by Sean Platt
Accusers were rarely believed. And, more often than not, perpetrators were never punished. The grayer the area, the less likely anyone would ever be held accountable.
And that was in normal cases, not taking into account when these things happened with people like Calum Kozack.
The more Jordyn read, the more hopeless she felt.
After walking for nearly half an hour, it started to rain. She headed home, unable to hide her pain. And now Jordyn wasn’t sure that she should tell her father.
She opened the front door. Fate could decide. If he asked her how she was, she’d lie and say that everything was fine. If he were paying attention, he’d ask her what was wrong.
If he did, then she’d tell him.
But her father wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen. He was upstairs, talking to someone. Maybe he was on the phone with his client from South Florida. She started up the stairs. His voice got louder.
Her father was yelling.
Then he heard the last name she expected. “I don’t care, Carissa. It isn’t for you to say!”
Jordyn froze on the stairway, her face feeling like it was going to crack.
No, no, no. I don’t need this. Not now.
“No, it doesn’t matter. And nobody is going to find out.”
Jordyn finished climbing the stairs, saw her father in his bedroom. He stared at his bed as if her mother were sitting on it.
“Find out what?” Jordyn asked. Her father turned, eyes wide as if he’d been busted. Before he could answer, she snapped, “Did you stop?”
“Stop what?”
“Taking your pills?”
“Jordyn, honey, it’s complicated.”
“You promised! You promised, and you lied!”
“I didn’t lie. I just—”
“What? You what?” He was speechless. And now she was close enough to smell his breath. “And you’re drinking?”
His face went from sheepish to angry in a flinch. He turned to where he imagined her mother to be and yelled, “Butt out!” Then he spun on Jordyn. “I’m the parent here. You are the child. I don’t need to explain myself to you.”
“You said you’d stop! If you’re not gonna stop, I’m calling the doctor.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Try and stop me.” Jordyn reached into her pocket. He smacked the phone out of her hand and sent it sailing into the hallway.
She stared at him, a hard knot in her throat.
“Go to your room.”
“What?”
“I said go to your room!” He pointed.
Jordyn burst into tears. Everything inside her was about to come out, all at once — her anger, her confession, and her accusations against Calum.
But as she was about to speak, her father pushed Jordyn out of his room and slammed the door in her face.
She bent down and scooped up her phone, then ran down the stairs and into the rain.
* * * *
CHAPTER 48 - MALLORY BLACK
“Officer down!” Mal shouted into her radio, leaning in to put pressure on Mike’s leg.
Captain Wilson was on the radio calling for air support and more officers, stationed just outside a three block perimeter, and road blocks around the neighborhood.
She repeated her call into the radio. The dispatcher finally responded with a promise that help was on the way.
Mike sat up and leaned against the car. “Go get him.”
“You sure?” Mal asked.
“I got this.”
The shot looked clean, in and out. It had missed any major arteries. Still, she hated to leave him bleeding.
“Go!” he said, again.
Three deputies had a thirty-second head start, but the woods connected several vacant lots on both blocks, then led to a wide swath of woodlands surrounding the neighborhood.
It wouldn’t take long to lose someone in the woods or on one of the streets.
She raced into the woods after Jeff, her eyes scanning for movement.
Lights bounced ahead, the other three officers to her left and right as they spread into the woodlands. Behind her, darkness.
Rain fell harder.
Captain Wilson updated them on the radio. “Weather has grounded the chopper, so we’ve got no eye in the sky. That means it’s on you all to find this bastard.”
Mal ran through the woods, and out onto a long street lined with homes, most with sleeping residents. A handful were lit, but no one was out. No yells of intrusion, no signs that Jeff had taken cover in one of the yards.
The darkness could bury him anywhere.
She had to follow her gut. He was still running, not hiding out this close to where he’d fired the shots. If he knew the area, he also knew that there was a train track a half mile west of them, and beside that a river fronting several hundreds of acres of forest.
Mal would run west, as far as she could get from the city.
A Honda Civic sat on the roadside, in front of one of the empty lots. It had a sticker on the window from the sheriff’s department, telling the owner they had 24 hours to move before the vehicle was towed, meaning it had likely been there at least a day.
She was about to approach the car when branches crunched to her left, across the street. She followed the sound to where the brush was thicker, scratching at her face and hands as she pushed her way through it.
Her radio was filled with the chatter of deputy updates.
The crunching stopped.
She turned her radio to silent and killed her light. She fell to her knees behind some brush. She listened.
Lightning cracked and strobed the woods in white. Thunder exploded.
She could hear officers in the distance. Dogs had arrived, giving them a desperately needed edge.
The circle was closing around the area, but even if they called in every agency in the northeast, they still wouldn’t have enough officers to stop Jeff from slipping through. Not without a chopper.
She waited for the sound of branches again but heard nothing.
