Chapter 7 - THE LOCKED WARD
Millbrook sat behind rusted gates and dead trees.
The building looked abandoned.
It wasn’t.
A light burned on the third floor.
Clara led us through a service tunnel behind the old laundry building.
“You came here often?”
“Years ago.”
“To see Lily?”
“To bring medication.”
I stopped walking.
“You drugged my sister?”
Clara turned.
“I delivered boxes. I didn’t know what was inside at first.”
“And when you learned?”
Her eyes filled.
“I stopped.”
Lily’s voice echoed in my head.
You saw me tied up.
There would be time for rage later.
We moved.
Mara had two officers with us.
Inside, the place smelled like bleach and mold.
Old patient rooms lined the hallway.
Some still had mattresses.
One had fingernail scratches beside the door.
I tried not to imagine Lily making them.
Then we heard shouting upstairs.
We ran.
A man stepped from a doorway.
Dr. Bell.
He looked older.
Smaller.
But I recognized him immediately.
“William.”
I punched him.
Mara shouted my name.
Bell fell against the wall.
“That was for the concussion treatment.”
He wiped blood from his mouth.
“Your father saved your life.”
“He destroyed Lily’s.”
“No. Lily destroyed herself.”
A scream came from farther down the corridor.
My sister.
I ran.
Evan stood outside a locked room.
He raised a gun.
Mara fired first.
The bullet hit his shoulder.
He spun and collapsed.
I kicked the room open.
Lily sat strapped to a chair.
A syringe rested on a metal tray beside her.
I tore off the restraints.
She grabbed me.
“I thought they were going to move me again.”
“Never again.”
Dr. Bell started laughing behind us.
“You still don’t understand.”
I turned.
Mara had him handcuffed.
“What?”
“You think Thomas did all this because Lily found some stolen money?”
Bell shook his head.
“Money was the least of it.”
Lily stood unsteadily.
“Shut up.”
Bell smiled at her.
“You never told your brother?”
“Told me what?”
Lily looked away.
Bell said it anyway.
“Your father didn’t choose you randomly, William.”
“What does that mean?”
“He needed you confused.”
“Why?”
“Because you saw what happened before Lily disappeared.”
My head started throbbing.
A fragment came back.
My mother screaming.
Blood on a stair.
My father dragging something.
No.
Someone.
I pressed my hands to my temples.
Bell watched me carefully.
“The medication worked better than we expected.”
“What did I see?”
Lily started crying.
“William, please.”
“What did I see?”
She whispered, “Dad killed someone.”
The hallway went silent.
“Who?”
Lily’s eyes met mine.
“Uncle David.”
My father’s younger brother.
The man I had been told died in a drunk-driving accident.
May you like
Bell smiled.
“And you helped move the body.”
