Don't Say a Word (Hometown Antihero)

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  “How do grown men say things like that about a student?” Dawson asked. At first, I thought it was his way of fitting into the conversation. But at second glance, I could see he was assessing how callous they’d been. How kill or be killed it could be at JHS.

  “Coach is a misogynist, so nothing he says surprises me. Callahan … I have to say, I’d had high hopes when I first returned to physics class. He seemed to have sympathy in his eyes—maybe respect. But I guess not.”

  “Yeah, no,” AJ quickly added with a shake of his head. “Definitely not.”

  “What I don’t understand is why those two were talking at all. It’s no secret that they’re not friendly,” I said.

  “Why not?” Dawson asked.

  “Mainly because Callahan won’t let the football players in his class off easy—the few that dare take it. He doesn’t subscribe to the turn-the-other-cheek grading policy that is standard in some classrooms.”

  “I thought that was only a thing in college sports,” Tabby asked.

  “Nope.”

  “So you’ve managed to bring two people who dislike one another together because they both dislike you more?” she asked. “That’s impressive, Ky. Even for you!” She added a smile to her comment, but it didn’t soften the blow. Joking or not, she was right.

  “Did they say anything else?” Dawson asked, working his profiling no doubt.

  AJ looked thoughtful before speaking. “Coach asked if she was basically on her own. Callahan said it seemed that way from what he could tell. Then Mrs. Petri came in and told Coach one of his players was down in the principal’s office, and he hauled ass out of the room.”

  I could feel Dawson’s stare boring into the back of my head as I looked at AJ. I knew he wanted to share some sort of unspoken message, but I just wanted to let it go. We needed a subject change—or the pep rally to end early.

  “So Tabby, want to go get an ice cream sundae at Matthew’s tonight?”

  Her face lit up like a Christmas tree for a whole second before the lights went out.

  “I don’t think I can.” Her shoulders rounded in embarrassment. “My dad still isn’t keen on us hanging out after everything that happened—he was willing to let you come over to our house, but I’m not sure I can swing an outing together. Not yet. He needs to get to know you better first—get to know the you that I know.” I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but she saw right through it. “He’s just nervous, Ky. It’s not personal.”

  “I can’t blame the man for not wanting you to get beaten with a baseball bat because you hang out with me.”

  “He’ll come around eventually,” she said, looping her arm around my shoulders.

  “Not if he ever figures out how bad an influence I am on you.” I managed a laugh with that comment and it earned me one in return.

  “True.…”

  “I don’t see how he can’t already know that if he’s met you,” AJ added with a wink, trying to further lighten the mood.

  “I don’t think you’re giving Ky enough credit,” Dawson replied, putting his hand on my knee—a clear infraction of the aforementioned no PDA rule. “I think Ky is great at hiding things from others when it suits her purpose—at making them see what she wants them to see.”

  “Are you calling her a liar?” AJ sat up a little straighter, his body rigid.

  “I’m saying she has layers. That she’s complex and not easily read. It’s obvious to see if you pay enough attention.”

  Sweet Baby Jesus, help me.…

  “I’ve known Ky since we were kids,” AJ said, his voice low and threatening. “I know all there is to know about her.”

  “Funny,” Dawson replied, sounding smooth as silk. “Doesn’t seem that way.”

  “Hey look,” I shouted, pointing at the basketball court. “The badger mascot—” I threw my arms up in the air and cheered as loudly as I could. It garnered some curious looks from everyone around me, but it did what I’d hoped it would. It shut down the brewing man-fight between my ex and the fed. Regardless of my warning to Dawson that he’d have to try to get along with AJ, he clearly had another plan in mind. “Is it just me or does the badger look more like a prairie dog?”

  “Maybe,” Tabby said, actually contemplating what I’d said. The boys, however, were not.

