Tyler (Blue Halo Book 6)

The phone rang. Then it rang some more. Tyler cursed under his breath. Why wasn’t she answering?

Callum and Mason watched him. Both men had arrived at the hospital just in time to view surveillance footage with him. Footage of the woman wheeling Levi outside, where a man had helped lift Levi into a white sedan. Callum was running the plates on the car while Tyler desperately tried to get in contact with Emerson. They’d also contacted Steve, who’d called in the nearest guys from the FBI as well as local police who should be there soon.

But there was something in his gut telling him to get to Emerson.

Tyler pulled the phone from his ear.

“Cameras?” Callum asked, looking up from his laptop.

He opened the app to his home security and rewound the footage on one of the outdoor cams until he saw Emerson stepping out of the house.

He frowned. She hadn’t told him she was going anywhere. Her gaze caught on the house next door, and she smiled. Then, instead of walking straight to her rental in the drive, she veered in that direction.

Mrs. Henry.

He clicked out of the footage and called the older woman’s number while he heard Callum on the phone with Flynn, who was at Blue Halo.

She answered on the second ring.

“Tyler, dear!”

“I need to know if Emerson told you where she was going this morning.”

“Oh, um…yes, she did. She said she was changing a flat tire for her ex-husband.”

That knowledge should’ve had the unease lessening inside him. So why was there still so much goddamn dread?

“Thank you, Mrs. Henry.”

He hung up before the woman could say anything else, then called Rowan’s number. He’d saved it into his phone as soon as he’d come to Cradle Mountain.

It was five rings in when he knew the guy wasn’t going to answer.

“Fuck!” he shouted, not caring who heard.

“Got it,” Callum said. He looked at Tyler. “We hacked the rental car GPS system again and got the location of her car.”

“Send it to me,” he yelled as he ran down the hall toward the exit.

His team would start working on locating the white sedan. Right now, Emerson was his priority. It wasn’t normal for her to ignore his calls. And everything in him shouted that something was wrong.

He made it to her rental in half the time it should have taken and parked behind it. The second he reached her car, he knew she wasn’t here. There were no sounds, no heartbeats from inside. Still, he checked the front, back, and trunk of the car. Empty.

His gaze ran over an array of prints on the side of the road. She’d parked behind another car. She’d rounded that vehicle, then…

His gaze found the second set of prints. A man’s. He’d walked out of the woods.

Had she gotten into his car willingly? Or had he taken her?

A dangerous rhythm pulsed in his temple. Because even though he wanted it to be the first option, everything in Tyler told him it was the second.

Silence. It surrounded Emerson. But not the calm, safe kind of silence you woke up to in the morning. This silence felt heavy. Dangerous. It made her skin prickle and her stomach clench and convulse.

She scrunched her eyes shut. A few minutes had passed since she’d woken, but her eyelids felt so heavy, she hadn’t tried to open them. It wasn’t just her eyelids that felt heavy, though. Her entire body did. Her muscles ached and there was a dull throb in her head that pumped behind her eyes.

She squirmed. Whatever she was sitting on was hard. She tried to lift her arms, but something stopped her. Some sort of restraint around her wrists.

Terror stabbed at her chest, and slowly, she forced her eyes open.

Thin ropes. They held her wrists to the chair and, by the feel of it, her ankles too.

Panic flooded her. There was barely any light in here, wherever here was. Through a breathing exercise, she battled back the fear and after several tense minutes, finally glanced around.

She was in…an old barn? The ceiling was vaulted with wooden beams cutting across. The concrete floor beneath her was cracked and dirty like no one had maintained it in months, maybe years. There was a big sliding door that was currently closed, and windows high in the structure. But they were covered in so much dust it made seeing any light nearly impossible.

She looked back at the rope around her wrists and noticed extra cords.

Electrodes. They were taped to her chest.

The cords attached to the electrodes led to a table beside her. Two laptops. One that faced her, another turned away. The latter had cords attached to it. And not just cords from her chest, she finally realized. There were more. On her skull. Her forehead. She shook her head, able to feel them.

What the hell was this?

There was a second chair on the other side of the table. Was someone else coming?

Her chest heaved with the need for air, and sweat beaded her skin. She opened her mouth to scream for help when footsteps sounded from behind. Then a voice.

A familiar voice.

“Good to see you awake, Emerson.”

Immense shock coiled in her belly, making nausea crawl up her throat.

