“Yes, I suspect they thought the guilt and shame would keep the kids quiet,” said Milton. “And it did. They wouldn’t even talk of it much after the truth was out and the tutors were dead. They seemed to just want to forget.”
“What happened afterwards?” asked Knox.
“The manager swept the whole thing under the rug because they didn’t want to risk that the place would be shut down. I voted against that,” Milton quickly added, “just as some of the other staff did, but we were overruled. We didn’t hold enough power to overturn their decision.” And he appeared to be pissed at himself for that.
“I never noticed any injuries on those kids to suggest abuse,” said Levi.
“Shephard could undo wounds, so he’d healed the children afterwards, leaving no evidence of what they’d been through,” said Milton. “From what the staff could tell, the abuse was isolated to that one dorm. The reason Harry and the others were placed together was that they were low on the power spectrum—the staff didn’t believe it would be fair to place them with children who they’d be unable to defend themselves against. I think that was probably also why the tutors chose that dorm—in terms of power, the kids were too weak to fight back.” Milton let out a sad sigh. “And now some of them have been victimized yet again. How were they killed?”
Knox gave him all the details, including Tanner’s belief that the mutilations reflected the See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil saying. “How many other kids were in that dorm? Because I’m thinking that one of them is holding the others to blame for whatever they went through, and they’re intent on making them pay for it.”
Milton pursed his lips. “Other than the boys I mentioned, there were three other children. Patrick Stephens, Royal Foreman, and Donnie Ramirez. I can tell you that Ramirez is dead—he turned rogue while at Ramsbrook; had to be taken down. I’m not sure what happened to the other two. Dale’s sister might also be a target.”
Tanner’s brows pinched together. “Why?”
“Well, she didn’t sleep in Dale’s dorm—the girls were kept separate—but she told one of the staff members that she snuck in there one night after she’d had a nightmare and the tutors came in and forced her to ‘take a vote.’”
Knox stilled. “Muriel told us that there was no way the victims were involved in anything together.”
Milton lifted a brow. “Then Muriel lied.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“She’s gone,” said Tanner, standing in the middle of Muriel’s living room a short while later.
Larkin perched her hands on her hips. “It doesn’t seem like any of her things are missing. Her wardrobe and drawers are full. Her door keys are in the bowl in the hallway. Her purse is near the sofa. The TV’s on.” Her nose wrinkled at the bowl of stale soup on the table. “Looks like she sat down to have lunch some time yesterday and then …”
“And then someone came and took her,” finished Knox. His nostrils flared. “Fuck.”
“I just skimmed through her phone,” said Levi. “She’s had a lot of missed calls. The last one she answered came yesterday morning at 10am. Her first missed call was at 2:30pm, so she was taken some time before then.”
“There’s no point ignoring the reality that she’s been taken by whoever killed her brother and the others. God knows where they’ll leave her body.” Knox sighed. “We need to get back to my office.”
Flames erupted around them and licked at Tanner’s skin as the Prime pyroported them back to his Underground office.
Planting his hands on his desk, Knox said, “Larkin, Keenan—I’m going to need you both to try to locate Royal Foreman and Patrick Stephens. One of them has to be the killer. It’s the only thing that makes sense of everything that’s happened.”
“Finding them might not be a fast process, especially with respect to the killer,” Larkin warned. “He’s probably taken precautions to hide his identity just in case anyone worked out what was happening and started to hunt him. He might have changed his name, moved away, switched lairs.”
“I’m not under the illusion that you’ll find the killer in time to save Muriel,” Knox assured her. “He’s had her in his grasp too long.”
“We’ll find Stephens and Foreman,” Keenan stated.
Knox sat on his leather chair. “What do we remember of Stephens?”
Levi pursed his lips. “He was a quiet kid. Kept his head down. Made no effort to draw attention to himself. He was also an illusionist. Could force people to believe they could hear, see, smell, taste, or touch something that didn’t exist. He didn’t have a good handle on his ability back then, though.”
“He had cold eyes,” Tanner recalled.
Larkin nodded. “Yeah. He could chill your bones with just a look, and he wasn’t even frowning or scowling. His face would always be blank.”