Her stare went to the door and locked on. Every feature on her pixie-like face froze.
“Kenny?” I prompted, drawing her out of the memory that I assumed captured her.
She drew in a deep breath and nodded.
“Okay,” I said, rolling down her window. “Close your eyes.”
She blinked at me, confusion shimmering across her features. “What?”
“Close them. Breathe deep.” I leaned forward slightly. “Don’t think about what you saw. Don’t try to remember the visual details. Think about what you felt. What you heard. What you smelled.”
She obeyed, her eyelids fluttering shut, lashes casting small shadows on her cheeks in the dim light. For a moment, she was completely still. The entire car paused, poised as we waited to see what would happen next. Then her nostrils flared slightly. “It wassnowing,” she whispered, her fingers fidgeting in her lap. “Light snow, more like mist.”
“Good,” I said, opening my door and stepping out into the brisk evening air. “Walk me through it.”
She followed, her movements shaky but determined. I’d been to the academy often enough to know my way around. Kenny walked toward the stairs near the gymnasium, her steps growing smaller as she approached the building. “They grabbed me here. Right on this step.” She pointed to the third one up and knelt down, her palm pressing against the rough surface. “Someone shoved me into the back of a truck. I remember the engine...” She paused, head tilted as if listening to sounds only she could hear. “It made this knocking noise.”
Her breathing quickened as Carson and Raine got out of the car.
“We moved fast. Really fast. Took sharp turns that threw me around. My shoulder hit the side of the car so hard I thought it was broken.”
“Was the road going uphill?” I asked.
She hesitated, her face scrunched in concentration. “No. Down. Definitely downhill for a while, like we were leaving the hills around the school. Then it flattened out. Long straightaways where the truck sped up.”
Carson reached out to steady her as she swayed slightly, his hand gentle on her elbow. “That’s enough, Kenny. You don’t have to?—”
“No.” She shook off his touch with renewed determination. “We’re finishing this. I need to finish this.”
I helped her back into the car, and we began to drive, letting her fractured memories guide us through the darkening streets. We traced every dip in the road she remembered, every curve that had pressed her against the truck’s walls. The route took us through parts of town I knew all too well, warehouse districts and shipping corridors where legitimate business blended seamlessly with less savory enterprises.
“Wait,” Carson said from the backseat, leaning forward in his seat. “Aren’t we close to the abandoned train yard?”
I glanced sideways over my shoulder. “Yeah, what of it?”
He squirmed in the backseat, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “It was where I dropped off Kay.”
Kenny’s breathing changed the moment I pulled the car off on the side of the road. “It is?”
I glanced over at her as she stared out the window, her brows drawing together in confusion.
“I swore this was the way, but it can’t be.” She pressed her face to the window, her breath fogging the glass. “I only remember being at the train yard the night I saw Kaylor.”
“And how long did it take you to get to the train yard from where you were being held?” Raine asked from the back.
Her fingers knotted together. “I-I don’t know. Time is different when you’re being held against your will. There were no clocks. We never knew what time it was. Everything was all jumbled up.”
“She tried. Are you happy? Now take us home,” Carson demanded as if he had any right to demand anything of me. Not that it mattered because he was easily ignored.
“What do you mean, we?” Raine asked, catching a detail I’d missed.
Kenny glanced over her shoulder at my brother. “There were two other girls with me. They didn’t keep us in the same room, but sometimes they put us together. We had what they called dress rehearsals.”
I swore under my breath.
Raine was more vocal in his outrage. “Sick fucks.”
“Did…did they ever touch you?” I had to ask, and at the same time, I didn’t want to fucking know.
