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He shook his head and released my face. His fingers moved toward my cheek and he swept some locks of my hair away. “No. But no one is in charge of us. We do what we want.”
“But we’re here for people we don’t even know.”
“We chose to be here. We’re helping a friend.”
“A friend you don’t know?”
“It’s complicated. Business.”
“Who signs the paychecks?”
“No one.”
I pulled myself away from him and shoved a finger against my forehead, sliding it across my eyebrow. Maybe this was part of the language barrier. Raven might know more than I did, but he may not understand what I wanted to know, or how to explain it to me. As far as he was concerned, his boss was Axel, and maybe they choose their assignments, but someone organized the whole thing. The lady said she needed approvals for them to adopt us, so Axel was appealing to other members, higher ups. “I don’t understand.”
Raven’s mouth twitched. He leaned over, and his hand draped over the back of my neck, warming. “We’re not the bad guys,” he said in a quieter tone. “We help. We’re like police, only better, because we learn about who we’re helping before we help them. We get the whole story. And our reach is further than theirs.”
“We didn’t know this lady,” I said.
“We knew the grandson, and he went on what she told him. There was no way for him to know the truth until we looked into it. Probably not until it was too late.”
“Where is he?” I asked. “Who is this guy we’re helping? Why isn’t he here?”
“Busy.”
I was about to grunt and let him know exactly how unhelpful he was when Corey returned. He held up a couple of key cards. “Got a nice one,” he said, smiling big. “One of the suites was open.”
I was disappointed, but got over it. Getting interrupted didn’t seem to matter right now. I was talking to the wrong guy. I needed to find time with Corey alone.
The old hotel I’d stayed in had exterior hallways. This hotel required going inside to access the rooms. It was the difference of being at a tourist hotel, where they invite you in, instead of being at a place meant for you to sleep and get out quick.
Getting a suite room, it had two queen beds, and a couch that pulled out into a bed. It was split into two rooms, a front living room and a back bedroom with a balcony that overlooked the ocean. It had that over-bleached smell. The bathroom was near the front, big enough for a tub with a shower and two sinks.
Despite the nicer amenities, it still felt like a hotel room to me. The view was better though. I tried not to let my past experience of living in a hotel drag this down, but I wished we were back at the Sergeant Jasper.
“We’re here first,” Raven said, dumping our bags onto one of the beds, and then sat down. He stripped off his nicer shirt, tossing it aside and leaving on the black T-shirt. He flopped onto his back on the patterned bedspread, spreading his arms out in a stretch. The T-shirt started to ride up, revealing his belly button, and the muscles that flexed, making the tattoos dance a little. “We claim beds first.”
I climbed onto the other one, shaking the flip-flops off so they fell to the floor. Corey kicked them to a corner while I sat cross-legged on top of the cover. I leaned back on my hands. “I get this one.”
“We’ll share,” Raven said.
“I share with Corey,” I said. If I had to sleep in the same room as the guys tonight, Corey was my safe bet. He’d keep his hands to himself. I guess I could sleep on the sofa bed and kick everyone else out, but it’d make someone sleep on the floor if I claimed a bed to myself.
Corey beamed, and rubbed the back of his head slightly. “Okay.”
Raven rolled his eyes.
Corey checked out the space around the room, and then checked out the front part where there was a small microwave on top of a mini-fridge, and the sofa in a living area space. He came back after a moment. “I’m going to need a whiteboard. Or a chalkboard or something.”
Raven made a slight groan and jumped up. “I’ll ask,” he said.
“Why do we need a whiteboard?” I asked.
“Math,” Raven said. He picked up one of the room keys, and then left.
“I need it to figure out where this girl went,” Corey said after Raven was gone.
“Are we going to track Fred’s cell phone?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we do that?”
“I’ll do that, too,” Corey said. “It’ll take time and while I’m doing the work, I should make a few calculations. I can’t depend on the phone data so doing two things at once should speed things along. You want to get back in time for your brother, right?” He picked up his bag, and a couple of the ones we got from the store. He dropped it all on the table, and then shoved the table around to where he wanted it. He retrieved his laptop and plugged it in. “We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way, though, I think. Finding out who his friends are and see if they know where he may have gone. Maybe he talked about going to an old family home, or had a timeshare in Maine. Maybe Harry might know something, too. We’ll see.”
I studied him as he started working. He’d left the dressier shirt on, which really looked good against his broad shoulders. After a while, he started unbuttoning, leaving the shirt on but revealing the T-shirt underneath. His eyes were focused, curious and determined. The happy expression stayed, even as he typed at the keyboard. It was hard to stop crushing on him now.
I felt awkward just watching him work, so I started peeling the bed covers back, leaving blankets and pillows in place. I had time with Corey alone, now, and wanted to take advantage of it. I didn’t want to jump into it right off, so I tried some small talk. “You know,” I said as I worked, “it’s kind of cute how Raven just jumps up and runs off whenever you ask him to do something.”
“Hm?” Corey asked, still looking at the screen and tapping at the keyboard. “Cute?”
“I mean when I ask him to do something, half the time he tells me no. Or when I ask him a question, his answers are usually, just ‘no’.”
“Don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “Ask him with a smile, maybe?”
I tried to calculate how long it would take for Raven to find a whiteboard and then figured I had time to ask. “You know, I was just talking with him about the Academy.”
“Oh?” he asked.
“I was trying to figure out who was in charge.”
“Axel,” he said.
I tossed the covers into the corner, and kicked them out of the way. “I mean, who is in charge of the Academy? You know? I mean, you have rules, right? Who makes the rules?”
“We do,” he said.
I smothered a sigh “You mean you created all the rules? You started it?”
“No,” he said. He looked up, tapping his fingers against the computer. “I mean, when we were introduced to the Academy, they had certain rules in place already. New ones are voted on among everyone. Joining the Academy means agreeing to the rules already in place, but if you really were offended by one, then it probably isn’t the right group for you, anyway. It simply wouldn’t work out.”
“Okay. Help me out here. What are we talking about? Give me a rule.”
“Well,” he said, and he rubbed a palm behind his neck. “I mean, do you really want to know? I know you’ve gotten sort of tied into it because of us. You don’t have to.”
“I’m in Florida with you now.”
He smiled. “Not a horrible place to be, is it?”
I shrugged and sat on the corner of the bed. I crossed my legs, leaning back a bit. “I like it fine,” I said. “I’m just a little stuck in the middle and not sure what it’s really all about. Is it wrong to be curious about it?”
“No,” he said. He breathed out slowly and sat back, shoving the laptop away from himself. “Is it just curiosity? I mean, it seems like you’re…wanting in.”
I stalled for a moment, trying to consider how far I wanted to go with this. I went for noncommittal. “W
ell, if you were me, what would you think?”
He smiled a little. He stood up, and moved to the end of the bed, sitting close beside me. He leaned over, bumping his elbow into mine. “I’d probably want to know more about the group I was running around with. But if you’re looking for some secret side of us, honestly...” He patted his hand to his chest. “It’s just me. Not much to it.”
“Then why can’t you really talk about it? I mean why keep the Academy a secret?”
“There’s a whole lot of reasons. I mean, if we told everyone about us, they’d call us to solve every little problem. But the biggest one is that the group is rather hard to explain. Not everyone would understand.”
“It’s like the CIA, isn’t it?”
“A little bit more home oriented than that. We don’t have any legal jurisdiction anywhere, really. We’re just regular people. It’s kind of better that way. We can do things people like the CIA and FBI can’t do.”
“But you keep tabs on people, like following them on cell phones.”
