Page 27 of Heartless Legacy

“Clear!” a voice yells from just inside the security door that separates this wing from the rest of the floor.

They’ll all be clear, because I’m the only patient on this side of the door. I back into my room, grabbing my chains in both hands, just as an orderly, the one who likes to stare at me at night, slips into the room. One of the men in black enters right behind him, and a third has his back to us as he guards the door.

Looks like I was right. Somebody’s looking for payback, and I’m the person they’re about to use to send a message. I lift the chains and crouch into a defensive stance. The creeper shuffles towards me, arms outstretched as if he’s trying to soothe me. I don’t fall for it, because what he’s really doing is trying to distract me from the guy in black who’s inching closer to my left. I whip my head around, snarling, “Don’t touch me.”

“You can trust us.” The man in black says,

The creeper adds on, “We just wanna help.”

Trust. That word is a lie no matter who says it. They can’t think I’m stupid enough to believe what he’s saying. It was trust that put me here, and the creeper’s done nothing to help me the whole time he’s worked here.

I sidestep him when he dives for me. I’m stiff, and my body aches in the places where the leads from the electric shock machine were attached, and the IV needles ruined the veins in my arms. Still, I manage to get a good hit in with the chain in my hand. He howls in pain and backs away.

That small moment of distraction is all it takes. The pinch in my neck burns, my bones grow heavy. I look over to where the guy in black has a gun pointed at me. The bastard shot me. My hand goes to my neck and I yank out the projectile embedded in it. When I pull my hand away, I’m holding a small arrow, staring at the tiny bead of moisture on the tip. A tranq dart? I glance over at the man in black in confusion.

The sedative takes effect quickly, and the room spins. I lose control of my legs, falling forward. The last thought I have as the ground rushes up to meet me is that at least this time, the bruises on my face will be from a fall.

Holden

The truck that passed by the traffic camera right before it went out belongs to Three Kings Waste Disposal. It took some digging, but I traced their corporate governance documents back to a subsidiary of Canaday Global Waste Transport Company. Three Kings has offices across the nation, and provides commercial, residential and biomedical waste disposal. There’s a hub here in Canyon Falls.

The company has state-of-the-art anti theft systems, satellite radio, and GPS installed on their fleet. All digital. All hackable. Which is how I know that the truck on the camera was supposed to be out of service for maintenance when it drove through the intersection. I found two other instances where trucks that were supposed to be in the maintenance bay went through the same area right before the cameras cut out.

I couldn’t track them beyond the first camera, because the GPS systems are offline during those scheduled maintenance days, but the data I had was enough of a starting point for my search. Finn and I have been scouring this area for two weeks, stopping along the way to launch my drone. Today, we’ve got a lead, and it’s literallyon fire.

It was the fire trucks rushing by us five miles down the road that led us here. On this land that’s supposed to be undeveloped sits a building that has the structural design of a three-story mansion.

What it is now is a crumbling relic with flames leaping from it. Fire trucks are parked in front of the building, dousing it with water to minimize the damage. Finn and I are outside of the safety perimeter, but even without the feed from my drone, I can see enough to know that the fire isn’t the only thing that happened here.

“This isn’t some prank that got out of hand.” I say, taking in the structural damage. “The fire is a red herring.”

Finn says, “You sound sure.”

I point to the people standing off to the right, at the edge of the long driveway. “Do they look like a bunch of teens causing trouble?”

“Definitely not. You think someone set the fire to hide what was really happening inside?”

I slide him my phone. “There are cameras mounted in the trees on a secure Wi-Fi network. The feed wasn’t looped like the traffic cameras. Someone cut the power to the building before the fire started.”

He passes my phone back to me. “What do you think they were doing here?”

Trees and a dilapidated fence surround the building. There’s no address posted and there’s only one road leading to and from it. On the outside, it has all the markings of being an abandoned building. It’s the perfect place to hide nefarious activities, and now the inside is burning away. Was it a brothel? A drug lab?

I answer, “Something no one was ever supposed to know about.”

Chapter 19

Thea

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” a gentle voice coos. My eyelids feel heavy, but I open them enough to squint, while waiting for my vision to sharpen. The first thing I see is the ceiling. Clinical white with recessed lighting. It’s nothing like my cell, or that damn room Dr. Quack likes to treat me in.

I try to calm my breathing and take in my surroundings. There’s just two of us in the room. Me and the person scribbling on a clipboard, which she hangs on the foot of the bed.

“We have you cathed, but if you think you can use a bedpan or make it to the restroom, I’ll take it out.”

My bladder feels full, and being on my feet is always preferable to lying on my back. But why is she giving me a choice, and why am I not restrained? Has Dr. Quack already started pushing the drugs through my system, so that now I’m waking up in a hallucination?

“Thea?” My gaze snaps to hers. “Did you want the pan, or shall I help you to the bathroom?”

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