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“But the question is whether he will or not,” I pointed out again. “After what he’s already done? To us and to Becky? He’ll be lucky if I don’t beat the shit out of him when I see him.”
“You’ll just have to curb your violent nature,” Jess said as she pulled out her phone. “Becky ought to know what class he’s in right now. Once we know that, we can head straight over and persuade him.”
According to Becky, Greg would be held up in class for at least another hour, which gave us the time we needed to get ready and head all the way across campus and stake out the entrance to the building. It was late in the afternoon, the sun slowly sinking down toward the horizon when the time came for students to start streaming out from the doors the head off to who-knows-where.
I glanced down at Jessica’s phone to get another look at Greg’s picture. He was a mousy guy from what I could tell, with the typical nerdy look that I’d seen so many times back in high school. It was surprising a guy like that even had the balls to do what he did to Jessica and I. But that still left the matter of what had happened to Becky unattended.
“He should have been out here by now,” I said, arms crossed as the two of us sat on a bench near the computer science building’s double doors. “What if he didn’t go to class today?”
“We’ll stay for a little while longer, Richard,” she said exasperatedly, “then we can go look for him at his dorm. Becky was sure that he’d be here today.”
My impatience was beginning to wear on her, and I certainly didn’t blame her. I hated to wait on anything. I was the kind of person who needed to be moving and doing something to feel like I was making a difference, and sitting on a park bench sure as hell didn’t feel like I was getting anything done.
“I can go in and look for him,” I said, clenching and unclenching my fists anxiously. “Bring him outside and then we can talk to him more privately.”
“No,” Jessica said, waving the idea away, “we don’t want to start a scene in there. Let’s do this a little more subtly. If campus security sees you hassling some guy then you can kiss playing in the game goodbye.”
“Fine,” I muttered, turning my gaze back toward the entrance to the computer science building. “What if he runs?”
“Then we chase after him, obviously,” She said, glancing over at me as she took a drink from a bottle of water she’d stashed in her bag. “I don’t think that he’s going to put up much of a fight, especially by the looks of him. Becky said she he was a bit of a wimp.”
I nodded, glancing down at Greg’s picture again on my phone. Jessica was right, the guy barely looked like he could support his own weight, much less throw a punch. But I wasn’t sure that would stop me from making him regret drawing Becky into Michael’s clutches.
“I think that’s him,” Jessica said suddenly, drawing me out of my thoughts.
I looked up, scanning a crowd of students as they began flooding from the double doors. Class must have just let out and with the evening drawing closer it looked like everyone was eager to head back to their dorms. I almost didn’t see Greg at first among all of the passing faces, but it wasn’t until Jessica pointed him out that I finally locked my sights onto him. He had a dark red baseball cap on, pulled down over one side of his face, almost like he was trying to not be recognized, but doing a poor job of it.
“Let’s go,” I said, helping Jessica to her feet as we made our way after Becky’s boyfriend.
Greg didn’t seem to know we were following behind him at first, his pace casual as he headed in the direction of the Student Union. I motioned for Jessica to get out in front of him while I stayed behind, hoping to catch him between the two of us, corner him before he got to someplace crowded.
Before long the crowd thinned and soon Greg was meandering along on the sidewalk, the street lamps flickering to life as he turned toward one of the on-campus dorms. This was going to be one of the only chances we’d have to get him alone. Jessica glanced back at me from in front of Greg, hoping for a signal—but only succeeded in drawing Greg’s attention behind him.
He might not have recognized Jessica from the back, but he certainly recognized me almost immediately. All at once his face flashed with both recognition and panic, freezing in place like a deer caught in headlights.
“Greg,” I called out, my hands out to the sides in a gesture that I wasn’t going to hurt him—not right away, anyway.
“I—” he stammered, taking a step away from me, his hands going up above his head. “I didn’t!”
“You didn’t what?” I began, but before I knew, it he was taking off in the opposite direction heading right for Jessica. I started to head after him, my footfalls slapping against the concrete like drumbeats. I knew that I could catch him, in fact he’d hardly gone ten feet before I was halfway to him. But just as I was about to take him down to noticed he’d already started to topple over.
I stopped just in time to watch Greg fall into the low bushes that lined the sidewalk, my stepsister standing over him. She turned her gaze toward me, a smile half-cocked on her face as she gave me a shrug.
“What’d you do?” I asked as I took another few steps closer, closing the distance between the three of us while Greg recovered himself from the tangling grasp of the shrubs.