  The four of us sat in silence as the cheerleaders performed their competition routine they’d be taking to regionals. We barely spoke at all as Coach Blackthorn blathered on about school pride and salvaging the season and weathering the blow he took in losing Donovan. Losing him—as if he’d gone missing like the Throwaway Girls Dawson was investigating. I could feel my rage boiling up within me as he continued to talk, his grating drawl making me want to claw my way out of my skin.

  Blackthorn represented everything that was wrong with Jasperville.

  “I gotta get out of here,” I mumbled, pulling my bag out from between my legs.

  Just as I started to stand, Dawson clamped his hand down on my thigh and held me in place.

  “Don’t let him get to you,” he said quietly enough for only me to hear. “Don’t let any of them ever see that they’re wearing you down.”

  He let me go without another word, and I sat there for the final few agonizing minutes of the rally, wondering exactly why he’d said what he did. Was it to keep me from drawing attention to myself? To keep me from plummeting deeper down the rabbit hole of social exile? Or was it something else entirely—something Dawson understood from personal experience?

  “Hey!” Tabby cried, bouncing in her seat, her smile beaming. “What if we all go out tonight? I can tell Dad that I’m meeting up with AJ. And if you two just happen to show up, I can hardly be held accountable for that, right? I mean, this town is really small.…”

  “Um, Tabs, I don’t—”

  “Sounds good to me,” AJ said, staring across us to Dawson.

  “I was just about to say the same,” he replied.

  “Don’t you have a football to throw tonight?” I asked AJ.

  “I can go after.”

  “Perfect!” Tabby said, her elation at her plan plain in her smile. “Meet there once the game is over?”

  The boys quickly agreed while I sat there slack-jawed and begging to be abducted by aliens. What had sounded like a fun night for Tabby and me had suddenly become a nightmare. Dawson and AJ passive-aggressively sparring all night was sure to send me into a blind rage. Doling out headlocks was imminent.

  While I sat in my silent stupor, the final bell rang. Students quickly dispersed, but I stayed where I was, hoping that if I didn’t move, I wouldn’t have to go on the date I hadn’t meant to sign up for. Dawson stood up beside me, reaching a hand toward me. With my mind still reeling, I took it. He pulled me to my feet, my body close to his.

  “Why don’t you come by my place before we go out tonight?” He looked down at me with a smile, but his eyes were sharp. I got the subtext loud and clear.

  “Yeah, sure. I just have to go home first. I’ll be over later.” I turned to say goodbye to Tabby and AJ, and found the latter staring past me at Dawson. “See you guys tonight.” I waved before walking away. Somehow the vast gymnasium started to feel a bit claustrophobic.

  By the time I was outside, I was practically gasping for air. Dawson, who’d caught up, looked over at me with concern.

  “You gonna be okay, Danners?”

  “Yep. Just need a sec to recover from what just happened.”

  “Your ex doesn’t seem to like me very much.”

  I glanced over to find him wearing his trademark smug grin. “You think? Can’t imagine why.…”

  “Probably because he’s jealous.”

  “Noooooooo,” I replied, pouring every ounce of sarcasm I possessed into that single word. “And you didn’t do anything to egg that on, did you?”

  He simply shrugged. “Just trying to keep things believable.”

  “Well, could you find a way to make it believable without being excruciating for me?”<
br />
  Another shrug. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  We parted ways in the parking lot. I climbed into Heidi and just sat there for a moment, emotions swirling around in my tightened chest. How in the world I was going to survive the two of them that night was beyond me. Morbid though it was, the thought of spending an evening in the pressure cooker that AJ and Dawson created made me wish we could investigate Danielle’s crime scene instead.

  At least something good would come of that.

  SEVENTEEN

  Tabby tried to double down and strong-arm me into going to the football game one town over, citing that it was the last away game for the season. I hit back (below the belt), playing the “it’s too traumatic” card. She dropped the subject immediately but made sure I wasn’t bailing on ice cream. I promised I’d be there with Dawson in tow.

