Collateral Damage (From the Damage) (17 page)

“Then what
do
you know?”

“I know she’s scared. She’s hiding from her dad. He’s been calling her all morning.”

“I can’t believe you’re hiding her again. That’s all you ever did was help cover for her dad.” Alex used Zander’s phone to call Kay, and held the phone to his ear while he counted the rings.

“Why are you acting like this?” Zander turned to Alex, studying him. “It’s just another one of their fights.”

He wished Zander would just leave him alone, let him talk to Kay. That’s all he needed, was to make sure she was alright. “It’s not just another—”

“Hello?”

Kay’s voice sounded strained and tearful, but hearing it filled Alex with an overwhelming sense of relief. It awakened the guilt he didn’t even know he was feeling, stirring emotions in him until his eyes teared, right here in the video game store. He hurried outside, waiting until the door was swinging shut behind him to speak. “Kay, it’s me.”

“Alex?” She sounded confused and then she went quiet.

“Don’t hang up, okay?” he begged, “I just want to talk.” He waited for her to respond, but she didn’t. She didn’t hang up, either, so he continued, “I’m so sorry, Kay. About all of it.”

“You’re sorry? For what? You didn’t do anything.”

“Your dad told you to stay home, but I just had to bring up the stupid road trip. And—”

“Alex, he would’ve found some other reason to hit me. He always did,” she said, her voice shaking. “None of this is your fault.”

“And it’s not yours, either,” he said.

“I know,” she said quietly, with a sigh, but he didn’t think she believed it.

“Then tell me where you’re at. I’ll take you to Daphne and we’ll all go to the police together.”

“And then what? Where am I going to go? Into foster care like Ryder? Or to my mom’s? What’s going
to happen to me? Nobody has an answer for that question, and I need…I need to know.”

“I can’t answer that,” he said. “All I can tell you is that from what I’ve seen, I think you can handle anything that comes your way.”

Her voice was barely above a whisper as she tearfully said, “I’m at the beach.”

***

Kendall

***

Standing on Seth’s porch, Kendall peeked inside the front window and searched for any sign of movement. Nervous and fretful, Kelly backed away from the window and whispered, “You’re
sure
the DVD said
MVP
?”

“Positive.
”

“So why don’t we just call the police?”

“You know my word isn’t enough to get a search warrant,” she said. “We have to get it ourselves, then we can give it to my dad. Now hide.” Without waiting, Kendall reached out and knocked on the door. 

Kelly ducked behind the rosebush
and shot Kendall a threatening look.

Seth opened the door a few seconds later.  H
e looked at her with that knowing, superior smirk of his and leaned against the doorframe. “You always come running back.”

She crossed her arms and looked up at him. “I’m not ‘running back’ to you. You skipped school today. I had to find you.”

He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “Ready to pick up where we left off?”

“I’m ready to tell you that you need some serious help.”

“Help?” he repeated, stepping out onto the porch. “I’d say I’m beyond help by now.”

“I don’t believe that,” she said, backing up as he came out of the house. “I know…I know you’ve done some horrible things…and there’s no excuse for it,” she held eye contact with him as she spoke. “But…what we went through…I think it explains it a little.”

He started laughing at her. “Classic case of victim turned predator, huh? Is that how you justify what I did?”

She turned as she started talking, both to lead him away from the house so Kelly could sneak inside and to prevent herself from looking at him.
“Take a minute to remember how we met,” she said, her voice starting to crack. “I was at the playground and you offered to push my swing. You hard your charm turned on and…I was instantly crushing. Do you remember what happened next, Seth?”

He was staring at her, his cold gaze softening. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “I told you I saw a cat run into the woods, and convinced you to help me find it.”

She nodded, a few carefully held back tears escaping with the movement. “And once we were alone…you chloroformed me.”

He took a shaky breath, the weight of the memories looking like they would crush him.

“You’d think I would hate you for that, but at the same time, I understand. He made you do it, and you were doing what you were told because you were scared. And he did this to you, over and over,” she said, her compassion for him growing until her heart ached. “He used you to lure the girls in. Used you as the male lead in his sick little movies. He turned you into a predator.” She shivered, squeezing her eyes shut as a few painful memories surfaced. “You lived through two years of that. Now I’m not an expert, but I’d say that’s enough to really screw with someone’s head. Maybe you should go talk to somebody, tell them what happened, what you did—”

Behind him, she saw Kelly slip into the house through the open door.

“Don’t you see what you’re doing here?” he asked, laughing at her like she was the joke. “You found out who I really am, and you can’t take it. And in less than twenty-four hours, you’re back here, defending me and making up excuses for what I did.”

“Because I know you’re a good person, you’ve just lost your way!”

He locked gazes with her, looking at her with a set of cold, numbed eyes. “No,” he said, voice rising, a venomous look crossing his face. “You need to believe I’m a good person, so you can think you’re one too. I mean, if the
rapist
can be redeemed, then the
slut
can too, right?”

His words stung, but she wouldn’t let them deter her. “Seth, if you don’t get help, I’m going to tell people what you did.”

He shrugged. “Nobody’s going to believe you.”

“My dad will. And he’ll talk to your dad, and eventually convince
him and then they’re going to talk to Meagan and she’s going to be so ready to destroy you that she’ll sing like a canary. Who would blame her?” She took a step toward him, keeping her arms crossed. “It’ll be this long, messy, drawn out thing. Newspapers might get involved. And the whole school is going to talk about it. And then there’s the trial, and the judge…”

He threw his hands up. “I get the picture. What’s the alternative?”

“You come with me now, and we’ll go tell your dad what you did.”

“He already knows,” he said, turning from her.

Kendall hadn’t prepared herself for that one, and it took her a minute to respond. “He…he knows? You told him?”

