A Cold Dark Place (39 page)

"Mrs. Kenyon, help me," His voice was a rasp. "We gotta
get Jenna out of here"

"Where's my daughter?" Adrenaline was now a flood
through her body.

Brown eyes stared back. "Get me out of here," he said.

Emily bent down and began to untie the ligature that was
wrapped around his surprisingly muscular body. She'd thought
that he was slighter. A runner or something. But he was
bulkier than she remembered. Much more so. She started to
loosen the cording, but something struck her as terribly wrong.
It was already loose. Oddly so. Anyone could take this off. A
kid this strong could break this cord with a half-assed tug.

"Mom! Don't!" It was Jenna's voice, this time, muffled.

Emily peered over Nick's shoulder. Was .Jenna right there?
She looked into his eyes, but it was already too late. A pipe or steel rod came down on her, grazing her temple and striking her shoulder. Then another, this time dead on. The small
musty room closed in. And as she began to fall only one
thing came to mind:.Ienna and I are going to die.

From the other side of the bunker, a cigarette glowed.

When Emily regained consciousness, two things were on
her mind. Her daughter, and a gaping hole in her right temple that sent a rivulet of blood down her clammy skin. She
shook her head, trying to startle herself into being fully awake.
Where am I? Where is denna? Her mouth was like cotton, so
dry, that at first she thought she'd been gagged. What happened? She tried to speak, but her words came out in a whisper. "Jenna?"

A voice came at her like a dream, like the sweet song of
an angel. If words could be uttered like a hymn, they had
been just then.

"Mom, I'm here"

The phrase brought a smack-down bump to Emily's
awareness. It was a spark. It rekindled a flash fire of memory. Shed been in the bunker. Shed been tracking Nick and
Jenna. Jenna was there. Shed been helping Nick get free.
Then a curtain of darkness, sudden and complete.

A battery-powered lantern glowed a few yards away. Within
the yellow light was the silhouette of two figures. One was
standing, a cherry ember hanging from his lips as he smoked.
The other was sitting on the cement and clay floor. It was a
much slighter figure. Jenna.

Emily found her voice again. "Nick, what's going on
here? What are you doing to us? Jenna, are you all right?"

"Shut up!" Nick said. "She's okay. But she can't talk."

Emily tried to lean forward to get a better view, but her
body was frozen. "What have you done with her?"

Nick sucked on his cigarette and exhaled, sending a sliver
of smoke into the air, then, like a whirlpool, out into the
drafty bunker. "Nothing. Nothing compared to what's been
done to me"

Emily struggled even harder to stand, to get a better look,
but it was useless.

"What are you talking about? Let me help you"

Nick looked at her, blank eyed. "I'm not helping anyone.
No one ever helped me"

He continued to smoke and Emily strained to get a better
view of her daughter. Jenna was within a few yards of her,
and she could see in the dim light that her breathing was
rapid and shallow. But she was alive. Relief mixed with the
fear that seized Emily. She wriggled in the cording, but it
was too tight. "Look," Emily said, her tone gentle, "I know
about Bonnie and Dylan. No one will blame you for any of
it. You've been through so much. I'll help you"

"You don't have a clue about what I've been through. I've
been alone my entire life."

Emily was unsure how to play it. Play him. Her instincts
failed her. Her head hurt. Her heart ached. What to say?
"That's not true. Your parents loved you. They wanted you.
They chose you" It was weak and she knew it. She was fir ing off a list, hoping that she'd trigger something that would
bring him back to what she hoped was really there. "You
were wanted"

"You didn't live in my house with my family," he said. He
dropped the cigarette butt and twisted it with the heel of his
shoe.

"I know. But I did know your mother."

"You think you knew her. She was ten times worse than
my dad. Everything was about Donny. Donny reminded Dad
of his father. Donny had Mom's eyes. Donny was a chip off
the old block. I was nothing to them. I was the boy they picked
up from an agency because Mom couldn't get knocked up"

"Don't talk like that, Nick." Emily felt wetness at her temple. She couldn't reach it, of course, but as it dripped down
she wondered if it was blood or sweat. She was unsure of
how badly she was hurt by the scuffle. She saw a length of
rebar by his tennis shoe-clad feet.

