The Countdown (The Taking #3)(34)

Before we did though, we reached a strange inner chamber. That’s where we discovered another body—a blond girl who matched the image Griffin had found online. It looked like Tyler’s dream had been right after all.

In the center of this room with its over-high ceilings, there was an old-fashioned gurney of some sort . . . an ancient metal table with leather straps. I could only imagine this was where they’d done electroshock or lobotomized the hospital’s residents in days gone by.

There was fresh blood smeared across it, splattered in thick viscous puddles. And all around the table were machines. But not old-school ones. These things were high tech. Monitors, IV stands, machines that had no business in a place like this.

I signaled for Tyler to come around. “That her?”

When Tyler nodded, my breath loosened. Not all the way, but enough. Someone had been here before us, someone armed. Someone gunning for the bad guys, same way we were.

Still, just because they weren’t on the kidnappers’ side, didn’t mean they’d be on ours. And there might be more of them.

It also didn’t mean we wouldn’t find Kyra among the rubble, a bullet between her eyes too.

All it meant was there were fewer kidnappers to contend with.

“Over here.” Griffin’s voice was less quiet. Less cautious. When I moved around to the other side of the table, I saw it too—body #5, if we were counting the one Ben Agnew’s team had come across.

Strange thing was, Griffin and I recognized this corpse—a guy we’d known years ago, a sneaky little prick named Eddie Ray. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, finding Eddie Ray here, dead at the asylum where Tyler said we’d find Kyra. How the hell did Eddie Ray fit into all this . . . after all this time?

Making our way toward the rear exit, we were intercepted by one of Griffin’s soldiers. He led us to the body they’d stumbled upon, a girl who was lying facedown in the dark.

“Who is it?” Griffin asked from behind me, and I hated her for the almost hopeful edge I swore I heard in her voice. Couldn’t she at least pretend she didn’t want it to be Kyra?

Beside me, Tyler froze, and for the first time we exchanged a look. I hated him because I understood him—the pain in his face.

Ben was kneeling beside the girl, and when he glanced up and saw us, he simply said, “It’s not her.”

Then I saw how small the girl was, and how short and dark her hair was. Of course it wasn’t Kyra, how could I have been so stupid?

Tyler hunched over her, his brow furrowed as he reached for her. When he rolled her over, I rocked backward.

Just like with Eddie Ray, we knew this girl . . . it was a face we recognized all too well.

Natty.

Things weren’t adding up. What was Natty doing here with Eddie Ray? Natty, who was armed, and had an almost identical bullet hole through her forehead as Eddie Ray and the other two guys. Did it mean anything that the blond girl had been shot through the back of her head and not the front like the others? Had Natty been abducted the way Kyra had? Or was this something more sinister? Did she somehow belong with them?

This time it was Griffin and I who exchanged glances, both of us wondering the same things: Had Natty been involved in the destruction of Blackwater? Had she gotten all those Returned killed? Had she been the one who’d kidnapped Kyra?

If that was the case, I wished I’d been the one to pull the trigger.





TYLER


AFTER FINDING NATTY, WHO KYRA HAD TOLD ME WAS her closest friend since being returned, I made the decision not to trust anyone, and that included Griffin and Jett. I even had a hard time with Ben, despite the fact he’d just lost his daughter again.

As for Simon, well, he’d never been on the list.

It didn’t take long to figure out Kyra was gone, although we had proof she’d definitely been held here—the clothes I’d last seen her in—the jeans and T-shirt she’d pulled on after we’d gone for a dip in the hot spring—were bagged in a corner of one of the rooms.

It made me wonder what she was wearing now, which was stupid, because who cared? All that mattered was finding Kyra alive.

God, I hoped she was alive.

It had taken us almost an hour to clear the place, to make sure whoever had done this—whoever had killed Kyra’s kidnappers—were no longer here. The asylum was a maze of winding hallways and dead-end chambers and there was all this crap in the way, like some sort of hoarder’s paradise. Almost an hour gone and we still had nothing to show for it, just a lot of useless equipment and enough drugs to supply a zoo.

But we still hadn’t dredged up another body. Most importantly, not Kyra’s. Whoever was responsible for this massacre hadn’t shot her and left her for dead.

“If someone else did get to her first, how are we supposed to find her now? Any clue where she is?” Simon turned on me, like it was my fault we hadn’t gotten there in time, rather than thanking me that we’d found the place at all.

“It’s not like I can turn this thing on at the drop of a hat,” I tried to explain, but Simon spun away.

Griffin wasn’t much better. “Well, standing around here isn’t going to help! We’ve wasted enough time in this shithole.” Her voice echoed off the rafters as she walked in nervous circles. “We need to get moving.”

Griffin was right. If whoever had done this had a head start, it couldn’t be by much. Hours. Maybe less. If they had Kyra with them, was it possible she’d seen our headlights as we passed on the road?