Silent Scream (Bittersweet Series, Book 2) Page 6

  “Then the only other choice is for you to find your own attorney.” Bree sipped her coffee. “Not that I’m trying to be mean, but outsiders are frowned upon. You know that.”

  “What do you think would happen if we were still clueless about the paranormal? We’d be assigned a public defender. Maybe that’s the way I want to go.”

  Gulping, she sighed and placed her mug on the counter while shaking her head. “Phaedra, while I respect your choice, I’m concerned it’s not the right one. Not in this case.”

  “What are you talking about?” The more I let my brain crank, the more I liked my idea. I stood, using the chair that Nadia sat in as leverage. “I bring in an outsider and that means whatever supernatural investigative crew that’s working the case will get their ass in gear to figure this out. Maybe we’ll get our mother back sooner. Because as long as she’s gone, this little situation we have leaves the door open for anyone to take advantage of us whether you’re here to protect us or not.”

  “And if the public defender gets too close? What do you think will happen to them? Nobody needs a lawyer disappearing and certainly not tied back to any of us. You’re you and your Nadia in danger all because you want to stick it to the supernatural man. It’s childish and you know it.”

  “Everyone in this world needs to realize there’s a larger one out there that we can't afford to ignore. We need them. You and everyone else are deluding yourselves if you think we can survive beyond their rules and laws or use them for profit. Hell, we’re more dog eat dog than they are. Why would anyone, in their right mind, want to be a part of this?”

  A crack snapped from one length of the tabletop to the other. Nadia jetted off the chair and wrapped her arms around me. Since it didn’t break in half and send everything crashing to the floor, I did a mental pat on my back for closing my eyes and forcing myself to be calm again. After quietly convincing her to let me go, Nadia calmed down long enough to lean against me. I hugged her to my side.

  “You’re talking like you’ve made up your mind.” Bree remained calm as though she had been here and seen this all before. She got one more sip of her coffee before rinsing out the pot and placing it in the dishwasher. “I just hope it’s the right side.”

  “The right side of what?” I hobbled to the extended counter and leaned on it. “I'm non-partisan, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I’m not talking about politics.” Bree left the dishes to check the damage to the table. She crouched on the floor and looked underneath. “Back in the 1970s the feds discovered our society existed. The only reason why they haven’t made it public is that they don’t want mass panic in the streets. We do our part by not causing any. Unfortunately, there have been a few times when the feds have come to members of our community for their assistance and they made it clear that we didn’t have a choice. Some think we should keep the status quo while others think it’s exploitation.”

  “Ha. If that’s not the pot calling the kettle.”

  “It’s enough to cause infighting.”

  “And this should concern me why?” If the preternatural community wanted to duel it out with the feds, then more power to them. Either way, I wasn’t about to beholden to anyone paranormal or otherwise.

  The haves have been around a long time and most of their money is old. Somehow, they think that gives them rights over the rest of us. The problem is that the system has been in place for so long that they still believe it and act accordingly. Hence, the bartered services or indentured servant system. While this might seem like a good idea, it wasn’t if they used it to take advantage of you. If you’re a good worker, they will do everything they can to monopolize your time and money, so you can never get your own business off the ground. If you do succeed, it’ll be short-lived because they’ll become your harshest critics and most likely deliver the final blow that will drive your business into the ground. While I might be a wallflower at school, that didn’t mean I was deaf. I had heard enough have-nots get harassed by the haves to know their families had been stomped on.

  Bree sighed. “I’ve heard the feds have taken notice of your family’s situation. They want to make sure the right people are involved should it ever come to a head like it has now.”

  “What head are you talking about?”

  “Your mother is missing and arson is involved. They think she might have set the fire to get rid of all three of you, which would alert social services.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  The overhead light exploded, spraying glass across the kitchen. I was barely able to cover Nadia from the shards, but one about an inch long nicked me on the shoulder. I yanked it out and threw it on the counter.

  Bree came out from underneath the table and checked both of us over. When she saw the blood, she gathered up some paper towels to press into my newfound wound. For me, it was just another one to chalk up on my daily list.

  The phone rang.

  Bree left me with a towel before going to the coffee counter where she kept her cell phone plugged. When she picked it up, she mumbled a few things into the phone before tapping it closed.

  “That was Mason,” she said. “First, your brother’s awake. Second, detectives were there to question him and they mentioned something about having you come down to their office and make a statement, too. So if you’re serious about getting that lawyer, you’ll need to move fast.”

  Chapter Seven

  The drive to the hospital took forever, as did the elevator ride up to the floor where Kurt was resting. Sore ankle or not, Nadia and I blew past the nurse’s station and headed straight to his room. Kurt was awake and a doctor was checking him over. Our little sister didn’t care. She threw herself at him with a huge hug despite his stifled protest. Grinning, I followed suit and hugged him, too. Nadia remained sandwiched between us.

  “I take it this is your family?” The doctor asked.

  “Very much so,” Bree replied, giving us our space. “The one who can’t breathe is Nadia and that’s her older, bossier sister, Phaedra.”

