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“What you and I did wasn’t the same, and you know it,” he said louder, his voice dripping with something deeper, too, pleading. “Sweetheart, look at the whole picture. Arson and larceny aren’t petty charges. If you need someone other than me to tell you this isn’t good, I’ll take you to the police station myself and let them talk to you.”
No need to go that far. “This could mean anything,” I said. “You want me to go with you because they got charges dropped? They may have been wild when they were younger, but if charges were dropped recently, that’s good, isn’t it? Doesn’t that mean they weren’t guilty of anything?”
“If this isn’t enough to prove you should leave, check the phone again. There’s more.”
I forced myself to look at the phone, afraid to see any more.
There was one more photo. It was an email from a Mr. Hendricks, directed to some email without a name, only an email address with random letters and numbers.
The Academy is too dangerous a threat to ignore now. Three of my students have been arrested in a matter of a couple of weeks, all thanks to them, and Mr. McCoy is still missing. I may be next. I’m convinced they have something to do with these continuous bomb threats. Mr. Blackbourne insists on continuing his investigation of it, possibly controlling evidence. I can’t believe the school board would be so blind. We’ll have to take matters into our own hands.
“It’s a high school,” Blake said. “In Charleston. This Academy took over part of it, from what Doyle was able to figure out. Mr. McCoy is the vice principal.”
“What does he mean he’s missing?”
“They took him,” he said. “This Academy took Mr. McCoy. One day he was there, the next, vanished. Their principal has been looking for him and suspects the Academy was the cause. This Mr. McCoy may know something the Academy doesn’t want anyone to find out.”
“Who is Mr. Blackbourne?”
“Another one of the Academy’s people, planted in that school under the ruse of a new academic supervisor or something like that. Doyle is trying to track him now, although he’s having a hard time. He can only catch him while he’s at the school.”
I slumped in the seat, releasing a heavy sigh. I stared out the window at the flashy tourist billboards, not really reading, just looking at the pictures. A missing person was not something I could ignore. A school in danger of being under the control of the Academy? What did they want with a school? None of it made much sense to me.
But I couldn’t deny it. I swallowed hard and then picked up the phone again, focusing. People were missing. Bomb threats on a school. Terrorist-like actions. I’d been duped and I didn’t like it.
“I didn’t know.” I said quietly.
“Tell me how you got involved,” Blake said. “What do you know?”
I stroked a finger across my brow, not liking revealing this information, but he shared a lot with me. If he believed this, he’d risked a lot looking for me. No wonder he was acting so cautious before. “They caught me lifting wallets at the mall.” I stopped there, trying to figure out a way to talk about this where I didn’t feel like someone as bad as the boys appeared to be.
He slid his eyes at me when I took too long. “Why?”
“Long story.”
“Tell me.”
I grunted. “I couldn’t afford my rent that week. When I didn’t have enough to cover, I’d go out and...borrow a little.”
His mouth opened a bit, even as he refocused on the road. “Don’t you mean steal?”
“Don’t judge,” I said. “I had a job, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t just supporting myself.”
He sliced his hand through the air and then grabbed the wheel again. “Fine, okay. So you were pickpocketing. They found you doing this?”
“Yes. They caught me by planting one of their guys as a target. When the trapped me, they told me…they made the Academy out to be a security team of some sort. They wanted me to help them.”
He stopped at a light and then turned to me, looking at my eyes. Those gold flecks shined, curious. “With me, right? They picked you up because they needed someone like you to get to me?”
I nodded slowly.
“The party,” he said. He paused, tapping at the steering wheel. “You took my wallet?”
I bit my lower lip. Busted.
He smirked, shaking his head. “So you weren’t just looking for an opening with the whole spilled champagne trick.”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
“You didn’t take anything from me,” he said. He rolled forward as the light turned green. “It didn’t work.”
“I did,” I said. “I took your wallet.”
“But I’ve got my wallet now.”
“I put it back.”
He slowly turned his head, glancing at me. “You did it twice?”
“They wanted your key card to your office,” I said. “So I took your wallet, they took the key card, and then when they brought it back after checking it out, they had me put your wallet back so you wouldn’t know.”
“And that didn’t strike you as devious?”
I couldn’t explain it. I’d said the same thing to the boys in the beginning, hadn’t I?
A burning started deep inside me, wanting answers and frustrated that I couldn’t come up with any.
What fired me up worse was that I still wanted to make excuses. I wanted to go back and demand proof that they weren’t flat out bad guys.
While I was thinking, Blake wove through the last of St. Augustine, passing by homes now. We’d be out of the city soon. “Sweetie,” he said quietly. “Darling. Sugar pie. Listen, these aren’t good guys or—“
“I’m not exactly a saint,” I snapped. “Neither are you.”
“I don’t know what they told you, but they thought you were a criminal and they picked you up because they thought you would understand. Why did you even follow them down here?”
“I wanted to learn more about the Academy,” I said.
“But why did they come to Florida? I thought at first you were after me again.”
“Someone’s grandmother,” I said. “It’s complicated, but a member of the Academy had a grandmother in trouble.”
“Helping family?” he asked. “Sounds like mafia to me. You need to get out of this.”
“I can’t,” I said. I swallowed, closing my eyes as I sat back. It was too late for me.
“But...”
“It isn’t about me,” I said. “My brother. Wil.”
“You have a brother?”
My eyes popped open and I smacked his arm. “Don’t lie to me. Did you know about him?”
He shoved my arm away and then rubbed the spot where I hit him. “Don’t go biting the hand, sugar. I only knew a few things about you. I don’t remember learning about a brother. If I saw it somewhere, I didn’t think about it. I was only looking for you.”
“I have a brother going to school in Charleston. The last time I went home, I couldn’t find him.”
“What happened?”
“He moved out. I don’t know where he is and I can’t call him. But the guys--this Academy—they have records. Mine and his. I had them helping me look for him and then found out they have all this information on me.”
“We’ll go back,” he said. “We can go get your brother.”
“I didn’t want to find Wil until I knew what the Academy was about,” I said. “If Wil is missing to them, that’s good. It gives me time. They’ve got files on both of us. I need to get those back and then I can look for him and get him out of this mess.”
He turned the car into the parking lot of an outlet center, parking in one of the spaces and shoving the stick into park. He threw off his sunglasses and twisted in the seat, studying me. “What do you mean?” he asked. “What files?”
