And that has everything to do with the program.
In fact, it has everything to do with God himself.
When Mason hangs up, I catch him before he rushes out of the room.
“I need to talk to you,” I say seriously. It gets his attention. “And Cassie, too.”
“Okay,” Mason says, a concerned look on his face. “Is everything okay?”
“Not really,” I say. “Let’s get Cassie, and I’ll tell you what I mean.”
When my guardians are settled at the table across from me, I begin my prepared statement.
“I believe that God killed Nora Fitzgerald,” I say directly, looking Mason, then Cassie, right in the eyes. Mason’s eyebrows scrunch up in confusion; Cassie looks as surprised as she is capable of looking.
“That’s quite an accusation, Daisy,” Mason says. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, a few days after Nora spotted me at the mall, I was on the system and stumbled across a folder for a twenty-second case.” I leave out the part about Matt.
Mason looks at me like I’ve just claimed that the earth is flat.
“But there are only twenty-one cases,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “But this was number twenty-two. I was curious, of course, so I opened it, but the name was confidential. The relocation town was listed as Franklin, Nevada.”
“Okay…” Mason says.
Distracted, Cassie checks her watch and shifts in her seat. I know she’d rather be working.
“I told Megan about it,” I say. Suddenly, Cassie attacks Mason with her eyes, probably annoyed that he’s given me access in the first place.
“Daisy, you need to keep what you see in there to yourself from here on out,” Mason says.
“Fine,” I say. “But Megan’s not the point. Anyway, she and I were messing around online and we found an article from Frozen Hills that said that Nora Fitzgerald had been killed in a car accident. But then we found her alive, on Facebook.” Cassie looks confused this time: I wonder if she’s going to call me on what I’m saying. I’m messing up the timeline and leaving out David’s involvement, but basically, it’s right. I speak quickly so she won’t question me.
“Anyway, I’ve been talking to Nora,” I say. Mason’s jaw drops. Cassie inhales sharply.
“You’ve been talking to a girl who thinks you’re dead?” Mason asks, sitting straighter in his seat.
“See?” Cassie says to him. “You give her too much freedom. Now look at what she’s done.”
“You guys are totally missing the point,” I say forcefully. “The point is that Nora was killed—on purpose—then relocated because she knew about me. Except that she wasn’t told anything real. She thinks that her family’s in the witness protection program.”
Cassie rolls her eyes, then stands abruptly.
“I’ve got real work to do,” she says. “I’m going to let you deal with this mess, Mason.”
She leaves the room and Mason stares at me for a long time before speaking again.
“Daisy, I can tell that this is really bothering you,” he says. “So I want to understand. It sounds to me like maybe the agents following Nora because of the sighting took advantage of the situation when she crashed. They made the call to fix the problem by Reviving and relocating her. It stands to reason that they wouldn’t want to divulge program secrets, so they kept it from her. I’m not seeing how God fits in here.”
“I was getting to that,” I say. I take a deep breath and try to explain my hunch to Mason. “When we went to the aquarium when we first moved to Omaha, there was a guy who talked to me in the big ocean exhibit. He was there, asking questions, and then he disappeared. I couldn’t remember a thing about him other than that he had a lisp.”
I take a gulp of air.
“Anyway, when Nora told me about the crash, she said that the Good Samaritan who saved her sounded like Daffy Duck. Like he had a lisp. And when she described the situation, it sounded really weird. Like the guy didn’t move or react quickly, and he called a ‘friend’ instead of nine-one-one. It got me thinking.
“I wondered if it was the same guy. At first, I thought he was an agent, but in that case, why didn’t he identify himself to me that day at the aquarium? The only person I can think of who might talk to me anonymously, then kill Nora, is—”