I could see the yellow from the edge of the trees. In those first terrible weeks, the crime-scene tape, marking the spot where Chris found Brian in a state of shock, had been hidden by the dense foliage. Now, with the leaves fallen and the branches covered in a thin layer of snow, the garish yellow was easily seen.
The realization of what afforded me the view brought bile to the back of my throat. I stood under the bell on the back of the shop, and I could feel its weight bearing down on me like a wicked headache. It was here, nearly fifty-five years ago, that I watched my father and those men enter the woods. From here, the place where William disappeared was only a short walk away.
Moving through the burr oaks was easier now than in the summer; low hanging branches easily snapped away in the gray afternoon light. The winter winds, or perhaps a confused and panicked deer, had torn one section of the tape apart.
Chris could be out here. He was known to wander with everything from rakes to hoes, clawing at the ground, desperate to find some sign of his youngest son, something to indicate what had happened to him.
I’d also seen Detective Strombino a few times in the woods. Once, I had gone out to ask him for an update. He only shook his head.
I doubted either would be out here today, for the conditions were miserable. Sleet spit from the sky, and the thin layer of icy snow crunched beneath my feet. I felt confident no one would see what I was about to do.
I set the cloth grocery bag on a flat stone and lifted out the glass terrarium. I had several of them in the house and in the shop. Even in the deepest of winter, I could have moss and ferns growing inside with just a little water and maintenance. The empty terrarium I carried was my smallest, but what it contained needed little space.
Taking one more look around, I walked through the cordoned-off area, holding the terrarium over my head. I looked up through the bottom to see the ten or so ladybugs I’d collected from inside the house crawling erratically.
I’d fully understood, then, why Daddy had dropped his glass lantern when he saw that his little girl had discovered him and those other men. If anyone now came up on me suddenly, I would be unable to explain what I was doing. The glass container certainly would have slipped from my fingers as well.
You’d warned—no, threatened—me not to come in these woods. What did you know? Were those strange men some of the first Researchers, who had come to these trees investigating the disappearance of Amelia Shrank and Josh Stone? Had they needed your permission to come out here? Had they explained what they were doing with those ladybugs? You weren’t a suspicious person, and you always wanted to help people. Did you think they were a bit eccentric? Why did you help them? What did you think you would find—
The popping sound came from above.
I lifted the terrarium even higher, and the beetles inside responded with even more ferocious swarming, slamming against the glass like little rocks, just as the ladybugs had done in the sconces on the front porch the night William disappeared.
I lowered the terrarium to my waist, and almost immediately, the ladybugs stopped their furious dance. I thought of Barbara’s words the night before: “That’s what ladybugs do when they arrive. We don’t know why. But it’s been documented in so many cases. Sometimes the beetles cover entire walls, crawling, like they’ve been driven insane.”
The terrarium was out of my hands and smashed against the ground before I could even comprehend what I’d done. The sound of the shattering echoed for a moment through the lonely trees. The anger and the irrationality felt addictive and I wished for more things to break. I thought, for a wild moment, I might run into the house to gather more of the glass canisters and then return to break them all around the site, like a christening of a cursed ship.
I wanted to scream to the heavens, curse whatever crossed the skies to hover here, taking my William and leaving behind some kind of lingering force that enraged the beetles. A ruthless calling card that no one would ever understand. I imagined trying to explain it to the police, to the FBI, to my husband, to Anne and Chris. You see, they obviously come close to the earth, and whatever they use to entrap people leaves behind an aura that also happens to aggravate beetles at a certain height, like a radio frequency that only insects can pick up. What’s that? No, I don’t take antipsychotics.
Instead, I knelt and started to pick up the glass. What would happen if Chris came back out here and wondered why the glass was everywhere? He might call the police—
The police.
I ran then to the house, not caring at that moment if anyone found the glass. I rushed into house, rummaging through the utility drawer to find the business card.
