Don't Say a Word (Hometown Antihero)

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  She broke out into a laugh that nearly camouflaged her sob.

  “Jesus, kid … do you really want one after everything that happened?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I do, but I could use a brief hiatus, if that’s okay with you. I’ve gotta get caught up on the schoolwork I missed last week—even if my bank account disagrees.”

  “Of course,” she said, her sympathetic smile making me look away. “And, just so you know, the Sinclairs confirmed today that they wouldn’t be pressing any trespassing charges against you for being on their property the night of homecoming. I spoke to Sheriff Higgins about it yesterday.”

  “What about Luke…?”

  She paused. “I told you before, Ky. The sheriff was never going to go after you for that.”

  “So I’m in the clear—in the eyes of the law, at least.”

  Her expression fell to one of sad understanding. “Yes. But I’m guessing the court of public opinion has been far less than forgiving about Donovan Shipman.”

  “That’s a painfully accurate assumption.”

  “Have a seat,” she said, indicating the club chair reserved for clients. I fell back into the tasteful gray upholstery and exhaled. She sat down on the other side of the desk from me and tented her fingers against her mouth. “How are you doing with all of this, Ky? And don’t give me your canned response. I want the truth.”

  “Surprisingly well, I think. I’m having trouble sleeping, but that seems normal given what happened.”

  “Are you seeing a therapist?”

  “The school psychologist—just once.”

  “Did it help?”

  “Maybe?”

  “How’s Gramps taking everything?”

  “I mean … as well as can be expected.”

  “And your father?”

  “Let’s just say I’m surprised he didn’t go postal and land himself in solitary.”

  “That is shocking.” Her laughter trailed off until she stared thoughtfully at me for a moment. “I’m glad you did what you had to do, Ky.”

  I hesitated for a moment, pushing from my mind the memory of Luke holding a needle to my neck.

  “I didn’t have a lot of options at the time.”

  “No. you didn’t.” Her eyes narrowed, assessing me from across her desk.

  “What? Why are you making that face at me?”

  “Because,” she mused, leaning forward in her chair. “I can’t help but feel like even though I’m your acting counsel, I don’t know everything that happened that night.”

  I shifted in my seat. “Because you don’t.…”

  “Attorney-client privilege still applies.”

  I thought about what my dad had said—how he didn’t want me to investigate his case. Then I thought about how alike Meg and I were. How she hated cover-ups and conspiracies as much as I did. Telling her the truth about that night would rope her into a case far bigger than the lot of us, but she at least had an avenue that could best lead to my father’s release.

  So I took a deep breath and told her everything.

  By the time I finished filling her in about the sheriff, the prostitution ring, and the AD, she looked genuinely shocked. Possibly a little scared, too. I wasn’t sure how to handle the Agent Dawson bit, but I opted to tell her about his involvement in the girls’ case, but not his undercover mission. Not that Meg would have, or could have, told anyone, but I thought it best to keep that to myself. It would have only led to more questions I couldn’t answer, especially about my involvement.

  “So you think this Advocatus Diaboli is somehow tied to your father’s case?”

  “Yes. Sheriff Higgins all but said he was.”

  “This is very circumstantial evidence.”

  “I know. I need more before I can try to get Dad’s ruling overturned, or case reopened, or whatever it is that would happen if new damning evidence came to light.”

  Meg shot me an incredulous look. “You need an attorney to look into his case again? Because I spent the first ten years of practice working at the DA’s office, Kylene. I know a lot about prosecutorial law. If I think we can get this case reopened, I’ll do it. In a heartbeat.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” I said reaching into my backpack. I pulled out a copy of the transcripts Striker had given me and dropped them on the desk. “You’ll need these. I’ve highlighted some suspicious testimony and made notes in the margins about some of the witnesses.”

  She smiled at me, amused. “You sure you don’t want to be a lawyer, kid?”

  “And sully my pristine reputation?” I asked indignantly. “Not a chance.”

  Our laughter rang through the room, the soundtrack to our newly founded partnership. Meg was the ally I’d needed to help my father, and now I had her. Together, we would free my dad—maybe even get him reinstated to the FBI. But Meg was definitely right about one thing. The court of public opinion was far crueler than Lady Justice herself.

  Maybe my dad would never be able to shed the skin of his murder conviction.

  FOURTEEN

  Sleep finally came, but it wasn’t kind. I shot up in bed three times, my recurring nightmare of Luke plunging the needle into my neck playing on a loop in my brain. I might as well not have slept at all. And, judging by the late-night text I’d gotten from Dawson, I figured he wasn’t much better off.

  I doubted he’d be in school the next day.

  Since I woke up at five, I got to school early for once in my life. I stopped by my locker to unload whatever books I didn’t need that morning. When I threw open the door, my cell started ringing. I quickly glanced around the hall before answering.

  The second I heard Jane’s voice, I froze.

  “I don’t have a lot of time, so I need you to shut up and listen,” she said by way of greeting. “I told you the other night that Danielle was dead. What I didn’t tell you is I know that because I saw her die with my own eyes. I watched a man cut her throat, bend down and grab her by the ankles, then throw her into the river like she was nothing. She hasn’t been reported missing yet—and she died about two weeks ago. I know this because I followed her that night. She’d told me she was going to meet her contact and tell him that she wanted out. She was sober now and this way of life wasn’t for her anymore.”