“Me?” she asked, eyebrows raised and her hands raised in a show of mock surrender. “I didn’t touch him. He just turned around and saw me running toward him and panicked. I didn’t have to lay a hand on him—he sort of just did it himself.”
“You startled me!” Greg said, trying to defend himself as he got to his feet.
I shook my head before grabbing Greg by the front of his witty T-shirt, pulling him up nice and close to my face. I could practically smell the fear on him, his face dripping with sweat as I stared right into his eyes, my jaw set. I even threw in a growl for good measure.
“Why did you take the pictures for Michael?” I asked, drawing myself up over him as much as I could, trying to seem more intimidating. I’d been the bully during my last few years of middle school the anger of my mother’s death finding its way out onto others before I found football. I knew how to make guys like Greg wet themselves.
“I’m sorry!” he said, throwing his arms over his face to save himself from whatever punishment he imagined that I would give him. “They said they’d pay me to get the pictures. I’m barely able to afford to go here as it is! I figured that it wouldn’t do much harm. Getting a picture of some guy and his girlfriend doing it? I figured Michael was just being a pervert.”
“He didn’t tell you why he needed them?” I asked, almost lifting him off the ground. I hoped to god no one came around the corner and saw this, or this whole thing would have been for nothing.
“No!” he exclaimed, turning his face away from me in fear.
He was just a stooge, I thought, shoving him away from me hard. Greg didn’t know what Michael wanted with the pictures for or even that Jessica and I were step-siblings. That, probably among other things, meant that Greg probably had no clue how Michael was storing the pictures or where any copies were.
“And what about Becky?” Jessica asked, her voice quivering with anger. Before I could stop her, I heard the sound of her hand meeting Greg’s face. “Did it make sense when you threw her to those bastards? When you let her get raped in the bedroom at some frat-house?”
Once again Greg was on the defensive, her arms raised over his head as Jessica swung her bag at him. Her face was red with anger as she forced him right back into the bushes. I’d never seen her so mad in my life, all the fury of seeing what Michael and his friend had done to Becky, of what Greg had let them do to her, it all poured out of her at once in a violent torrent of rage.
“You let them violate my best friend! You son of a bitch!” she cried out, forcing Greg onto the ground with another swing of her bag. “You lead her right to them, and they chewed her up and spit her out like she was garbage!”
“I didn’t know what they were going
to do!” he whimpered, curling up into a ball on the concrete. “I swear to God, I didn’t know they were going to touch Becky!”
Jessica stopped, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her face still red. It was taking everything that she had to keep from swinging that bag again. I knew I’d have to step in if my stepsister couldn’t control herself, but would I want to?
“They told me that they’d give me the money at the party,” he continued after the assault had abated, lowering his guard so that he could look up at Jessica. “When I handed Michael the pictures, I noticed that something was wrong. Becky wasn’t acting right; she looked drowsy and confused. And when I asked them for the money, they just laughed.
“Michael’s guys pulled Becky off the couch and told me that they were going to show her a good time,” Greg’s eyes started to well up with tears. “I tried so hard to get them to stop. I tried to bring her back. I ended up getting my ass kicked and thrown out of the house.”
“Why didn’t you call the cops?” I asked, my brow furrowed.
“I did!” he shouted, his own anger rising in his voice. “And by the time they got there, the party was over. And besides, half the cops on campus were in AEO. They’d never have done anything to their brothers.”
Jessica took a step back, her hands covering her mouth as she dropped her bag to the ground. She turned her eyes toward me and I watched them begin to fill with tears. I knew that look, that hopeless frustration. She and I knew exactly what the other was thinking—if the campus police were on Michael’s side, then we were going to some damn hard evidence if we even wanted to think about getting justice for Becky.
“You’re going to help us get those pictures back, Greg,” I said, glaring down at him. “Jessica and I aren’t about to let Michael get away with this, or with what he did to Becky.”
“You don’t understand,” he whimpered, looking up at me in fear. “They’ll kill me. If they find out that I’m helping you, then I’m a dead man! No, I won’t do it!”
Before I could move to grab him, Greg was scrambling away between me and Jess, sprinting down the sidewalk at breakneck speeds. I started to run after her, but the feeling of Jessica’s hand on my chest kept me from giving chase.
“Let him go,” she whispered, her eyes still downcast. “We’ll just have to find another way.”