I dialed, brought my cell to my ear, and listened to four rings before Detective Strombino answered.
“Mrs. Roseworth? Is everything all right?” he asked in his thick Boston accent.
“I’m really sorry to bother you. I have a quick question.”
“Of course. I wish I had some new news for you.“
I took a deep breath. “Detective, do you know if anything was found in the woods where William went missing?”
“No, ma’am. Nothing. As I’ve told you, there is no trace of who took him.”
“I’m not talking about something someone left behind. I mean something on the ground.”
His silence told me everything I suspected. “I’m not sure—”
“I want to know if you found a gravestone. A small marker for a girl named Amelia Shrank.”
More silence until he cleared his throat. “Yes, Mrs. Roseworth, we did find that, but it was of no consequence—”
“Then why was it taken into evidence?” I asked.
“Ma’am, I would have certainly shared it with you if it had pertained at all to your grandson’s disappearance—”
“A child’s gravestone was found in the same location where my grandson went missing and you don’t find that strange?”
“That girl disappeared almost eighty years ago, Mrs. Roseworth. There is no connection—”
“Thank you, Detective, that’s all I needed to know,” I managed to say before sinking down into a chair at the table as I disconnected the call. I could picture them, the detectives or police or even the FBI, finding the grave marker, wrapping it in protective plastic, and thinking they had been to first to find some bizarre remnant of history, like an ancient piece of crockery. They’d done the research into Amelia, of course, and dismissed it. A weird coincidence, nothing more.
They didn’t know a grown man had vanished there as well.
* * *
The headlights from my Volvo flashed over the Honda Accord parked in the corner of the Chevron. Barbara’s hair was momentarily illuminated, and she squinted. I pulled up next to her and lowered my passenger-side window.
“You’re welcome to ride with me,” Barbara offered.
“My friends and family use this gas station all the time, and if my car was left here unattended, it would raise some eyebrows.”
Barbara nodded. “I’m not a fast driver, and I’m unfamiliar with these roads, so stay with me. We’re going to the Holiday Inn in a town named Murfreesboro. Sound familiar?”
“It’s right off the interstate not far from the square. I know where it is.”
“If we get separated, I’ll wait for you in the parking lot, and we can go in together.”
“I won’t lose you. In fact, why don’t you follow me? The interstate’s the quickest way, and we can pick it up a few miles down Harding.”
Barbara appeared grateful. I took a deep breath and turned the wheel.
Anne seemed fine to watch the boys tonight, even if it meant she slouched with Greg on the couch while Brian sat in his room alone and Chris was in his study. No one would think it was strange I’d chosen to stay home alone on Saturday night. Tom would be in on the eleven o’clock flight, and a car would bring him home. As long as I was home by then, no questions would be asked.
It would take thirty minutes to get to the hotel, and thirty minutes to get back. I wouldn’t have long to spend with Steven.
This is stupid to do alone. Roxy would throw a fit if she found out. But I’d already dragged her six hours away on a fruitless endeavor and then refused to even discuss what happened.
My cell rang as I got onto the interstate. I briefly looked to see that it was Tom calling, and I silenced the phone. I looked in the rearview mirror to make sure Barbara was still behind. The Accord was keeping up.
I thought of picking up the phone to call him back. What would you say if you knew? I pictured his jawline jutting out when he paced while on the phone with his staff, dealing with either a domestic or foreign crisis. Or would you walk around for hours with your hands behind your head, as you did when Stella left for college or when Anne nearly married that set designer? Or, worse, would you stare off out the window with tears in your eyes that you could somehow keep from running down your cheeks, as you did all those nights when William first disappeared? What version of your heartbreak, your anger, would surface if you knew what I did then?
The first time Steven kissed me, after I’d returned from the cornfield and the encounter with the men in the black suits, I was surprised at his intensity. Given that he often seemed nervous when we came in close physical contact, I expected soft brushes of lips. Instead, he was unbuttoning my shirt within seconds of our lips touching for the first time. Our clothes were soon tossed onto the floor of his office.
