Don't Say a Word

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  * * *

  “Hey, Dad,” I said as the guard walked away.

  “What’s wrong, Kylene?” he asked, seeing my exhaustion or frustration or any assortment of other emotions I was too tired to keep from my expression.

  “I’m so over Jasperville, Dad. I literally can’t even with that place anymore.”

  “What’s happened? Did somebody do something to you?”

  “No. Not me.” I took a deep breath and told him everything that happened with Missy and Coach—leaving the potential murderer part out of the story for the time being.

  I watched as my father’s face turned a shade of angry that I hadn’t seen in a long time—since Boobgate, to be exact. Not even once during his trial did he ever look that ready to actually commit murder.

  “Tell me he’s under arrest, or has that bumbling sheriff messed things up yet again?”

  “I don’t think she’s come forward, Dad. There’s nothing Sheriff Higgins can do until she does.”

  “Not that he will once that happens.…” My father’s incredulity was hard to miss.

  “I’m so tired of people getting away with things in this town!”

  “Ky—”

  “No Dad, I mean it! This needs to stop!”

  He leaned forward on the counter, resting his elbows on it.

  “I’m not saying it doesn’t, but you don’t have to be the one to make certain it does.”

  “I didn’t say I was,” I argued. “I dropped your case like you asked me to.” He quirked a brow at me. “I mean, I dropped it right into Meg’s lap, but—”

  “Kylene! I did not agree to that!”

  “Well I did. They were my transcript copies to do with as I saw fit. Meg’s already said she found reason to show your attorney was an ass clown who should have never passed the bar exam. She wants you to fire him and retain her as your legal counsel—”

  “No!” my father shouted before regaining control. “No. Absolutely not. I don’t want her to do that.”

  “Why, Dad? Because you’re worried about her? Because you love the accommodations here so much that twenty-five to life sounds like a solid plan?”

  “Because it’s my decision to make and I say no!” He slammed his fists on the counter and the guard took a step closer. My father raised his arms in surrender, and he backed away. “Kylene, I am the adult here, regardless of where I am. This is my life and my mess to clean up, not yours or Meg’s. I love that the two of you love me enough to try, but you have to respect my wishes and let me handle this in my own time and my own way.”

  I could practically feel the legal documents in my pocket burning me. There was no way in hell he’d cave on his stance, no matter how hard I worked to change his mind. He’d drawn his line in the sand and that was that.

  Or so he thought.

  “Okay,” I said, smoothing my jacket and the papers beneath. “I won’t bring this up again.”

  A promise I knew I could keep.

  “I love you for trying. I really do, but you have to trust me on this, okay?”

  I nodded. “Sure, Dad. And I love you, too, but I have to run. I’ll be back soon.”

  His features tightened at my words; he knew he’d hurt me. But we were both good at ignoring the elephant in the room. We’d had a lot of practice at that over the years. I got up to leave and he waited for his escort, smiling and waving at me as I looked back.

  I wondered if he’d ever smile at me again once he learned I forged those documents.

  THIRTY-NINE

  I was a nervous wreck the next day.

  Every socially and economically marginalized girl that passed me in the hall was Jane. Every buzz of my phone was her calling to tell me that Missy agreed to turn Coach in. But when I went to gym that day and found his ugly mug staring me down, I lost hope.

  Even watching Tabby do the hundred-meter hurdles couldn’t cheer me up.

  I blew off lunch when I saw AJ heading for the cafeteria. I didn’t know where I was going to go, but I knew I couldn’t eat my lunch with him. I was willing to eat in my car if I had to for as long as necessary to avoid that scenario—or at least until I got caught. Or Garrett and Tabby staged an intervention.

  Dawson was present for Spanish, but in body only. His mind was clearly elsewhere. It took Mrs. Stewart three attempts to get his attention by calling his name. By the third, she was standing right in front of him. He started when his eyes focused on her, then answered her question so she’d leave him alone.

  When the bell rang, he stormed out of class, staring down at his phone. I tried to catch up to him, but I was caught in the mass exodus of students. By the time the crowd thinned out, he was long gone.

  I exhaled hard in frustration. After a quick stop at my locker, I hurried down the hall, texting Dawson as I walked.

  Then a voice stopped me just short of the stairs.

  “You dropped this,” AJ said, holding out a pen. A pen that wasn’t mine. The impish look on his face told me that he knew damn well it wasn’t mine, too.

  “That’s impressive given that I’ve never seen it before.”

  “That is impressive,” he said with a wink, putting the pen into his backpack.

  “Listen AJ, I’ve really gotta go—”

  “I know you’re avoiding me, Ky, and I get why. I really do. What happened the other night—”

  “Shouldn’t have happened,” I said as firmly as I could. It almost sounded believable. The tiny twinkle in his eyes told me so.

  “Exactly.” When he stood there looking pleased with himself, I turned to leave. “I can walk and talk if you’d prefer.”

  “You know that would make you the only male in existence capable of multitasking, right? You’re like a mythical creature … a unicorn.”

