Emily had seen this happen in real time. The more Clay could push Nardo toward acts of maliciousness, the happier Clay was. And Blake was always a willing participant in the destruction, alternately egging Nardo on and despising him for his cruelty. She supposed she should add Ricky to the depraved cabal. In many ways, she was the most vicious of them all.
She asked Jack, “Why did I never see that they’re all such reprehensible human beings? I loved them so much. They were my best friends. I trusted them completely.”
Jack suddenly turned bashful.
“Say it,” she told him. “We literally have no secrets between us.”
He nodded because it was true. “I’m sorry, Emily. Nobody ever understood why someone as nice as you was hanging out with them.”
Emily didn’t understand why herself. Or maybe she didn’t want to admit the reason. Clay had made them all feel so special, so cool. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I mean—” Jack shrugged. “It was pretty obvious that they were terrible.”
Emily could only see that in hindsight, which was doubly depressing because, just weeks ago, Ricky had accused her of being a Pollyanna.
Still Emily felt the need to defend them, at least partially. They hadn’t all started out bad. Only Nardo had shown signs of his later brutishness, always yanking Emily’s hair or snapping Ricky’s bra strap. Clay had once been kind. Long ago, Blake had been sensitive. Even Ricky had been sweet, taking up for Emily in third grade when someone had ruined her art project. Though, looking back, Ricky was probably the person who’d ruined it in the first place. She was such a spiteful bitch.
“Emily, you’re not going to be alone in all this, okay? I’m going to be here if you need me. When you need me,” Jack said. “I’ve already been accepted into the police academy for summer term. I only applied to get my dad off my back, but Clay doesn’t want me to go with him and I don’t have any other options. I’m going to stay in Longbill and work for my dad when I get out of the academy.”
Emily’s heart sank. If anybody ever needed to get out of this place, it was Jack Stilton. He needed to go to Baltimore or some other big city where he could find people like himself who were living happier lives.
“No,” she said. “Jack, don’t do the easy thing. Fight for your happiness. You’ve wanted to get out of here since we were in elementary school.”
“What else am I going to do?” he asked. “You heard Clay. He’s not going to change his mind. And my grades are shit. I’m barely graduating fucking high school. I can’t join the army because they outright ask you who you are, and I can’t tell them. I mean, I could, but hell, I could end up in prison. Or dead, if my dad finds out. At least in Longbill, I know the people I’m dealing with. And they think they know me.”
“Jack—” Emily couldn’t argue with him. He was just as trapped as she was. “If you really do become a cop, if you can stomach it, will you make me a promise?”
“Of course. You know I’d do anything for you.”
“I want you to find out who did this to me,” Emily said. “Not for my sake, because I don’t want any of those callous, hateful bastards in my life. I want you to catch him for the sake of the girls who come next.”
Jack seemed surprised by the observation, but not because he disagreed. “You’re right. Criminals have a modus operandi. They repeat their patterns. That’s how you catch them.”
“Promise me.” Emily’s voice cracked. She could not imagine another girl having to go through what she was going through. “Please, Jack. Promise me.”
“Emily, you know I’ll—”
“No, don’t make a promise because I’m crying. Make it because it matters. What he did to me matters. I matter.” Emily got on her knees, hands clasped in front of her. She was suddenly overwhelmed by sorrow for everything she had lost. “He didn’t just rape me, Jack. He knew that I wasn’t really there, that I was more like a—a receptacle.”
“Emily—”
“No, don’t tell me that’s not what happened.” Emily fought back the wave of devastation. “It wasn’t only that one night that he hurt me. The stain is on my soul. He turned me into nothing. I am ruined because of him. My life that I worked for, that I planned for, is gone. All because he decided that my wants, my desires, were nothing compared to his. You can’t let that happen to another girl. You can’t.”
“I won’t, Emily. I’ll find out who did this if it kills me.” Jack was on his knees, too. He carefully wrapped his broken hands around hers. “I promise.”
10
Andrea kept to the shadows as she followed the beat-up old Ford truck.
Nardo was behind the wheel. Star had pushed her body against the passenger’s side door, putting as much space as she could between her and Nardo. He didn’t seem to care. He drove slowly down the road, his arm hanging lazily out the window as he smoked a cigarette.
Andrea searched the dark expanse of road behind her, hoping to spot a government-issued black SUV that told her one of the six surveillance teams had followed the truck from the farm. But the teams were set up on the entrances and exits. They weren’t monitoring an old logging road that had probably been wiped off the map during the last century.
She turned back around. The truck was still moving. There were no payphones on the street. The motel was ten minutes away. This was what Compton had been afraid of, that men like Wexler and Nardo always had an escape plan. Andrea was not surprised to find Nardo making a run for it. He had moved on from Clay Morrow. He could move on from Dean Wexler.
Andrea bolted out in the open, taking a chance as she sprinted up the stairs to the police station. She yanked on the locked door. She looked inside the lobby. There were no lights on inside. She knocked on the glass.
Nothing.
“Shit,” she muttered, running down the stairs. The arrest warrant had to be in front of a judge by now. Any moment, Bernard Fontaine would go from being a person of interest to a fugitive. If Andrea lost sight of him, they might never find him again. He would never face justice. Melody Brickel might not ever see her daughter again.
There was a phone in the restaurant.
The diner was one hundred yards away. Andrea let all the catastrophes rain down in her head as she jogged toward the pink glow of the neon lights.
She had no back-up. Her waterlogged gun was on its way to Baltimore. Nardo had a history of carrying a concealed weapon. She knew by the shape that it was a micro gun, which narrowed it down to one of the most popular 9mms, the SIG Sauer P365. That meant ten in the magazine, one in the chamber. He also had Star in the vehicle with him. In seconds, she could turn from passenger to hostage.
Andrea darted into a doorway as the brake lights glowed. She watched Nardo pull into a space a few yards from the diner. The rumble of the Ford’s engine cut. The emergency brake raked up. Nardo flicked his cigarette onto the sidewalk. He got out of the truck and slammed the door. He stretched up his arms to the sky, bending his back in a stretch that pulled the white T-shirt out from his cargo pants.
Andrea held her breath, waiting.
Star sat in the truck. She didn’t move until Nardo gave her permission by way of a flick of his wrist. She pushed open the door. She turned her body. She slid off the seat. Her feet touched the ground. She trailed several feet behind Nardo as they both disappeared inside the diner.