  “Nice to meet you, but I didn’t perform surgery on my patient so that he could end up back on the table again.” He smiled when he said it, but something on his face said he was serious.

  Nadia and I let go and stepped aside.

  “Relax, Doc.” Wincing, Kurt placed his hand across his ribs. “If they weren’t out to get me, they would be out to really get me for reasons that only pain-in-the-ass little sisters would.”

  I smacked him in the shoulder. “I hope that part of you still hurts.”

  “See what I mean?”

  Even though Kurt got on my nerves just about all of the time, I was glad to see that he was still alive and in one piece. His other arm was bandaged up, probably more so from burns, but his leg was broken and he had cuts across his neck, face, and other parts of his body, no less. Whatever internal bleeding he had, the doctor must have fixed it, thank goodness. Still, the wincing on his face and constant movement made me wonder how much discomfort he was feeling. Not like he would probably tell me anyway.

  “What about mom?” Kurt pressed the button on the side of his bed. A mechanism came to life, angling him so he could better see us.

  “Perhaps that’s for a later discussion,” the doctor said.

  He must have known about our mother. Kurt was twenty-three years old. He wasn’t Nadia who you had to treat with kid gloves. The time for that discussion was here and now.

  “She's missing.” I glared at the doctor, daring him to stop me. “I’m told that people are out there looking for her, but I don’t know who they are or how hard they’re trying. Mason might be the only one.”

  “I’m sure the police are doing the same.” The doctor lowered his tablet. “As far as I know, they didn’t find anyone in the house.”

  “Excuse me, doctor.” Bree slipped in between us and him. “We know Kurt needs his rest and so does his sister. But I also know neither one is going to get that unless they get to
talk to each other. Can you give them some time alone?”

  “Fine.” He tapped one final thing on his tablet before he motioned to Kurt. “Five minutes, Mr. Thorne. I’m expecting you to get some rest since you’re not leaving this hospital anytime soon.”

  “Yes, sir.” My brother saluted him on the way out the door. All joviality fell off his face as he turned his focus to me. “Mason has as many people from his security firm as possible out there looking for her. Plus, he’s asked a few people in the community he can trust to keep their ears and eyes open."

  “That’s not reassuring.” I helped Nadia climb onto the bed so she could sit next to Kurt. It was funny seeing those two together like that, considering Nadia didn’t waste a moment telling me how much Kurt got on her nerves during my away time at college.

  He motioned to Bree before turning his concern back to me. “Is this Mrs. Kendrick?”

  “Pardon my manners.” She stepped forward to shake his hand. “My name is Bree. I’ve been watching over your sisters while you’re laid up here.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I know. Mason briefed me on you guys. You’re a business analyst and your husband, Ian, is some sort of scientist?”

  “Almost right. He’s an engineering psychologist. In fact, he works for an aerospace company called Tetradon Dynamics.”

  “Oh. Wow. Great. Sounds...important.”

  Bree chuckled. “Oh man. You sound just as unimpressed as your older sister. Now I know where she gets it.”

  “You didn’t tell me your husband was a shrink.” It was rigged. It had to be. Someone finally decided I was crazy enough to need professional help, and what better way to get it than to live with a nutball wrangler?

  “Not that kind of shrink,” Bree said.

  “Either way Mason told me about you guys, and I trust him.” He winced as though he needed to work through a painful spasm. “Said you guys swooped in and saved my sisters. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate that they’re not in the system or anything, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely onboard with this idea. For better or worse, they are my sisters. My family.”

  “Wait.” I reached over and touched his forehead with the back of my hand. He swatted it away and I laughed. “I just needed to see if you were running a fever or something. Maybe I needed to call the doctor back in here.”

  Nadia covered her mouth with both hands as she snickered.

  Grinning, Bree nodded once. “Knowing all that Mason has told me about you, I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  “Which brings me to another point,” Kurt said. “How do you two know each other?”

  “We didn’t until about three weeks ago.” Bree glanced between all of us before approaching the edge of the bed and leaning on the footrest. “Mason never got a chance to run the plan by your mother. But basically, if anything ever happened to her and for whatever reason the courts didn’t feel you were a good fit to take care of them, he wanted to make sure there was a backup plan. He interviewed us and other families as possible alternatives to step in and fulfill the so-called stable environment that the Department of Social Services would require for them not to put you two in foster care.”

  “Why is he sticking his nose into our business?” I grumbled and shook my head.

  “Relax before you blow a hole into the wall.” Kurt placed his hand on my forearm to calm me down. “I get it. I hate the plan, even though it’s a good one.”

  “Careful. Your schizo is showing.”

  “That’s probably why he wanted to discuss it with mom and not you.” He glared a warning, then turned his attention back to Bree. “So, you guys were the top pick, I take it?”

  “No. We were his second choice. However, the other family had been placed with a foster kid a few days back, so it might be suspicious if they took on two more. Plus, there’s room at our house. It's just our teenage daughter, but we have an extra bedroom that your sisters are sharing.”

