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Corey had the table set up with one of the pizzas open. He put the other ones aside. He had the television on, with an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation playing.
I sighed heavily and felt a lot of the day slipping away. The lure of pizza had me dashing over and jumping on the bed closest to the table. I bounced once.
Corey laughed. He motioned to the box. “Don’t have any plates. Come eat over here so we’re not getting crumbs in the bed.”
“Let’s get crumbs in Raven’s bed,” I said. “Or sand.”
Corey shook his head. “He’s the last one I want to piss off.”
I could sympathize, but it was tempting. I moved the other chair until I was sitting beside him and could watch television. I grabbed a piece of pizza, used a napkin to catch crumbs and sat back.
By the time I was on my third piece, I had my feet propped up on his legs. By my fifth piece, he’d finished, sat back, and was warming my toes with his hands as he watched the show.
Corey stretched in his seat during a commercial. “Must be nice to be captain of a star ship,” he said. “I think I could handle that job.”
“No,” I said. “You’d be Data.”
He laughed. “I’m not quite Data.”
“Data’s my favorite,” I said. “I mean he’s super smart but there’s things he doesn’t know and he doesn’t hesitate to go look it up or ask one of the others. He’s so literal and open. And he’s an android.”
Corey readjusted a little, tugging my feet closer in his lap. “So you’re into androids?”
“How cool would it be to be an android?” I said. I finished my pizza and crumpled the napkin, tossing it toward the empty pizza box. “You don’t have to eat. You don’t have to sleep. Super strong…”
“No emotions, though,” he said. “No real feelings.”
“Ah,” I said. I sliced my hand through the air. “He’s probably better off.” Wasn’t that the truth? Wasn’t I screwing up with the guys when I couldn’t control my feelings for them? If I was an android, it wouldn’t matter. It had to be so much easier.
Corey sighed, tilting his head like he was considering. “Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “It’d suck.” He squeezed my feet. “He spent the entire show trying to be human. I mean, unless he installed a specific computer program, he wouldn’t enjoy pizza. You couldn’t even taste it. You wouldn’t care.”
“Good point.” I got up, moving over to the bed to stretch out on it. I captured two of the pillows together and stuffed them under my head. Corey was a blast. It was the first time all day I hadn’t been worried about Wil or the Academy or Sara or anything. It was good to forget for a minute. Clear the head.
Corey pulled his phone from his pocket, checking it. “No word from the guys.”
I rolled over, looking at him. The pang of guilt setting in. “Is that bad?”
He shrugged. “If they were calling, I’d be more worried. Means they need backup, and we don’t exactly have transportation to get to them quickly right now.” He got up, stretched and climbed onto the bed, sitting cross-legged. “You shouldn’t lay down after you eat,” he said. “Bad for you.”
I wanted to ignore him because I was tired, but I moved the pillows and propped myself up to sitting.
He moved himself until he was next to me. He held the phone up, looking at it like he was waiting for messages.
“Are you worried?” I asked.
He nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean not just for my brother. The others… They’re like family to me. I’m not supposed to worry. I should trust them to do what they need. It’s hard not to, though.”
“They’re not dead,” I said, meaning to be helpful.
He laughed a little. “Well, I wasn’t thinking that, until now.”
Crap. “Well, I mean, they…” I almost said the Academy would get them out, but I realized I shouldn’t know that part. “Can Axel do anything? Are they going to be stuck in jail?”
“Naw,” Corey said. “They’ll be okay there. I mean trespassing is probably the worst they could pin on them, and I doubt they’ll be able to charge them with much at all.”
“They could lie. They could make things up.”
“They’d be going through paperwork and trouble to do that.” He shook his head. “They wouldn’t do it for something like this. Too risky to their jobs.”
I guess that made sense.
Corey’s fingers fumbled with his phone. His eyes kept going to it. I had the same feeling. Was there anything I could do besides wait?
“How long will it take?” I asked. “How long will it be before they get released?”
Corey shrugged. “It’s late. They could keep them overnight.”
“Axel couldn’t bail them out now?”
“I think they’d want a judge to look it over before they set bail, if any. Judges are home for the evening. It really depends on what’s going on.” He grimaced and then tucked his phone aside. “Can’t sit here and worry,” he said. “It’s not helpful.”
I checked the time. It was ten. I looked around, trying to figure out what to do next. I was super sleepy, though. I started going down the list. “Is there anything we can do for Sara?”
“Well, from what you’ve told me, I’m thinking we should talk to Future again. But not tonight. She could tell us who that woman is, perhaps; the one you were interested in.”
“Should we babysit the grandmother?”
“Brandon tapped her phone for now,” he said. “If she gets a call, we’ll know. And he’s been watching all day. No activity with the grandmother, other than fixing up her lawn.”
I stopped for a minute, considering. “Is she not worried? Could it be they actually left town?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He sighed and rolled his head back until he was resting it against the headboard. “I wish it was so simple. We really should find Sara, though, and make sure she’s okay. I don’t like not knowing.”
It was what gnawed at me, too. I didn’t even know the poor girl, but I couldn’t stop thinking of that apartment, her things, her chalk drawings. One day she’s drawing flowers on the porch, the next, who knows where she is? “Maybe…I mean if he ran off and they were still safe, maybe they should stay that way.”
“They should have their lives back,” he said. “They shouldn’t have to run and hide.”
“If he comes back, he’d end up in jail, wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe,” he said. “He’d have to go to trial.”
“The mother would get the girl.”
“If we can find her,” he said.
“She’s probably out looking for her.”
He shook his head slowly. He didn’t know.
I sighed heavily. We had no leads, and nothing to do until morning, and that wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg. The Academy, Wil, the mess I was in with the boys…not to mention I was homeless except for the guys supporting me.
Corey reached out, taking my hand in his. He covered it with both hands, using his thumbs to massage the back softly. “Not a great start to an Academy introduction, is it?”
I squinted at him. “Hm?”
“I mean, the first time with Coaltar was messed up and now with this Sara stuff, we shouldn’t be this incompetent.” He smirked but there was a shot of darkness in his eyes. “And we can’t even get back to Wil right now. I know you want to. You probably think we’re screw-ups.”
That caught me so hard. He had absolutely no idea. Screw-ups I could live with. Screw-ups I could love. If all the Academy was, was well-meaning screw-ups, I’d have signed up right then and there and would have never, ever left. I was a screw-up, so I’d fit in. “It’s not normally like this,” I said, almost a question, but I knew better, and I didn’t want to lie.
Corey shook his head, smiling. “I shouldn’t say it never gets this crazy, because it can. But usually there’s a break between cases like this. And, I mean, it’s been a strange case all over.”
“That’s not your fault, tho
