The Never List

was making us wait. I held my knife in my lap, squeezing the handle tightly, clenching and unclenching it in my fist.
    Adele inhaled deeply and went on.
    “Jack had also brought in his old friend—Joe Myers, he’d called him at the time—to join us. He was something else altogether. The most hardcore of us all, cruel and violent. He made me wonder sometimes if I knew what I was getting into. But I was too deeply involved by then. And Jack was still the one in absolute control of it all. At the time I stupidly trusted him to keep everything safe.”
    She paused and looked up at us, then said meaningfully, “It turns out I didn’t know Joe Myers’s real name until he made it onto the Most Wanted List yesterday.” She saw the shock in our eyes as we registered her meaning. “Yes. Noah Philben.” She let this sink in for a moment before continuing.
    “On the day Jack was taken away, the news broke and then spread around the campus like wildfire. But at the very beginning, the FBI was focusing on the house. Before they got to his office oncampus, I sneaked in. I knew I only had one shot. I took everything I could carry so I could continue this project, but I also knew he had kept crucial materials hidden at the house, and there was no way for me to get in there.
    “Noah Philben—still Joe Myers to me then—also wanted to get Jack’s things, though I didn’t know why. And I was afraid he’d already taken something. I wanted to confront him, but he disappeared. I couldn’t find him again after Jack’s arrest because I didn’t know his real name. I swear I only found out yesterday when they showed his picture on the news.”
    She turned to me. “When I saw his face and heard that Sylvia belonged to his church, I suspected that your search had somehow led back to him. And I was right.”
    “And you wanted to know exactly what we found, isn’t that right, Adele? That’s why you called us, why you wanted to come to the hotel,” interrupted Tracy.
    “But, Adele, Scott Weber said the secret society was still meeting after Jack’s arrest,” I said, challenging her.
    “Sort of.” She thought a minute and then said, “We met, but at that point it was just me and David and two others we knew from The Vault. We were regrouping, trying to make sure we didn’t have any ties to Jack that could be traced back to us, that everything we’d done would be kept from the police.
    “And yes, I was still seeing David. I was … I was only seeing Scott to keep him out of Jack’s research. I didn’t want him to find the notes before I did. He is a damn good reporter, so I had to keep him away. I know that doesn’t exactly sound ethical, but you have to understand—this work has become my life.”
    “No kidding,” muttered Tracy.
    I turned to Adele. “Didn’t you—weren’t you at all … moved or disgusted or horrified or something about what you had just learned about your professor and—let’s just say it, friend ?”
    She looked ashamed. “Well, I was. I was. Oh yes, definitely. I just also told myself I needed to be strong, because this was really an … opportunity for me.”
    “You are one revolting piece of work, Adele,” said Tracy, looking away in disgust.
    At this Adele turned on her heel and walked back to her spot by the window. She faced away from us, so I couldn’t tell whether she was regretting her revelation or not. We left her alone.
    As the rest of us sat there recovering from Adele’s story, Ray began picking through the box of photographs. Suddenly, he jumped up and turned to me, looking panicked, “What were those ‘subjects’ called again? From the notebooks?”
    I lifted one up. “Let’s see, here’s a Subject L-39, and here’s an M-50 …”
    “That’s enough. Look.” He handed me a photograph, flipped over to the back. I could just make out the words “Subject M-19” scratched in the lower-left-hand corner. I took the pile from Ray. Sure enough, the photos were carefully labeled with tiny letters, each using the same formulation, “Subject P-9, L-25, Z-03.”
    And then I found H-29 the subject I’d read about in the notebook. She was a blonde, wearing a tattered nightgown, her eyes closed, a swollen purple bruise on her left cheek, a chain around her neck. Her teeth were bared, her lips dripping red around them.
    Tracy had been right the first time. These girls were Jack’s study.

CHAPTER 37
    Tracy stood up abruptly and wrenched the photos from my hands. She