Page 112 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

I sat cross-legged on the dusty floor of the secret study, old leather-bound journals and cracked medical volumes strewn around me like a madwoman’s nest. I remembered the dream—the man with the syringe and now had more information to study Scanlon’s notes.

Scanlon had written everything down. All of it.

Each leather journal was filled with charts tracking changes with each student before and after treatments.

At first, I couldn’t make sense of it. I skimmed one page that described an auditory canal measurement procedure.

Another, with tiny precise drawings, showed detailed anatomical sketches of the ear.

But the further I read, the clearer it became.

Scanlon had been experimenting with a rosemary-based tincture designed to stimulate hair growth deep within the inner ear.

The fine hairs there, he wrote, might regenerate in Deaf individuals, altering the canal’s structure and possibly restoring partial hearing.

It was unethical. Horrific. Brilliant, if it had worked.

But these weren’t voluntary test subjects. These were children. Deaf children. Abandoned children like Katherine Nieves. Like me.

One journal described what he called Phase Two testing. The dosage had been increased. The side effects were…disturbing. Headaches. Nosebleeds. Memory gaps. Mood swings. One entry mentioned a girl who cried for hours every night. Another reported a child who forgot their own name for a full day .

And then there was Livvie.

Scanlon wrote about Olivia Bishop the following: Patient displays remarkable response. Reports auditory success. Progress satisfactory. Will attempt memory restructuring again. The last hypnosis did not take. Patient continues to remember treatments.

Memory restructuring…hypnosis.

I sat frozen, the journal trembling in my hands. So that’s what had been done to us. Hypnosis? Drugs? Conditioning? All of it beginning with the potential effects of rosemary.

I didn’t know how long I had sat there. The journals blurred together. Some were hand-typed. Others were annotated copies of medical articles, all with Scanlon’s frantic scrawl in the margins. Pages and pages about experimental herbs, oils, ear canal regeneration, neural re-patterning.

At some point, the sun set. I barely noticed the light dimming. The room’s only window now provided only shadows. Only when my eyes strained to make out the next sentence did I realize how dark the room had become.

“Becca!” I called out, standing quickly, the journal falling from my lap. “I’m coming downstairs! I found something on Livvie.”

I gathered a few papers I wanted to show her and moved to the bookcase. I’d opened it earlier without any trouble. But now…

It wouldn’t budge.

I pushed harder, bracing my shoulder against the hidden latch. It didn’t move.

“Becca?” I shouted again. I hoped louder this time. I pounded once on the back of the bookcase. Nothing.

The light finally gave out, plunging the room into utter blackness. I backed up slowly, my arms outstretched, careful not to knock into the desk or the sharp-edged chair I’d moved out of the way earlier. My breaths came short and fast.

Locked in. Trapped. Blinded. Completely cut off from the world. From safety.

I pressed my back to the wall and slid down until I sat on the wooden floor. My heart pounded in my ears, thudding so hard I could almost hear it .

Not again. Not like before.

A memory flashed in my mind as though a light in my brain turned on. Back in this lodge, I’d been locked in my bedroom for an entire weekend while Scanlon observed me in isolation. He called it his control environment. I called it a cell.

I remembered banging on the door, begging to be let out. He wouldn’t come. Not until he believed the environment had produced what he needed. I’d counted the hours. Days. I remembered curling up under the desk, feeling so alone.

Now I was here. In another locked room. Alone.

But this time, I knew the truth. This time, I wouldn’t forget what he did.

I crawled across the floor in the dark, reaching for his desk. I felt around for anything that could produce light. Was there a lighter? A match? A flashlight?

My hand brushed a metal object on the desk. A pen. No help.

Then something else—a box. A small box tucked under a stack of papers. I opened it blindly, feeling inside.

Batteries. Maybe for a recorder. I dug deeper—yes! A small flashlight.

I fumbled with it, praying it worked. When the soft glow flicked on, I nearly cried.

The weak light illuminated the desk and the other objects in the box. I looked closer to see an old VHS cassette, labeled Patient #11. I withdrew it, a sinking feeling of what could be on the tape.

Evidence, perhaps. Had Scanlon videoed an experiment?

I scanned the room until the light fell on a television and an old VHS player. If only I had electricity to play it.

I grabbed another box and filled it with all I had found. I banged on the back of the bookcase door again, but it still didn’t move. Was it locked from the outside? Had Becca done this?

No. She wouldn’t. Would she? The woman was so broken, anything was possible.

I needed to get out. I needed someone to believe what I’d found.

I aimed the flashlight around the room, searching for another exit. Nothing. Just shelves and more shelves of dusty medical tomes and bound notebooks.

I grabbed the box, then I sat back against the wall, the flashlight flickering in my hand, and waited for Becca to come looking for me.

I didn’t know how long I sat there before the bookcase’s movement vibrated along the floorboards. A dim light spilled into the room. Becca ran in with a flashlight.

“Scarlett! Are you okay? It was jammed! I swear, I didn’t?—”

I missed what else she said as I staggered to my feet, nearly dropping my flashlight.

“I know,” I said, stepping into Scanlon’s bedroom. “But we don’t have much time. You need to read this. Downstairs where it is a little lighter.”

We sat at the kitchen table. She read in silence.

