AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Axel showed no emotion. He lifted a palm. “Before you speak,” he said quietly, “I’d like to have the floor without interruption.”
Brandon groaned, and raked his fingers harshly through his hair. “You can’t be seriously considering it!”
“Brandon,” Axel said. “Please.”
Brandon rolled his eyes and then took a step back, forcing his hands into his pockets. He pressed his lips together tightly. His face was still red, but he held himself together.
“Everyone knows what we’re here for and what we’re dealing with. I won’t go over our objectives again; how we’ll be dealing with Ethan’s problems. However, Kayli has just brought some new information to my attention.”
Kevin shifted until his elbows were on his knees as he leaned forward. “And you’re going to tell us what the hell is going on?”
Axel put his finger to his lips and Kevin leaned back in his chair, staying silent. Axel continued. “When Kayli arrived here last night, it was Blake Coaltar who was in charge of the team.”
Marc shifted, looking like he was about to stand up. Kevin’s spine straightened. Brandon stared at the floor. Corey’s eyes shifted from his brother to his friends, as if gauging their reactions. Raven was the only one unmoved by this news.
“She’s cleverly placed herself in position as a co-lead, a position she felt compelled to take when she learned Blake could be the single entity holding the fate of half of Charleston in his hands.”
Brandon changed from anger to confusion as he looked at me. “A co-lead?”
Axel sliced his hand through the air. “I’m not done,” he said in a stern, commanding tone. “Our dealings with Ethan and Blake and the rest of their team now lay with how they handle the situation moving forward. Kayli has agreed to their terms with conditions. We will gather information. We will provide suggestions as to how to handle both the money uncovered, and the people involved in the alleged crimes. If they refuse to listen, or at least negotiate how to handle things, if they ignore Kayli, then after this voyage, we’ll be leaving.”
I shifted on my feet. Axel made it sound like I was the one who’d come up with all of this. I didn’t disagree with what he said, but I wasn’t sure if I should get the credit.
Brandon’s shoulders lowered, but he was still looking at me. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Axel motioned to me. “She was aware of our resistance to anything involving Blake Coaltar. She’s not an idiot.”
“I didn’t say that,” Brandon said, his tone quieter now.
“She told me the moment I got on the ship,” Corey said. He looked at his brother, his hands spread out, palms open. “I didn’t say anything because she wanted to speak to Axel first alone, but she checked in with me while everyone was busy. We weren’t in immediate danger so I agreed to let Axel decide. We had time to learn about it before the boat took off. We still have time to leave if we really want.”
“Maybe we should,” Kevin said. “We don’t have any guarantees that they’ll actually listen to her.”
“I’m no expert,” I said, “I’m not really sure why they wanted me, specifically. It seems, though, that Ethan isn’t really sure who to trust anymore. We, including you guys, have been the only ones who came in to help without asking for anything in return, without really knowing who he was. As of right now, we might very well be the only ones he can trust with this. He’d married someone trying to take his secret cell phone service before. He’d said he was a poor judge of character. He may not know who else to turn to. We were brought in from the outside, and we have no angle or business with him at all. It may be the reason why he needs us in on this.”
The boys fell silent, looking at each other. I got the feeling they felt like I did, that it was odd to be trusted by Ethan, and yet we really didn’t know much about him, either. Maybe that was the point. We’d saved Ethan when we didn’t have to, so Ethan felt we were trustworthy.
How sad for Ethan. He had no close friends or family he trusted right now. He only had us, a group of practical strangers who helped save his life and save his invention from being used for the wrong purpose.
“It might be their only chance to listen,” Marc said quietly. Faces turned toward him. He was calm compared to everyone else. His eyes were looking at the floor, but they were shifting, too, calculating. “If they don’t listen to Kayli, we might need to stay anyway.”
“Why?” Axel asked.
“Because then we’d be leaving the fate of half of Charleston in their hands, just like you said.” He lifted his head now, his face assured. “Kayli is our only link to how they proceed, now and in the future. I hope they’ll listen to her, because otherwise we’d have to leave her as co-lead. We’d have to use her to figure out their moves so we can counteract any if we tried to work against them at any point. If they don’t do the right thing, we’ll have to. She’d be our information source. The rest of our friends will have to take steps to intervene where possible. Don’t you see? She’s our link now.”
Axel’s head recoiled at this, but then he drew himself back and started to nod slowly. “I hate to say it,” he said, “but you’re right. If what happens with this team means they’ll make trouble for Charleston, public or not, it’ll require everything we’ve got to intervene for the better of the city.”
I gritted my teeth, suddenly afraid for Blake. How could I get any of them to agree if they didn’t trust each other? I stepped forward. “We don’t need to look at that right now,” I said. “We can’t go into this assuming Blake will make the wrong choices, or that Ethan’s only goal is to save the money and sweep everything under without any consequences. Blake’s helped us before, even saving our lives. Maybe...maybe if we actually try to get friendly with him, we can motivate him when the time comes. In a good way. He doesn’t seem that bad.”
“It’s not a bad goal, Kayli,” Axel said. “Maybe he isn’t that bad of a person, but he’s too close to our other friends, and he has the potential to expose us, putting more than us in danger.” He eyeballed me, making me realize he was trying to protect the Academy. “But we’ve only got a few days on this boat to make friends. Is he going to trust us? I don’t feel like he does.”
“Have we given him a reason to?” I rubbed at my stomach with a palm, considering our options. “We’re in this together now. We should try to be friends. He asked for me to join, knowing you all would follow. He’s sticking his neck out to invite us along, knowing you all don’t trust him, but he realizes he needs more people. He has to know he’s asking for you all to watch his back if this job gets dangerous.” I studied them, although they didn’t meet my eyes, but instead they all appeared to be in deep thought, considering the situation we were in. ?
?We can’t expect change overnight, however, would we rather get someone like Blake Coaltar on our side or against us?”
The team was quiet. Brandon glared at the floor.
Corey sat up, scooting to the edge of the sofa. “Kayli and I can get friendly,” he said. “It might not require all of us. Maybe just a couple of us can do it and that’ll be enough to influence him to do the right thing.”
“I go with Kayli,” Raven said, surprising everyone.
“We’re not leaving Kayli,” Axel said.
Raven grunted. “If it requires being friends with Blake, then we are now friends.”
“Raven,” Kevin said, rolling his eyes. “That’s not how friendship works.”
“How is it different?” Raven asked. “Aren’t you and I friends?”
“Yeah, but...”
“It’s because I say we are,” he said. I had to smile at his oversimplification of the friendship process. Maybe for Russians, it was like marriage: You just made the decision in an instant and it happens quickly.
“Well my only problem is how we get this past our other special friends,” Kevin said, clearly talking about the Academy. “They won’t be thrilled. Not at all.”
“We either do this, or we put Charleston at risk,” Axel said. “It’s not a hard decision to make. They can’t exactly bring other people in on this now. Not on this side of things. Kayli’s our only link with Ethan at this point and she is our responsibility.”
“That may not stop them from wanting to put other people in this,” he said. “You know that, right? There might be a way to get more people on this boat, or even in league with those other companies on his list.”
The Academy would add in more people? I hadn’t considered it. I knew there were others, like Dr. Roberts, and then there were the kids that had been at the gun range. I wondered who they could get to come aboard on short notice and then who they could ask to join Nightingale or the other affiliated companies. If they did, I could learn much more about the Academy than before.