I should have felt incredible guilt afterwards. Instead, I lay in his arms on the couch and smiled as he pointed out the star on the map above us that he had secretly named after me.
From then on, he didn’t give me assignments. The calls that came in often asked for me first, because I’d become the point person. Lynn Roseworth, please, they said.
Steven began to introduce me to the other Researchers who visited from universities in Illinois and other states such as Indiana and Missouri. The Researchers had potlucks, and some expected me to stay in the kitchen. Instead, I would sit next to them on the couch and point out there was no common shape of the ships as described, and that even though the descriptions of the beings were similar, that could just be the brain’s reaction to such a traumatic experience.
I remembered how they cocked their heads at me, cleaning off their glasses, wondering how the young woman in the floral swing dress knew so much about the reported height differences in the aliens known as the Greys.
When Steven led their meetings, I didn’t sit at his side and certainly didn’t serve appetizers. Instead, I often leaned on the doorframe, clarifying the data. He would gesture to me in those rare moments of emotional expression. “That’s right! Listen to her, fellas. Listen to her,” he would say.
Sometimes I found them staring at me, and I chalked that up to the lack of exposure to the opposite sex. In time, they didn’t just ask for my input—they bombarded me with questions. Did I think the aliens could communicate telepathically? What about inbreeding with humans? Did the creatures even have genders?
“OK, boys, that’s enough,” Steven would say, placing his hand on the small of my back. He was always touching me. At the end of the day, he rubbed my shoulders. As we sat at his desk in the office, with the door firmly locked, one hand would be writing and the other would rest on my knee. When we went to his apartment to make love on our lunch break, he wrapped his arms around me until the very last moment before we had to get dressed. I could see the pride in his eyes when he introduced me. My wedding ring felt heavy on my finger.
I awoke one fall afternoon in his bed and found Steven looking at me from where he lay on his pillow. I scrambled to get dressed, fumbling with the clock to see the time.
“It’s only two-thirty,” he said. “You fell asleep at one. It’s OK. I have no classes, and it’s Friday, so no one’s in the office. Come back to bed.”
I snuggled up to him, and he brushed a curl from my forehead.
“I’ve been thinking about something. Do you remember that once you told me that the missing come back?” I said. “I have yet to find a single case of that happening.”
He brushed my cheek with his fingers. “I’d rather talk about you. I wonder, who do you more look like—your father or your mother?”
“I don’t remember my mother, but from the pictures Daddy kept of her, she had curly blond hair like mine. Otherwise, I’m all Stanson.”
“How old were you when she died?”
“Daddy says it was right before the discovery of my tumor that I’ve told you about. I can’t imagine how my Dad handled it: the death of his wife and then a terrible diagnosis for his only child. He couldn’t talk about her without tearing up.”
“If you are anything like her, I can see why he was so devastated. It’s awful to lose someone you love. But … to have someone you love vanish, without an explanation, never knowing what happened to them … that’s a different kind of torture.”
I kissed him again. He never discussed his sister. It was clearly too painful.
“Have you ever actually met one of the missing who returned? What did they remember? All those horrible stories about being probed and violated…”
His response was to pull me closer. It was the last time we made love.
It rained heavily the next day, and my passenger seat was stacked with files. I didn’t know why Steven had insisted I bring them out of the office and to the motel on the outskirts of campus.
A fierce humidity forced me to constantly wipe the windshield with my hand. I saw Steven’s car as I pulled into the parking lot. The red sheen of his hair stood out in the haze. A man with a beard stood near him, smoking. I pulled in quickly, behind a bread van.
I peered over the steering wheel, trying to identify the stranger. It wasn’t Dr. Roberts, as I had hoped. I hadn’t seen him, or Marcus, again, after that day in the cornfield. Steven explained that Marcus didn’t play well with others, and Dr. Roberts’s wife’s cancer had advanced so he wasn’t able to travel. I suspected it was actually something more, remembering that look of fear in both Marcus and Dr. Roberts’s eyes. Maybe they’d had enough.