“So this is what he did to her,” she finally spoke. “To all of you.”

“We were part of something,” I said. “Livvie knew everything. Hypnosis didn’t take on her. They tried numerous times. That Fourth of July…she was killed to silence her. I know it. And all the others, too.”

Becca closed the journal, her eyes glassy.

“All these years. But now…now I know, too.”

I nodded. The air between us felt different. Not healed. But…open.

“We’re going to finish this,” I said. “We’ll reveal it all. Even if it destroys us, too.”

Becca jumped up from her chair, eyes wide. She looked at the back door. “Someone’s here,” she said, rushing to the window.

I followed to see Clarice Scanlon stepping from her car and walking up the gravel path with her phone’s flashlight. I opened the door.

“I’m told you’re ready to sell,” Clarice said, pushing past me. She dropped a bag on the table and faced me. “That’s good, because I already have a buyer.”

Stunned, all I could do was watch Clarice make herself comfortable at the kitchen table as though she still owned the place. The scent of her perfume—some heavy floral blend, likely expensive and old—permeated the kitchen.

She opened her briefcase to remove a set of papers. Placing them on the table with a pen offered to me, she said, “Sign on the bottom line, and you’ll be free of this monstrosity once and for all.”

Free .

I thought of Tabitha saying the same thing. Clarice’s words should have brought comfort. Freedom was what I wanted.

But then why did it feel like I was being silenced instead of liberated?

“Did you not understand what I said? I have a buyer,” Clarice said, slower and obviously shouting at me, as if that would make me hear better. “A corporation. Cash. No inspections. All they want is your signature, Scarlett, and you can be free.”

Free. I wondered why the woman thought I felt trapped. Did she know what happened in this house? More than just a hunch?

The contract was thick and full of legalese I would never understand. I held the pen in my hand, staring at the line with my name typed neatly beneath it.

Then I looked up. “Who owns the corporation?” I asked.

Clarice’s mouth twitched. Just for a second. Just long enough to cause me to question this transaction.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s a pharmaceutical holding group. They’re interested in developing private retreats.”

Nothing about this moment felt right.

“What’s the name of the company?”

Clarice sighed like I was being difficult. “Redwood Biotechnica.”

Becca picked up her phone being used as a source of light in the dark room and typed the name out to do a search. “Hold on.” She caught my gaze and turned the phone to me.

Becca’s fingers hovered over her phone screen, the blue-white glow casting long shadows across the woodgrain table. My pulse hammered as I stared at the photo she pulled up.

It’s him. The man from the photograph in the study—the one standing beside Livvie near the edge of the dock. The one from my dream, holding the syringe .

“You recognize him?” Becca asked.

I nod, swallowing the sudden rise of nausea in my throat. “That’s him.” My voice feels raw from disuse and something deeper. “And now he wants to buy the lodge.”

“That’s who?” Clarice asked, reaching for the phone, but Becca lowered it before Clarice made contact.

Becca turned her screen toward me again, zooming in on the image. No name was written to identify the people in the picture, but the resemblance was unmistakable. Same dark eyes. Same smile that doesn’t quite meet them. Just fifteen years older.

“He’s the CEO of the pharmaceutical research company. They claim to focus on memory recovery, neural reprogramming, and auditory regeneration.”

Auditory regeneration. My stomach dropped.

My fingers ached from how tightly I gripped the pen. I had been so close to giving this man everything he wanted.

I pushed back from the table, sending the papers back toward Clarice. “The answer is no. I won’t be selling to this corporation or to this man. Ever.”

“What man?” Clarice demanded. “Show me who you mean.”

I nod to Becca to turn the phone to face Clarice.

A moment later, Clarice inhaled in shock. “That’s Nathan, Aaron’s nephew. I had no idea he was part of this company. He kept it secret, even from me.”

“Of course he wants the lodge,” I say, feeling my voice trembling.

“It was his uncle’s testing ground. He knows there are still things here.

Journals. Records. Maybe even samples. Things I can take to the police and have him arrested for.

He had to be livid to learn he didn’t get the lodge in the will. That I did. I won’t sell to him. Ever.”

Clarice snatched the paperwork up with a twist to her lips. “It does seem underhanded for him to trick you into selling. But I do have to be honest and tell you it will be a hard sell to anyone else.”

“I’d rather burn the place to the ground.”

“You may have to,” she said and left the house the same sweeping way she had entered, her perfume still marking her presence even after her headlights disappeared into the night .

“He’s coming for the lodge. If not through Clarice, then some other way.”

Becca rubbed her face with both hands. “He was there that night. He might know something. We need to talk to him.”

“You saw him?” I squinted at Becca. “Are you saying this was the boy you were with?”

Becca nodded slowly. “He took me for a ride on his motorboat. And kissed me. Then he dropped me off, and I never saw him again.”

The memory of the motorboat came to my mind. Long dangling hair. A girl hanging limp in someone’s arms.

“Becca, don’t you understand? That man most likely killed Livvie.”

“No!” Becca stood so fast, her chair went flying into the wall behind her. “You killed her. She went to meet you. I was with him. He couldn’t have. He liked me.”

“No. I’m sorry, Becca, but he didn’t like you. He played you…to get to your sister. Get dressed. We’re taking the evidence to the sheriff.”