Very Bad Things (22 page)

“You knew he did it all along?” Katie asked, tasting bile.

Tessa let out an exasperated sigh. “Don’t you get it? He kept me alive. I would have done anything to protect him.”

Katie squeezed her eyes shut.
Please, let this not be happening. Let me not be here
. She prayed that when she opened her eyes, she’d be somewhere else.
Anywhere
else.

But when she dared to look again, she was still sitting on an old mattress in a room lit by one candle, and there was Tessa beside her, those familiar clear blue eyes watching her expectantly. Like she was waiting for Katie to say, “Oh, hey! You were just protecting him. Well, then everything’s A-OK!”

Katie trembled. “Tessa, untie me
now
.”

But her roommate simply glanced at her brother again, as if he was in charge. As if it was up to him, not her.

Oh, God. Peter wanted to keep her in the tunnels like she was some kind of pet. And Tessa was going to let him?

“Tessa, this is wrong, and you know it.”

But Tessa made no move to untie her.

Katie’s stomach turned. She pulled as hard as she could against the twine, but it didn’t give.
Is it the same twine he’d used on The Box?
she found herself wondering. Was Peter involved in Rose Tatum’s death? Was that why Tessa had spun that wild story about Mark calling her?

It was like finally putting together the border to the puzzle when nothing else fit.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” Katie said what she was thinking. “He killed Rose, not Mark. Not Steve.”

“No!” Tessa jumped up from the mattress. She waved her arms, shaking her head. “Peter didn’t kill her. He
found
her. He thought it was you, and he totally freaked out. When he called me from her phone, he was howling like a wounded animal. I’d never heard him in such awful pain, not ever.”

Katie stared at Tessa, her stomach cramping. She felt such disgust. “You flat-out lied about Mark. He really was drugged. He didn’t do anything.”

Tessa’s eyes turned rock-hard. “Mark doesn’t deserve you. He never did.”

“What he doesn’t deserve is to spend his life in jail because you helped set him up,” Katie said, her chest aching—
everything
aching. How could she have ever trusted Tessa? How could she have believed they were best friends when Tessa had kept so many things from her? Very bad things. Things Katie wished she didn’t know, wished she’d never had to hear.

“I had to take care of Peter,” Tessa replied without emotion. “I had to take care of
you
. Don’t you see?”

Virginia Cottingham had said there was always something off about Peter. And Katie saw clearly for the first time that there was something off about Tessa, too.

“It’ll be okay, you’ll see,” Tessa said, her mouth curving into a thin smile again, one that didn’t touch her eyes.

Katie watched as the dark shadow that was Peter moved carefully about the room. He was lighting candles, lots of them. As the room grew a little brighter, and then brighter still, Katie’s realized what he meant for her to see: dozens of bloodred roses stuck in old jars and cans. She breathed in their sweet smell, along with the scent of burning wick and wax, and it was all she could do not to gag.

She thought of the rose in the library. The fingers touching her hair. The recurring nightmare that wasn’t a nightmare at all.

It had all been Peter, hadn’t it?

“For … Kay-tee,” he rasped, gesturing around him.

Tessa leaned in to whisper, “I think he likes you,” as though it were a good thing.

The flickering candles illuminated something else as well: more of Peter’s underground home and the things he had collected. Katie’s eyes went to several wooden benches and parts of old bleachers that held all kinds of things: books and backpacks, shoes, jackets, purses, ball caps. Things students had lost and he had found? There were dozens of big cans stacked against the wall as well, the kind that bulk fruits and veggies came in, and Katie wondered about the food found down in the basement at Amelia House when Tessa started living
there. Was Tessa the one who’d taken it from the dorm’s kitchen for Peter? Or did Peter pilfer food for himself?

Then her gaze fell on a collection that made her go cold. Knives of all kinds: penknives, steak knives, several hunting knives, and what looked like a saw. More frightening still, she saw a stun gun, like the ones that the campus cops carried. Did Peter use them to hunt to feed himself? Or did he have plans to use them for something else?

