“Moved where?”
“Someplace safe. We never find out where they go. That’s part of how Abeona works. We compartmentalize. So I don’t know what happened to those boys.”
“And you?”
“In my case, I was sent to England. I grew up in the town of Bristol.”
That explained the accent. This all made sense. No one knew about that tunnel. You could approach it hidden, from the woods and into the garage. “I blew it, I guess.”
“Pardon?”
“You can’t use that secret room anymore,” I said. “Now I understand what Bat Lady meant. The police know about it now. If more kids go missing, it will be the first place they look.”
“True,” he said. “But the house is gone anyway. We had been using the tunnel. But that secret room…” A shadow crossed his face. “We stopped using that room a long time ago.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We sealed it shut. It hasn’t been open in years.”
“Why?”
Dylan didn’t answer right away.
“Why did you stop using that room?”
“That’s what I need you to understand, Mickey.”
“What?”
“You watched the tape with Luther and your father?”
It felt as though a cold hand had caressed the back of my neck. “Yes.”
“Those boys were the last ones to ever use that secret room.”
CHAPTER 33
Dylan started walking faster.
“Wait,” I called to him. “What happened?”
“We rescued a little girl once. I won’t tell you the horrors she had to endure. Her mother had done things to her that would boggle the imagination. But the little girl still thought that woman was her mother. She didn’t know any better. She thought that she loved this evil woman. That’s what happens. You get attached to your abuser, especially when you’re a young child who doesn’t know any better.”
Spoon had said something like this. Something about Stockholm syndrome. I remembered how defiant Luther had been on the tape.
“And that was the case with Luther?”
“Yes.”
“So what happened?”
“Your father made a mistake that night.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“Someone had seen him.”
Again I thought about what we had seen when we watched the video in Spoon’s room. There had been a sudden interruption. “They followed him back to the house,” I said.
“Yes.”
“That’s when you all started panicking. I saw it on the tape.”
Dylan nodded.
“So who was it?”
“The state police.”
“Did they search the house?”
“Yes.”
“But they didn’t find the boys.”
“No. They were in the secret room. We had the false wall covering the door. Luther was calling for help.”
“But the police couldn’t hear him.”
Dylan looked pained again. “Exactly.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“You noticed the smaller boy on the tape. The one Luther had his arm around?”
“Yes.”
“His name was Ricky.”
Was. He said “was.”
“He wasn’t Luther’s biological or even adopted brother. But in most ways, Ricky meant more to Luther than that. Those two had gone through hell and back together. Luther had always protected him.”
“What happened to him?”
Dylan took a breath and let it go. “He died.”
I felt my throat clench. “How?”
“You have to understand. The police were watching us. They even brought Lizzy Sobek to the police station to ask her questions. We have a powerful lawyer on the Abeona team. She came and helped us get through it. But that was the thing about that room. We didn’t have wires. We didn’t have a sound system. We wanted to make sure that there was no way anyone could get in or out of that room. Like I said, it was soundproof. All of those precautions had saved many children over the years. But it also meant that if something went wrong, it might be a while before we knew about it.”
“So what happened?”
“Ricky was a sickly child. He often suffered seizures. When your father rescued them, it had been chaos. He had to rush. Luther told him that they needed to go back and get the boy’s medicine. But your father didn’t have a chance. That wasn’t his fault, of course. Normally we would have taken care of it right away. We would have gotten our hands on the medications. That was part of our protocol. We always ask about that when they arrive.”
“But not that night,” I said.
“No. That night, when the police came, we didn’t have time. Ricky had a seizure. A really bad one.”
“And he died?” I asked.
“Yes.” Dylan Shaykes looked into my eyes. “Can you imagine it? Watching the only person you ever loved die on the floor in front of you. Pounding on the big metal door. Screaming for help.”
“And no one could hear,” I said.
Dylan nodded. “We sealed up the room after that. No one has been in it since.”
We walked some more.
“Luther never forgave, did he?”
“He pretended he did. But that was just to get placed. As soon as he was out, he ran away. I don’t know where he’s been. He blamed all of us, but your father most of all. He swore that he would get revenge.”
“What did he do to my father?”
“I don’t know.”
“I saw him there. Eight months ago. He was dressed as a paramedic. He took my father away.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“Bat Lady thinks my father’s alive.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Dylan looked at me and I saw the answer before he said it. “No.”
I swallowed. “You think…?”
“That Luther killed your father. Yes. I saw him, Mickey. I saw his rage. So, no, I don’t think he spared him. I think he took him away and killed him.”
“Is that why he burned down the house? For revenge?”
“I assume so.”
“And he’s still out there.”
“Yes.”
“So you’re still not safe.”
“None of us are, Mickey. None of us are safe.”
CHAPTER 34
I came home exhausted.
I figured that I would text Ema and start filling her in on my encounter with Dylan Shaykes, but as soon as my head hit the pillow, I started drifting off. It could wait, I thought. In fact, it would probably be better to go over this with her face-to-face.
I fell into a deep sleep.
When I walked to school Monday, I took a slightly different route to avoid the Bat Lady’s house. I was not sure why I did that. Or maybe I knew but I didn’t want to think about it.
In the past I had thought about all the children who were rescued in that house. Now, for the first time, I started thinking about one specific boy who ended up dying trapped in a room. I hated Luther. I hated what he did to me and my family. One day, I hoped to meet up with him and exact justice.
But part of me now understood. Part of me wondered what it must have been like to be locked in a room, watching the only person you love die-and there is nothing you can do about it.
Bat Lady had explained it to me right at the beginning. The good guys don’t always win. We rescue as many as we can. There is an old Arab expression that when one person dies, an entire universe dies. The opposite is true too. If you save a life, even one, you save a universe.
But you can’t save them all.
I was about three blocks from the school when I heard the car. It was a red sports car. Troy was driving. He pulled up alongside me and said, “Want a ride?”
“Sure.”