INK: Vanishing Point (Book 2) (17 page)

“How do I get out of here?”
I demand, but seeing where I am doesn’t make it any better; as
a matter of fact I think it may have made it worse.

“Why would you want to leave so
soon? There is so much here for you,” he says, running one
finger down my cheek. I’m taken by surprise that he feels soft
like velvet. A feeling of nausea runs through me in the wake of his
touch.

“Because I don’t know this
place. I want to go home.” My weakness bleeds through.

“Your pain, it’s gone?”
he asks, tilting his head quizzically.

I rest my hand on my chest, realizing
the pain in my soul has subsided, but I’m not convinced it
hasn’t just been replaced by fear.

“I want to go back,” I
insist, as though this thing can be reasoned with.

“You may not, and you would do
well to be as gracious a guest as I am a host.” He turns his
shadowy back to me.

“But I don’t want to be
here.” My mind finally kicks in. This must be one of my dreams,
and I can control it. If only I can find the trigger to get out it’ll
be fine, and my eyes will open at Eli’s.

“You are an ungrateful little
wench. How dare you rebuke my hospitality?” His voice booms
through the forest. “You’ve given me life. In return,
I’ve given you everything. We are meant to be together, whole.”
He looks over his shoulder at me, awaiting an answer.

“You have given me
nothing
.”
My anger is brewing fast in my gut. “You have taken everything
important to me. I didn’t know then, but I do now.” I
take two bold steps toward him. “It was never my intention to
do anything with you other than draw you. You were never real; you
were only ever a nightmare.” I move two more steps toward him,
not sure what I’m going to do when I reach him. I don’t
exactly have a weapon or anything really.

He stands unmoving without turning or
speaking. My hands ball into fists at my sides. I stomp the rest of
the way to where he’s standing and wheel him around. A scream
spills from my lips. I see that the shadow I’ve been talking to
is not the Specter, but Kevin hanging from a tree. I don’t know
when my eyes were deceived, but I’m instantly filled with
sickness and despair. His eyes are intact, which puzzles me, but
there is a hole in his chest where his heart should be.

To control the nausea, I look away.
Slowly I back away from Kevin, looking around to find an escape.
There’s nothing for me to see that would give the slightest
hint of an exit. The doors to this place wouldn’t be marked in
big red neon signs. My thoughts wax mundane as though this line of
thought will help me deduce a way out of here.

The only logical thing I can do is walk
– carefully.

Harry

The entire way over here I’ve been
trying to come up with a way to ask Eli what I need to know. He’ll
appreciate it if I’m direct with him. There’s also too
much on this video for me to be dancing around what I saw.

When the knob doesn’t turn, I ring
the bell two times quickly, and Eli takes his time getting to the
door. He greets me sleepily; he’s a damn mess, but at least he
doesn’t smell like booze.

“Hey Harry, come on in.” Eli
leads me through the foyer.

“How’s Shayleigh?”

“She’s asleep.” He
sits down hard on the couch, letting his head fall backward. “In
the guest room.”

“Thanks for that, Eli; she’s
having a hard time keeping things straight, so this will help
complicate things less.” Honestly I’m relieved, and I’m
hoping she’ll come home with me tonight.

“I know she is. I could hear her
screaming earlier. I’ve never heard her so upset like that. It
was bad,” he says, and his voice is heavy with something I
can’t quite put my finger on.

“Where is Carl?” I notice
his absence.

“He took off running down the
street. Something about needing to get away from her pain.” His
tone is sarcastic as he waves his hand in the air dismissively.

“That’s good,” I
answer, heading into Eli’s office. “We’ve got some
videos to watch.”

Eli looks at me curiously. “What
did you find?”

“You know I found some video that
clears Shayleigh of the Ringgold murder.” I put the thumb drive
marked “traffic cam” on Eli’s desk.

“Right and that’s a good
thing; what else do you have there?” He’s intrigued by
the other drive I’m holding in my hand.

“This is the hotel lobby the night
of the murder.” I’m watching him closely for his
reaction.

“I thought we’ve seen it,
that she wasn’t accounted for during the target times.”
He scratches his head while waiting for the computer to boot up.