  I fell back a step into the locker behind me.

  “Don’t ask me why I followed her,” she continued. “I think you of all people know what it’s like to just get one of those feelings that you can’t ignore. So I did it. I don’t know what I hoped to get from going—if I just wanted to make sure she was safe or see who was in charge so I could maybe use it against him somehow, but none of that matters now. What I learned—or confirmed—is that there is no way to leave this hell. That if I want to get out alive, I need leverage or I need him shut down.”

  “That’s why you need me,” I whispered.

  “I was going to tell you the names of the other girls I knew that were in this—old recruiters. Write these down,” she said and I yanked a pen out of my bag. “Kit Casey, Rachel Fray, Angela Mercy, and Samantha Dunkley.” I scribbled them down on my hand as quickly as I could. “After seeing what happened to Danielle, I know they were killed, too. This guy doesn’t leave loose ends.”

  Every hair on my body shot up at her words. Luke would have still been alive at the time Danielle was killed—maybe he was responsible for her death. Maybe Dawson’s whole case was over before his undercover mission really got started.

  The warning bell rang, jarring me from my thoughts. I could hear it echo through from Jane’s line as well.

  “I have to go—”

  “Wait!” I shouted. “I need the date and time that you last saw Danielle.” She rattled off both and I wrote those down on my hand too.

  Then she hung up.

  With no time to waste, I took a picture of the information on my hand, then ran to the bathroom to wash it off. If Dawson’s recruiter was killed by the very person she worked for—the one he was hoping to fin
d so he could get closer to the man running the show—then processing Danielle’s crime scene, investigating her life, would be his best bet at finding the killer. Once we had him, we had the asshole responsible for exploiting and discarding girls like the ones Jane had mentioned. The ones who nobody seemed to care about.

  The Throwaway Girls.

  As I rushed down the hall, I sent Dawson a text: GET YOUR ASS HERE NOW! WE NEED TO TALK. Then I ran into Callahan’s class just as he was closing the door.

  * * *

  I hadn’t heard back from Dawson by lunchtime, so I decided it was time for drastic measures. Instead of heading to the cafeteria, I bolted for my car and drove off, hoping I wouldn’t get caught in the process. Dawson’s house wasn’t far away, so I knew I could make it back before lunch was over, but the margin for error was minimal at best.

  When I pulled up to his house, not a light in the place was on. I ran up to the door and started pounding on it. If anyone had seen me, I’d have just looked like a crazy ex-girlfriend—not out of the ordinary for Jasperville. It took a solid thirty seconds before the deadbolt turned and the door flew open to reveal a half-naked, totally disheveled-looking Dawson.

  “What the hell, Danners—”

  “Do you ever check your phone?” I asked, pushing past him through the doorway.

  “I was sleeping.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s time to wake up.”

  I rambled off every detail from my phone call, his intense stare never faltering. Then I shoved the picture on my cell phone of the girls’ names in his face. He grabbed a pair of glasses off a wooden end table and looked them over. I watched as realization dawned in his expression. He recognized every one of them from our search the other night.

  “What’s the date and time for?” he asked, though I suspected he already knew and just wanted confirmation.

  “Danielle’s murder.”

  He let out a breath. “I need to know where that crime scene is,” he said, running his hand through his hair as he made his way down the hall. Without invitation, I followed. “I need to process it for forensic evidence.”

  “But it’s been two weeks,” I countered. “And we’ve had some crazy thunderstorms in that time.”

  “You watch too many cop shows,” he said, storming down the hall to his bedroom. He grabbed a T-shirt off the bed. As he pulled it over his head, his half-naked status finally registered. It seemed wrong to stare at his abs while discussing a murder, but for the briefest moment, I did.

  And they did not disappoint.

  “We just need to use a different chemical to find any traces of blood. And we can process it for DNA. Whoever killed her is most likely the same person prostituting the girls. If we get a hit, it could be case closed for two different crimes. But I can’t do that without the location of the crime scene. The number on Danielle’s phone is no longer in service, therefore untraceable. Another dead end.”

  I followed Dawson out of his room into what he’d set up as an office across the hall. And by office, I mean a desk under the window and an enormous whiteboard lining the far wall. It was covered with names and photos and profiles of the girls we’d found after Jane’s initial call—the Throwaways—each with a picture at the top and a trail of information underneath. Some of those trails were painfully short. How it was possible to find so little information on a person was unthinkable. It was like they’d never existed.

  “I’ve been combing what little evidence was obtained from Danielle’s home and locker to see if she can be tied to any of the other runaways. Now that Jane has come forward with these other potential homicide victims, I can work to tie them all together and build a list of suspects solely based on who they all had in common.”

  “If you can manage that.” I pointed at the meager details he had so far.

