The Seduction Game novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Fire

Teddy was already on the dock when we got there, sitting at the very end with his legs over the water.

The yellow tape still hung across the burned doorway behind him.

Hattie had come too, with a clipboard from the groundskeeper's shed and a pen she kept clicking.

"Somebody has to write it down," she said.

Nash stopped ten feet from Teddy.

He had not said a word since the dorm.

In the last of the light his scar showed white against his eyebrow.

"Say it," he said.

Teddy got to his feet.

He was taller than Nash by two inches, and he made himself small anyway.

"I started the fire," he said.

Nobody moved.

The water tapped at the posts.

"Last April, the night of your mother's anniversary. Camille knew you came down here every year to sit alone."

Nash's hand opened and closed at his side.

"She told me to pour gas along the back wall at eleven."

"She said you'd be at the front and smell it and run, and I'd film you coming out."

"With a lighter in my hand," Nash said.

"You always carried one. You never lit it. She knew that."

Hattie's pen scratched.

"I thought you were at the front," Teddy said. "You were at the back, on the old rope coil. You were asleep."

Nash went white.

It was an ugly thing to watch, because he did not make a sound.

"I saw you come out through the smoke," Teddy said.

"You fell on the grass and couldn't get up."

"I stood behind the hedge and filmed it, because she told me to."

"For how long?"

"Four minutes."

"And then you ran."

"Then I ran."

Nash stepped forward.

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