The man talking to Steven hadn’t attended any of the Researchers meetings, and his face didn’t look familiar from any of the scientific journals I’d reviewed at the bequest of the astronomy professors. I unconsciously reached over and put my hand on the files protectively. All Steven had said was to bring the files on the Allen, Bristoff, and Carson cases. I assumed we were meeting another out-of-town Researcher, and it wasn’t strange he was staying at a discount motel. None of them was in it for the money.
I watched the man toss the butt of the cigarette aside as he and Steven stepped into the room, leaving the door ajar. Not wanting to risk the files getting wet, and frankly feeling that I needed to know more about this man with whom we were sharing data, I opened my umbrella and dashed to the end of the overhang.
I didn’t know if the water on my forehead was sweat or rain. Why was I acting so possessive? Why did I feel so off kilter? Yes, I worked hard on these cases, but it certainly wasn’t only my work. It was Steven who helped me become a Researcher. He could show the files to anyone he pleased.
I thought for a moment of how it would look if, by some terrible coincidence, Tom drove by and saw his wife enter a motel room with two men. Usually, my resentment towards him helped justify my indiscretions, but at this moment, I felt ashamed. I tried to brush it off, hurrying past the other motel doors. The curtains were drawn in the room that Steven and the other Researcher had entered. Smoke was drifting from the room, explaining why the door remained open.
“These wingtips are killing me,” I heard the stranger say.
“Pretty high end for someone in our circle,” Steven said.
Just another professor. I reached to open the door. Probably from Chicago—
“What does she know?” the man asked. I withdrew my hand.
“More than I do, at times. She’s whip smart.”
They must be sitting just inside the door, maybe on the edge of the bed.
“I mean, how much does she know? About the weather? About the other theories? Even Argentum?”
I bit my lip, remembering Barbara asking for an explanation of Argentum, and how Steven refused to even discuss it with me.
“Why would I waste her time with that?” Steven replied. “We don’t even know what it is. It’s a glorified urban legend about aliens, without any details. We’ve all been told to dismiss it anyway. Why do we keep asking what it is if we don’t even have a shred of information?”
“Is this smart, Steven? She’s not even a scientist, or a professor.”
“Not all of us are in academia. It does us good to have others.”
“If we go underground, will she do it?”
“I think she would, especially if I decide to as well. She’s seen a lot, enough to understand why this is so important.”
“It’s necessary, Steven. Not everyone agrees, but we have to become more militant about things.”
“Militant isn’t the word I would use. I think it’s important for those of us in academia to continue gathering information from the families of the missing. I know you say that you’ve been contacted by some … parent organization over the Researchers. But come on. I’ve been doing this for nearly ten years, and I haven’t heard of such a group.”
“The Researchers aren’t calling the shots. Don’t you realize someone … something.… is driving all our work? Sure, we Researchers share information, but something is connecting us, beyond a shared passion. All I know is that the call I received came from someone with the Corcillium, which, if you remember from Latin class, derives from corcillum, meaning ‘heart,’ as in ‘heart of the organization.’ This is a chance, Steven, to join the true mission. To go so far under the radar that no one can find us, especially not the Suits. They say it’s the only way we can move around the country without being recognized. And they said if you were interested, that you should come meet with them. I didn’t anticipate you insisting that your girlfriend come too.”
I shook off a surge of nausea, leaning into the door.
“You really think they’re monitoring us? The Suits?”
“Of course they are.” The man sounded weary. “They’re not stupid. They know we’re asking questions. They can dismiss us for only so long. This remote research is important, but it’s only scratching the surface. We would live among these people, spend time in their communities. Understand the commonalities that we have theories about. Live in all these places for a while, spending weeks, maybe months, in the locations of the disappearances. You said she can cook? That might be helpful.”
