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.
The 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.
He heard a thud as someone hit the stone floor, and the noise of legs and arms slapping the rock in convulsions.
“Mark!” Katie sobbed his name. “Say that you’re okay!”
“I’m … okay,” he breathed, rolling onto his back, gulping in musty air. He felt Katie’s hands touch his face, the twine around her wrists scratching his cheek.
And somewhere very near, Mark heard Tessa say over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Mark felt Katie’s head turn, and she asked in a shaky voice, “Tessa, you stunned Peter, not Mark?” Then she was crying. “You did that for me,” she said, sobbing. “You did the right thing.”
“I had no choice,” Tessa replied in an eerily calm voice. “I lied to you, Katie. He wanted to keep you down here. He wasn’t going to let you go. I couldn’t let him do that, could I?”
“No,” Katie said. “No.” She wrapped her arms around Mark and held on to him tightly. “Don’t let me go,” she whispered.
“I won’t,” he told her. “I swear to God, I won’t.”
Dear Katie,
If I said I’m sorry a million times, it wouldn’t be enough. If I said I love you, it would mean nothing because of the lies and the secrets I kept. But I am sorry and I do love you. I would do anything for you, and I think I proved that. Maybe someday, you’ll forgive me and want to be friends again. I hope you understand that I had to do all I could to save Peter, even if he was too broken to fix. I had to try, and if I had to do it again, I would. Does that make me a very bad person or a very good one?
Yours always,
Tessa
The sun shone down brightly, as if nothing in the world were out of place and this day were like every other spring day before it.
But Katie knew good and well that it wasn’t.
Rose Marie Tatum had been buried a half hour earlier. And she’d been wearing the St. Sebastian medallion, the one the police had found around her neck in that shallow grave in the woods. Katie had given it to Mark to protect him. Since Rose hadn’t had anyone to protect her in this life, Katie hoped maybe St. Sebastian would protect her in the afterlife. It was worth a shot.
Dozens of students from Whitney had attended the service and the school had paid for Rose’s burial, along with the huge spray of red roses that covered her casket. Katie was glad for the turnout since she didn’t see anyone show up who acted like Rose’s family. A number of townsfolk had paid their respects, too, and the other waitress from the diner who had been Rose’s roommate. Katie heard that Rose’s mother had always been fonder of alcohol than she was of her own child, and no one had ever really been sure who her father was.
In a way, Rose had been as much an orphan as Tessa.
They’d both experienced plenty of pain way too early in life.
The police ruled Rose’s death an overdose and charged Steve Getty with manslaughter. Only Steve had disappeared from the school’s clinic in the middle of the night—twelve fresh stitches in his face—before the Barnard police could arrest him. Word had it that his ambassador father had swooped in and jetted off with him, taking him out of the country this time, most likely to a place where he couldn’t be extradited.
Slimy bastard, Joelle had texted Katie when everyone learned what Steve had done and that he’d skipped town. Now he got away with murder.
On the other hand, Peter Lupinski wasn’t getting away with anything, not this time around. He’d survived getting Tasered but faced three counts of murder in the first degree. Peter Mikhail Lupinski—the real Peter—would likely be locked up for the rest of his life. Cutting off a dead girl’s hand was the least of it. Dr. Capello wanted him committed to a psychiatric facility rather than the state prison. She was quoted in the Barnard Gazette as saying, “He’s severely physically and emotionally scarred. He isn’t fit to stand trial.”
In that same article, Katie read that they’d be digging up the bones from Peter Lupinski’s grave. Dr. Arnold and his associates at the hospital’s cadaver lab would consult with a forensic anthropologist to try to determine who had really died in the fire instead of Peter.
“He didn’t belong to anyone. No one missed him,” Tessa had said so dismissively. But Katie knew she was wrong.
Everyone belonged to someone. Everyone came from somewhere. Everyone had a name and a right to be properly put to rest.
How had Katie not guessed that her best friend was hiding something so big, so dark? Tessa had kept the secret well. Had guarded it fiercely. All to protect a brother too damaged to lead a normal life.
And Tessa had been damaged, too. According to the Gazette, the local prosecutor was still trying to decide what charges to press against her. Katie hoped Dr. Capello would help Tessa get treatment, too. Maybe she wasn’t too broken to be fixed.
No matter what Tessa had done, Katie felt incredibly sorry for her. She’d hardly had a chance to be anything but broken.
How she wished things had been different! If only Tessa had opened up to her, had let her help. In a way, Katie felt like she’d buried her best friend today, too.
And it sucked.
“Time to go,” Mark said, and tugged her hand as the crowd of mourners began to disperse.
Katie looked away from Rose’s grave and into Mark’s face. His neck was still mottled with bruises from Peter’s hands. But his eyes were calm, and she knew he was relieved to have the truth come out despite the rough path to get there.
“Do you believe in heaven?” she asked on a whim, thinking of her father and her grandfather. Of Rose Tatum and the Lupinskis. Surely they were in a better place.
“I guess I do,” Mark said, and glanced above them at the endless blue sky. Then he looked at her so warmly her heart melted. “If you don’t believe in something, you’ve got nothing, right?”
“Right.” Katie squeezed his hand and smiled.
The ice rink was packed.
Katie figured every Whitney Prep student was there, filling the stands, eager to cheer on what was left of their hockey squad. It wasn’t the state championship, which they’d had to forfeit because of all the turmoil. But the Briarcliff Bears, state champions by default, wanted to play the Soaring Eagles nonetheless, and the Eagles had accepted.
Everyone on campus was stoked. It was something fun and light after weeks that had seemed so dark and harsh.
“It’s just a friendly match, nothing at stake,” Mark had told Katie when she’d talked to him before he’d gone into the locker room to gear up
.
But Katie knew it was way more than that.
This was Mark’s last game as a senior, his last game as captain, and he wanted to win. With Steve Getty gone to God knows where and Charlie a scratch while he recovered, the team wasn’t at full strength. But Mark had something to prove. If anyone could lead them to a win by guts alone, Katie was sure it was him.
It felt odd, at first, sitting in the stands without Tessa attached to her hip. But Katie knew Tessa was attending daily counseling sessions and trying to get her life back together after losing her scholarship and being expelled from Whitney. She was being held at a juvie detention center the next town over until the judge presiding over her case decided how to proceed. Katie had already gotten a letter from Tessa, apologizing for everything. She planned to write her back one of these days. Just not yet. Soon. When she knew better what to say.
“Hey, move the ugly hobo, would you?” Joelle Needham scowled down at her from the aisle. “You’re taking up two seats with that thing.”
Katie murmured, “Sorry,” before putting her bag between her feet.
“That’s better.” Joelle wiggled her curvy backside into the space beside Katie and shoved a bag of popcorn into her hands. “Eat up, Barton,” she said, before drawing out a compact and touching up her lip gloss. “You’re looking scary scrawny these days. I swear, you wouldn’t even have matching socks if I didn’t keep an eye on you.”
Katie suppressed a giggle. That Joelle had decided to shuck her posh friends and start hanging around her was downright funny.
She started stuffing her face with popcorn, then mumbled with her mouth full, “Are you happy now?”
Joelle gave her a sideways look and sighed. “I swear, you’re like a new puppy. Am I going to have to paper-train you?”
Very Bad Things Page 16