“Then you know you’re in a shit-ton of trouble here, Brecken,” Jake said. “The way we see it, you used phones belonging to Ethan Hogan and Tomas Cambra to lure Luna Ahern to you. What did you do to her when you got her there?”
“I never saw her. Ethan and Tomas were with her.”
“That’s not what they told us.”
“Wait, where are they?”
“In the hospital.”
He clearly hadn’t been expecting that news. Interesting to note that Brecken hadn’t known the boys had escaped from the home where they’d been held.
“That’s right,” Hill said with a little grin. “They managed to escape. I can tell that’s news to you. Were you hoping they’d never get out of wherever you two put them?”
“I… I haven’t seen them in a couple of weeks.”
“That’s not what they said.”
His eyes bugged as it seemed to set in with him that this wasn’t a Law & Order episode, but a real police station with real officers sitting before him, accusing him of serious crimes.
“The girls must love you.” Avery took Brecken by surprise with the shift in tone. “A handsome kid like you… They must be knocking down your door.”
Jake sat back to let Avery take the lead on this line of questioning.
“Hardly,” Brecken said with a hard edge to his voice. “They don’t like me.”
“Why not?”
“Who the fuck knows? They like Ethan and Tomas, but they won’t even talk to me.”
“That must make you mad.”
“It’s ridiculous. Look at them and look at me. If you were a girl, who would you rather be seen with?”
“Looks are important to them?”
“Looks are everything. I’m better-looking than both of them, so why do girls like them and not me? They’re a couple of Chads.”
“I’m not familiar with that term. Can you tell me what it means?”
Brecken sighed, as if this was a huge waste of his time. “A Chad is a guy who gets all the girls without doing much of anything besides being a douchebag. The Stacys, those are the girls who love the Chads and ignore the rest of us.”
Even though he knew all this, Avery still took notes as if he were hearing the information for the first time.
“How do you know about Chads and Stacys?”
“My dad and his friends talk about them. My mom is a Stacy. She’s with a Chad now.”
Bingo, Jake thought. That could’ve been the inciting incident that’d led to him and his father becoming active in incel culture.
“Do you see your mom?” Avery asked.
“Fuck no. I want nothing to do with her. She’s part of the problem.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“When I was, like, ten or something.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
