The Psychiatrist: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller packed with twists, page 15
The basement door opens. The hinges groan as if they resent her touch. I do not flinch.
Her footsteps start slow, but they grow faster as she comes down the stairs. The sound of her shoes on the concrete is muffled, but I can hear the quickening rhythm.
The chain rattles when she crouches beside me. The faint scent of soap clings to her skin, and the sharp chemical tang of detergent drifts from her clothes.
“Isabel,” she says softly. “Isabel, look at me.”
I keep still.
Her breath catches. Her hand lands on my shoulder, shaking me once, then harder.
“Oh no,” she whispers.
Her fingers fumble at my ankle. The cold metal of the lock clicks open. The weight of the chain slips away, and my skin prickles with the sudden freedom.
This is my moment.
I lunge upward, shoving away from her. My bare feet slap against the concrete, the shock of the cold floor shooting up my legs. Every muscle screams in protest, but I force them forward, driving myself toward the narrow stairs that lead up.
“Isabel,” Miriam’s voice cracks behind me, sharp with panic. I do not look back.
The air changes as I climb. The damp chill of the basement gives way to warmth, heavy and damp. I can smell earth. The pale glow of filtered light spills through the doorway ahead.
The greenhouse.
I push myself harder, my hand stretching toward the door at the far end. It is so close I can almost feel the outside air on my skin.
Then something slams into the side of my head. The world explodes into white. My knees buckle, and I crash to the floor at the top of the stairs. The breath rushes out of my lungs in a painful burst.
A deep, searing pain blooms in my skull. My ears ring. My vision wavers, everything blurring at the edges.
Miriam stands over me, gripping a rusty garden tool in both hands. Her knuckles are white around the handle. Her chest heaves.
Her face is twisted, eyes wide and wet.
“Look what you made me do,” she says, her voice breaking on the last word.
I try to speak, but no sound comes out. My mouth is dry. My body will not respond to me.
She drops to her knees beside me. The tool clatters to the floor with a dull clang. Her hands hover over my face, trembling, as if she cannot decide whether to touch me or shove me away.
Blood trickles down the side of my head. I can feel it pooling against my cheek, sticky and warm. The metallic taste blooms in my mouth again.
“This is your fault,” she whispers. “You should have stayed where you were. You should have listened.”
Her tears fall onto my skin, hot and fast. She is sobbing now, shoulders shaking with each breath.
For a moment, her expression shifts. The rage fades, leaving something hollow in its place. Her hand brushes my hair back from my face, the way a mother might comfort a child after a nightmare.
“I never wanted this,” she says, but the words are empty. They are not for me. They are for herself.
The ringing in my ears deepens until it swallows all other sounds. My vision narrows, tunneling until Miriam is all I can see. Each breath feels heavier than the last.
“You could have been safe,” she murmurs.
She pushes herself to her feet, swiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand. Her voice hardens again, sharp and cold. “You’ll never run from me again.”
She bends and hooks her arms under my shoulders. My body dangles uselessly as she drags me backward. Pain jolts through my head with each step she takes.
The greenhouse door glows in my peripheral vision, the pale light filtering through the glass like a promise. It gets smaller and smaller as she pulls me away from it, one dragging step at a time.
The rusty garden tool lies abandoned on the floor, dark with a smear of my blood.
My bare heel catches on the threshold. She yanks harder, hauling me back into the narrow darkness of the stairwell. The light fades. The air grows cold again.
My limbs are too heavy to fight. My body will not listen to me.
The door swings shut above us. The long, low creak echoes in the basement, sealing me back inside. It sounds final. It sounds like a trap snapping closed.
40
WENDY
Even though I’m bringing him the first real development since I arrived, Beck doesn’t like being interrupted. The moment I mention the sketchbook, his jaw tightens. He leans back in his chair, looking at me like he’s deciding whether I’ve wasted his time.
I don’t give him a chance to dismiss me. “There’s a sketch of a greenhouse in a city,” I say.
That gets his attention.
I give him the original version and keep one copy that we had one of the guards make.
Beck doesn’t congratulate me. He isn’t the kind of man who offers praise. He simply nods and says, “Find it.”
“Then I need more time,” I counter.
His eyes narrow. “You’ve had time.”
“I need more. This isn’t something we can rush.”
He studies me, silent, weighing whether I’m worth indulging. Finally, with a dismissive flick of his hand, he says, “Until tomorrow.”
Not much, but it’s something.
Lila and I spend hours checking in with the team that Beck assigned to analyze the drawings and match them with cityscapes. Despite them moving at a speed that I can't even comprehend, we still try to follow up with our own checks, focusing on the cities we know Elias has visited. It's too big a search for us; it all seems futile.
Lila is hunched over my computer, fingers flying as she pulls up maps, architectural databases, and city planning documents. I sit beside her, flipping through greenhouse catalogs on the tablet, trying to match the jagged skyline in Elias’s drawing to any city we can find.