Another flash of lightning, then Mal headed through the woods to the next street, continuing west. Instinct told her to stop.
She thought about the car sitting on the street.
Just sitting there.
The sticker meant it had probably been there all day. But what if Jeff had taken a sticker off another car to make the car look abandoned?
She raced back the way she’d come, exploded out of the woods and into the street, just as Jeff was approaching the car.
She didn’t tell him to stop.
She fired.
Missed. Cracked his windshield.
Startled, he turned and fired back.
Mal ducked behind a fence, no protection, but at least he couldn’t see her. She peeked out, ready to take another shot, and saw him running toward the house he’d parked in front of.
Shit!
This was about to turn into a hostage situation. And given his propensity for stacking the body counts, Mal didn’t hold out much hope for a positive outcome.
She turned on her radio, updated his location, and called for backup.
Screams and gunshots as Jeff forced his way inside. Mal couldn’t see him from two doors down, but as the bellows multiplied, and a child’s was among them, she couldn’t wait for backup.
Lightning flashed. Rain poured harder. Mal raced toward the chaos.
She cornered a row of cars, nearly wiping out as she pounded sidewalk on her way to the house.
The front door was wide open. Jeff stood in the living room, aiming his gun at the people inside — a Hispanic family of five, screaming at them all to back away.
He would try to make his way toward the rear of the house.
Mal was going to duck behind a car and sneak around to the back, but she was too late.
Jeff looked up, locked eyes with Mal.
She raised her gun.
He grabbed a teenage girl and pulled her in front of him, putting a pistol to
her head. “Gun down!”
The girl screamed.
The men yelled at him to let her go. The women cried.
The scene was a cluster fuck. The kind of shit that went sideways fast, before three days writing reports explaining how the hell it went so wrong.
“Gun down!” he yelled again.
Mal wasn’t sure how long it would take for backup. She had no choice, but to put her gun down. But then she remembered the mystery vigilante’s advice not to put the gun down or else he’d kill the girl. Not Sandra, specifically a girl.
How could he have known it would go down like this?
Every ounce of training told her to lower her weapon, wait for hostage negotiators to talk him out of the house.
Her heart raced as she stared down the sight of her pistol.
She was twenty-five feet away. But it was raining, and her target was mostly concealed by a crying teenage girl with a gun to her head.
Her radio crackled with Wilson calling for an update.
She didn’t have time to answer. Or think. Mal only had time to act.
Put the gun down or fire?
She locked with the crying girl and felt her aching. She’d let Katie down. She was already responsible for more pain than she wanted, so it made sense to heed the gunman. Put the gun down, and let the hostage negotiators handle this.
Jeff screamed, “Put the fucking gun down or—”
Mal fired.
Lightning crashed, so close and blinding that everything was white for a moment.
Then, when her vision returned, Jeff was on the ground and the girl was in her family’s arms.
Mal ran inside the house. “Police, step away from the body.”
She went in, gun aimed down at Jeff. But as she drew closer, Mal saw that he was down for good. Thanks to the perfect hole in his forehead.
* * * *
CHAPTER 49 - JORDYN PARISH
Jordyn didn’t know where she was going. She just wanted to be far away from everything.
She tried to call Sammi, the only person who might be able to help her. At first, the calls went straight through to voice mail. Jordyn texted:
Please, Sammi. I don’t know what to do. Please call me.
She was about a mile away from the beach. There were a few diners on the other side of the intracoastal overpass where she could go to escape the rain. She had a few dollars in her pocket, enough for something to eat. After puking up the next-to-nothing she’d had all day, Jordyn was famished.
She wasn’t sure if a diner would let her in soaking as she was, but it was worth a shot.
A car full of teenagers in an SUV passed in the westbound lane, honking.
She thought it might be someone offering her a ride. Then the window rolled down and a bunch of girls and guys yelled, “Slut!” in unison, with middle fingers to follow the slur.
Jordyn flipped them off in return.
She kept walking, anger boiling. This was her life now.
Her phone pinged again. More LiveLyfe alerts, people messaging, calling her skank, whore, slut, and other not-so-creative names.
The insults weren’t just coming from strangers; some were coming from kids she’d thought she was friends with. Kids in what used to be her circle, but didn’t seem to be in Brianna’s. Kids that had been down-to-earth. Nice, until now.
More people had posted to her wall, including links to the now infamous video, as well as Photoshopped pictures of Jordyn’s body on porn stars. There was Jordyn in a gang bang, Jordyn and lesbians, Jordyn getting pissed on, Jordyn getting raped by all sorts of celebrities and cartoon characters.
The flood of hate showed no signs of slowing or stopping. There was nothing she could do. The only thing Jordyn could think of was to tell her father and go to the police. But that wasn’t an attractive option, not with her father’s current state of mind.