  “Well aren’t you lucky, then?” He proceeded to keep pace with me as I made my way to the stairs at the end of the hall. “Seriously though, Ky. I want to show you I’m capable of being your friend. To prove it to you, I’m having a party after the big game tomorrow, and I want you to come. You can call it an early birthday present if you want.”

  I shot him a look over my shoulder before descending the steps.

  “I’m not sure that’s a great idea, AJ.”

  “Worried you’ll pick up where we left off?” he asked, the challenge in his voice plain. When I sped up, he backtracked. “Listen, I’m sorry! I know you’re with what’s his name. I get it. I want you to come because we’re friends again. Remember? And friends go to their friends’ parties.” I rounded the newel post on the second floor and kept going. “Ky, throw me a bone here. I’m sorry about how things went down the other night. I’m really trying to navigate this as best I can—to be your friend—but it’s hard and you’re not making it any easier.”

  He was right. I wasn’t. Mainly because being friends with AJ wasn’t easy. Not even close.

  I continued all the way down to the ground floor and through the double doors before AJ stopped me with a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  “Ky. Please.” The pain he clearly felt when he said my name made my chest hurt. It tightened around my lungs, making it hard to breathe.

  “AJ, I don’t know what to say,” I replied, throwing up my hands in frustration. “This isn’t easy for me, either, and not because of what’s his name.” He stood before me, unbreathing, as though whatever I was about to say might make or break him. I feared perhaps it could. “For two years I told myself that you were someone else, and now that I know everything I believed was a lie, my mind is a scrambled mess. It makes being around you complicated.” I kept it short, sweet, and believable. He’d never question the truth in my words. But what he didn’t know was if he’d just barely scratched the surface of my excuses, he’d have found exactly what he wanted. That every time he smiled at me, I could feel my armor cracking. That every time his arm brushed against mine, my heart sped up a beat or two. That every time our eyes met, my body begged to move closer to him—begged to be held. Begged to do what we�
��d done in his room again. My hormones, memories, and rational mind were in an all-out war where AJ was concerned, and I needed to get a grip on the situation fast. Dawson was my boyfriend—or at least looked that way. The last thing I needed was an apparent love triangle brewing—the Jasperville High gossips would have loved that. My reputation, however, would not. “What happened the other night was my fault, and I take responsibility for that. But I can’t afford for it to happen again.”

  “Ky,” he replied, an unmistakable note of sadness tainting my name. “It wasn’t your fault. We were both there. We both just got a little too caught up in the moment to think clearly, that’s all.”

  I looked at the pile of books in his hands to get a break from his hopeful eyes.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  I let out a breath. “Okay. I’ll go to the party.”

  “Excellent!”

  “But I’ll have to bring what’s his name…,” I said, a wry smile growing.

  “Yeah, I kinda figured that, which basically means I’m a saint.”

  “Saint AJ, Forgiver of all Dick Moves…,” I mused aloud.

  “I like that,” he said. “It has a certain ring to it.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “It really does.”

  “Does this mean you’re going to go to the game, too?”

  “Don’t push it, AJ.” I looked up to find him smiling wide.

  “Last game of the season…” He waggled his brows for effect, but I had no intentions of caving.

  “No way. No more football for me.”

  He feigned a pout, then perked back up. “Hey! I just got the team pictures. Want to see them?”

  “Sure.” He pulled an envelope out of a textbook and handed it to me. “Don’t they do these digitally?”

  “They do, but you know Mom,” he said. “Technology is not her friend.”

  “Fair point.”

  I pulled the stack of various-sized photos from the envelope and paged through them. At the back of the pile was the team picture, AJ sitting front and center on the bottom bleacher. For once, the photographer had gotten in close enough to actually see the faces of the players. I scanned them all, cringing when my eyes fell on Donovan. AJ must have noticed, and he started apologizing immediately, reaching to take the picture away. Just as my numb hands were about to let him, something in the photo caught my eye. I turned from AJ and held it closer to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.

  “Are you okay, Ky?” he asked, concern in his tone.

  “AJ, can you get me a digital copy of this?” I asked, trying not to sound as panicked as I felt.

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll email it right now.”

  “Great!” I said, turning to shove his pictures and envelope back into his hands. “I gotta go. See you tomorrow!”

  Without another word, I took off in a sprint to my car, sweat beading along the small of my back. The second I got Heidi fired up, I peeled out of the parking lot and sped toward Dawson’s house. I heard the notification that I’d just received an email. I dared a glance at my phone to find it was from AJ.

  I was standing on Dawson’s front step not long after leaving the school, pounding on his door. He threw it open to reveal his irritated expression. But when I bolted past him, fumbling with my phone, he followed without giving me another lecture on visitation etiquette.

  “What’s going on?” he asked as I tapped on the attached picture. It took me three attempts to zoom in on what I wanted, but once I did, I held it up so he could see.

  “Danielle was killed two weeks ago, right?” I asked. His eyes just drifted to me in response. “Varsity football and cheerleading photos are taken the same time every year. Never changes. That photo was taken two weeks ago,” I explained, pointing at Coach Blackthorn. “And those right there are fresh scratches on his neck.”

  Dawson stared for a moment before he opened a browser on my phone and started searching for something. Moments later, those narrowed hazel eyes turned to me.

