Involuntarily, her gaze swept over his polished dress shoes, tailored slacks, the loose collar of his button-down. The spell was broken as Kenna landed on his stern face with its rippled, pink-white scarring.
“Get in.” He held the door open for her, a caustic gentleman.
She stared at the leather seats. A fork in the road.
The shadowy interior of the car undoubtedly represented the path marked ‘dead end’ but she climbed in, stomach clenching all the while. Wordlessly, he got in the car and soon they were in motion. The radio was off. Not even the engine made a sound as they coasted along the streets and roadways that connected East Haven to Branch Spring.
Anxiety spurted out of her like blood from a slit carotid as the needle on the speedometer ticked just under 90. Once they headed into town and slowed to a tame 50, she found herself capable of speech. The obvious questions came to mind but an unexpected one tumbled forth.
“Why do you see Rogers, no charge?”
Seconds passed and casted doubt on whether Dayton had heard her. He maintained a loose grip on the steering wheel with one careless hand and kept his eyes trained ahead. It reminded Kenna of the day he’d gone with her to Reid’s funeral. Her heart still leapt at the memory of him in a suit.
“I had an uncle who fought in the Korean War. Never mind that he survived, it completely destroyed him. My dad told me the stories, how his brother’s family fell apart. His wife left with the kids a few years after he’d come back from the war. He got older and some of our relatives chipped in and put him in a nursing home. When I’d go home for the holidays from UCLA, I’d visit him. I didn’t tell my parents. No one else visited the guy. He hardly said a word but I told him stories, tried to engage him in something.”
His measured voice punctured her lungs and as he spoke she drew no breath. His words became her oxygen, anchoring her to this life.
“Truthfully, I felt this pull toward him. We were both battling something neither of us could control.”
Everything she knew about him dulled to unimportance as she parsed out the most revealing thing he’d ever told her. Whatever his affliction was, it was something he couldn’t control. A compulsive need. He couldn’t help going after the girls. Still, in her mind, it didn’t justify his actions.
Nothing did.
But the sliver of information gave her an edge as far as what might have been the guiding force for his behavior.
She ran through the possibilities as they coasted along and, for a moment, some of her fear fell away. Kenna didn’t care where they were heading or when they’d return. Her brain was high on deductive reasoning and she was engulfed by the familiar crispness of mint cologne.
One by one, she ticked off the paraphilic disorders. None of them fit Dayton. Voyeurism spared some degree of hope yet it was miles away from what she would have considered a bulletproof diagnosis. Mentally, she turned to the conflicting evidence. The Polaroids were taken without consent but his sexual encounters were consensual. For many people who suffered from the disorder, it consumed them. Their entire life became ruled by fantasies.
From the outside, Dayton appeared sane. He held down a prestigious career, extra shifts at the emergency room. He had hobbies and participated in charity events. He had a family. Friends. He was, by most accounts, normal.
That’s what made him so terrifying.
* * *
After a pit stop at her apartment complex and one drive riddled with unanswered questions later, they reached their destination: the middle of nowhere.
Or so it seemed.
They were in the station wagon, engine cut, amid a cracked wasteland of asphalt. The Caprice was the only vehicle in sight. Where the pavement ended, the trees began, dotting the lot on all sides. Imprisoned by nature while they idled on the flat expanse of man-made corruption.
Kenna’s first instinct was to scream but terror muted her. It sealed her lips and hastened the beating of her heart.
Murder had never truly been something she thought he was capable of, but she could see no other reason as to why he’d brought her to the deserted blacktop.
He spoke right on cue, as if he’d read her thoughts.
“Relax. I didn’t bring you out here to kill you.”
A violent chill rocked her body but she forced a weak smile, silently praying her discomfort escaped his notice. “Well, whydidyou bring me here?”
Dayton teasingly jingled the keys in front of her face like one might wave a treat before a domesticated animal. Her hand was closed in a tight fist on her thigh but he pried it open and deposited the keys. Flinging open the driver’s side door, he motioned to get out of the car but stopped halfway. One foot planted on the asphalt and the other on the floorboard. The corners of his lips lifted in wicked delight.
“It’s your lucky day, Miss O’Callaghan. Today, you learn to drive.”
She despised the slight knotting of her stomach at hearingMiss O’Callaghanroll off his tongue. It transported her to a more frightful, though decidedly simpler, time. One in which she studied him rather than experimented with him.
She too barreled out of her respective door and they came face to face as their paths crossed in front of the hood.