  With hours to kill before what promised to be the world’s most awkward un–double date ever, I went home and waited for Dawson to call. He’d texted me to tell me that he had to meet up with the profiler and he’d let me know when he was done. That left me alone with way too much time on my hands and too few distractions.

  Not a winning combination.

  At first, I tried to watch a movie. When that didn’t work, I ransacked the boxes in my room, deciding that I should finally finish unpacking. That successfully killed an hour and a half, but even once I’d finished and reorganized my closet by color, I still hadn’t heard from Dawson. If he didn’t hurry, it would be time for our date, and I’d be stuck flying solo, undoubtedly having to explain why Alex wasn’t there—much to AJ’s delight, no doubt.

  After eating some dubious leftovers from the fridge, I flopped down on the couch. I was running on empty, and I knew I couldn’t do that forever. Trying to outrun the fallout of that night was a crappy plan. My denial was waning with every night’s sleep lost, and I feared my demons would escape their cage any day.

  The longer I laid there, the more sleep tugged at me, begging me to follow. I closed my eyes, hoping my memories wouldn’t haunt my dreams as they had since homecoming night. Then something unexpected—something else entirely—drifted into my mind, a scene I hadn’t revisited since my father’s arrest.

  The night of Agent Jim Reider’s death.

  My father looked at me as he left, hovering at the door longer than usual.

  “I love you, kiddo. You know that, right?”

  I blew him off like he was being overly sentimental for some bizarre reason—not seeing the sincerity in his eyes.

  “Yeah, Dad. Now go or you’ll be late.” He opened the door. “Where are you going, anyway? Isn’t it kind of late for a meeting?”

  “I have to go to the north side of downtown. I shouldn’t be long.” That was all he said before rushing out the door.

  Mom was working late, so I watched a movie—some paranormal thing that scared the pants off me. An hour and a half later, right at the climax of the film, my father burst through the back door. He locked it behind him and said a quick hello as he rushed past me to his office, then into the basement.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” I yelled after him, sitting up on the couch.

  He didn’t respond as his footfalls echoed down the steps, then disappeared.

  A knock on the front door came about the time the credits started to roll. I’d had the TV up so loud that I doubted my father even heard it from his subterranean hideaway. I answered the door to find his boss and two other agents standing on the front porch.

  “Hello, Kylene,” Special Agent in Charge Wilson, his boss, said. He sounded far too formal for my liking. “Is your father home?”

  “Yeah, he just got back a little while ago. Why?”

  The three of them shared a knowing look before returning their attention to me. I never heard my father come up from the basement, but in a flash, he was at my side, staring at his colleagues.

  “Kylene, I want you to call your mother and tell her to come home right now.”

  “Dad? What’s going on?”

  “Just do as I say, Kylene. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  I didn’t believe him.

  “Bruce, we need you to come down to the bureau with us.”

  My mind finally caught up with what I was hearing.

  “Wait! Are you taking him in?” I asked, the disbelief of a child clear in my tone.

  None of them answered—not even my father. Instead, he stepped outside to join them. Two of them took him by the elbows and led him out to one of the three vehicles parked outside.

  Now in a full state of panic, I raced to the living room and grabbed my phone. I didn’t do what my dad had asked. Instead, I called his partner, Striker. If anyone would know what to do, it was him.

  “Kylene?” he said, his smooth, deep voice sounding confused.

  “They just took my dad! They’re bringing him down to the bureau. Nobody will tell me what the hell is going on. Is this about the meeting Dad had just now? The one downtown?”

  Striker grew alarmingly silent.

  “I don’t know anything about a meeting.” My heart plummeted to the floor. “What did you tell them when they came for your dad?” Striker’s tone was all business, which wasn’t a good thing. He was calm but commanding, and I frantically tried to remember how everything had gone down.

  “They asked if he was home … I said he’d just come in. SHIT! I should have lied, Striker. I should have said he was home all night!”

  “I’m going to go down to the bureau now and see what I can find out, okay? In the meantime, you are going to stay put and wait to hear from me, got it?”

