“No thanks. I think we’re good.” I look at Ken, because maybe he wants something else and spoke too soon. He gives me an approving nod.
“Actually, is there a newspaper around?” I look at Ken again. “Maybe we can go to the movies this afternoon.”
“Yep, have them up front. Let me get one for you.” The waitress disappears.
“I’m sorry. Maybe I should have asked you first.” I lower my gaze.
He reaches across the table with his fork and pokes my wrist. “Eyes up,” he commands, waiting for me to comply. “You don’t have to ask about stuff like that. If you want to see a movie this afternoon, we’ll go to a movie. You’re not a prisoner with me, Dolly.”
“I didn’t think that,” I say too loudly. Readjusting my tone, I continue. “You don’t treat me like that.” He needs to understand I’m sitting with him because it’s what I want, not because he’s forcing me.
His lips soften at the edges, but worry lingers in his dark eyes.
“No one is going to treat you like that ever again.” It’s a promise he’s made several times. My heart can tell he means it, but my brain knows he can’t keep away all the evil in the world forever.
“Can I ask you something?” I shove a forkful of pancakes into my mouth. The butter runs over my tongue mixed with the syrup in a gooey, delicious mess. I could drink this for the next week.
“Sure. Anything.” He sips his coffee.
I swallow and grab for my orange juice. “Why did you become a police officer?” In a world where he could be anything, why work every day facing the scum of the earth?
He puts his fork down on the plate and leans back in the booth. His chest expands with his breath.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.” I take another large bite of the fluffy breakfast to keep from prying more.
The waitress drops the newspaper on our table as she passes. Ken pulls it toward him and holds it while he waits for me to look at him again. When he pauses like that, it’s because he wants my full attention. He won’t speak until he has it.
“I majored in computer science when I went to college. I was going to get a big job with the FBI one day working in forensics—you know, hack the big computer, track down the bank hackers.” He rolls his eyes like his youth is something to be embarrassed about. “My junior year, my mom went missing. Just vanished.” His fingers crinkle the edges of the paper. “She left work and never made it home. The search went on for weeks. No one saw anything. No video footage in the parking lot at the company she worked for. No real evidence of foul play.”
“Like me,” I whisper. No one would think anything of not seeing me around. I rarely went out other than going to class. No real friends, no social media…no one to notice I disappeared.
“Yeah.” His voice scrapes out of his throat. “I came home from school to search for her. The police gave up and filed it away as an unsolved case.” He sips his coffee and places the cup back down with less care than usual. “A year later, they did find her. A shallow grave in the forest preserve near the airport. She’d been raped and murdered.” His jaw sets firm. Years of anger and sadness over his mother’s death deepen the crease around his frown.
“You went into police work so you could find her killer?” I keep my voice low. More people have filed into the diner since we sat down.
“I wanted to find all the killers,” he deadpans. “I thought if they hadn’t quit looking for her, they would have found her before she was killed.” Another long sip of his coffee. “That was before I knew how the system actually worked.” He scoffs. “I was an idiot, hurting and angry. I was going to save the fucking world. But the world isn’t salvageable.” He points to my plate. “I want you to eat all that up.”
I take another bite, letting what he told me swirl around my head.
“You still want to find the other girls though, right?” If he truly thinks the world can’t be saved, he wouldn’t have been so angry when he saw those discs. He wouldn’t have helped me rid myself of my parents.
“Of course I do.” He drains the last of his coffee and puts the mug at the edge of the table along with his plate. “I guess a little bit of me still wants to save everyone from the bad guys. It’s why I ran to you when I saw the video. I needed to get to you.”
I swallow the last bite of my pancakes. My stomach stretches to accommodate the amount of food I’ve eaten. It’s been too long since I’ve felt so full.
“And you did get to me,” I remind him. “And we’ll find these other girls. And we’ll get rid of the bad guys.”
“We can’t get rid of all the bad guys in the world, Dolly.” His frown deepens. “But I won’t let anyone who’s hurt you get away with it.”
“What about the police? Won’t they find our fingerprints at my house? And the playroom? Won’t they start looking for us?” It occurs to me he’s on the other side of the law now. He has his detective skills, but not his badge. We aren’t going to be understood as the good guys.
He lifts a shoulder like he’s not bothered by the prospect.
“I’m not worried about it.”
“How can you not be worried about it? They’ll know we were there. They’ll know it was us. They’ll find us.” I flatten my hands on the table, pressing down hard.
He arches a brow. “We’re two towns away and haven’t used any electronic payments, only cash. The motel is nice, but not nice enough to have security cameras littering the hallways. And the truck is registered to Bossman.”
Ken won’t tell me their real names, but he knows them. I’m sure one of them is the contact my father has in his cell phone. The name my father gave us—Mortimer. Yeah, Bossman looked like a Mortimer.
“When they find your parents and they dust the place, they’ll find our prints, yes. But they’ll also find the closet with all the CDs,” Ken explains.
Another thought sinks into my stomach. “People will watch them? They’ll see what I did.” Heat rises to my cheeks.
“Dolly.” His hard tone makes me snap my attention back to him. “They’ll see the torture your father put you through, the other girls through. Nothing else.”
“But—”
He points a finger at me, stilling my objection. “No more talk of guilt. You carry none of it.”
The waitress stops by and picks up his plate. “Ready for the check, or would you like more coffee?” It’s a question, but she doesn’t ask it that way.
“Just the check,” Ken answers, not pulling his gaze from mine. He’s back to being bossy.
I like him that way.
“What movie do you want to see?” He opens the newspaper, and the front page flashes in front of me.
The playhouse stares at me. A wrecking ball looms in front of the upstairs bedroom window. The room with the extra clothes. The room across the hall from the playroom.
The headline screams at me.
AIRPORT EXPANSION FINALLY UNDERWAY.
Twenty
KENDOLL