CHAPTER 13
I know that, logically, there’s no dress code for horrible people.
You can’tlooklike a serial killer or a sexual predator. I know that, yes, Richard Ramirez, Charles Manson, and sour-milk Ted Kaczynski himself had aesthetics that screamed B-A-D in blinking neon letters. Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, on the other hand, could have been anyone’s hot, shitty cousins. Look at the horror they inflicted. All of Ed Kemper’s cop friends thought he was a goofy, harmless guy. He brutally killed six college students.
All that being said, Leah and Greg don’t seem like the torturing, murdering sort. Haircut, on the other hand, probably drowns kittens for fun. As for the man who was holding Emma—I’ve never met a youth pastor whodidn’tseem capable of killing.
I don’t know about Ellis. I don’t know why I didn’t see the black hole lurking behind his bright eyes and quick smile. Emma’s reaction to him is very different when I recount everything from the moment I called her onward.
“I’m not surprised. Horrible people seek out positions of power that let them feel benevolent. I’d put money on most CEOs having actual bodies buried under their patios.”
“You just don’t like bosses.”
She wrinkles her nose but doesn’t deny it. Labor girlie, through and through.
“I knew there was something wrong the moment he stopped me on the road. His voice was… off. I should have Tasered him. ‘It might be dangerous. Let’s go together.’ Asshole.”
“I don’t get it,” I say after a minute of silence. “Why do any of this? What’s the point?”
There has to be apoint.
Emma worries her hands. “I’m not joking about it being a cult. There’s weird stuff painted all over the walls upstairs. People were going in and out carrying chairs and, like, lanterns, I think. Cult shit.”
The last two words are said with such finality.
“There were symbols on the gate. The one that led to the property. Circles with a plus sign through them. Is that what was on the walls?”
Her gaze is intense on the side of my face. “There were creepy cult symbols on the gate to the property. And you went through anyway?”
I don’t know what to say. My reasoning, which seemed so strong at the beginning of all this, can’t stand up to the disappointment and anger in her voice.
“I asked you not to do anything dangerous, right? Didn’t I do that? What would make you think, ‘Oh Iknow. I’ll walk through the creepy cult gate and straight into the forest’? Why didn’t you turn around? Or call me? You had Ripley with you. I thought at least you’d think about her.”
The handcuffs jangle when she runs them over her face and through her hair. She slumps. The anger I could handle. The defeat, I cannot.
“I don’t— I couldn’t lose this job. My mom— I thought it’d be fine. I’m sorry.”
Her face crumples. She doesn’t answer; won’t look at me. I close my eyes and press my palms into the sockets. I can’t lose her. I can’t fail her too.
This job was supposed to save us—save me and my mom.
Iwas supposed to save us.
A shiver licks its way up my arms. The smell of cigarette smoke makes my nose itch. I don’t want to open my eyes. I don’t want to see it. Ican’tsee it. I hold my breath, but the smell is already in me. Tobacco and ash. Cigarette butts and warm beer. My mom started smoking when she was sixteen. She told me when I was in middle school. It was a warning not to follow in her footsteps. She did that a lot: laying out her life like a map of roads I shouldn’t take, choices I shouldn’t make.
“You’re better than me,” she’d say again and again. “You’ll be better than me.”
Sometimes, I wonder if what she gave birth to wasn’t a baby at all. Maybe it wasn’t anything other than her second chance.
And now, instead of saving anyone or being anyone’ssecond chance, I’ve managed to get my best friend chained up in a basement, my dog hit by a car, and my mom—
The ceiling creaks.
I open my eyes. I’m still in the basement. The smell is gone. In its place is a thought—a single encapsulating sentence.
This job was supposed to save us, but all I got was credit card debt, chloroformed, and coworkers who call my dog by the wrong name.
CHAPTER 14