  “That’s just a preliminary workup on them. Now that I know we’re likely looking for someone who they all had in common, I can dig deeper. Jane said the other girls were recruiters, too. That’s how the sex trade often works. The people in charge use someone—usually a former victim—to reach out to girls they’ve predetermined to be easy prey. They would have to have known these girls well enough to know that they could be leveraged into doing what he made them do.”

  His response, though harsh, made a lot of sense.

  “Okay. What do you need from me?”

  “I need you to do exactly what you’re doing. Keep feeding me information and work on gaining Jane’s trust.” His business expression fell for a moment, revealing a softer edge. “She’s smart and a survivor. You two have that in common.”

  An uncomfortable silence closed in around us for a moment until I couldn’t breathe. I had to break it.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to sit here and dig up everything I can on the girls. Until Jane contacts you and tells you something about the crime scene, I’m stuck with that.”

  “You planning on making an appearance at school anytime this week?”

  “Yes, I’ll be back. Agent Wilson wants me to get whatever I can on teachers the girls had in common so I can share it with the bureau’s profiler. Hopefully narrow down the suspect list.”

  “Good. I’m not prepared to keep covering for you to keep the rumors at bay.”

  His brow quirked. “Rumors?”

  “I’m sure there are some good ones already.”

  “Can’t wait to hear them.”

  “You’re no help at all.”

  Any hint of amusement fell from his face. “I have a case to solve, Danners. I can’t be worrying about high school bullshit.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to,” I muttered under my breath. “Anyway, I need to get back before our lunchtime meeting quickly becomes the afternoon topic of conversation.” He shot me a curious look. “Like we had a quickie … make-up sex, maybe?”

  “Alex Cedrics doesn’t do quickies.”

  I fluffed past that statement as fast as I could. “That’s great, but I should probably still go.”

  “Or you could cut class and help me out.”

  My eyes went wide at his words—the stickler for the rules baiting me into breaking them.

  “Are you trying to get me into trouble?”

  He scoffed. “Like you need help with that.”

  “You really want me to stay?”

  “I have homework assignments that need to be done. You could do those so I can investigate.”

  While I stared at him, struck by the audacity of his idea, he walked down the hall to the coffee table and grabbed his laptop. He plopped down on the couch and went straight to work as though he didn’t have to do anything else to convince me to stay—or maybe he didn’t care either way.

  With my blood pressure rising, I pulled my phone out and called Mrs. Baber to tell her I didn’t feel well and went home for the day. I rode out her riot act about policy and procedure and following the rules, then hung up.

  Dawson glanced up at me, a mischievous look in his eyes.

  My eyes narrowed in return.

  “You wanted me, you got me. Now … where do I start?”

  * * *

  Hours later, I needed a break. My resentment for doing homework while Dawson investigated was making me angry—or maybe I just needed food.

  “You got any snacks in this place?” I asked as I passed him at the kitchen table.

  “Chips are in the pantry.”

  I opened the long cupboard door to see the chips in question. I was not impressed with what I found.

  “Aww … what’s up with this hippie crap? No nacho chips? Cheese doodles?”

  “That stuff is nothing but chemicals.”

  “Yeah. And?”

  He let out a put-upon sigh. “Try those. You’ll like them.”

  “I highly doubt it,” I mumbled, pulling out the bag of hipster puffs. “If this is made with some kind of vegan cheese crap, I’m going to throw them up all over your rug.”

  With snacks in hand, I retur
ned to my spot on the couch and picked up my books.

  “You puke, you clean.”

  “Can you not talk while I’m doing our homework, which, by the way, is so unfair that I don’t even really know where to begin my rant. You do realize that Tabby basically does my physics for me, right? You’re going to fail that class. I hope that goes down on your permanent record.…”

  “It won’t.”

  Dick. “Shhhh … studying.”

  A low laugh escaped him, but I didn’t bother to look up. I was on the brink of understanding electrical current and resistance. The power of the ohm was strong with me in that moment. No need to disrupt that (pun totally intended).

  Dawson sighed and got up from the kitchen table to join me on the couch. He reached for the snacks, then grabbed the remote. He turned on the TV to a prison documentary in progress, highlighting all the horrible things that happen there. I quickly snatched the remote and shut it off. For a moment, we sat in silence, the crunch of my hippie-not-really-cheese-puffs the only sound in the room.

  “You know those are always an overdramatization of prison life,” he finally said.

  I found little comfort in his words. “Yeah…”

  “Your dad will be removed from most of what goes on anyway because he’s not in the general population.”

  My anger spiked. “You sure about that, hotshot? Because up until the last time I saw him, he was. Some bullshit about paperwork not being filed properly or a holdup or missing something—basically, someone was screwing with him.”

  When Dawson didn’t respond right away, I turned to face him. His gaze was fixed on me, dark questions brewing behind his warm hazel eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he was in gen pop. He had the war wounds to show for it. Hell, he threw himself down a flight of stairs to be put in the infirmary just to be isolated for a few days. That’s desperation at its finest, even if he did his best to play it off as a strategic move and nothing more.”

  His eyes narrowed further. “Even if there was some sort of clerical error, it shouldn’t have taken long to fix,” he said, puzzling something out in his mind. “When did he get pulled from gen pop?”