  I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me.

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll call you soon.”

  Then the line went dead—just like Reider’s and my father’s future.

  * * *

  I exhaled loudly, sitting up on the couch. I rubbed my face with my hands, my mind running over and over the events of that night. What I could have done differently. How I could have helped cover for my father. Then I thought about him running to the basement and my hackles stood on end.

  Over the course of my father’s arrest and subsequent trial, warrants had been issued for our home. They’d come through and emptied his office. They’d ransacked the better part of our home, including my bedroom. They’d searched the basement, too, but not like I’d expected. Then again, I never mentioned that Dad had gone down there when I was interrogated, and my father might not have, either. At the time, it didn’t really register, but in my mania-induced insomnia, my brain put it together. Dad had spent a long time down there before his colleagues had shown up to take him away. I’d always assumed he was cleaning himself up in the downstairs bathroom, but now I wondered.…

  I ran outside and opened up the garage door. It was full of stuff Mom didn’t take out west with her, so there it sat, taking up the better part of Gramps’ one-car garage. I plowed through the boxes in search of anything marked BASEMENT. They were buried in the back, of course, but I eventually maneuvered my way to them.

  Forty-five minutes later, I found what I was looking for: an old file box full of tax reports and other important financial papers. If my dad had done what I thought he had, I’d soon find out. I’d have a clue I could use for his case.

  With shaking hands, I shuffled through the papers, hoping as I neared the back that I hadn’t struck out. That my mind wasn’t failing due to lack of sleep. But the second my index finger landed on the blank tab of a manila folder, I felt a surge of adrenaline shoot through me. I pulled it out, looking over my shoulder to see if the feds had sneaked up on me like a good little paranoid girl.

  Once I was comfortable that I was alone, I opened it up. In it were sheets of papers with columns of numbers on them. Hand-scribbled notes were tucked everywhere. Sticky notes galore. And, in the back, some surveillance photos of men I didn’t recognize, the date and time stamp printed in the top corner.

  “What is all this,
Dad?” I asked the silence. I didn’t have a clue what to make of it all, but I knew that it was what I’d been looking for.

  I carefully put everything except the file away, making it look as undisturbed as possible, and then I closed the garage. With an excitement I could barely contain, I ran to my room and locked the door. I stashed the file by taping it to the bottom of my dresser drawer, then grabbed my phone to text Dawson. I wanted to tell someone about my find, but then I remembered he wasn’t a great candidate. He wouldn’t be nearly as thrilled about it as I was.

  So I texted someone else instead.

  Striker, my dad’s old partner and ally, replied immediately. He agreed to meet up in Columbus the next day for lunch. I didn’t need to tell him why I wanted to see him. He knew me well enough to suspect I was up to something.

  As I walked back to the living room, a text from Dawson finally came in. He was almost in town and would be over shortly. Given how late it was, we weren’t going to have a lot of time to get caught up on what he’d been up to before our date. I exhaled in frustration, then perched myself on the kitchen counter and waited for him to arrive. With any luck, he had found a break in the case—something about one of the girls Jane had named. If so, I wasn’t sure I’d make it through our date without dragging him into a closet and making him spill it.

  I was too on edge to pull that off.

  EIGHTEEN

  A knock on my door jarred me from my thoughts, and I hopped down from the kitchen counter just as Dawson let himself in.

  “Are we already on that level?” I asked, doing nothing to hide my mock disbelief. “Shouldn’t you need a warrant or something to just march into a home?”

  “Cute, Danners,” he replied. He was not amused, and I could only imagine why. Either he’d found something ominous during his investigation that night, or he’d struck out. Or maybe he was about as excited about our date as I was. All were likely options. “We should go. The game should be done by now, right?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, grabbing my coat and purse. “And we wouldn’t want to be late for this.” He choked on a laugh. Yep, definitely not excited about our plans. “So, how was your meeting with the profiling guy?”