I was really fighting the urge to vomit. What is wrong with me? Is today the thirtieth? It is. I should have started last week.
I stepped back, my hand on my stomach. It’s been more than that. It’s been two weeks. I’m two weeks late.
“I’ll have to think hard about it. How do we know this isn’t a setup by the Suits? You think they may even have information … about what happened to my sister?”
“I think they’ve got information beyond anything we’ve ever known. Steven, they say there is more to the Argentum theory than what we know. But they made it clear over the phone: Once you’re in, you don’t get out. I’m ready for it.”
“I’m not sure. I know I want to be with her, and I think she’s more than ready to move on with her life.”
Navigating what I would later realize was my first bout of morning sickness, I teetered back to my car in the rain, not bothering to even pick up the umbrella. Steven was carrying it when he returned to his apartment, where I had gathered the few belongings I had recklessly left there.
“I found your umbrella outside the hotel door,” he said. “How much did you hear?”
Having already thrown up twice before his arrival, my tone was as cold as a January morning. I explained that no one would be taking me underground or anywhere away from my family and friends. I wasn’t going to live my life skulking from one remote location to the next. And how dare he talk about me like some kind of trophy girlfriend? And I certainly wasn’t going to cook for him or anyone in that underground world. This was goodbye.
He practically got down on his knees, begging for forgiveness; he said all he wanted to do was to protect me. That without me, he wouldn’t join whatever this secret organization within the Researchers was.
I leaned in close and said I never needed anyone’s protection in my life. From this moment on, he was no longer part of it. He’d helped me realize whom I needed to be with, and that was my husband.
He chased me down to my car, grabbing my arm and imploring me to listen. I snatched my arm away and slammed the door.
I drove away, and only allowed the tears to come when the sight of him standing in the rain and holding my unopened umbrella had vanished from my rearview mirror. I just can’t, Steven, I remember thinking. I just can’t raise a child in that world.
More than forty years later, I was coming back to him.
* * *
I flicked on my blinker in a startled realization that we had reached the exit. I swerved to make it, and saw with relief that Barbara was far enough behind that the sudden jerking of my car didn’t throw her.
I followed the ramp and crossed over the interstate, looking for the glowing Holiday Inn logo.
The green-and-white sign with the cursive capital H beamed in the dark, and I pulled into the circle drive. My heart was beating faster than I would have liked.
Barbara parked and stepped out of her car, looking tired. “He already has a room. 404. He’s waiting inside.”
Glass doors opened at our approach. The smell of steam-cleaned carpet and soap wafted through the lobby and stayed with us in the elevator, up to the fourth floor, and down the hallway. I didn’t have to ask if Barbara had a key.
A quick swipe, a beep, and Barbara motioned me in. “I’ll be down in the lobby,” she said, shutting the door. “I’ll give the two of you some privacy.”
I slowly walked in, past the bathroom and into the bedroom. The man sitting on the edge of the bed stood.
He wore a tan jacket of a style popular in the late 1990s, with a button-over collar and slightly too short sleeves. His jeans were from the same era as well, though his Reeboks were of this decade. His hair had gone completely gray, and he was shorter than I remembered. But he had become more handsome as he aged.
He pushed up his glasses from the side, not in the middle as he had done throughout our time together.
“Hello, Lynn.”
I breathed through the slight purse of my lips. “Hello, Steven.”
“You look good. Great, actually.”
“What do you know about the disappearance of my grandson?” I clutched my purse in both hands.
Steven blinked. “He … has my hair, or the color, at least, which didn’t last long after you left. And your oldest daughter looks just like my mother, from what I’ve seen in the papers and on TV—”
“My husband, Tom, is the father of my children and grandfather to our grandchildren.”
“I never had a chance to be Anne’s father.”