Even though it feels endless, I understand Lila's tenacity toward it. She's done things like this, found people who didn't want to be found. When we both look at something, we see two totally different things. It's a shame that we never figured out how to make that work as a team. Either way, I don't have faith that we’ll find anything, but I'm not gonna tell her that, and I'm not gonna stop trying to keep my mind occupied by looking.
Lila curses under her breath when yet another virtual street-level map turns up empty. “It’s not here.”
“It’s somewhere.”
She shoots me a sharp look. “That’s what Elias would say.”
I ignore her.
The copy of the page from the sketchbook lies between us, black lines taunting me. Elias drew this for a reason. He wanted us to find it.
By two in the morning, my eyes blur from the screen. Lila slams the laptop shut. “We’re getting nowhere.”
“We can’t stop.”
“You can’t stop,” she says flatly.
She’s right.
By morning, I’m back in front of the glass cage. Beck’s team, myself and Lila have made no progress finding the greenhouse. I have to work on Elias.
Lila doesn’t join me. She claims she needs sleep, but I know the truth. She doesn’t want to sit across from Elias again.
Elias is lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, when I walk in.
His hair is damp, like he just showered. His shirt is clean. The only sign of yesterday’s chaos is the faint purple bruise along his jaw. I wonder briefly how he got that, considering he was the one doing the injuring.
He looks calm. Too calm.
“Doctor Rhodes,” he says, his voice smooth as silk.
I take the seat opposite the glass, setting my notepad on my lap. “Elias.”
“I hear you’ve been busy,” he says.
My stomach knots. He knows.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, keeping my voice even.
He grins like a man who’s already won. “You found my little drawing.”
So much for subtlety. I don’t answer.
He leans back against the wall. “Did you like it?”
“I think you drew it for a reason.”
“Maybe I was bored.”
“You weren’t.”
He laughs softly. “Sharp as ever.”
I ignore the jab and flip my notepad open. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“The greenhouse.”
His grin widens. “Ah. Straight to the point today.”
“Where is it?” I repeat.
He doesn’t answer. Of course he doesn’t.
Instead, he taps his fingers against his knee, slow and deliberate. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? All that glass. The way the sun cuts through it in the morning. You should see it at sunrise. From the west side of the industrial quarter. It’s the only beautiful thing there.”
My pen freezes mid-word.
West side. Industrial quarter.
He said it like it was nothing, like it was just another taunt, but I know better.
I keep my expression neutral. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
He shrugs. “Maybe I will. If you ask nicely.”
I write the words down in my notepad. West side. Industrial quarter.
I don’t look up as I ask, “What’s in the greenhouse, Elias?”
He chuckles. “Why don’t you find out?”
It’s infuriating. He’s holding the cards and enjoying every second of it, but that slip, west side of the industrial quarter, lodges itself in my brain like a splinter.
West of what? Which city? Which quarter?
I glance at the sketch in my mind. The jagged skyline behind the greenhouse. It wasn’t random. It was a clue. He just gave me the first piece to place.
I press. “Is Isabel there?”
He tilts his head, pretending to consider. “You’re asking the wrong question.”
“Then what’s the right one?”
“Why would someone build something so pretty in a place so ugly?”
It takes everything in me not to react.
“Riddles aren’t going to help you,” I say evenly.
“They’ll help you,” he counters. “If you’re smart enough.”
I lean forward. “Then help me be smart.”
He grins, showing a flash of teeth. “You already are. That’s why you’re here.”
I hate how much my pulse spikes when he says that.
I close my notebook and stand. “Since you’re not going to give me what I need, I’m done.”
“Already?” His voice drips with mock disappointment.
I don’t answer.
I make it halfway to the door before he says, “You’re getting closer.”
I stop.
“Closer to what?”
He just smiles. “You’ll see.”
In the hallway, I lean against the wall, my heart pounding.
West side of the industrial quarter.
It’s the first real direction we’ve gotten, and I hate that I know that he wanted me to have it. We’re being led like sheep.
Hours later, I sit at the desk with my laptop and maps spread across the table. I tried finding Lila to help me, but she was nowhere to be found.
West side. Industrial quarter.
I scour Beck’s teams' filtered searches. Greenhouses on the west side of various industrial zones. Nothing.
This can’t be nothing.
I know it isn’t.
Elias doesn’t waste words. He’s playing a game, and for the first time, I feel like I’m catching up, but that feeling is fleeting.
What if this isn’t just a breadcrumb?
What if Lila’s right and it’s bait?
I stare at my notes, Elias’s grin burned into my mind. He let that slip on purpose, but why?
41
LILA
I’m not easy to find. That’s the point.
The property’s massive, but there are only so many places that give me the illusion of quiet. I’m behind the garden wall, perched on a low ledge near a row of blackberry bushes. From here, I can see the edge of the dock and a sliver of shoreline. The silence is better here.
