“I’m sorry, Colton, but we need to show this to Ms. Owens,” Warren said and I turned to him, my movement stilted, like my joints needed oiling. “This will be upsetting,” he informed me.
I gave him a look that screamed, No kidding? but I didn’t speak. I just lifted my hand and took the note.
Typed out, it said:
I’m sorry I upset you about the dog. I didn’t mean to. I thought you’d be happy that he hurt like he made you hurt. His has to be the worst.
It will be.
For you.
After I finished reading for a second I went blind, the words erased from the paper and I saw nothing.
Then I turned to Agent Warren. “I need to make a statement on TV or something, tell him to stop. Tell him he’s not helping me. Tell him this is not making me happy.”
One of the profilers, went by the name of Nowakowski, said, “If you’d be willing to do that, we’ll consider it, Ms. Owens, but right now we’re unsure we want to alert the media to this.”
“Then I need to send a message somehow.” My voice was rising. “He thinks he’s making me happy. I need to tell him to stop.”
“Ms. Owens –” Nowakowski started.
“He’s watching me. I started crying when my brother told me Puck died… in the bar I started crying. He’s watching me. I need to be visible. What he’s doing to Angie, Puck, I need to be visible. I need to show him he’s not helping me, he’s harming me.”
The agents looked at each other and I felt a presence come close and I knew from experience it was my Dad.
“I don’t need to be here.” My voice was rising as well as getting louder, sounding more hysterical. “I’m not helping here. I need to be out there.” I pointed to the doors, my arm slamming into something solid, that something was Colt’s chest, but I didn’t stop. “I need to be where he can see me! I need him to see –”
“Girl, calm,” Dad said, his hand coming up to curl on my shoulder.
I couldn’t be calm if someone injected me. I’d killed Colt’s dog.
I turned and tipped my head back. Day three, third crying jag I grabbed Colt by the lapels of his jacket and got up on my toes, feeling the tears dropping from my eyes, instant rivers of salt. So much water, I had my eyes open but I couldn’t make him out, he was a total blur.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry he hurt Puck. I’m so f**king –”
Colt’s hand wrapped around the back of my neck, its steadiness and warmth coming as so much of a shock, I stopped speaking.
“February, it’s okay,” Colt’s voice was quiet, just for me, only for me.
I shook my head, the movement unnatural and wrong, me alive and moving while all things around me were getting butchered. The tears still uncontrolled, my hands twisted in his jacket and I shook it. “It isn’t.”
And it wasn’t. None of it was.
“Feb –” he began but I lost it.
I lost it because it finally sunk in deep what my sick admirer considered his end game.
And the thought was intolerable.
Yanking Colt’s jacket with a vicious pull, I slammed my fists back into his chest and screeched, “He means to harm you!”
Then I did it again and again, my repeated shrieks of those five words broken with sobs, my fists pummeling his chest, abusing his jacket, until his arms came around me, pulling me close, trapping my arms between our bodies.
My head was still tilted back and Colt was still blurry and even imprisoned I was still hysterical. “He means to harm you!”
“Do you have someone here who’s qualified to sedate her?” Agent Warren asked and I tried to turn, tear out of Colt’s arms to confront my new nemesis but Colt held me fast so just my neck twisted.
“I can’t help if I’m sedated!” I shrieked.
“February, you need to calm down,” Colt said firmly.
My head twisted back and I looked at him still sightless and weeping. “I killed your dog.”
“You didn’t have a thing to do with Puck dying.”
“I killed your dog.”
“She’s hysterical,” someone muttered.
My neck twisted toward the direction of the sound and I screamed blindly, “You would be too if you killed someone’s dog!”
Colt’s arms got so tight, my breath was forced out of my lungs and I heard him whisper the words, “Baby, stop it. You didn’t kill my dog.”
Baby, stop it.
Baby, stop it.
Baby, stop it.
The soft words bounced in my head, round and round, taking all my concentration. So much, I didn’t have enough to remain standing and I gave Colt my weight, dropped my head and rested it on my hands which were trapped against his chest.
Baby, stop it, you don’t know what you’re saying.
He’d said that years ago when I broke up with him.
Baby, stop it, you know the way it is between you and me.
He’d said that years ago too, when I told him he should act like a free agent when he went to Purdue and if he came back to me then we’d know it was meant to be. He’d refused. He’d said he didn’t want to be a free agent. He didn’t want anyone, not anyone, but me.
Baby, stop it, Morrie gets it, your parents do too.
He’d said that years and years and years ago, after the first time he kissed me and I’d freaked out because I’d wanted that kiss so badly, and it was everything I’d wanted it to be, and it promised everything I needed it to promise, but I’d worried Morrie, Mom and Dad would get mad.
“I want him to be watching now,” I said to my hands, the tears still coming but they were no longer loud and neither was my voice. My words, like his, were meant only for Colt. “I want him to see what he’s doing to me.”
Colt’s arms got tight again. “He won’t care, Feb, after all these years something started him on this path and he can’t go back now. But you’ve got to be stronger than this, you’ve got to help Sully and the FBI and you’ve got to stand strong to the end.” One of his arms came from around me and his hand went to the back of my neck, giving me a squeeze there and I tilted my head back to look at him, was able to get focused on him but still only blinking through tears. “And there’ll be an end, I promise, February, and it won’t end with the end of me. It will end with the end of what he’s doing.”
I nodded, not because I believed, I was too scared to believe. I nodded because it was clear he believed.