"Why are you doing this to me, to Jenna?"

"Dan says that Jenna's collateral. Just like you. He's just
pissed off at you for screwing up everything."

"What? His place in the serial killer hall of fame?"

Nick laughed. "It's a little like that. Dad says that God
told him that he had a special plan for him and that his son,
me, would help him get there. I'm willing to do for him what
needs to be done"

"But killing Jenna, me? What's that?"

"Collateral, Mrs. Kenyon. You ruined my dad's rhythm.
You cost him what was rightfully his when you killed that
dumbass Tuttle."

"What are you talking about? That was an accident. I was
trying to save Kristi. She was just a little girl. She didn't deserve to die."

Nick Martin was unmoved. His eyes, cold like a doll's eyes.

Like his father's.

"Maybe so," he said. "But you're really the one responsible
for her death anyway. You killed her by killing Tuttle. When
you did that you messed with my dad. You stole from him."

"Stole what?"

"His rhythm, his plan to be more famous than Bundy."

There was no point in arguing the merits of his bio dad's
sick run to be some kind of serial killer superstar. She'd heard
of people like that, people who sought infamy over fame.
People who cared to make a mark, no matter how dark, how
evil. There was no arguing. No defending the other side of it.

Emily changed the subject. "Jenna needs water," she said.
"Please give her some"

"Water? She's gonna die. Why make her comfortable?
That's stupid. You researched me. You know I'm no dummy.
Yeah, my grades weren't as perfect as Donovan's, but he
wasn't an artist."

The wind whistled through the bunker. Emily didn't want
the conversation to track there. Talking about Jenna not
making it was not anything she'd even ask about. No fuel for
whatever sickness drives this boy.

"Nick, that's right," she said stiffiy. "You're special. You're
an artist. What's going on here isn't you. I know that"

His eyes, his father's eyes, were black voids. "But it's who
Iwanttobe"

"No, it's who you've been forced to be. This is wrong. It
doesn't have to be. I'll help you. We can repair all of this.
Nothing's gone too far. Yet"

Jenna's breathing had appeared to slow and muffled
sounds of her coughing came through the gag. Every neuron
in Emily's body fired. She was hyper alert, with the kind of
rush that allows a desperate mother to pick up a car crushing
her child.

"Nick! Take that out of her mouth right now! Jenna can't
breathe!"

He dropped his cigarette. "Jesus. Where did that come
from?" He winced at the increased volume of Emily's voicethe "mom" voice that women can summon when they needed
it. "All right. I'll get her some air. She's gonna die anyway,
but you don't have to yell at me."

He loosened the gag and Jenna coughed.

"You don't have to yell, you know. I can hear all right."

Emily detected the tiniest fracture in the teenager's practiced veneer and she went for it.

"Yelling? Did your parents yell at you?"

He blinked. "No shit. Every chance they got"

"How did it make you feel?"

"Like I was worthless."

Chipping away. Making him feel something. If not for
denna, for himself. Good.

"You aren't worthless. You know it. Didn't Jenna see it in
you? See your worth? Your talent?"

Nick's eyes were downcast. "I don't want to talk anymore,"
he said. "You're not some school counselor trying to make
me happy. My dad's coming. My real dad. We're getting out
of here" He sat down next to Jenna, her pale, pasty skin now
alarmed her mother even more.

"Please," Emily said, "let my daughter go"

"Shut up. That's not the plan."

"What is the plan, Nick? I wasn't aware of a plan."

He shot her his best FU look. His eyes were cold, his stare
hard. "Wouldn't you like to know?" He allowed a brief smile
come to his lips. "You're gonna die. Just like Kristi Cooper.
You're gonna die because no one can find you"

"You know about Kristi?"

"I know what my dad tells me"

"Which dad?"

"The one that matters, Dylan Walker."

"Don't you know he killed all those people? Doesn't that
mean anything to you?"

"You killed someone"

He was referring to Tuttle, of course, maybe even Kristi
Cooper. But Emily didn't go there. She couldn't. She had to
keep him talking so that just maybe she could find a way to
talk them out of the bunker. To daylight. To freedom. To safety.
The wind sent another blast of air against the bunker's openings. It sounded like the whistle of a train, the rolling of the
tracks.