“It’s not her on the video.”
I really don’t want to plant any suggestions in his head; he
needs to draw his own conclusion when he sees this.

He raises one eyebrow, takes the drive
from me and slides it into the computer. It boots up, and I reference
the time stamps of interest I have written down on my folder. “Okay,
go to eighteen forty.”

Eli clicks the mouse to find the spot.
“Freeze it or let it run?”

“Let it run, then go to nineteen
fifty-five.”

We watch the tape closely; I really hope
that I’m going to see something different this time, but I know
I’m not. Aiden crosses the lobby from the elevators and out the
front door of the hotel.

“That’s Aiden; he said he
didn’t leave the room. That he wanted to be there in case she
came back.” Eli looks up at me from his chair, his brows knit
together in confusion.

“Yes, I know that’s what he
said, but that’s not what he did.” My lips pull into a
thin line; and there is regret building in me at the implications.

“But this doesn’t prove
anything. It just proves Aiden lied about staying in the room,”
Eli questions.

“Forward to nineteen fifty-five.”

Eli grabs the arrow with his mouse and
lets the video run again. “There’s Aiden again coming
back. He was gone for an hour and ten minutes, so what’s the
big deal?”

“Pull the frame from him walking
out the door.” I pause while he does it. “Now look at the
frame when he’s getting on the elevator.”

Eli studies them side by side for a long
moment. When he sees it, he sucks in a sharp breath. “Holy
shit, Harry, what did he do with the backpack?”

“That’s one of the questions
I’d like to have answered about the videos. Why Aiden left the
hotel with a backpack, lied about leaving and then came back
without
the backpack.”

“It doesn’t make sense;
maybe he put it in the truck.” Eli doesn’t want to
believe it either. As much as I don’t like Aiden, I never
pegged him as a killer.

“No, I checked the cameras in the
parking garage. He never went to the truck during the time frame.”

“Jesus Christ, what are you
thinking? Are you thinking Aiden disposed of evidence?” Eli’s
tone is full of doubt.

“Yes, I do think that’s what
happened. Leaving only the possibility that he killed Gary and
Alice.”

Eli’s eyes round out in horror,
“No, Harry. Why would he do that? He had no reason to.”

“This isn’t the kind of
murder scene you can associate with ‘reason’ or even
‘motive.’” That’s the truth. This wasn’t
a crime of passion; this was an exploration of power.

“There has to be another
explanation.” Eli can’t wrap his brain around it.

His reaction is putting me somewhat at
ease, considering the next part of the images I uncovered. He appears
to be really horrified by all of this, but not in the way a sociopath
would react to someone stealing their kill.

“There’s more, Eli. Go to
one fifteen the next day.” Eli complies and ends up at the
point in the video where he entered the hotel.

“Yeah, that’s when I got
there because Aiden had lost her,” he says, pointing at himself
on the screen.

“Pull the image and blow it up.”

He does, and there’s a wide angle
image of him on the computer; it’s pixilated, but I can still
see what I need
him
to see.

“Okay, that’s me.” He
shrugs.

I lean in closer to the screen to point
out multiple dark spots on his dress shirt. “What is that on
your shirt?”

Eli squints, studying the image. “Its
blood. Aiden and I got into a fight at the hotel room, remember?”

“Eli, this was you arriving at the
hotel, not leaving. You hadn’t had the fight with Aiden yet. So
answer me, what is that on your shirt?” My tone hardens with
the desire for him to have a reasonable explanation.

Eli nervously runs his fingers through
his hair, shaking his head. “Harry, I don’t know, I have
no idea. Maybe I spilled something on my shirt? This is in black and
white, so I can’t even tell what color it is.”

“Where is the shirt?” I ask,
trying not to make it sound like a demand.

“I threw it away. It was ripped
and had blood on it.” He doesn’t mean it to sound
defensive. A look of panic falls across his features.

“Eli, what was on your shirt?”
I ask him in an even tone.

“Harry, I don’t know what it
is.” He looks up at me from his desk.

“Go through your day; you know how
to do this,” I coax him.

