CHAPTER 11
1038 Words
CHAPTER 11
Kennedy’s diastolic blood pressure must have dropped at least twenty points. She didn’t yell. Raising her voice might attract whatever fiend her roommate had invited. Seriously? Seriously! Willow was always hooking up with strangers, but a random man at least in his thirties she met at a bakery?
“When’s he coming over?” Kennedy’s voice quivered, but she didn’t care. Disgust and fear warred against each other in her stomach. It was a miracle she didn’t have a dozen ulcers after a semester like this.
“We weren’t going to meet until tomorrow,” Willow answered. “You know I don’t do that kind of stuff until you’re out.”
Kennedy shut her eyes. Think. She had to think. Come up with a plan. Which was harder than it sounded after functioning on a few hours of sleep each night. Why did her parents have to live so far away?
Willow picked up her duffel. “Come on. Are you already packed for tomorrow?” She grabbed Kennedy’s backpack and shoved it at her.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re not staying here,” Willow answered. “We’ll spend the night with Toby.”
“The RA?”
Willow put her shoes back on, but Kennedy still hadn’t moved.
“Let’s go.” Willow stopped tugging on her laces. “Look, Toby and I will behave ourselves. I promise. Nothing funny. Now hurry up before Gino decides to pay a surprise visit.”
Kennedy stared around the room, uncertain what to take. She still had that mass of laundry, and her clean clothes were strewn sloppily in her drawers. Her mind was swarming, like a chemical reaction that clogs up if you introduce too many reagents at once. She stared at her dead cellphone, her lifeline to her parents. To emergency responders.
Willow was right. They should both go somewhere else. But would they be any safer down the hall? The men who abducted her last October were chillingly high-tech. They had bugged her phone, hacked her computer. What difference would it make if she were in her own dorm or five rooms down when Gino came after her?
But what other choices did she have? She couldn’t ask Reuben to put her up for the night. It would be ridiculously awkward, for one thing. For another, she didn’t have his phone number memorized and couldn’t call him until her phone charged. Where was the plug?
“You’re stalling.” Willow’s hand was on the doorknob, her penciled eyebrows slanted down.
“I just can’t figure out what would be best.” With all the crisis training her dad put her through, you’d think she’d be more prepared to make these sorts of snap decisions. Maybe he was right. Maybe she just wasn’t ready to be out on her own yet. “Do you think we should call the police?”
“Of course. But not from here.” Willow’s features softened, her eyebrows resumed their regular position, and she sighed. “I know this is all my fault. And I’m really sorry. I thought that he ... well, he wasn’t what I expected. Now I just want to make things right and make sure you’re safe, ok? If you’re not comfortable at Toby’s, then let’s find somewhere else to go. Do you have any other ideas?”
Kennedy’s stomach rumbled once. Why couldn’t this have been a normal night? She should be asleep right now.
Willow’s hand rested on the doorknob. Waiting. Waiting for Kennedy to make up her mind. Only she didn’t know how. Kennedy half-expected Willow to come up with a sarcastic jab, but her roommate just stood there. Watching. Waiting.
Kennedy’s mind churned like a centrifuge in slow motion. Reuben’s wasn’t an option. She didn’t really have any other friends on campus. There were students she smiled at, a few in her calculus study group she might eat lunch with if they happened to be in the student union at the same time, but nobody else she could call a friend. In fact, she was closer to Pastor Carl and his wife than to anyone else on campus.
That was it.
“What about my pastor’s house?”
It wasn’t the ideal scenario. Carl’s phone number was stuck in her phone as well, and it would be almost midnight by the time they got there. Well, how many times had he and Sandy told her to let them know if there was ever anything she needed? This was definitely something she needed.
“Do you think you could drive me over there?” Kennedy didn’t have the route memorized, but she could point Willow in the right direction and let her phone charge up on the way.
Willow frowned, and Kennedy wondered if she’d throw another one of her fits about the evils of organized religion. “I’m thrilled you have somewhere off campus to go,” she started, “but I parked all the way in J lot. So that would mean you and me walking at least ten minutes in the dark in a windstorm that’s so loud nobody could hear you scream more than ten feet away, and most of the student body and half the security staff have already gone on break.”
The temptation was strong to plop down in bed and worry about everything in the morning. She could talk to the detective, head out of state for a few weeks. No, that wasn’t going to cut it. Call the police, maybe? See if they could get her some protection? She hated running to them like a damsel in distress, unable to take care of herself, but if she explained that she had actually seen that man on the subway — a subway that ran out of power and filled with smoke ...
Kennedy’s head spun, threatening to knock her off balance. The smoke in the T, the invisible phantom in the tunnel, the chase ... So it had been Gino that whole time. The power outage, everything. That hand she was sure was about to reach out and grab her. Only he didn’t. Why? What had stopped him? What had saved her?
No, she couldn’t think about those things. God, why have you left me here to deal with all this myself? You tell me to be brave, and then you throw convicts at me ...
Willow’s voice was as soft as her gently waving midnight hair. “I know it’s not easy, but I think we need to go. Let’s at least head to Toby’s. We’ll call the police from there, ok?” she coaxed, as if Kennedy were a toddler afraid of getting wet in the kiddie pool.
Kennedy took a deep breath. The plan made sense. She picked up her phone charger and her coat.
Footsteps pounded up the hall. Footsteps coming closer, headed straight to their room. Kennedy froze, staring at the door Willow had left a crack open.
“Kennedy!”
The door burst open.
- Writer
