Deviant (24 page)

She started with the familiar orange social work file: #50837. She flipped to the back, leafing through the small pieces of paper with names and numbers on them.

GP appointment.
Boring
. Education Board.
Boring
. It angered her that she’d been deprived of all that, especially in all the insanity surrounding her departure from Scotland, but the worst by far was the last scrap of paper she found.

For: Abigail Thom

From: (Refused to give name. Male.)

Tel: (Not given, but did 1471 to retrieve – 555 78450234)

Message: Mother gravely ill, requests Abigail visit at Western Infirmary. Urgent
.

So it wasn’t the hospital who’d phoned. It was someone else. And Unqualified Asshole hadn’t told her about this message. Useless prick. Without pausing to think, she used Becky’s phone to dial the UK telephone number.

An interminable
buzz-buzz
followed with a dull: “Hullo?”

“This is Abigail Thom,” she said. “I’m ringing because someone left a message for me using this telephone number.”

She waited through the long pause. Perhaps the person didn’t live there anymore. Perhaps the message was from someone at the hospital after all.

“Abigail?” a man’s voice finally said. “Is that really you?”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name’s Harry. Harry Belwood. You don’t know me, but oh, I know you. Sophie’s little Abi. Where are you? Are you okay?”

“How do you know me?” she pressed.

“I’m …” He hesitated. “Your mother was the love of my life.”

With that, he started jabbering, revelation after revelation, each more confessional than the last. But it wasn’t that her mother had been in a long-term, loving relationship that shattered Abigail’s view of her past. It wasn’t that the couple had lived a quiet life together on a disused quarry in the Scottish Borders for fifteen years. Or that this man was the “Next of Kin” who had requested Sophie’s ashes, and scattered them in the Holy Loch. Or that he was the blond man she’d seen at the funeral. It was how he finished: “She thought about nothing but you and Becky, all her life.”

Abigail couldn’t answer. She squeezed her eyes shut. Then she breathed. “Yeah, well how was I supposed to know that, Harry?”

“She was consumed with grief and worry. She was in danger. She knew she couldn’t make contact with either of you, for your own safety. It killed her, every day.”

“Well, why didn’t
you
get in touch?”

“Sophie begged me not to,” Harry said.

Abigail nodded. Her throat was too tight to speak.

“Sophie never misled me, so I promised,” Harry said. He was crying, too, now.

“I have to go.” Abigail was desperate to find out more, but the clock was ticking. She just couldn’t stay on the phone.
“But before I do, I have to tell you something. Something really awful … Becky died. Suicide, they say, but I don’t think that’s what happened.”

“What! Oh, God, no.” His voice quavered. “I’m coming over.”

“No, don’t come, not yet,” she warned. “But tell me something, did Sophie say why we might be in danger?”

“No. I knew better than to press her.”

“So you haven’t heard of the Granoch Group?”

“The what?”

“Have you ever heard of PA23?”

“Is it a postcode?”

“Okay, forget I said anything,” Abigail muttered. Sophie had shielded Harry as she had her daughters. He knew nothing. Sophie protected those she’d loved from certain danger.

“Tell me, what’s going on?” he insisted.

“I don’t know. Not yet. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. It’s not safe now. Don’t tell anyone you spoke to me. Don’t try and call me. Delete all records of this call.”

God, she sounded just like Stick did last time they’d spoken on the phone.

I
T TOOK A FEW
moments to compose herself, but she managed. She had to. For Stick and for Becky, so their lives wouldn’t be lost in vain, like all the wasted lives at No Life and every other nightmare hellhole she’d endured. After a few deep breaths, she sat down and stared at the evidence before her. Many years ago, back at the Glasgow library where she’d hidden from life,
Abigail had taken a “Visual Illusions” book—and spent a day staring at the shapes on the pages until the face or the shape or the light-change jumped out at her. She used the same skill here, staring at the information on the flip charts …

At the letter from her mother.

