Page 72 of Midnight Secrets

Joe put his arm around her and bent low to her ear. “Honey, you don’t have to?—”

Joe meant well but he was wrong. Isabel pushed away. “Oh, but I do, I do. Teddy—a bullet shattered his head. He dropped to the floor and there was only mist spattering my mom and Rob. Mom had already been shot but she was still on her feet. She was turning to put herself between the shooter and my father and Rob but the shooter got her in the back.”

How could the memory have been wiped? How could she have possibly forgotten it? Dead people on the podium, her wounded mother, blood pouring from a shoulder onto her pretty cream-colored suit, turning with her arms wide, wanting to catch her kid brother except the only thing she caught was a bullet.

“It sometimes took two bullets, but the guns killed everyone. Methodically, coldly. The gunman was making his way across the podium. Dad was struggling with—with Hector. Dad was trying to get to Mom and my brothers but Hector was holding him. Wait.”

Isabel held up a finger and stared into the distance. No one in the room moved. No one even breathed.

She ran through the sequence in her head. She almost didn’t believe herself, but the events rang true somewhere deep inside her.

“This is what happened. The gunman was picking off the people on the podium, Dad was trying to get to Mom and the boys but Hector was holding him. At that point, another gunman shot the man next to me and he fell on top of me. He was a big man, knocked the breath out of me. The gunman killed the man standing next to Hector. Cyrus Lowry, the former secretary of state. Dad went to school with him. Cyrus fell, the gunman pivoted…” Isabel closed her eyes, saw everything. “Hector was standing next to Cyrus. The gunman all of a sudden pulled his machine gun…up.”

“Like he didn’t want to shoot Blake?” Joe asked.

“Exactly. Exactly as if he had orders not to shoot Hector. And the two exchanged glances. Both nodded. Then the gunman, oh God!” She reached for Joe’s hand, found it. “The gunman brings his gun down, aims and kills Dad. Hector was spared. Deliberately.”

Silence.

“So Blake was last man standing on the podium.” Joe’s voice was harsh. Isabel looked around at her little audience. The women looked shocked, pale. The men looked grim, as if unsurprised at this example of human wickedness.

“Yes. And he turned away, but before he did, he?—”

“What, Isabel?” Lauren asked softly. She still held the portrait of an eminently recognizable Hector Blake between two fingers.

“He saw me. I was on the ground, half-crushed by this man, but I was able to lift my head. We were both in the small circle of light thrown by the candles, the rest of the huge hall black and filled with bloody corpses. And…and hesawme. Saw me watching him just as he was turning away. There was still a huge amount of noise. The machine guns were still firing and, though the moans and screams had died down a lot, there was still screaming. So Hector gestured to the man who’d killed everyone on the podium to catch his attention and then pointed at me on the floor. I imagine what he wanted wasn’t immediately apparent because the gunman’s head was swiveling, trying to see what Hector wanted. And Hector’s face tightened…and I have never seen that expression on a man’s face before. Pure malevolent evil.”

Joe nodded. Douglas and Metal and Jacko were listening, looking grim. They were warriors. They’d seen pure malevolent evil before. They knew what she was talking about.

“The gunman is still looking. He doesn’t see me, doesn’t see that I am alive. So Hector checks his watch and makes this gesture—” She twirled her index finger in the air. “And Hector and the gunman run out the door behind the podium. I was drowning in blood and I was trying to get out from under this dead body and there was an explosion and…everything went black. The next thing I knew it was ten days later and I had a concussion that was twelve on the Glasgow coma scale. And I’d lost all memory of that night until—until now.”

“What do we do now, Mystery Man?” Felicity asked in a loud voice.

Mystery Man?

“Depends,” a metallic voice answered. It was one of those anonymized voices, like kidnappers had in the movies. Had someone been kidnapped? Isabel looked around. Had the voice come from Felicity’s computer?

True, Felicity’s computer was magical but now it had developed into a person?

“Is someone inside your computer, Felicity?”

“Sort of.” Felicity didn’t smile. Usually any mention of the magical wizard-like properties of her computer made her smile, but she wasn’t smiling. She looked deflated and sad. “An ex-CIA guy who is investigating the Massacre.”

“Can he see us?”

Felicity nodded.

Isabel walked over and addressed the monitor directly. Who knew who was on the other end? Former CIA. Then he’d have known Hector. “Are you investigating the Massacre undercover? Not officially?”

“Not officially no.”

But unofficially, yes. And presumably Mr. Former CIA knew a lot about what actually happened. So Isabel had to ask the question. And the answer would divide her life into two. She almost wanted to cling to her precarious mental state. Poor Isabel, who was blown up and can hardly stand, what does she know?

Because if she was right…if she was right…

“This is the guy who told me to protect you,” Joe said.

Isabel faced the monitor. “Do I know you? What am I to you?”

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