Katie knew then without a doubt that Peter had already done something very bad with the knives or saw. “You cut off Rose’s hand, Peter, didn’t you?” she said, her voice trembling. “You gave me her hand.”

“Roses … pretty, yes?” he asked.

Pretty?

Katie tried to stay calm, told herself not to scream. “Sooner or later, they’ll know what you’ve done,” she said to him, though his face didn’t seem to register that fact. “They’ll find something that ties you to Rose. They’ll match your fingerprints.”

Tessa snorted. “The police will never know anything. Peter doesn’t exist in the outside world, and his skin is so scarred he can’t leave prints, just smudges.”

Katie thought of The Box and the hand, and it came to her, like a light switching on. The thing she’d been trying to sort out in her brain. The police had taken her prints, Tessa’s, and the housemother’s to rule them out as suspects.

All I can safely tell you is we’ve taken your prints out of the equation, as well as Miss Lupinski’s and Mrs. Gabbert’s
.

But Tessa had never touched the package that Mrs. Gabbert had brought in from the steps. Tessa’s prints shouldn’t have even been on it unless she’d handled it before it was received. If only Katie had paid attention.

“I can’t stay much longer,” Tessa said, glancing at her wrist-watch in the candlelight. “They can’t realize I’ve been gone.”

“You’re not leaving me?” Katie stared at her. How could Tessa even think of taking off without her? “Tessa, this is wrong,” Katie said, and tears blurred her vision. “If you’re my friend … if you love me … don’t do this.”

Tessa walked over and stroked Katie’s hair for a moment, and Katie prayed she would change her mind. But instead she leaned over and whispered, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Katie moaned. She had to get out. She looked around and found the dark hollow that was the door. If she couldn’t use her hands, she’d have to use her legs. Even if she couldn’t see in the tunnels, she’d rather take her chances getting lost than spend one minute alone in the dark with Tessa’s brother.

Before Tessa left, Katie blurted out, “Wait! I have to pee.” The only trick she could think of that might buy her a minute alone.

“Oh.” Tessa looked like she hadn’t planned on such a thing. “Hold on a sec,” she finally said, and got up. She whispered to Peter and he nodded. He went to the far corner of the room and turned around, and Tessa brought an empty tin over. It was big enough to have held about two pounds of peaches. “Can you use this? I’ll help.”

“I can’t pee with you watching,” Katie told her. “If you
don’t mind, can I just get my hands in front? Then I can do it myself.”

Tessa turned her head to look at Peter. He still stood with his back to them. Then she sighed. “All right.”

Katie wriggled around on the mattress, sitting on her tied hands and then pulling them around her butt and finally around her bent knees until they were in front of her.

Tessa put the can on the floor.

“Will you turn around, too?” Katie asked.

Tessa didn’t appear to like the idea, but she nodded and looked away.

Without wasting another second, Katie took off toward the blackened hollow of the doorway.

T
he door to the men’s lockers at the ice rink was unlocked.

Mark pushed his way in and instantly spotted a familiar book bag on the floor. “Katie!” he yelled. “Katie!”

He hurried past the trophy cases and his foot connected with something small. It skidded across the way. He would have let it go, only he had a bad feeling he knew what it was. When he bent over to pick it up, his chest clenched.

He recognized Katie’s phone with its pink Hello Kitty cover. Mark pocketed the phone and stood up, heading toward the sinks and showers. “Katie?” he called, trying not to freak out. “Katie, where are you?”

Where the hell were the campus cops? he wondered, and then realized they’d probably pulled a bunch of cars to look for Tessa, who’d vanished from her dorm. Mark knew, though, that they weren’t likely to find her unless they went
down through the grates, into the tunnels. He was sure that was where she was.

“Katie?” he tried again.

A moan came from the washroom, and Mark rounded the corner to the row of pedestal sinks. He saw the blood first, splashed across a broken mirror and dripping in puddles on the floor.