At the table about the sample group in Granoch.

At the PA23 drink, at Joe’s face, at the MMR shot he received much too late in life.

At the Graffiti Tease paintings.

At her iPhone.

At The Book of Remembrance.

She thought about everything that had happened since she came to LA: Becky, Stick, Grahame, Melanie.
Joe
. She stared. She detached herself, as Joe had been detached. She focused.

Then, quite suddenly, the pieces came together. The shape she’d waited for had formed. It was obvious and clear, as clear as the sunlight pouring through the Winnebago windows.

I
N ONLY A FEW
minutes, Abigail had assumed head cop in this investigation. Even Bren’s father seemed okay with it. She stood before the McDowell family, pointing to the flip charts.

“Okay, so this is what I think: my father and Stick’s father are part of Granoch. They tested PA23 on young people in Scotland in 1996. My mum knew and disapproved. It was illegal, so they had to shut her up. They must have threatened to hurt her, and me and Becky, and made up the paranoid schizophrenia story. They waited years to be sure the drug worked. The sample group turned out to be law-abiding and conformist
adults, just as they hoped. Seventeen years later, they decided to roll it out in the United States. Stick and Becky cottoned on. They were going to tell the world, to stop it. Graffiti Tease was their way of doing it …”

Abigail’s voice caught.
Idiot kids
, she thought.
Stupid, beautiful, spoiled, misguided idiot kids. No idea about how cold and ugly the world really is
.

She grabbed a barbeque fork from the tiny Winnebago sink and waved it at the papers stuck to the wall. “But Granoch found out about what they were up to. Grahame was monitoring her. They killed Becky so she wouldn’t interfere. They already had a plan to give it out to the Juvies. They disguised it with an MMR shot. One of the Graffiti Tease kids, a good friend of Becky’s, Joe Dixon, was one of the first to have it. He was behind the art, behind the whole campaign. He was a
genius
with his graffiti. And I saw him after. He was like a zombie. All that talent and drive, it was gone.”

She paused and put the barbecue fork down. “That’s all I know.” She took the breath she desperately needed, paused, and looked at Bren. His mouth was half open. Grace was sickly white. Craig’s temple was twitching.

“Does it make sense?” she asked, as much of herself as of Bren’s family. “I mean, does it make sense Grahame would kill his own child? Who would
do
that?”

“Somebody who doesn’t love their own child,” Bren answered.

“My God,” his mother and father whispered at the same time.

“So what are we going to do?” Bren asked.

Abigail lifted the Book of Remembrance and turned to the
page where she’d glued the deathbed letter her mother had written at the Western Infirmary. She touched the signature at the bottom, which she thought her mother had misspelled. Moving her finger gently over the two words, she whispered, “
Stophie Them.”
It was only when she spoke the words out loud that she allowed herself to accept their message.

She looked up, no longer afraid or angry, but fiercely determined.

“We’re going to do what my mother wanted all along.”

A
BIGAIL COULDN
’
T HAVE ASKED
for better allies than Gracie and Craig. She decided that she wouldn’t think about her misinterpretation of Bren and what he thought that their relationship might be or could be. Bren wanted to protect her; that was all that mattered. Craig eventually even convinced her that calling the police was a bad idea. If Grahame had connections in Immigration at LAX, he might have connections with the LAPD, too.

Craig dialed an old university pal at Interpol whom he trusted implicitly. Within minutes, they had traced the number plate of the black car that had chased Abigail and Stick: 4DMSP38. As suspected, it turned out to be a company car, registered to GJ Prebiotics. Abigail waited for Craig to add any word of Stick—news of seventeen-year-old Matthew Howard being pulled from the Venice canals, dead or alive. But there was no word, not among the news or the authorities. Craig hung up the phone with a sigh.

“We have to find a way to stop Granoch,” Abigail said.