  “I have the top bunk,” Nadia announced, beaming.

  Kurt chuckled and rubbed her frizzy hair. “Good for you, Squirt.”

  “Enough of the background check.” I leaned my crutches against the wall and sat in a nearby chair. “I want to know about the detectives. What did they want?”

  “Oh. Them.” Kurt went into the story of how they wanted to know what happened and what he was doing when he noticed the fire.

  They seemed to be okay with everything until he got to the part about mom being in the attic. Kurt explained she was probably working on some fashion designs or tending to her seamstress duties, as she still had that job to do on top of the house cleaning one. They didn’t question that part of his story because they found enough materials and equipment that made the seamstress story believable. However, they also found shackles and a tranquilizer gun that had piqued their interest. They sealed it in an evidence bag and sent it off to their lab, but they also wanted fingerprints for a match.

  “Oh man.” I gulped. “It’s my gun. There are more darts in my dresser. If they find those, they’re going to trace—”

  “They won’t.” Kurt reached for his water cup and took a sip. “Mason knew we had tranquilizer guns in the house in case mom ever got loose. So, he sneaked past the caution tape and searched our rooms for anything leftover. Almost got caught, too.”

  “But that still doesn’t get her out of having to make a statement, right?” Bree asked.

  “Nope.”

  “I’m not going without a lawyer,” I announced. “Preferably my own.”

  “No, you’re not.” Sighing, Kurt shook his head. “Don’t you get it? You lawyer up and the first thing they’ll think is that you’re hiding something. Trust me, I’ve been in enough trouble to know. Just make sure you get your story right. If they ask about the tranq gun, just tell them you found it on Cornerstone’s Campus and brought it home because you were curious. Tell them everything that happened once you got home, but without the supernatural aspect. That’s the best way to go.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You’re a psychokinetic eunuch.”

  “What’s a eunuch?” Nadia asked.

  “Never mind.” Bree reached for my sister. “How about we go to the snack machine down the hall while your brother and sister talk?”

  “No,” I replied.

  Bree signed. “I swear I won’t take her anywhere else. You can even time us if you want. It’ll take about five minutes.”

  “A lot can happen in five minutes.”

  “Phae...”Kurt waved them onward. “Five minutes isn’t going to hurt anyone. Besides, less of a chance for Nadia to accidentally correct you while we rehearse your story so it coincides with mine.”

  “Yeah, but...” I glared wide-eyed at him and motioned for him to enforce some law while hiding behind a curtain of my black hair.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, ignoring my gesture.

  I waited until the door closed before I tore into him. “Are you nuts? You just said you didn’t trust her any more than I did and now you let her go off with our little sister?”

  “My god.” Kurt rubbed his tired eyes. “If she wanted to hurt you guys, she could’ve last night. Besides, we don’t have much of a choice. Now are we going to get on with it or are you going to spend the next four and a half minutes arguing with me? After all, they already have my statement. They’re looking to draw blood from you, next.”

  #

  Kurt talked me off the ledge, so the lawyer was out. He also said not to go to the police. If they wanted my statement, then they should come to me and not the other way around. I didn’t get his logic behind that, but then again, my brother had joined the criminal element shortly after he left home a few years back. I skipped that piece of advice and asked Bree to make contact with them instead.

  Detective Yoffee looked more like some clueless guy who should’ve been working behind the desk of a financial institution and not some office filled with desks and chairs that looked like they came from a thrift store. He was lean and w
ore a suit with a tie and shiny shoes. Perhaps he should’ve worked in a bank instead. I couldn’t imagine seeing him running down the street after criminals and probably ruining his precious insoles.

  Bree and I were offered a seat next to his scratched-up desk while a female detective took Nadia down the hall to show her the playroom they had for whenever kids came to visit. The thought of having a playroom for kids made me a little uneasy about the kinds of people who had to come here and how often.

  I stuck to the story as Kurt and I had rehearsed it, though there wasn’t much to rehearse, once you tossed the supernatural stuff out of it. Kurt woke Nadia and me up when he smelled the smoke. He went to find mom since she didn’t come to find us. After I got Nadia to safety and called our “wonderful, family friend," Mason, to come get us, I went back into the house and found Kurt trying to drag our mom to safety from the attic. From there, an explosion ripped through the attic, throwing me back down the trapdoor and onto the second floor. From there, I retreated out of the house to find Nadia again because I left her alone.

  “So you didn’t see anyone else?” he asked.

  “No one other than the firefighters.” I shrugged. “Oh, and Mason when he finally got there.”

  “Which reminds me.” He flipped through a notepad he had that was just as well kept as his slick hair. “You guys haven’t known Mason for a very long time, correct? About six months?”

  “Something like that.”

  “How would you describe his and your mother’s relationship?”

  I shrugged. “They’re on good terms. Mom kept him in his place around us, but if you’re asking me what they did in private—"

  “No.” He chuckled and waved his hand. “That’s not what I’m looking for. I mean, how has their relationship been recently?”