“Is that what this is about? Because if I need to beg for forgiveness, I’ll beg—if it means getting information about what happened to William.” I hated that my voice was cracking. “I want him back.”
“I wish I had him to give to you, Lynn. But I don’t.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Because I failed to keep a promise to your father, and now our grandson is gone because of it.”
“What are you talking about? My father? You didn’t know my father.”
He reached inside his coat and pulled out a yellowed envelope. “I never met your father. But I did know him.”
“You know nothing about my father.”
“You think it was by chance that your father, this landscaper, could pull strings at a university two states away and get you a job in the astronomy department, of all places? I got a call from a colleague in St. Louis who said he knew of a young woman looking for a job at the university, and that her father supported our work. What do you think that meant?”
“This is insane.”
“Read this.” He held out the envelope. “He only had one request of me, and I failed him. Please, Lynn.”
He held up the envelope to show the handwriting on the front. In Daddy’s bold, decisive letters, were Steven’s name and the address of the astronomy building.
I took the envelope and slowly opened it. The pages inside were rigid with age and still smelled faintly of pipe smoke.
Dear Dr. Richards,
I want to thank you for bringing Lynn into your fold. I am not at all surprised to hear that she is exceeding all of your expectations. My girl has always been remarkable.
I also want to thank you for so readily taking my phone call all those months ago. I didn’t know if you would, given that I had to limit my interactions with your peers for many years now.
I simply couldn’t risk what happened to my wife happening to Lynn.
Daddy’s words began to blur, and I blinked, holding the paper closer.
As I told you on the phone, Lynn doesn’t know the truth, and I honestly hoped she never would know. Yet I’ve always been plagued with guilt that she doesn’t know her own true story. When you become a father, all you ever want to do is protect your children. I thought that when she moved to Illinois, she would finally be safe. But I fear that one day she will return to our land, and I beg you, sir, to do everything in your power to keep that from happening. I am not a well man, and if it comes to it, you must explain to her why she must never move back. In order for her to understand why, you have to know what happened.
Lynn was five when they took her. There had been a wicked storm, and she and I were on the porch, watching the fireflies come out, late on an August evening. She wanted so desperately to chase them. I must have dozed off, and the next thing I knew, I awoke to a terrible light in the trees and ladybugs swarming everywhere. I couldn’t find Lynn, and when I went to look in the woods, I found her shoe. My wife, Freda, and I looked through the night. You have to remember how remote our home was then—we barely have neighbors now, almost twenty years later. There was no one to call for help that late.
My wife and I didn’t sleep, and I was preparing to head into town to find help the next morning when this man shows up. Dr. Rex Martin. He said he was a professor who lived in St. Louis and had received several reports from the area of power outages and lights coming from the heavens. I told him that all I cared about was finding my missing daughter. He calmly put his hand on my arm and said that my daughter was gone. But he thought he knew where she would be.
Those words would change my life. I would regain my daughter and lose my Freda.
What happened over the next six months is something that I still cannot fully comprehend. Where Dr. Martin led us, and what we found. Freda kept pushing us until we found Lynn. My brave, brave wife would never would stop. She sacrificed herself in the end so we could escape.
It is a story perhaps for another time. It’s still too painful for me to think about. In the end, I returned home with only my little girl.
I had to concoct two stories: that Lynn had gotten sick with a brain tumor and we took her to have it removed in St. Louis, and that Freda died of a sudden heart attack and was buried in her home state of Missouri. Of course, there was no surgery; nothing was ever removed from Lynn, but it was all I could come up with to explain our absence and Lynn’s lack of memory when we finally found her. And thanks to Dr. Martin, I was even able to produce forged medical records for Lynn and a death certificate for Freda. We were private country people with almost no family, so there weren’t many who even knew us well enough to mourn.
By the Grace of God, Lynn finally began to accept me as her father and relearned everything. If you didn’t know, you’d have thought she had a normal life. I’ve done everything in my power to give her one.
