“Orla would not have been easy to carry,” Hazel interrupted.
“I agree, but if we assume she vanished from Birch Park, he didn’t have to worry about other hikers. That place is empty most of the time. So he didn’t have to move as fast. If she was hard to carry, he could take breaks. And she might have gotten in his car willingly.”
Hazel frowned.
She wanted to disagree, but Orla was not a suspicious person by nature.
Chapter 21
Orla
The familiar bottle of sodium thiopental, or truth serum as Crow called it, stood on the metal table near the bed.
Crow sat in a wooden chair, watching Orla.
“What time is it?” Orla asked.
“The time is not relevant.”
Orla screwed her eyes shut and tried not to scream. They’d been sitting in the room for a long time. Crow rarely spoke to her until the medicine had plenty of time to enter her system.
“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.
He glanced at his watch.
“I’m a doctor.”
Orla scoffed and turned her head away, preferring to stare at the wall rather than Crow’s cold eyes.
“When did you first experience impressions with your hands?”
Orla pressed her lips together, tried not to hear him. For several seconds it worked, and she didn’t speak.
He snapped his fingers and without intention, the words poured out.
“I was four.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No.”
Again, she pressed her lips together.
He stood and marched to the table, took her chin in his hand and jerked it toward him.
“You have no idea what I could do to you in here, Orla. Do you understand? As far as the world knows, you’re gone. You belong to me.”
Rage bubbled in her stomach. It rose hot and acrid into her diaphragm. She clenched her hands into fists and imagined wrenching them up, grabbing his head in her hands and tearing the eyes from his head.
He seemed to recognize the anger in her face, and a small smile spread across his mouth.
He slipped an object into her bare hand.
Before she could drop it, an image of her father emerged in her mind. He held flyers in his hand, his heart heavy, his hands shaking as he lifted the pages, gazed at his daughter’s face, and stapled the paper to a telephone pole.
Orla lifted from the bed, straining into her elbows, crushing the paper in her hand. She sagged back, head flopped down, heart thudding.
Crow opened her fingers and removed the page.
“Anger amplifies the impressions, doesn’t it?”
She turned her head away. The tears she’d held back earlier poured over her cheeks. She wanted her father, to lean into his broad torso and his big arms. She wanted to smell his Teak aftershave with the sweat and dirt combination of a day on the job. He would kill this doctor. If she ever escaped and told him what happened, he would crush the man’s head beneath his boot.
Orla snorted laughter, and the doctor stepped away.
He eyed her wearily.
The door opened, and Ben shuffled in holding a tray in his hands. Orla gaped at a piece of toast and a glass of water.
Her stomach cramped at the sight. She hadn’t eaten since the morning before.
“Are you hungry?” Crow asked. “Of course you are. And after you answer my questions, you shall have breakfast.”
“Fruit,” Orla said, staring hungrily at the toast. “I want an apple.”
Crow sat back in his chair, leaving Ben to fidget by the door.
“A request?” He laughed, but the sound was humorless and cruel. “An apple must be earned.”
He turned to Ben.
“Leave. Come back in an hour with an apple. We’ll see if she earns it.”
Ben backed from the room.
Dismayed, Orla watched the toast disappear from view.
“Tell me about your first impression through your hands.”
Orla closed her eyes and sighed. The answer came easily, she’d recalled it many times over the years. The challenge was offering up such a vulnerable part of herself to this man.
“I had pneumonia, and they hospitalized me for three days. I don’t remember the sickness. My dad said I nearly died. When I woke up, my mother was beside me, crying and praying. She put a wooden cross in my hand. I saw…” Orla pressed her eyes tighter, the memory making her miss her mother. “I saw a robed man waving incense over the cross. My mom was kneeling beside him. I felt how her knees hurt against the prie-dieu, the prayer bench. I tried to tell her about the vision, but she just cried and shook her head and lay across me.”
“Did you tell anyone else?”
Orla bit her lip. She remembered stepping into the confessional in her family’s church. Father Flannery had listened to her story, reminded her of the common fever dreams of illness, and assured her not to give it another thought.
“I told our priest. He said I was dreaming. But then it happened again.”
“How soon after the first occurrence?”
“I don’t know, a week or two. My parents took me to the park. Some kids were playing ball, and it rolled over to us. I picked it up and saw Andy, the kid who owned the ball, getting hit in the back with it. When he did something bad, his dad threw the ball at his back over and over to punish him.”
Crow took notes as she spoke, somehow filling the page with her scant words.
“And you told your parents?”
“Yes.”
“What did they say?”
“My mom pretended she didn’t hear me. My dad didn’t know what to do. He put us in the car, and we went home.”
“Did you ever undergo medical testing?”
Orla gazed at him, confused.
“In a laboratory, where they questioned you about the abilities while checking heart rate and other vitals?”
Orla shook her head.
“It became a secret. My mom made me gloves. I learned to control it.”
“Someone taught you to control it?”
“No. Every time I told someone about the experience, they either didn’t believe me, or it turned out poorly. I learned to keep my mouth shut and wear my gloves. If I didn’t wear the gloves, I learned to ignore the impressions.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how,” she snapped. Her stomach growled.
“And you’ve never used the gift for your own benefit?” Crow’s voice rose as he spoke.
“How so?”
“I can think of many ways, but let’s start with blackmail. I’m sure you learned dark, secret things about people. Did you ever use that information to attain money or favors?”
Orla frowned.
“I’m not a thief.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“I’m also not a morally shallow bitch.”
Crow gazed at her steadily.
“But you wanted to, didn’t you, Orla? All that power, literally at your fingertips…”
Orla glared at him. No, she hadn’t wanted to. It had never crossed her mind to use the knowledge to control people, but this man wanted to.
Chapter 22
Hazel
Hazel didn’t bother to muffle her cries as she watched Abe pull into the driveway and climb from his car.
“Today is my mother’s birthday,” she sniffed. She wiped her eyes with the hankie she’d brought into the garden. She sat next to a pile of weeds, gazing at their tangled roots.