“I have Mom’s data,” Cassidy said, spreading a slew of pages across the conference table in Aaron and Cadence’s office. “And I think it’s pretty obvious what we missed.”
Cadence looked at the stack of notes, wishing her mother had a better sense of what they needed. It all looked like random notations to her, while she’d been expecting a detailed map after what Aaron had explained to her what Liz was supposed to do. At least it seemed to make sense to Cassidy.
“What is it?” Elliott asked, sitting in his usual spot next to Cadence, though she couldn’t help but wonder if he wished he was sitting near Aurora, who was across the table between Christian and Meagan—like she always was.
“Well, if you check back through the communication log, you can see that Becky and Patsy are about to clear a place called Larundel at 2:17, but as soon as Becky makes the call over the IAC, Jeb transmits to her and Patsy that he and Steph had already cleared it.”
“Okay,” Aaron said, leaning forward and staring over the end of the table at the notes Cassidy was hovering over.
“But, when you go back over Jeb and Steph’s log, they never noted that they cleared this place. It’s not mentioned at all, and in fact, they are on the other end of the search zone from Larundel. So….”
“You don’t think they actually searched it at all,” Cadence concluded.
“But why would they say they’d done so if they hadn’t?” Alex asked. He hadn’t been there with them during the hunt in Melbourne and didn’t know as much about the situation with the IACs as the rest of the team.
Cassidy looked at him for a moment, not speaking, and her cheeks went a little pink. Cadence shifted her gaze to Brandon and saw his jaw set slightly, but he didn’t say anything. Neither did her sister.
“Our IACs have been wacky,” Jamie explained. “We know Holland can mess with them. So I think Cass is saying she thinks that message didn’t actually come from Jeb.”
It took Cass a second before she agreed. “Right. I think that was Holland messing with the IACs, and I think it hasn’t come back up again because Jeb and Steph don’t even know that Becky and Patsy thought they’d cleared it.”
“And if fake Jeb told her it had been cleared already, did Becky even bother to tell them she and Patsy were not going to go in after all?” Hannah asked from her seat next to Alex at the far end of the table.
“No, she just said, ‘Affirmative,’ and there’s a good chance Jeb didn’t receive that transmission if Holland was intentionally screwing around with them,” Cassidy pointed out. “So, whatever that place is, I think we need to look at it.”
“You don’t know what it is?” Christian asked, his voice a little eerie sounding even for him.
“Should I?” Cassidy asked, sinking into her seat. Cadence shifted her eyes to look at the old soldier, watching a creepy smile spread across his face. She braced herself.
“I would’ve thought you’d checked, what with your dream and all,” he replied, gaping at her.
“Well, I went through this stuff a minute ago and haven’t had much of a chance to do anything else. What is it?” Cassidy’s patience was clearly wearing thin.
The annoying, amused look on Christian’s face had Cadence’s stomach rolling, but she tried to stay focused as he made sure he had everyone’s attention before he slowly began to answer the question. “Larundel was originally conceived in the late 1930s, but due to World War II, building didn’t begin until the 1940s. Even with that, it wasn’t until 1953 that it opened its doors.”
Cadence glanced around the table, noting nearly everyone else looked the same way she felt, as if they wished Christian would hurry up. Aaron, on the other hand, looked as if he wasn’t paying any attention at all, and Cadence figured that was because he already knew what Larundel was and wasn’t bothering to listen to Christian’s attempt at storytelling.
“It was only open for about forty years, but during that time, thousands of psychiatric patients resided there, some of the worst cases imaginable, too. Schizophrenics, the criminally insane. It’s really not a very nice place. Now, paranormal investigators flock to the site because of all of the activity. Well, they did anyway. I imagine if Holland is holed up there, they wouldn’t be coming in droves anymore.” Christian concluded with a satisfied look on his face.
“So you think the place I saw in my dream, the asylum, is Larundel, and that’s where Holland is?” Cassidy asked, her face taking on that crippling grimace only a teenage girl can pull off.
“Yes,” was all Christian said in response.
“Then why in the world are you just now mentioning this?” Brandon asked for all of them.
Christian shrugged. “No one asked me. Besides, I figured it was clear. If Jeb said he’d checked it, I thought it couldn’t be the place. Even though it sounded right by Cassidy’s description.”
“Thanks for that,” Cassidy said, still glowering at him.
“I think it’s safe to say that we messed this up, and we need to go have a look around.” Aaron rejoined the conversation. “Cass, do you have any idea who Holland’s left in charge in her absence or how many Vampires we might be talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Cadence’s little sister admitted. “I have tried to find out numbers, but it’s hard because they’re always adding to their army. And Holland being away has left it difficult for me to zero in on anyone who is still there.”
“Okay. We’ll just have to send Paul’s team in and see what happens,” Aaron said with a sigh, like he didn’t think that was a good idea.
“What are their numbers like now?” Elliott asked. “You sent them quite a few Guardians, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Aaron nodded. “They’ve got about fifty extra Guardians, which on paper sounds good, but I’m not sure what all Holland’s up to. And if she’s truly trying to find a way to kill us, we need to be cautious.”
“Can’t happen,” Christian mumbled dismissively, and Cadence found herself biting her tongue against mentioning all of the other things he had recently thought Holland couldn’t do but they had evidence she could do now.
“Actually,” Jamie interjected, and Cadence was glad it was him because he was so reasonable and unlikely to reach across the table and snap Christian’s neck, “there is something she could do.”
All eyes were on the doctor as he continued. “If Hines has figured out what we know about how to turn Guardians back into humans, then he could do that, and then kill us. It wouldn’t be quick, but it is a possibility.”