Movement catches my eye. A slim figure in a pale dress is slipping between the row of greenhouses in the distance. Miriam. She glances my way briefly, expression unreadable, before disappearing behind the glass walls. I almost call out, but I hear footsteps approaching me from behind, so I let her go.
Wendy rounds the corner, shielding her eyes against the sun. “There you are.”
I don’t respond.
She stops a few feet away, chest rising slightly like she’s been walking fast. “He told me something.”
That gets my attention.
I slide down off the ledge. “Go on.”
“During the interview, he mentioned it was on the west side of an industrial quarter. Called it the only beautiful thing in an ugly place.”
I stare at her, waiting for the punchline.
“That’s it?” I ask.
She nods. “That’s it.”
I shake my head. “You think that’s useful?”
“I think it’s something. A direction.”
My stomach twists. It’s too easy. Elias never gives anything away unless he wants to.
A buzzing sound rings out near Wendy. I watch her as she grabs a burner phone off of her waist.
“So I came here willingly, yet they gave you a burner phone and not me?”
She ignores me and answers the phone. After a brief back-and-forth, she hangs up. “They think they have something.”
I exhale slowly. “Let’s go.”
“That's not all. If they can narrow down the zone, they want us to go with their team.”
“I thought you said that they kidnapped you. Now they're just gonna let you go? They're not afraid that you're gonna talk about it? I thought we were gonna have to fight our way off of the island after I killed Elias.”
Wendy takes a breath.
“Don't tell me you already forgave your incidental kidnapping?”
“I just wanna find Isabel and whoever else we can. I am not concerned about Beck. Besides, you came here willingly, so you must not be too afraid either.”
“Yeah, but me and you are different.”
She takes a breath. “Lila, let’s finish the job.”
“Okay, but if all this works, I'm not going to admit that you were right.”
She smiles, tired.
We walk back up toward the estate in silence. Inside, a guard leads us to a side room I haven’t used before. A war room, of sorts. Floor-to-ceiling monitors on one side, maps splayed across a long wooden table, satellite images on loop from Beck’s drones overhead. There are no techs in the room, but there are definitely several working from somewhere else remotely, based on all the activity on the monitors.
The feed is quiet. The sky’s clear over the west side of the city. Shipping containers. Smokestacks. Rusted rooftops. The industrial quarter looks like it hasn’t been touched since the fifties.
Wendy sits and opens her laptop, syncing to the feed with practiced ease.
I don’t bother with a chair. I pace instead, circling the table like something caged. “You think he meant this city?”
“I think it’s likely,” says Wendy. “The skyline in his sketch matched our architecture more than anywhere else we’ve seen.”
“If you spot something pointed out, the team has audio and visual in this room,” says a voice. I instantly recognize it as Beck's, but I do not see him. He must be watching us remotely. Who knows if he has been watching us the entire time we've been at the estate?
Wendy must assume so because she pulls up the drawing we copied from the sketchbook. Either way she can't talk to me about it now. We study the drawing. The jagged lines. The sloped roof of the greenhouse. The lopsided building in the distance has a square vent sticking out of its side like a tumor.
I move closer, leaning in. “What if it’s old? An abandoned building no longer on official maps?”
“I’ve already cross-referenced building plans for greenhouses registered with the city. None of them match the shape,” says an unfamiliar voice. I assume it's a tech.
“So we’re looking for something unregistered,” I say.
She nods once.
I start dragging the map with my fingers, scanning grids. “We need overlays. Utility lines. Heat signatures. Something recent.”
Three layers flash on the screen. Power lines. Infrared. Recent satellite imaging.
I pause, leaning closer. “There.”
A building near the southern edge of the quarter. Big enough to be a greenhouse. Looks like glass from above, but the heat signature is faint, which could mean it’s insulated or shielded.
Wendy narrows her eyes. “It’s close to the railyard.”
“Good,” I say. “No one innocent goes there at night.”
We keep scanning. We flag a few more. Two possible matches near the abandoned textile plant. One tucked behind a recycling facility that’s been out of business for years.
“How many does that make?” I ask.
She glances at the list. “Five. Maybe six.”
I reach for the greenhouse drawing. Flip it over. On the back, Elias sketched something else. An arrow. A slant. A number.
“Seventy-two degrees,” I read.
Wendy tilts her head. “That’s an angle.”
“Or a sunrise direction.”
She’s already typing. “If the greenhouse was built to catch the sunrise at seventy-two degrees, we can filter for buildings with that orientation.”
The software loads slowly. Beck’s tech is top-tier, but even it has limits.
When the data populates, only two structures fall within that range.
Wendy exhales. “That’s our zone.”
I step closer to the map. “What do we know about them?”
She pulls building records. One’s a defunct greenhouse used for botany research in the nineties. The other was listed as a floral distribution hub until five years ago. No new permits since.
“Either could work,” she says.
I look at the perimeter fencing. The spacing of the roads. The foliage nearby.
“This one,” I say, tapping the older botany site. “It’s covered by some type of trees planted on the roof. They cover three sides. Easier to shield from drones.”