No…

Rowan came to stand in front of her, his features completely devoid of emotion.

She gave the ties on her wrist a hard tug. “What the hell’s going on, Rowan? Untie me! Now!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I need to ask you a few questions first.”

She frowned. “Questions?”

This was a dream, right? A surreal dream where she’d turned her ex-husband into some psychotic creep who kidnapped and held people hostage?

“We’re going to do an electroencephalography test. I’ve attached electrodes to your chest to monitor your heart rate and more to your head to record brain activity. The information will be sent directly to my laptop.”

She shook her head, ignoring the ache in her skull. “I don’t understand…”

Understatement of the damn century.

Rowan gave her a look that almost seemed sympathetic before crouching in front of her. “You’re part of my study, Emerson. For years, I’ve found your loyalty to your stepbrother utterly fascinating. Eventually, an idea started to form in my head. What if I made that the subject of my PhD thesis?”

What the hell?

She almost didn’t want to ask but knew she had to. “What if you made what the subject?”

She tried to think back, to remember what the topic of his thesis was. Surely he’d told her? He’d been working on it for so long, she should remember. But God…she couldn’t. Had she never actually asked?

“I’m investigating the neuropsychology of emotional attachment and its impact on moral judgment.”

The words tumbled around in her head, and she struggled to piece them together in a way that made sense. It was hard, when nothing about her current reality made any freaking sense.

Rowan stood. “You know what I realized almost immediately? It’s not just you. So very many otherwise good, ethical people desert their values for loved ones. The way emotional attachment impacts our judgment is something I’ve become quite obsessed with over the last few years.”

Jesus…

“Do you kidnap all your research participants?” she growled sarcastically.

“Yes.”

One word that shook the very foundation of her world. Maybe the drugs had affected her more than she’d thought. Maybe this was a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. Because in what universe did her ex-husband admit to kidnapping people?

“Usually I don’t show my face,” he continued, like he didn’t notice her mental breakdown, “but you’re my last test subject, and I’m certain you would have figured out it was me, so there really wasn’t any point in hiding.”

He was a freaking mad scientist. How the hell hadn’t she seen it?

An angry breath hissed from her lips. “You really think after kidnapping me and tying me to a damn chair, I’m going to answer a single goddamn question?”

His slow smile made the back of her neck prickle uncomfortably. “Yes. I believe you will answer my questions. All of them. If you want Levi to live, that is.”

Her breath hitched. “You don’t have Levi. He’s in a hospital bed being watched by Tyler and his team from Blue Halo Security.”

“Yeah, it appears they’re not as good as they’d like people to believe. It wasn’t hard to get your stepbrother. All I had to do was pay a nurse to sneak him out to a car and deliver him to my assistant.”

“Your assistant?”

Rowan’s expression turned fond. “He was my student. And he’s a big fan of my work. When I told him what I had planned, of course he wanted to be a part of it. He’s been quite the asset.”

God, there were more sickos like Rowan?

“I can see you’re disgusted, Emerson, which is a little surprising, considering how easily you’re able to forgive your stepbrother’s sins. But that’s okay. You don’t understand my vision. While I’ve always been working toward understanding people and the brain and the way we’re programmed to work, you’ve been off painting your pretty little pictures.”

Her hands clenched. He meant that while she was creating art, he was kidnapping innocent victims. She shook her head. “I still don’t believe you have Levi. And I’m not answering a single question.”

He sighed, as if she’d disappointed him. Then he pressed a few keys on the laptop facing her. A photo appeared on the screen.

Horror gripped her throat.

It was Levi, still in a hospital gown, tied and bound in the back of a car.

“Now,” he continued. “I’m going to explain what will happen. If you play along, your brother has a chance to live.”

A chance? She opened her mouth to tell Rowan he wasn’t a killer but then snapped her lips shut. She had no idea who this man was or what he was capable of. He certainly wasn’t the Rowan she’d thought she married. The man who’d been her friend and confidant for years.

“There are two parts to my data collection,” he said, turning the laptop facing her and taking a seat on the other side of the table. He tapped a few keys. “For part one, dilemmas will be presented as a visual display on the laptop screen. Each dilemma will be presented as text, sometimes through one screen, sometimes multiple. Some questions will be accompanied by visual aids in the form of photos. You’ll then be able to select the option and state whether you believe the situation to be appropriate or inappropriate.”