"I never meant to kill anyone"

"Good for you. I never killed anyone"

"Not even Bonnie."

"Dad took care of her."

`But she was your biological mother."

"She was a breeder and that's all. She was stupid, too. My
dad tried to get rid of her for years. I would have killed her,
but instead, I just helped clean up the mess. Dad never liked
working alone."

Emily was reeling. It was as if all that Dylan Walker had
done was now being revealed by his biological son, a son no
one knew about.

"There were others, too. Bonnie took care of them. Just
like she did to the Martins. Other mistakes he made that he
wanted cleaned up"

"What others?" It struck a nerve that he now had referred
to his family by its surname. His split from them was so
complete. Emily wondered if he held any emotion for Peg,
Mark, or Donovan.

"What happened to your family," she asked, hesitating,
before shifting her words, "to the Martins?"

He looked downward. A trickle of feeling? Emily studied
him through the murky light of the bunker. What was he
thinking? What was he feeling?

"It was planned," he said. "Everything. But the storm.
The storm wasn't planned."

Jenna was wide awake, listening to Nick Martin spin a
slightly different and darker version of what had happened in the hours before the tornado. She listened without
moving a muscle while her mother surreptitiously struggled
to break free. Jenna knew she'd been played. It had been a
setup from the beginning. Nick hadn't just come home to
find them dead.

Nick had known what he was going to find.

"Okay," he continued, "I didn't know that Donny was
going to be home"

As she fought her binding, Emily's eyes beamed through
the darkness at Nick. It was as if she willed his attention to
hold on her face only, not her hands. "But your mom called
him to come home," she said.

"No. Peg didn't call him. Bonnie did. Dylan, Dad, said
that Bonnie really messed up. She came to get me. Take me
out of Cherrystone. My dad was important. Famous. She
was my birthmother, but the Martins didn't want anything to
do with her."

He called his parents by their names, Emily thought, no
longer Mona and Dad. It was like he d dissociated himself
f ona then. No ties. No connections.

"By the time I got home, they were all dead"

Tears welled in his eyes. Emily saw it as a hopeful sign.
Maybe this kid has a soul after all, she thought.

"I don't know why that bitch called Donny home," he
said, sniffing a little.

"Maybe she didn't want any loose ends to worry about?"
Emily tried to sound unthreatening and helpful. She was more mom than cop just then, at least she hoped that's what
Jenna's friend-turned-captor would think.

Instead a little defiance followed. "He wasn't a loose end.
Even though the Martins couldn't stop yapping about how
great he was, he was my brother."

"Right. And you loved him."

"I love my dad. He's coming for me. We're going to live
in Mexico. He says I get my creativity from him."

And your taste for blood, she thought. "He's not coming
for you. You were a loose end. All of them. The kids. The
families."

"You don't know anything," he said.

Emily caught Jenna's eye. She could see that Jenna had
made some progress. No words were needed, just the look of
desperation giving way to hope.

"I know enough," she said, her calming tone barely in
check.

"Too bad. You're gonna die, Mrs. Kenyon. Jenna, too.
'Cause you're my loose ends"

"No," Emily said firmly. She wouldn't allow one drop of
fear color her words. He was just a goofy kid. A mixed-up,
goofy kid. In another time or place he could have been a
Columbine student skulking under a table as bullets sprayed
over a cafeteria. He could have been a chess champion, making his final move, winning the prize. Or just a plain old kid
waiting at a bus stop or laughing and pushing and shoving
his friends in a movie line at the Cherrystone Cinema. Anything. Anything-but a monster.

He was a lost boy.

"Yeah, that's what you are," he said, looking for a smoke,
then pulling one out of a twisted pack and poking it into his
mouth. "A loose end" He spat out the words as he felt for his
lighter.

Jenna's hands were free now. She tried not to let her excitement show on her face, or become audible through her
breathing. As quickly as she could, Jenna untied the bindings
that held her legs. The cords had cut so deeply into her skin
that the wave of pain that came with their release was nearly
unbearable. It felt as if she'd been cut with the jagged edge
of a hunting knife. Her feet were numb. Had she lost blood?
Had gangrene set in? She wanted to cry. It took every bit of
strength she had to just swallow that pain as she scanned the
darkened space of the bunker.