the gun flew from his hand, the alligator snapped, and the shallows exploded with splashes and screams, mud and blood, and the squeaky grunts of baby alligators calling for their mother.

But she didn't answer. She thrashed and twisted, dragging the man who'd disturbed her nest deeper into the swamp water.

I had to look away, but Ben didn't. There was a battle happening in his eyes—emotions fighting for their grip on him—terror, fury, and pain.

Finally, the screams stopped, and then the splashing, and the air settled into insect buzzing and osprey cries. When I looked back at the water, the swamp had claimed whatever was left of Dr. Ames. Lou was swimming back to her nest.

I turned to Ben. The horror had drained out of his eyes, replaced by shining tears. “I believed him,” he choked.

I put a hand on his arm. “I know.”

We sat, trembling against the mangrove roots, until a voice cut through the humid air like a blade. “Mark! Mark!”

It was Dr. Gunther. I looked at Quentin. He held a finger to his mouth and whispered, “Careful. He could be armed, too.”

But he wasn't. He rounded the bend of the river in one of the kayaks, paddling awkwardly until he came to the disabled airboat. His eyes searched the shore and finally landed on us.

“Is he . . .” He looked around. He didn't see the water at the shore, stained red.

“He's gone,” I said.

Dr. Gunther stepped shakily out of the kayak.

“Wait!” I said, but it was too late. One-Eyed Lou shot across the water like a torpedo and snapped at him. Dr. Gunther fell backward over a gnarled branch, and his leg twisted at a sickening angle. His face contorted with pain. His eyes darted everywhere, terrified. But Lou was gone. There was no sign of her—only a scattering of bubbles rising in the murky water.

I held my breath—we all did—until Lou surfaced, a quiet log swimming back toward her nest, where her babies grunted for her in the grass. She climbed back onto shore facing the swamp, rearranged her prehistoric limbs, and stared out at him, cowering by the log.

“You're lucky,” I said. We all were.

I turned to Quentin. “The other airboat's still okay. We can take that.”

He nodded and helped me pull Kaylee up once more. She moaned softly, barely coherent. “It's okay,” I said quietly. “It's going to be okay.” And finally, I knew it would. At least for me. I hoped it wasn't too late for her to get to a doctor. “We're going to get you help,” I promised. “A hospital where you can get better. And go home.”

We eased her through the shallow water and onto the boat. She curled in a seat, shivering, and closed her eyes. Sarah climbed on board next, and then Ben.

“Trent, come on, man.” Quentin sighed. Trent plucked some of his things from the swamp mud, muttering as he collected a mess of wires tangled in the weeds, and then he climbed on board.

I stood in the shallow water near the boat and looked at Dr. Gunther, struggling to stand. His leg gave out underneath him. Lou shifted on her nest.

I looked at Quentin. “Can you help me get him?”

Quentin started to climb down from the boat, but Ben grabbed his arm and whirled him around. “Are you kidding me?” Ben had said next to nothing since we left Molly's shack, but now it all came pouring out, so many days of anxiety and hurt, promises and trust betrayed. “He was going to kill us! He . . . he . . .” Ben looked as if he might leap from the boat and drown Dr. Gunther with his bare hands.

I understood. I did.

But when I looked at the old man tangled in the prison of mangrove roots, I remembered his voice back in the clinic.

Run!

He let me get away.

“He was there,” I said quietly, “when I went back for the computer.”

“What?” Quentin's face clouded with questions.

“When I ran to the clinic. . . .” I hoisted myself onto the edge of our swamped airboat, but I couldn't find the laptop. Had it flown into the water when we'd lost control? I spun around, searching, but it wasn't there. “Where is it? Where's the laptop?”

“Oh.” Trent came over and tugged Molly's bag from behind the seat. “I put it in here to avoid potential moisture damage,” he said, sliding it out of the bag. “Electronics and water don't mix.”

I wanted to hug him and spin him around. The laptop was there, its video files and e-mails and research folders and memos, all preserved. The truth. I held it up. “I went back for this,” I said. “Dr. Ames's laptop. And Dr. Gunther . . .” I looked at him. His eyes begged us not to leave him. “He found me in the office. But he let me go.”