Broken Bonds. Karen Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ you don’t think you’re known by the company you keep, do you. I mean that someone would try to hurt you to get to Royce Flemming?” she asked.

      “It’s crossed my mind. I’ll be careful.”

      She extended her hand to him and he took it, not exactly in a handshake, not really holding hands, but a link, an unspoken bond. The moment passed, and she felt awkward again. She hated to admit it but she was attracted to him, yet felt so vulnerable with him.

      “I can wait until you’re ready to carry things out,” he said. “We can put a load in my car, and I’ll follow you up. I’ve got a lunch meeting, but if you give me your number, I’ll call you later, see when you’re ready to be picked up for dinner if you think you’ll be safe with me— You know what I mean,” he added hastily. “Some idiot is loose out there.”

      But she was starting to think Matt Rowan was a man worth being near even if someone was out to get him.

      * * *

      “I swear, this place always give me the creeps,” Tess told Kate and Char as she drove them toward the old asylum gates. When Kate had heard where they were going, she’d insisted on coming, too. “And not just because it’s supposed to be haunted,” Tess insisted. “Every time I see Brice Monson, I feel I’m looking at an alien, a creature from beyond.”

      “Bright Star’s a mind manipulator of the nth degree,” their practical older sister, Kate, put in with a roll of her hazel eyes.

      Tess slowed as they passed through the rusted, open iron gates and fence that surrounded the long-deserted Falls County Mental Hospital grounds. The hospital had started life in the 1880s as the Cold Creek Lunatic Asylum. They passed the modern playground area with its swings, slide and jungle gym. The county-owned park was deserted, though with the wind the swings still squeaked back and forth as if someone sat in them. The few dry leaves on the trees seemed to shudder, and little eddies of dead ones on the ground swirled and danced.

      The hospital had once been a busy, self-sustaining establishment. Two five-story towers with cupolas stood sentinel over a large main red brick building, a relic from post–Civil War times. Gabe had said the big central structure once had male and female wards and separate dining rooms with patient rooms stacked above, under the copper roof. It was all derelict now. Vandals and ghost hunters broke in at times, especially around Halloween as they had just a few weeks ago.

      Empty outbuildings in various stages of decay dotted the acreage, cottages for overflow patients, a small barn and greenhouses that had once helped to feed the patients and staff, even a carriage shop. Two graveyards, one with only numbers on the small tombstones were on the site. Flush with cash from selling the old cult compound site for fracking, Bright Star had hired workers to renovate two of the larger outbuildings and quickly build two wings with more expansion to come.

      “They used to do lobotomies here,” Kate told them, shaking her head. “You know, primitive brain surgery that turned anxious, paranoid patients into zombies more or less. I swear, Bright Star’s doing a version of that himself the way everybody falls in line with his weird ideas. Grace and Lee used to have minds of their own, but no more.”

      Kate was always the bright one, the scholar, and she’d been like a second mother to Char and Tess when their father had left and their mother had gone to work to support them in Jackson, Michigan. Through scholarships, grants and hard work, she’d earned her doctorate in archaeology, lived abroad and led archaeological digs—and then to Tess’s and Char’s amazement, had ended up back in little Podunk, Cold Creek, Ohio. And not just because of the ancient Adena Indian mounds here, but because of a man, so let that be a warning. But even here in Cold Creek, if there was any trivia or clue to be had, any theory to be probed, Kate was the one to ask, so maybe later Char would run past her the mystery of who tried to kill Matt on the mountain yesterday.

      “Well, Bright Star will have trouble refusing to let Gracie and Lee see the three of us,” Tess declared, but her voice shook. “Safety in numbers! If only Lee and Grace would stand up to him, I wonder how far he’d go to keep them here. You’re right, Kate. It’s like he has some hypnotic hold on them—all of them.”

      “If their children are being abused in any way, I’d like to get a court order against them,” Char said. “He can only hide behind freedom of religion so long if he’s hurting those kids.”

      “I’m sure Gracie—and Lee—would never allow that,” Tess insisted.

      They got out of the car at the closed gate to the new compound, one almost as ornate as the old Victorian one. The fracking must mean money coming out Bright Star’s ears, Char thought. This gate had a star bursting with beams formed from the metalwork.

      “Bright Star likes to hit us idiots over the head with symbolism,” Kate muttered. “Such humility!”

      As usual, a guard stood sentinel at his post. Kate did the talking, asking to see their cousins Lee and Grace Lockwood and their children. The guard, a tall man, apparently unarmed but with a walkie-talkie, moved a few yards away and spoke to someone in it.

      “So far, so good,” Char whispered. “One for all and all for one.”

      “You’ve been reading The Three Musketeers?” Kate whispered. “But don’t bet on ‘so far so good.’ Tess and I have both tangled with the guy.”

      To Char’s relief, the man opened the gate and waved them in. Following him, they went up the new-looking concrete walk toward the main building with its two curved additions shaped like—like embracing arms? Angel wings?

      “Gabe told me this was once a cottage for tubercular patients that they used to segregate, but it’s been really redone,” Tess whispered.

      Another man met them at the door, and the guard went back toward his post. This man seemed his clone in their garb, kind of Quaker or Amish—definitely pioneer-looking. No Bright Star so far, but that could be a good sign. The man directed them down the center hall to a small, sparsely furnished room.

      Char remembered their first cousin Lee from their childhood—fun, lively, a little shy maybe and handy with all kinds of tools. And Grace—Gracie, Tess still called her—had once been Tess’s best friend. They’d all missed Lee and Grace and their two darling kids, Kelsey, age four, and Ethan, two. Char had only glimpsed the children once on a weekend market day since she’d been back. She’d never grasped how Lee and Grace had been caught up in this weird web.

      The room where they waited had no windows and was plainly furnished with four straight-backed chairs and a bench. The two torchère lamps reminded Char of the uptilted, soft lights in funeral homes. On the walls were framed quotes from the Bible in beautifully scripted writing. The largest one read:

      You do well to heed a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

      “Maybe that’s where he took his nickname from,” Char whispered, pointing.

      “And check out the other Bible quotes framed here,” Kate said. “They’re about hunting people down. I swear, that’s the way he targets people to get them in here, with initial goodwill, then total mind control, so we’d better—”

      She stopped in midthought as the hall door opened and Lee and Grace entered. Char was pleased their escort closed the door behind them so the family could have some privacy, but she was disappointed they didn’t have СКАЧАТЬ