Even when Dr. Martin and others in your profession needed to come and study the woods and the location where all the people have vanished, I was hesitant. I let them come once and only once. I could not risk more. It cost Freda her life having to enter your world of secrets and shadows.
And now, the most important person in my world is in your care. I fear I will not live long enough to explain all this to her, and it’s why I felt better about deceiving her into thinking she was getting a job in the agriculture department. I need you to teach her what you know about the missing, and if I don’t survive, explain to her why she cannot return to our home.
She will fight you on this. This is our land, and Lynn is a homebody. She sees Illinois as a temporary location, but it must become more than that. Dr. Martin believes the devils come back from time to time, and I cannot risk the possibility that she could be taken again.
She will be stubborn. Her husband, Tom, is a good boy, but he too will have difficulty believing all this, so you must start with her. She is deeply rooted in reality, as am I. I wish I could go back to the beliefs I had before this, where the only purpose of the stars was to bring us light in the dark. Now I cannot look too long into the heavens for fear of what I might see.
Sincerely,
Bud Stanson
I read the letter twice. I wanted to find a chair and collapse into it.
It couldn’t be. Not me. That happened to all those other people whose disappearances I’d researched.
Not me.
But it explained the bell. The day he entered the woods with the strangers. Why he could never speak of my mother. His last words to me not to raise my children near the woods. I tried to fold the letter up and place it back in the envelope, but my hands were shaking too hard.
“How could you have kept this from me?”
“Because I was angry. You broke my heart. I realize now that I was a self-involved, self-important jerk. Your father wanted you to know about what happened to you on your own terms. I intended for you to learn it either from him or, in time, from me. And when you left me and I found out you returned home, I assumed your father would tell you, and you would come back to me. When you didn’t, I thought you had made your choice.”
“My choice?” I held up the letter. “My father couldn’t speak when I moved back home. He couldn’t explain this to me. I settled there. I raised my family there. And they were all in danger! You let this happen!”
“I know that.” He took a step towards me. “It’s all my fault. I even tried telling you, so many times. All those years ago, you asked me how we could keep encouraging families, telling them that sometimes the abducted come back. But how do you explain to the woman you love that of all the missing we were researching, she was the only one who ever did?“
“That’s what I was, wasn’t I? A test case,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “The Researchers who constantly peppered me with questions—they just really wanted to ask if I remembered anything about being abducted. You all were studying me. I was a glorified test subject—”
“No. You were never that. We all had fallen in love with you—”
I placed Daddy’s letter in my purse. “I should have never trusted you.”
“It’s why I had to go into hiding. They know that I know.”
“I don’t even care to know who they are.”
“Your husband’s employer.”
He took off his glasses and rubbed between his eyes. “When I first heard that your—our—grandson had vanished, I immediately feared the worst. I knew if I suddenly showed up, after all these years, with a wild story of you being abducted as well, it would have made an already bad situation worse. But I had to do something. I started with downloading the maps of your property, so I could know where to start searching. That was my first mistake. Not two hours later, I was summoned to the office of our esteemed dean, who promptly fired me for using university equipment for personal use. An anonymous tipster, he said, had alerted him. I was escorted out and blocked from all my work. I rushed home to find FBI agents carrying all my belongings out of my house.
“It was no coincidence. I should have known they would be monitoring any outside internet searches. Especially from anyone who worked in astronomy. So I had to run, with only the shirt on my back. And when you’re my age, that’s not easy. I couldn’t contact you or anyone. Even getting cash out of an ATM was out of the question, since they were monitoring that too.”
“Steven, please—“
“It’s vital that you know how far they’ll go, Lynn, because of what I’m about to tell you. If it hadn’t been for the Corcillium, I wouldn’t have been able to even find out about the other missing people from your property.”
“Corcillium—?” I asked, and then stopped. I knew the name. I’d heard it, all those years ago, when that Researcher had tried to convince Steven to take me deep into what he had called the underground.
