Page 71 of Stay Baby Stay

She pauses to sip her tea. Cal waits patiently for her to continue from his seat on the coffee table across from us.

“He drove me to a big house on a lake,” she says. “I could hear frogs chirping when I got out of the car. He brought me into the house, to a bedroom. It was really clean and impersonal, like a nice hotel room. He told me to wait there and then he left.”

“How long did you wait?” Cal asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes. Then another man—anolderman—came into the room.”

“Can you describe him for me?”

“Tall. Maybe six feet. Not fat but not thin either. Just solid. Gray hair. He wore thick rings on his fingers, and he looked like he smelled like brandy and expensive cigars.”

Cal pulls out his phone, swipes at it, then holds up a photo of the reverend he’s been investigating. “Is this the man you saw?”

Kenzie glances at the photo, closes her eyes, and nods. “That was him.”

Cal puts his phone away. “What happened next?”

She swallows thickly.

“Cal,” I say quietly. “Give her a minute.” I can’t stand the thought of her having to relive this while being interrogated.

Kenzie turns to me and offers up a wavering ghost of a smile. “It’s okay, Hollywood. I want to tell him what happened.” She turns back to Cal. “We had sex.”

“Consensual sex?”

I flash another look at him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his tone a bit softer. “Was it consensual?”

She nods. “It didn’t last long. Afterward, he said his driver would pay me and bring me back to the party.”

Kenzie lifts the teacup to her chapped lips. She takes a drink and starts to cough. I take the cup from her hands before the contents can slosh all over her lap.

“It’s okay.” I say the words out of habit, knowing full well that nothing about this situation is remotely okay.

Kenzie takes a deep breath, then continues. “I started getting nervous when we drove past the turn to the first house. I thought maybe I was confused, but the drive was taking longer. A lot longer. I kept asking him where we were going. He said, don’t worry. That’s all he kept saying. So, of course, I was really fucking worried.”

“Was this the same driver who’d brought you to the second location?” Cal asks.

“Yeah, it was the same guy.”

“Can you recall how long you were driving for?”

“About an hour, I’d guess. I saw a sign for Rogersville. We turned onto a long, winding driveway. I know it wasn’t paved because the road was bumpy. He pulled up to this old barn. Not like, dilapidated, but definitely not new. I remember my heart pounding in my ears. I had nothing on me but the half-heart necklace Hollywood had given me. I took it off and held it in my hand in case I needed to like, stab him in the face or something. He pulled me out of the car and punched me really hard in the stomach. I fell to my knees. He tied my hands behind my back.”

“What did he use to tie ‘em?” Cal asks, then glances sidelong at me. “If you know, or can remember.”

“Some kind of soft rope. The necklace is a broken heart, so it has a jagged edge, like teeth. I started sawing at the rope as soon as he pulled me to my feet.”

“Did he take you inside the barn?”

Kenzie nods. “He turned on an industrial-looking lamp, like what you’d see at a construction site. He started hitting and kicking me, on my chest and stomach. I fell to the floor, which was covered in dirt and old straw. He took my shoes off and pushed me onto my back and then straddled my waist. He felt a lot heavier than he looked. I thought my arms were going to break under his weight.”

I fight the pins-and-needles feeling in my limbs, the urge to get up and move around, to distract myself from the horrific ordeal my friend had gone through. It’s not the first or even the third story I’ve heard about something terrible happening to a girl like us, but this isn’t just some girl telling it. It’s Kenzie.

“He pulled a knife from his jacket and cut a piece of my hair off,” she says. “There was a book. He put the lock of my hair into a book.”

“Do you remember what book it was?” Cal asks.

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