Page 72 of Logan

No, wait.

I was in Jason’s house. There was no reason to stay quiet now. If I wanted to scream, I could scream.

I tried, but there was suddenly no air in the room, and I clawed at my own throat as I tried to breathe.

How were Jason and Patrick breathing when there was no air?

Everything around me went dark. This wasn’t the same as slipping into the Midnight Zone. When I was in the Midnight Zone, it was always pleasant. I felt nothing and wasn’t even aware of my own body.

This was the exact opposite. I was hyperaware of my body, as if the very blood in my veins had been replaced by barbed wire.

Other people were screaming now. It wasn’t fair.

Why were they allowed to scream when I had to remain silent?

I wanted to scream too, but there was no air and I couldn’t make a sound.

The last thing I felt was pain in my knees as they hit the floor.

CHAPTER 29

Logan

The flight from Baton Rouge,Louisiana to Kent Island, Maryland usually took a little over two hours. I did it in seventy minutes. I probably broke several air traffic laws to get there so quickly, but I didn’t care.

When Jason Dahler called me to say that Clay was in the hospital, my heart stopped beating, and it didn’t start again until I laid eyes on him myself.

“A panic attack,” the doctor’s said. They’d put him on some heavy sedatives to calm him down, but he should wake up soon.

Everyone acted as if it were normal. As if keeping a perfectly healthy man unconscious so his body wouldn’t turn against itself out of fear was a completely ordinary thing.

I counted each rise and fall of Clay’s chest as I sat beside the bed.

“What happened?”

Jason, who sat on the other side of Clay’s hospital bed with a worried expression that matched my own, took a minute to respond.

“I’m not sure. He got up later than usual this morning. When he eventually came downstairs, he took one step into the living room and just froze there with this look of horror on his face. Then he collapsed.”

The fact that Jason didn’t question why Clay had gotten up late meant that he already knew exactly what his brother and I had been doing over video call. My face grew hot, but my expression stayed neutral as I demanded a detailed description of the moments right before Clay collapsed. Jason painted a clear picture, picking apart every detail of the room around them and every word they exchanged right up until the tragic moment.

“You said you were watching the news on TV?”

Jason thought for a moment. “Patrick was watching it. I wasn’t really paying attention, so I don’t know what it was talking about. Is it important?”

I leaned back in my chair and rubbed at my gritty, tired eyes. It felt like I hadn’t blinked since getting Jason’s call.

“Whatever was playing on the news is the only unknown variable of the situation, so let’s start there. Ask Patrick if he remembers what was being shown.”

A few minutes and one phone call later, we had our answer.

It was a press conference about the recent joint effort to “clean up” the country and put a stop to the human trafficking that was plaguing many states more than ever before. No one wanted to admit that the amount of trafficking hadn’t increased, the Bellringer case had just made us more aware of it. However, hard truths like that didn’t reassure the public.

I’d been consulted for that press conference. I knew many of the people who appeared in that news story. If the sight of one of them triggered Clay’s panic attack, there was only reason I could think of.

We already suspected that powerful people must be behind the Bell ringers. I just never expected them to show up so close to home.

But which one?

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