“How are we going to do that?” Bren asked in a dry voice. “You do realize that you might as well have said, ‘We should establish world peace.’ ”

She couldn’t tell if Bren were more frightened than the rest of them, or just annoyed that Abigail’s priority was Stick. But it didn’t matter. The last thing she wanted to do was put another friend in danger. And that’s what Bren was above all else: a friend.

“Maybe we should drop you somewhere safe,” Gracie suggested, as if reading Abigail’s mind. “Like Uncle Jamie’s.”

“Why, you don’t think I’m tough enough?” Bren demanded.

“Of course not,” Craig said. “But this is dangerous.”

“I
know
.” Bren crossed his arms in front of him.

Abigail felt a twinge of guilt. She’d incorrectly assumed he was gay; now she assumed he’d be scared.

“First things first,” she said. “Let’s find out what happened to Stick.”

I
T WAS A TWO-HOUR
drive back to Los Angeles. They were low on gasoline, so Craig stopped at the first service station en route.

“You need anything?” Bren asked.

She shook her head.

When the others left the Winnebago, Abigail picked up Becky’s iPhone, keyed in the pin, and opened the video montage. Her sister’s face filled the screen. Becky was wearing the same plain white T-shirt Abigail was wearing now. As much as it pained Abigail to watch, a weight had been lifted. Becky hadn’t killed herself. She hadn’t orchestrated the fast-forward
bonding day because she knew it was going to be her last. She simply wanted Abigail to become a part of her life as quickly as possible. Abigail wasn’t to blame. Of course, the truth was far darker than that initial suspicion. Becky had been murdered—either by Grahame or by his colleagues.

Abigail switched off the phone and shoved it in her pocket. She glanced out the window. Bren’s parents were standing in line at the counter. Gracie wrapped her arm around her husband’s shoulder. The gesture was thoughtless, familiar, and loving all at once. It occurred to Abigail that she’d never actually seen a committed couple in real life, a
lifelong
couple. Gracie and Craig didn’t get along all the time; the dynamic was hardly perfect, but their devotion was solid and unspoken. It just
was
. As was their love for their son. The couples at the commune preached love, but that love was fragile and overdramatic, the devotion fleeting.

The door flew open.

“Bren, when did your parents meet?” Abigail asked.

It wasn’t Bren. It was a man in a dark suit. Abigail tried to scream, but he clamped a cloth over her mouth and nose before she could move. An overpowering stench filled her nostrils, a combination at odds with itself: disinfectant and rotten garbage. Another man appeared behind him and darted for her legs. Her last thought as they dragged her from the Winnebago was
I’m either being killed or knocked unconscious
. Then there was only darkness.

Abigail first noticed the pain in her arms. She couldn’t move them. Everything else seemed like television interference. She tried to speak.
Is there someone there? Where am I?
Her mouth was dry, stretched, stuffed. If only she could make a sound. And the thirst. She needed water.

“Don’t be scared.” A wobbly figure appeared through the fuzz.

It was a man.

Her arms tensed. She tried to kick. She couldn’t move her legs, either. Her limbs were bound.
Jesus Christ
. She was gagged and tied to a chair. Her underside ached. What had happened? What was her last clear memory? Two men had taken her. Suffocated her with a smelly cloth. She’d been kidnapped. And now a man was standing over her. Abigail tried to scream through the gag. A muted growl was all she managed. She bit at it, gnawed. There was no getting through the thick cotton material.

“I mean it, Abigail,” the man continued.

Grahame
. Of course. Who else?

“There really is nothing to worry about.” The fuzziness cleared. He turned to someone across the room. “Go on, tell her …”

“There really is nothing to worry about,” another voice confirmed.

Her heart pounded, filling her ears with a rapid
thump-thump-thump
. She looked to her right: nothing but a closed door. Ahead, past her father: a desk, with a small box on it. To the left: Dennis Howard, Stick’s father, who nodded sadly. His eyes were bloodshot, his features drawn, haggard, and pained. She searched that terrible face for an answer and got it.