  “It was cold that night,” he said, a sense of awe in his voice. “About forty-five degrees. He would have been wearing a jacket when he killed her—or at least long sleeves. The only skin he’d likely have had exposed would have been his face, neck, and possibly hands.”

  “Holy shit, Dawson.…”

  “Danners—I think our suspect list just got a whole lot shorter.”

  FORTY

  It took forever to calm the storm of thoughts in my mind. Thankfully, Dawson snapped me out of it when he grabbed my hand and dragged me down the hall to his office. He flipped the whiteboard over and started scribbling notes all over it like a man possessed. As I tried to decipher his chicken scratch, he stopped and turned to stare at me.

  “The girl—”

  “Missy Edwards—”

  “We need her to come forward. Without her, bringing him in will be tricky.”

  “Well, Coach was there today, so no such good luck on that front.”

  Dawson frowned, then started to pace the room. He seemed to always pace when he was thinking—when he wasn’t sure how to solve the problem at hand.

  “I need to make a call,” he finally said.

  “To who?”

  “Special Agent in Charge Wilson. I need to see if I can bend the rules a little here to get a DNA sample from Coach Blackthorn.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking of making an anonymous report to the police. One that will surely end with the coach in an interrogation room.”

  “An anonymous phone call?” I asked. He nodded. “Well, you know I excel at those.”

  “I don’t want you to make it,” he quickly said. “I don’t want you involved in that part.”

  “Because I can’t handle it?”

  “No. Because if there’s fallout of any sort, I don’t want any of it possibly coming down on you.” Oh. “If you hear from Jane, make sure you let her know about this new evidence. Maybe it’ll motivate her, and get her to leverage Missy into coming forward—especially if she thinks Coach is the killer.”

  “I will.”

  “I need to go make that call now. I’ll let you know the plan once it’s clear, okay?”

  “All right,” I said, taking the hint. I walked down the hall to the front door and paused there for a moment.

  “Something wrong?” he asked, stepping next to me.

  “It’s just—I mean I’m no fan of Coach, but for all his dickheadedness, I would never have pegged him for a murderer. It’s just hard to wrap my mind around.”

  His lips thinned to a grim slash across his face.

  “Murderers come in all shapes and sizes. That’s something you can never afford to forget in my line of work. Something you can’t take for granted.”

  I nodded absentmindedly, his words settling on my addled mind.

  “Like my dad…”

  He hesitated. “Yes. Like your dad.” For once, there was a note of sympathy in his tone when he mentioned my father, but it didn’t make me feel any better. That subject was still too raw.

  Instead of saying anything, I took out my phone for the second time that night, prepared to drop another bomb on him. One that would shake the very foundation of his beliefs, just like Luke’s betrayal had shaken mine. I wanted Dawson to know what that felt like.

  I held up a screenshot of Reider and the mobster in Atlantic City, the one my father had taken of him while investigating the fed he’d later kill. Dawson stared at it blankly, then took it from my hands.

  “What is this?” he asked. His voice had resumed its haughty indignance that it had only begun to shed a week earlier.

  “That’s Reider with some mob boss. I found it in a box of old papers. Striker has been looking into it and a few other things I found along with it. It was taken in Atlantic City. Seems Reider had some serious gambling debt. My dad was looking into it.”

&nbs
p; I glanced up, expecting to find Dawson’s stare burning holes through my face, but instead he looked pale and empty. He didn’t say a word in argument.

  “He told me he’d stopped years ago,” he said. His voice was so filled with disappointment and despair that I instantly felt like an ass.

  “You knew he had a problem.…”

  He nodded. “I found out when I was heading to Quantico. He and his wife were having issues, and he’d said he’d gone to the casino a few times to blow off steam and it got a bit out of hand. He’d always like to go to the races—even when I was younger—but I never thought much of it. Legal gambling and addiction aren’t mutually inclusive.”

  “Dawson,” I said softly, pulling my phone from his grasp. “The AD leverages people into doing things they might not otherwise. Do you think it’s possible he backed Reider into a corner because of his debt? Do you think he could have made him manufacture evidence against my dad?” He looked at me as though I’d just slapped him in the face but said nothing. Guilt roiled in my guts.

  “How long have you had this?” he asked. The hurt in his voice impaled me.

  “About a week.”

  “Why didn’t you bring it to me?”

  I swallowed hard. “I didn’t know what it was, if anything. I wanted Striker to look into it first.”

  His expression hardened. “I see.”

  “Dawson, I know how you feel about my dad and his case—”

  “It’s fine, Danners. I get it,” he said, walking toward the hallway. “I’m going to go make that call. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He disappeared from sight.

  With a sharp exhale, I opened the door. I’d planned to let Dawson in on what I knew, but I’d also planned to do it with a bit more tact. Unfortunately, any mention of my dad from Dawson seemed to set me off, even against my better judgment. It was a knee-jerk reaction I needed to get rid of, because with one tiny mention, I’d kicked the shit out of the progress he and I had made. I wondered if, in the morning, we’d be right back to where we started: an adversarial relationship built on distrust and misunderstanding.