“Consider them … a board, of sorts, that governs the Researchers’ work. I knew someone was distributing information to us, but I never knew who. I was so destitute that I was living in a homeless shelter when they found me. They not only rescued me, but their resources allowed me to find out about the others abducted from your woods. It took me some time, but once I had the information, I immediately headed for Nashville. When I reached out to Barbara, she told me that you’d come searching for me first. As soon as I heard about William, I wanted to come to you. But you know the danger. There was a time when you came face-to-face with the Suits yourself.”
“I don’t live in that world anymore. I was young and naïve and, frankly, desperate for anything that would have saved me from my marriage at the time. You could have been doing research into chimpanzees and empowered me like you did, and I would have thrown myself into that too.”
“I don’t believe that. It took you a few months to figure out the climate patterns and the commonalities in these cases when it took me years to realize them. You could have done anything with your life.”
“You know nothing about my life.”
“Listen: I think I know where William is.”
“He’s still alive?” I asked, a twinge of hope swelling in my chest.
He nodded. “What I’ve learned from the Corcillium in just the past few months makes me believe we can find him. But Lynn, there are risks—”
“Steven, please. You owe it to my father to tell me. Tell me what you know—”
“We go together, then. I’ll tell you everything when we get in the car,” he responded, looking around the room. “I don’t dare say much more here, as I’ve come to learn they have ways to monitor everything—”
“Tell me now. Right now.”
“I’m not talking about losing a job and having all your property seized by the government. No one has returned alive from where we’re going. But I want to find William too—”
The door suddenly beeped and Barbara pushed through. “Jesus, Steven, they’re here! They’re all wearing FBI jackets, coming up the stairs.”
“What?” he asked, now angrily scanning the room. “Dammit, I knew it!”
“They’re coming now!”
“Go out the back stairs and take your car, like we talked about. Take it and run. Now, Barbara!” Steven ordered.
“Come with me,” she pleaded.
“I’ll be right behind you,”
She gave us one last, fleeting look before running out.
“What’s going on?”
Steven rummaged through his duffel bag and brought out a folded-over envelope. He leaned in close and whispered softly, “Put this in your purse.”
“What is this?”
“Look for your star.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand—”
“Lynn, the Argentum theory—“
The door thudded. A second later, it smashed open, and agents dressed in SWAT jackets swarmed in. Steven moved past me, holding up his hands.
“You got me, OK? You got me. Don’t hurt her.”
“We have no intention of hurting her,” one of the agents said, seizing Steven and cuffing him.
“Dr. Richards, you are under arrest on a charge of domestic terrorism and kidnapping,” declared another agent, her voice muffled under the full protective mask she and the others wore. “Where is William Chance?”
“This won’t silence me,” Steven grunted, grimacing in pain. “Don’t believe them, Lynn!”
They turned him around, and he twisted back to me. “Remember what I told you!”
The agents forced him out the door and into the hall. He stumbled, and they yanked him around the corner.
I started to follow. “Please, don’t—”
“Mrs. Roseworth, I’m so sorry,” said the female agent, her ponytail now loose from where it was tucked into her shirt. “Are you all right?”
I nodded once. “I’m sorry it came to this. We had to follow you until Dr. Richards could be found. We knew he would, at some point, reach out to you. Senator Roseworth said you used to work for him.”
“My husband knows?” I asked, dazed.
“He does as of tonight, when we told him we were moving in. I want you to know we’re going to find that woman, his accomplice. We’re tracking her now. She may know the location of your grandson. Let’s go, your family is anxious to see you.”
She took off her mask, and slipped a cigarette between her lips. I blinked in recognition.
“I know you don’t like cigarette smoke.”
“But you’re Tom’s press person,” I stammered, thinking that it wasn’t that long ago when she sat at my kitchen table. “Why are you wearing an FBI jacket?”
“Let’s get you home,” she said, sneaking a quick drag and gently taking my arm.