“We had the meeting, I had to go
into the office, and I went to Shay’s.” He pauses for a
moment, his eyes darting around trying to capture the memory. “Came
home, got into it with Jerry and Taffy. Threw them both out...”
He releases a heavy sigh. “I dropped Taffy off after the
argument. And when I couldn’t get Aiden or Shay back on the
phone, I drove out to Tampa.”

“You had a fight with Taffy?”
I don’t like where this is going.

“Yes, she begged me to let her
stay; she said that she was going to be homeless.” He rests his
head in his hands. “Harry, I feel responsible for her death. If
I had let her stay, she might still be alive.”

Shay

Time lives in the anonymous darkness,
neither seeming to move forward or stand still. After attempting to
will myself home, or awake, I feel around the trees for some secret
panel in hopes of opening a curtain or door to get out. After walking
for what feels like days, hopelessness sets in. Even though I’m
trapped in the Specter’s demented playground, I’ve grown
used to being here. I don’t know how. The fear in me has found
a quiet calm, as though it knows how useless it is. I’m not
sure if it’s the eerie stillness, or exhaustion. My eyes are
tired from straining in the dark. It smells like mold, sulfur and
rotting death. My feet hurt from walking over the stumps and tree
roots with no shoes. I’d almost forgotten the fact that I had
no shoes. Almost.

I have to sit, my lids feel heavy and I
can’t take one more step. My thoughts fill with the visions of
the beach and Ryker’s Park, and I realize my eyes are open.
It’s twisted, dirty and dark, but that’s the dock. My
first inclination is to rush to it, but I decide a slow careful
approach would be more prudent given my current circumstances. Each
step is cautious, waiting for the boards below me to fall away
dropping me into the quagmire that looks like flowing crude oil
instead of water. My fists ball up tight in the tattered tails of my
shirt. Eli’s shirt.

The shape of someone sitting at the end
of the dock comes into focus. I start to walk partially sideways, for
some reason thinking this will make me more stealthy or safe. There’s
a man sitting there looking out onto the black waters. With each
step, the man’s form becomes more solid. From just a few steps
away I study him; he doesn’t turn toward me so I can only
assume he doesn’t hear me. He is old and definitely not
healthy.

To get a better look at him I crane my
neck around. His face comes into view and I stumble back a step at
what I’m seeing. “Oliver?”

He turns quickly at the sound of my
voice. “Shay? What are you doing here?”

He has aged even from when I saw him at
his funeral; but how is that possible? He pushes himself up off the
dock to stand and meet me. “Oliver, the question is what are
you
doing here? How long have you been here?” To comfort him I wrap
my arms around him.

When I pull him in tight, he sighs into
my ear. “Shay.”

The feeling is a little strange; this is
not the sort of intimacy I shared with Oliver. Pulling back from him,
I see a sad smile on his face.

“Well if you’re here, then
that means I’ve failed.” His head dips in defeat.

“Oliver, I don’t understand.
What do you mean?” My confusion is starting to cloud my
thoughts.

“Shay baby, it’s me Aiden.”
He rests his hands on my hips and tilts his head, searching my eyes
for recognition.

My knees buckle beneath me and he
catches me from falling. “Aiden? What happened?” Panic is
spreading under my skin like a disease, making me question my own
existence.

“I don’t know, but I’m
going to get you out of here.” He pulls me in tight.

Tears free fall down my cheeks; I’m
so confused by everything. Aiden looks so old and decrepit. The urge
to collapse tugs at my resolve with greedy hands. “Aiden, I–I–”
I’m at a loss for words even though I’m full of so many
questions.

He pulls my head into his chest and
quietly shushes me while stroking my hair. “It’s okay;
we’re going to make it okay.”

Eli

Harry continues to grill me about my
shirt. For all I know I had barbecue on the way over to Tampa. My
eyes keep drifting toward the bedroom; it’s been too long. She
hasn’t made a sound or come out to use the restroom.

“Eli?” Harry’s tone is
irritated.

“Sorry Harry, I’m just–”
He cuts me off.

“Go check on her. Just peek in.
I’m worried about her too.”

I take a moment too long contemplating
whether I should check, and Harry nods at me. “Go.”

There’s no noise coming from the
room, not that I would be able to hear her breathing, but at least
she’s not crying. Pushing open the door slowly, I find an empty
bed. “Harry!”