But the man didn’t say a thing, just picked up a thick folder from the floor and handed it to me.
“What is it?”
“Have a look. It will speak for itself.”
I hesitantly opened the folder. The first photo made it clear what I was looking at. “That’s Theodore. He used to be The Director. He adopted Eliot and Thomas.”
“Who?”
“Eliot was the one who set me up. He betrayed me. Thomas was The Director while I was there.”
“I didn't know they passed the role from father to son.”
I stopped myself from saying that Thomas had never wanted that role. I had a flashback of pressing down the pillow until his feeble body stopped twitching, but I pushed the memory aside.
“There was at least one more Director before Theodore, going back to the early 1900s,” Ben said.
“Were they kidnapping people even back then?” Tammy asked.
“Based on what we learned, yes. Their agenda is the rule of the elite over the common man, giving them the right to take and abuse whoever they deem beneath them.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look further into the folder, knowing it would consume me. “Was the FBI investigating them?”
Ben gave a stiff nod. “We investigated them for over a decade. The deeper we dug, the more names kept piling up—people you’d never imagine getting involved with something like that.”
He’d be surprised by what I could imagine. “Did you arrest anyone?”
Ben shook his head. “The bigger it got, the more pushback my team received. By the time I realized the higher-ups were trying to bury the investigation, I’d lost the momentum to fight back.” He took a breath. “I probably could’ve tried to rattle the nest,but that was around the time Tammy was trying to take down her crooked boss, and I saw firsthand what fighting against the system could do to one’s career.” He gave Tammy an apologetic look, which she returned with a grim smile.
“They ended up offering me a different department to lead, claiming it was a budget thing. I swallowed their bullshit until I retired the first chance I got. Horses can sometimes smell, but at least they’re trustworthy.”
I rubbed my face, resenting everything Ben had said. If those who were supposed to stop The Society had done their fucking job, I and others would not have wound up in hell.
“You’re the first person I’ve heard who got away from them,” Ben said, a trace of suspicion in his voice. “I’m sure there’s an interesting story behind that.”
“It doesn’t matter. Do you know of Mr. White?”
“Never heard of him.”
“He was a member of the High Council.”
Ben leaned forward. “You were in contact with the High Council?”
“Just with him. He came to the estate from time to time.” I couldn’t help but feel a tingle of needle-hunger whenever I thought of him, even after all these years. I asked Tammy, “So you knew who I was talking about this whole time?”
“Not at first, but the more you spoke, the more it sounded familiar. I was never involved in Ben’s investigation.”
I ran my fingers over the thick folder. “Can I look at it later?”
“You can take it with you to the motel, but it hasn't been updated in years. No one knew I took it, which goes to show how much they didn’t give a damn.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“I’d still like to have a look at your leg before you hit the road.”
I followed him into a room with a lot of computers. He gestured for me to sit on a chair in the middle of the room. Tammy stood close by as he pressed on my calf, then scanned it with a similar device to the one Samuel had used in the last yearly visit. A monitor showed my bones and the small tracker that seemed out of place. Ben told me to hold the scanner to my calf while he worked on his computer, switching between screens with numbers and graphs. He turned to me after a few minutes. “Like you said, it’s pretty much dormant. It does seem very advanced, but it still has some limitations.” Ben took the scanner from me and put it on his desk. “Mind giving me and Tammy a few moments to talk? You can wait out back. The view is something.”
I stood up and crossed my arms. “I’d rather stay and listen while I’m the topic of conversation.”