Her mind scrambled to keep up with his words.

“As I’ve already mentioned, your brain activity and heart rate will be monitored during the test.”

She opened her mouth again, not quite sure what she was going to say, but he kept talking.

“You’ll have a maximum time limit of one minute to answer each question, then a fifteen-second break between questions for the hemodynamic response to return to baseline.”

A few more keys were clicked on the laptop, then he spun it around. Words were in front of her, but she didn’t read them. She couldn’t. Shock and disbelief were still pumping through her veins. That she was here. That Rowan, her Rowan, was responsible.

And what did he plan to do after the test? Let her go so she could tell the world? Had he let others go?

Nausea coiled in her belly at the suspected answers of those questions.

If she didn’t answer the questions, what would he do to Levi? What had he already done?

“Answer the question, Emerson. The longer you take, the less chance you have of saving your stepbrother.”

She lifted her gaze to him, hoping to find…something. Maybe a scrap of humanity?

She saw nothing. Only a cold, clinical expression.

Emerson clenched her fists and looked at the words. Then she forced them to make sense. Bit by bit, they did.

You kill ten people to save one. Appropriate or not appropriate.

One long breath. “Inappropriate.”

The next question popped up.

You kill one person to save ten. Appropriate or not appropriate.

Her brows twitched. She wasn’t sure she was capable of killing anyone. But was it appropriate? Was the most moral choice whatever offered the greatest number of saved lives?

“Appropriate,” she said quietly, not entirely certain it was, but it was the best answer she had in the moment.

You kill the ten because the one person is a physician who saves people from impoverished countries, and the ten people are convicted killers. Appropriate or not appropriate.

He was asking her if the value of the life or lives made a difference. She wasn’t sure. And she wasn’t God, so she shouldn’t be making such a choice anyway.

She said the first word that came to mind. “Appropriate.”

More ethical dilemmas were put in front of her, all very similar. About saving some but in the process, killing others. And the more questions she was faced with, the easier they were to answer.

Until, suddenly, the information changed to an image of a smiling family. She frowned. The man looked familiar.

The next screen held more text…

Dad of three. Husband. Police officer.

And the last screen…

This officer was murdered by a convicted killer. You can choose to save him or his killer. You choose his killer.

The question made her skin cool. She opened her mouth three times before answering.

“Inappropriate.”

The next slide had her gasping. It was three men. One, the officer she’d just been shown—and two that she definitely recognized.

The men who’d been on Levi’s team in the military. The men he’d shot, sending him into a downward spiral.

The screen changed to a photo of Levi. Her heart stopped.

Then the statement.

The men on screen one are known victims of the man on screen two. There may be more who are unknown.

Her heart cracked. Was this real? Had the officer Levi shot died? “Victim” could mean more than one thing. As far as she was aware, he was still in the hospital. Her heart started to ache in her chest.

The screen changed.

The killer’s in one room. His victims are alive in the other. You only have time to open one door. The people in the other room die. You choose the murderer.

Tears pressed to her eyes. Presented as simply as this, the answer was obvious. But, like every other question, no one should have the choice to save or take a life.

Three heartbeats later, she answered.

“Inappropriate.”

For a split second, she wondered what her brain showed him. That the question was harder than it should have been? That there was brain activity when there shouldn’t be?

God, what did he expect? That the second a loved one did things they shouldn’t, love for them stopped? It wasn’t that simple!

“Well done, Emerson.”

Her gaze swung to him. “Is it true? Did the officer die?”

“We’re up to part two,” he said, without answering her question.

She frowned, remembering what he’d said earlier. Two parts. But he’d never explained the second.

Rowan stood. “The second part is the behavioral section of the test.”

The what?

“Rowan—”

He moved toward her, and her skin crawled when he began to remove the electrodes from her chest and skull. She didn’t want this man anywhere near her.

It stung every time he pulled one off, but she barely felt it. “Rowan? What is part two?”

He removed the final electrode, then stepped toward the laptops. He closed both and slid everything into a bag before pulling two things out. A compass and a small piece of paper.

She opened her mouth to ask what they were for, but he spoke before she could.

“Escape quickly, and you might just be able to save Levi.”

Wait—what?

“Rowan!”

He ignored her, turning and heading toward the barn door.

“Rowan, come back! Tell me where the hell Levi is!”

He didn’t. He left the barn, then an eerie silence surrounded her.