Flawed (Flawed, #1)(80)
FIFTY-SIX
I SPRING UP to a seated position on my bed and stare at the phone in shock, goose bumps all over my body.
I have Mr. Berry’s video?
I redial his number. It rings and rings, no answer.
I have it? Mr. Berry says I have the video? How? When? Where? I look around my room, my head spinning, trying to think where it could be, how he could have given it to me, trying to remember those final moments when I was removed from the chamber and taken to the ward. Did I see him then? Did he slip his phone to me? But I was just wearing a gown. Where would I have put it? Did he visit me afterward? I was so heavily drugged, and in such shock, I remember very little. I remember Tina. Tina cared for me mostly while the nurse tended to me. But I don’t remember anyone else. Mary May already thoroughly searched my room. Was that what she was looking for? If she was, did she find it? I doubt it. I believe she thinks I have only five brands—she has referred to that fact enough. I don’t think she has any idea of what happened in that chamber, and I won’t make the same mistake I made with Pia, blurting it out just to show I have the upper hand. I know now that this information is highly sensitive.
And then I realize. Carrick is the only other person who was in that room with him. Carrick must have it.
I need help. Pia is gone on her mission and will report back to me who knows when, and the only other person who has been able to give me any information whatsoever on Carrick is Alpha. I decide I’m going to Alpha’s meeting, but I’m not going alone. I dial another number.
“Hello?”
“Granddad, I need your help.” I was never ready before, I never believed him before, I thought that he was a conspiracy theorist and that he was too irrational, but I know now that he was right about everything. I am ready now.
“Ah, she finally calls,” he says, a cheery sound. “And so it begins.”
*
The positive outcome from the week’s house arrest is that the press have disappeared from outside of the house, and they haven’t yet learned that the punishment has been withdrawn. If I’m not coming or going, there’s nothing for them to report, so I successfully manage to get to the local ice-cream parlor, my meeting point with Granddad, because that’s where he always used to take me and Juniper after Ewan was born to give Mom a break from us. Granddad is waiting in his dusty pickup truck with two ice creams.
“Showtime,” he says when I sit inside, and it’s the best I’ve felt for weeks.
After driving for almost an hour, during which I’ve filled him in on everything that has happened to me since we last met, including Alpha and her charity for the Flawed, the guards’ going missing, Pia’s helping me search for them, and my mission to find Carrick, especially now after Mr. Berry’s husband has told me that I have the video. Granddad listens intently as we drive, sometimes pulling over and asking me to repeat what I’ve said, listening to every word and, most important, believing me.
“What makes you think this lad Carrick has the video?” he asks.
“Well, it just makes sense,” I reply.
“But Berry’s husband said that you have it. Not anybody else. That you have it.”
I nod, hearing him but thinking it couldn’t possibly be true. I would have remembered being given it.
“Did Berry send you anything since you’ve been home? Think about it, Celestine.”
“Granddad,” I say, holding my hands up to my pounding head. “I haven’t been able to do anything but think about it. But there’s nothing. Apart from an envelope with an invoice, there was nothing. He left his home number for me, and I called his husband. That’s the only message he left for me.”
He goes silent. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.”
“Thanks for your help, Granddad. I appreciate it. I don’t want to get you into trouble, though.”
“Trouble?” he barks. “I’ve been trouble since the day I was born. You’re not cutting me out of this excitement.”
I smile, feeling grateful.
We turn off a country road onto an even smaller track, and Granddad slows.
“This can’t be right,” he says, confused, squinting out the windows at the view of fields around us. We’re surrounded by thousands of acres of wind turbines, and a liquid-air storage plant rises from the horizon, enormous though it’s miles away. “Let me see the directions again.”
I hand him the crumpled slip of paper with Alpha’s handwriting. It’s a messy scrawl, something I think she did deliberately so nobody else could decipher it.
“Hmm,” he says, face screwed up in concentration as he reads. Then he looks up and around. “Looks like we’re going the right way,” he says, but he sounds uncertain. “This woman, do you trust her?”
I look at him. “I don’t trust anyone anymore.”
“That’s my girl.” He chuckles. “Well, we’ll soon find out.”
He continues driving down the narrow road, on the hunt for Gateway Lodge. I’m expecting a hotel of some sort, a conference room with a dozen or so people all talking about their experiences, but this doesn’t seem like the place anybody would come to to stay in a hotel. It’s too remote. My stomach tenses. Becoming lost is a concern of mine now, as is running out of gas. I worry about a random event occurring that will stop me from returning home in time for my curfew. Even worse, I’m afraid Mary May will orchestrate something to deliberately get me into trouble. She can’t be happy with the outcome of the photograph and alcohol charge, and I’m expecting trouble. I must beat this fear. I thought the Guild couldn’t do anything to hurt me anymore, but I was wrong—targeting my family would be an unbearable pain, a guilt I don’t think I could live with, and it’s the fear that they instill in us that is the continuous punishment for what we’ve done. I trust Granddad. I trust he will make sure I get home. But he’s old. What if he has a heart attack, what if he passes out…?