She could call 9-1-1, but didn’t want to without telling her father first. She thought of him slamming the door in her face. Remembered the anger in his eyes.
He’d never looked at her like that.
That wasn’t just anger; it was something closer to hate.
Jordyn had often wondered if he resented her mother dying and leaving him to care for her on his own. He’d never said it, of course. But there were times she could feel it over the years, in an exhausted sigh or a rising voice of annoyance, times when his actions told the truth that she was a burden. That he would’ve been happier on his own.
Maybe he would’ve returned to the force after the injury. Maybe he wouldn’t have turned drunk and crazy. The job had kept him grounded. But he left South Florida because of her when she was having trouble at school with other kids.
Jordyn hadn’t fit in for years.
And after she went to the police, she’d be ostracized like never before.
She’d never have another friend.
School would be an endless hell.
And where could she go now?
Homeschool?
If her father wasn’t sick of her before, that would certainly do it.
And it wasn’t like they could go running back to South Florida, even if they managed to sell this house.
Her phone rang at the top of the bridge. Sammi.
Jordyn sighed with relief. The girl that had always been nice. The girl that Bobby claimed had never hurled a single ill word her way. The one girl that she felt might really be her friend.
“Hello?” Jordyn answered.
“Hey, you called?”
“I need help. I don’t know what to do.”
“About what?” Sammi sounded weird, not what Jordyn expected. It wasn’t the comforting voice of someone returning a call to someone in obvious distress. It was almost matter-of-fact. Clipped.
“The videos. What happened to us. I don’t know what to do.”
“Just tell the truth.”
“What do you mean?” Jordyn asked, confused.
“Tell Bobby the truth. That you were trying to get him away from his friends with a fake rape charge.”
“What?”
“Come on, Jordyn. Just tell them the plan you told me and then apologize. They’ll forgive you.”
“I never said anything like that.”
A sound of the phone brushing up against something, then another voice — Brianna’s. “Listen, you little bitch. The game is over. And you are fucked. You come at my man and me, you come at our friends, we will fuck your shit up. I suggest you don’t ever show your face again or we’ll release everything. And I do mean every little thing. You got that, cunt?”
Brianna hung up the phone.
Jordyn’s face felt like it was going to crack. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stood paralyzed.
How had it come to this?
How could everything in her life all crumble at once?
The cold rain pelted her. She looked out at the churning dark waters, barely visible in the intense rain, barely able to make out the lights on passing boats beneath the overpass.
It would be so much easier to end things.
It wasn’t the first time she’d thought about suicide. She’d considered it a few times in South Florida. Her father thought the problem was with their home, and the memories that were haunting them both. Other kids. A shitty community.
The problem is me.
Jordyn looked down at her phone.
She called Bobby and raised the phone to her ear. If she could get him on the line, maybe she could find a way to work through this. Find a way that didn’t involve the police or throwing her life in the garbage.
But even if she could somehow return things to the way they were, things could never be normal again.
Even if she could go back to people pretending to be nice, she knew the truth. Everybody hated her.
Jordyn was an outcast.
Same as she’d ever been.
The world would be better off without her.
She climbed to the top rail of the bridge and looked down.
She called her father.
She wasn’t sure if she was calling so he could talk her down or calling to say goodbye.
It didn’t matter.
He didn’t answer.
“Sorry, Dad,” she said to his voicemail. “I know you tried. Tried real hard. But I can’t do it anymore. It’s too hard. I’m going to see Mommy.”
Jordyn hung up.
She put the phone in her pocket and looked down at the churning darkness below. A long drop. If it didn’t kill her, it would paralyze her for sure. Either way, she didn’t care.
Jordyn just wanted something other than the pain. Because now she knew the brutal truth. There was no escape.
She jumped.
As she fell, the phone trilled in her pocket.
But it was too late to answer.
She—
* * * *
CHAPTER 50 - JASPER PARISH
Present Day…
Jasper carried the plate with the peanut butter sandwich and bottle of water down the darkened stairwell to the cellar.
He set it down, grabbed his pistol, then unlocked the padlock. He opened the door, gun aimed, just in case his prisoner had slipped free his chains.
Calum Kozack was still leashed to the iron bed post, the collar still around his neck, hands still cuffed. He had just enough room to reach the toilet. There wasn’t a sink.
Calum’s eyes widened when he saw his meal. His only one of the day. He was salivating as Jasper pushed it toward the bed.
Jasper stood in the corner, watching Calum turn animal, shoving the sandwich into his open maw fast enough to choke himself.
“Slow it down, Cal, there ain’t gonna be another one for a while.”
“How long?”
Jasper turned to the plastic clock mounted on the wall behind him, also out of Calum’s reach. 6:15. “About this time tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.”
“You fucker.”
“Tsk tsk, Calum. That’s no way to talk to the only person keeping you alive. The only person who knows you’re alive.”
