Like his father's.
"Maybe so," he said. "But you're really the one responsible for her death anyway. You killed her by killing Tuttle. When you did that you messed with my dad. You stole from him."
"Stole what?"
"His rhythm, his plan to be more famous than Bundy."
There was no point in arguing the merits of his bio dad's sick run to be some kind of serial killer superstar. She'd heard of people like that, people who sought infamy over fame. People who cared to make a mark, no matter how dark, how evil. There was no arguing. No defending the other side of it.
Emily changed the subject. "Jenna needs water," she said. "Please give her some"
"Water? She's gonna die. Why make her comfortable? That's stupid. You researched me. You know I'm no dummy. Yeah, my grades weren't as perfect as Donovan's, but he wasn't an artist."
The wind whistled through the bunker. Emily didn't want the conversation to track there. Talking about Jenna not making it was not anything she'd even ask about. No fuel for whatever sickness drives this boy.
"Nick, that's right," she said stiffiy. "You're special. You're an artist. What's going on here isn't you. I know that"
His eyes, his father's eyes, were black voids. "But it's who Iwanttobe"
"No, it's who you've been forced to be. This is wrong. It doesn't have to be. I'll help you. We can repair all of this. Nothing's gone too far. Yet"
Jenna's breathing had appeared to slow and muffled sounds of her coughing came through the gag. Every neuron in Emily's body fired. She was hyper alert, with the kind of rush that allows a desperate mother to pick up a car crushing her child.
"Nick! Take that out of her mouth right now! Jenna can't breathe!"
He dropped his cigarette. "Jesus. Where did that come from?" He winced at the increased volume of Emily's voicethe "mom" voice that women can summon when they needed it. "All right. I'll get her some air. She's gonna die anyway, but you don't have to yell at me."
He loosened the gag and Jenna coughed.
"You don't have to yell, you know. I can hear all right."
Emily detected the tiniest fracture in the teenager's practiced veneer and she went for it.
"Yelling? Did your parents yell at you?"
He blinked. "No shit. Every chance they got"
"How did it make you feel?"
"Like I was worthless."
Chipping away. Making him feel something. If not for denna, for himself. Good.
"You aren't worthless. You know it. Didn't Jenna see it in you? See your worth? Your talent?"
Nick's eyes were downcast. "I don't want to talk anymore," he said. "You're not some school counselor trying to make me happy. My dad's coming. My real dad. We're getting out of here" He sat down next to Jenna, her pale, pasty skin now alarmed her mother even more.
"Please," Emily said, "let my daughter go"
"Shut up. That's not the plan."
"What is the plan, Nick? I wasn't aware of a plan."
He shot her his best FU look. His eyes were cold, his stare hard. "Wouldn't you like to know?" He allowed a brief smile come to his lips. "You're gonna die. Just like Kristi Cooper. You're gonna die because no one can find you"
"You know about Kristi?"
"I know what my dad tells me"
"Which dad?"
"The one that matters, Dylan Walker."
"Don't you know he killed all those people? Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"You killed someone"
He was referring to Tuttle, of course, maybe even Kristi Cooper. But Emily didn't go there. She couldn't. She had to keep him talking so that just maybe she could find a way to talk them out of the bunker. To daylight. To freedom. To safety. The wind sent another blast of air against the bunker's openings. It sounded like the whistle of a train, the rolling of the tracks.
"I never meant to kill anyone"
"Good for you. I never killed anyone"
"Not even Bonnie."
"Dad took care of her."
`But she was your biological mother."
"She was a breeder and that's all. She was stupid, too. My dad tried to get rid of her for years. I would have killed her, but instead, I just helped clean up the mess. Dad never liked working alone."
Emily was reeling. It was as if all that Dylan Walker had done was now being revealed by his biological son, a son no one knew about.
"There were others, too. Bonnie took care of them. Just like she did to the Martins. Other mistakes he made that he wanted cleaned up"
"What others?" It struck a nerve that he now had referred to his family by its surname. His split from them was so complete. Emily wondered if he held any emotion for Peg, Mark, or Donovan.
"What happened to your family," she asked, hesitating, before shifting her words, "to the Martins?"
He looked downward. A trickle of feeling? Emily studied him through the murky light of the bunker. What was he thinking? What was he feeling?
"It was planned," he said. "Everything. But the storm. The storm wasn't planned."
Jenna was wide awake, listening to Nick Martin spin a slightly different and darker version of what had happened in the hours before the tornado. She listened without moving a muscle while her mother surreptitiously struggled to break free. Jenna knew she'd been played. It had been a setup from the beginning. Nick hadn't just come home to find them dead.
Nick had known what he was going to find.
"Okay," he continued, "I didn't know that Donny was going to be home"
As she fought her binding, Emily's eyes beamed through the darkness at Nick. It was as if she willed his attention to hold on her face only, not her hands. "But your mom called him to come home," she said.
"No. Peg didn't call him. Bonnie did. Dylan, Dad, said that Bonnie really messed up. She came to get me. Take me out of Cherrystone. My dad was important. Famous. She was my birthmother, but the Martins didn't want anything to do with her."
He called his parents by their names, Emily thought, no longer Mona and Dad. It was like he d dissociated himself f ona then. No ties. No connections.
"By the time I got home, they were all dead"
Tears welled in his eyes. Emily saw it as a hopeful sign. Maybe this kid has a soul after all, she thought.
"I don't know why that bitch called Donny home," he said, sniffing a little.
"Maybe she didn't want any loose ends to worry about?" Emily tried to sound unthreatening and helpful. She was more mom than cop just then, at least she hoped that's what Jenna's friend-turned-captor would think.
Instead a little defiance followed. "He wasn't a loose end. Even though the Martins couldn't stop yapping about how great he was, he was my brother."
"Right. And you loved him."
"I love my dad. He's coming for me. We're going to live in Mexico. He says I get my creativity from him."
And your taste for blood, she thought. "He's not coming for you. You were a loose end. All of them. The kids. The families."
"You don't know anything," he said.
Emily caught Jenna's eye. She could see that Jenna had made some progress. No words were needed, just the look of desperation giving way to hope.
"I know enough," she said, her calming tone barely in check.
"Too bad. You're gonna die, Mrs. Kenyon. Jenna, too. 'Cause you're my loose ends"
"No," Emily said firmly. She wouldn't allow one drop of fear color her words. He was just a goofy kid. A mixed-up, goofy kid. In another time or place he could have been a Columbine student skulking under a table as bullets sprayed over a cafeteria. He could have been a chess champion, making his final move, winning the prize. Or just a plain old kid waiting at a bus stop or laughing and pushing and shoving his friends in a movie line at the Cherrystone Cinema. Anything. Anything-but a monster.
He was a lost boy.
"Yeah, that's what you are," he said, looking for a smoke, then pulling one out of a twisted pack and poking it into his mouth. "A loose end" He spat out the words as he felt for his lighter.