“I didn’t tell him…he found out, okay? So there goes your whole plan—”

“Then we’ll go straight to a doctor—”

Fed up, he lunged toward her, getting right in her face as he shouted, “Kendall, I said no!” She just stared at him, scoffing.

“Well, those words don’t mean much to you, do they?”

He shifted away from her, his face filling with emotion she couldn’t read. And all she could think was…he looked so tortured, and so scary at the same time.

“Whether you believe it or not,” she said, “there’s still hope for you.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I don’t know,” she exclaimed. “But it’s true. Somehow, I know it’s true.”

“You know nothing,” he said, shaking his head like she was naïve and beneath him, like her sympathy for him made her pathetic. “I’m a bad guy. It’s that simple.”

She shook her head in denial. “You can choose to be good. Choose to change. Those voices in your head saying there’s nothing pure or clean left in you, saying that you’re a horrible person…I know what those are. I hear them all the time. And they’re wrong, Seth.”

“You don’t know—”

“Yes, I—”

“Kendall, I killed somebody,” he exclaimed, grabbing her arms and yanking her close to him. Angry, needing her to be silenced, he stared down at her, clutching her tight. Braced and afraid, she peered into his eyes, seeing the pain in them, the torture and the shame. But there was no sign of hope and she wondered if he was right, if he was too far gone and she was just too crazy and screwed up to realize it.
When he spoke again, his voice was low and clipped, “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Stopping on the sidewalk in front of his house,
she was stuck somewhere between running away from him and pretending she’d never heard what he said. “What do you mean you
killed
someone?”

He let her go and stepped back. “You really want to know?”

She nodded slowly.

“We didn’t just escape like I told you,” he said. “We tried. But that…freak caught us.” He spoke quietly, the numb and distant look in his eyes growing more prominent with every word. “It was late, so he was really drunk. Somehow, it made him even scarier. He had a gun and he said we were too much trouble; he’d just kill us and find someone else. And I didn’t give a damn, I was ready to die.” He stepped back again, putting some space between them. “But then I saw you. You were shaking, and crying and all I could think was…it was my fault you were there. You’d have been safe, at home with your family if I had just told him you didn’t take the bait. I didn’t have to lure you away, but I did…and now he was going to kill you.”

His words trailed off into a heavy silence that stretched on, and on, and on, leaving her hanging on every breath, every shift of his eyes, searching for some clue about what he would do next.

And then the memory started coming back, creeping up on her out of the darkest places of her mind. She could smell the wet, moldy odor in the dark and dingy basement, hear the steady, drip, drip, drip from a faucet or pipe located somewhere in the shadows. And the gun glinted in the flickering light from a bulb swinging back and forth, casting a dull circle of light around Seth, Kendall and their captor.

The man moved forward with ruthless determination, no remorse on his face. Vicious eyes narrowed on the boy, as he pressed the barrel of the gun against Seth’s forehead. “Who do you think should go first?” the man asked, his voice taunting. “You? Or her?”

Watching in terror, Kendall backed up a step, prompting the man to glare at her. “Don’t move!”

With the kidnapper’s attention on Kendall, Seth grabbed the hand that held the gun and clamped his teeth down hard on the side of it, just below the pinky. The gun fired with a quick flash and a loud pop, making her ears ring. The bullet landed in the floor, burrowing itself into the cement inches away from Kendall’s feet.

All she could hear was that ringing sound in her ears, a high pitched shriek that drowned out the sounds of curses and struggle. Finally, the kidnapper dropped the gun and punched Seth in the side of the head, the sound echoing off the cold walls. The boy’s body went slack as he fell to the floor, landing face first.

And he didn’t get up.

Her throat choked back a scream of complete terror as she realized she might be alone with the predator, that Seth might be dead.

Holding his wounded hand, the man nudged Seth with his toe, but the boy still didn’t move. Kneeling down, he turned Seth over. And a final gunshot rang out, so much louder than before, so unexpected that Kendall lost it and started screaming at the top of her lungs. Standing as still as she could, unable to move, her eyes shut tight, she screamed and cried.

When she finally had the courage to open her eyes, she saw t
heir captor fell to the ground, a hole in his chest pumping out blood. Her scream suddenly silenced when Seth stood, slowly, his face locked on the dying man. His hands trembled and the gun fell from them. He jumped, like it might fire again, but the only sound was a ‘cling’ as metal and pavement collided. And when he turned to look at her, she couldn’t recognize him. The vacant look in his eyes scared her; they looked as empty and glassy as the corpse at his feet, and they just stared, aimlessly, like he had a million thoughts rushing through his head and couldn’t focus on a single one.

Letting out a sob of relief, gratitude and pity, she stumbled forward and pulled him into a hug, gripping him as tight as she could, so thankful that he’d saved her. But he just stood still while she held him, so quiet and unresponsive that she’d wondered if he was traumatized for life.

Years later, she realized he was. Standing in front of him on the deserted sidewalk, with the dark night sky looming above and the moon covered with thick clouds, she stared at him in complete awe, bewilderment and confliction. “I remember.”

He looked over at her, looking much like he did that night, with the numb look of shattered innocence and disgust.

Her voice was hoarse from unshed tears as she whispered, “You’re the one who saved me.”

Tears made his eyes shine, but they didn’t fall as he gazed over at her, fighting to keep the emotions hidden. Fighting to pretend he was bad and liked it that way, but in his eyes, she could see the conflict he felt. He ducked his head, looking at the sidewalk, and gently cleared his throat. Opening his mouth, he started to say something, but stopped. He did this two more times before he finally spoke in a trembling, bitter voice, “What a great job I did. You seem so
saved
.”