He let out a held breath when he realized the blood hadn’t come from Katie. Its trail led to a man lying on the tiled floor. His face was a bloody mess, but Mark knew it was Steve. What had gone on here? There was no way Katie could have pushed Steve’s head into the mirror unless she’d gotten superpowers.

“Getty,” he said, and nudged him with his foot. “Are you alive?”

“I guess so,” Steve muttered.

“Where’s Katie?” Mark asked. “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you, I swear,” he added. “Only it looks like someone else tried to do that already.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Steve whispered through his bloodied mouth, and struggled to sit up, leaning against the tiled wall. “The guy came out of nowhere.”

“Who?”

“He was so fucking strong.”

“Who?”
Mark asked again.

“I don’t know,” Steve said, touching his face and wincing. “He came from behind. I didn’t see who it was. I was out cold for a few, and when I woke up, she was gone.”

“How’d you get her to come here?”

“A chick will do anything for her BFF, right?”

“You pretended to be Tessa?” Mark asked. “How’d you know Katie wasn’t with her in the dorm?”

Steve shrugged. He was too busy inspecting his injuries.

Mark could have kicked the guy for doing something so cruel. Yes, Katie would do just about anything for Tessa. Only Tessa wasn’t on the up-and-up these days any more than Steve. Mark couldn’t figure who the mystery man was who’d beaten up Getty and taken Katie, but he was sure Tessa knew who it was. And his gut told him Katie was with Tessa.

“Christ, I think I swallowed some teeth,” Steve mumbled as he fingered his mouth. “Help me up, would you?”

“Help you? Like you helped me the night of the party? Sure,” Mark said, and pulled out his cell, calling his dad and telling him, “If you want Rose’s killer, he’s lying in a pool of his own blood in the ice rink showers. And, no, I didn’t do it. Someone else did, and now Katie’s missing.”

He hung up.

“Where you going, man?” Steve called after him as Mark walked toward the machine room behind the showers.

There was a grate leading into the tunnels behind a bunch of oversized water heaters. He found the grille already loosened and shoved it aside. He had no idea who’d taken Katie or where they’d gone. But if Tessa had disappeared, he knew she was underground. It could take him all night to cover just one section of the tunnels. Scouring every passage could take days, and he didn’t have days.

Mark moved through the tunnels, feeling his way along
the damp stone at his sides. He paused for a second in the dark, every nerve in his body suddenly on fire. Was he crazy or could he hear voices and the scuff of someone’s footsteps coming toward him?

“Katie?” he yelled, hoping she could hear.

She was near, he knew, his pulse thumping. He kept on a straight path, the footsteps getting louder. His eyes didn’t have time to adjust, so he could rely only on his ears and his fingers.

“Katie!” he tried again. “Katie!”

And then he heard her cry out, “Mark!”

“Keep coming,” he told her. “I’m close.”

He kept saying her name so she could follow his voice through the dark. He moved toward her as fast as he could until she plowed into him headfirst. He wrapped his arms around her, pressing his face into her hair, breathing in the scent of her.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Katie wailed, shaking uncontrollably. “Tessa’s been helping him. He’s not dead after all—”

“Who?” he asked as he tried to untie her hands.

“Please, let’s go,” she said, tugging her bound wrists away, her voice trembling as much as the rest of her. “He’s right behind me.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Mark felt someone grab his shoulders, pulling him down. He heard a guttural growl as hands rough as sandpaper wrapped around his neck so tightly all he could do was gasp.

Mark couldn’t breathe. The hands closed in on his windpipe, cutting off air. He reached behind him, grabbed for flesh or eyes and tried to claw and scratch. There was barely room to move, hardly a chance to fight back.

“Peter, no!” Katie was yelling. “Peter, stop!”

Mark was choking, his consciousness turning as dark as the tunnel around him. His arms fell to his sides and he slumped to his knees, his palms on the stone as he slowly slid to the ground. He didn’t see his life flash before him, but he did see flashes in the dark, tiny bursts of lightning. He felt the tail end of an electrical jolt, and then the hands slipped off his throat and he fell back, gasping and sucking in oxygen like a drunk chugging liquor.