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“So?” Marc said. “We seem to have that reputation lately. Once more won’t hurt.”
“I’d rather hurt their feelings,” Raven said, “than risk our lives.”
Axel grunted. “You know if we leave, we won’t be risking anyone’s life.”
“Yes, we would,” Raven said. “We’d be leaving the Academy behind to deal with them, and they can’t handle it. Not like we would…” His voice dropped to a harsh whisper, but he leaned into the three of us as he spoke. “Alice, that old fucker with her, everyone one of those shits, they’re the sort you put down. Because they don’t stop. Only worse now when they were almost caught, since they can’t show their faces.”
“We’re not murdering anyone,” Axel said.
“Then they need to be deported,” Raven said. “To Russia.”
“Alice is from Germany,” I said.
“But she needs to go to Russia. They’ll take care of it.”
“None of that,” Axel said. “We don’t need a conspiracy to send people to execution. We’re in enough trouble as it is.” He waved a hand shortly and then put out one finger at a time to count off. “If we’re doing this, we have to agree to not tell anyone at the Academy. But we must protect them all. We pretend to pack up. We find our exit strategy to leave town. We yes, sir anything they ask. And maybe once this is over, they’ll forgive us if we’ve sorted it ourselves.”
“So we can’t work with anyone else,” Marc said.
“Right,” Axel said in a lower town. He looked at me. “Obviously, first choice is Blake.”
“It may mean exposing some Academy things to him,” I said.
“He already knows,” Axel said. “More than I’d like, but he trusts you. I think he trusts me and the rest of us. Especially now.”
I wrinkled my nose. “What happened? Is this about how his phone got stolen?”
He twisted his lips. “Let’s just get ready. Okay?”
Again, he wasn’t answering.
Something was going on with him. It involved Blake. I wanted to know.
For now, I nodded. “Yeah. Let’s pretend to get out of town. Let’s go find some tents.”
PREP WORK
Step one: Get ready.
Step two: Leave town, making Alice and even the Academy unable to find us.
Step three: Sneak back and deal with Alice ourselves and make sure the Academy isn’t discovered.
How? I wasn’t sure.
I took a quick shower and changed into my own jeans, a shirt from a laundry basket and some boots I dug out of Marc’s closet.
While Marc was helping Axel box up his stuff to get that to his workplace, I was sent to Corey’s and Brandon’s apartment to find them and let them know what we were up to. It wasn’t likely we’d be able to get away with doing this without them, and it was their choice if they were going to be in on it.
I’d volunteered to go while the others talked strategies, but the moment I was facing their apartment door, I was regretting it. Would they be upset we were going against the Academy again?
I didn’t have a key, so I knocked and waited.
It was Corey who answered, peering out at me with a curious brow lifted in question. “What’s wrong?”
Was it my face that gave it away? “There’s uh…change of plan.”
“What?” he asked, opening the door further and ushering me in. “What’s going on?”
I sidestepped into the tiny hallway space and then further into the living room area. His computer monitors were on. One of the screens seemed dark, until a blue outline of a person walked across it.
Trying to figure out what he was doing was distracting me. “Uh, well, they decided to try to find Alice and do something about it ourselves.”
Corey’s mouth opened wide for a moment. “They said that?”
“Yeah. For the most part. We fake leaving town but then come back and try to get to her. They’re working out how right now.”
He then closed his mouth and nodded. “I’m not totally surprised.”
“Not a good idea?” I asked.
“It’s probably the best calculated move,” he said. “At least at this point.” He did something with his hands, making numbers like he was writing out a formula in the air. “Best case scenario, we find out where they are, catch them in the middle of something, and point the police at them so they can take care of things.”
“What’s the worst case scenario?”
“I don’t want to do that math.”
I didn’t want to ask further. “They need to know you and Brandon are in on this.”
“Oh, we’re in,” he said. He went back to his desk, watching his monitor that was dark for a second and then looking at a second one that had some program running numbers and formulas, and those were flying across the screen quickly. “Brandon’s not going to want to be left out.”
“Left out of what?”
My heart jumped at the familiar voice.
Kevin was standing just outside of Brandon’s bedroom. I would have thought it a bit suspicious, as he was never around, but I knew they sort of let their own team do whatever, trusted them.
It was just hard to think of him as on the team.
He stepped forward, his face turning from curiosity to something bordering angry as he faced off with Corey. “Don’t tell me…”
Corey stood up. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“It better not be.” He waved his hand around. “I can’t do this again, man. I’ve been laying low just like everyone told me.”
“It’s for your own safety.”
“And Mindy is asking questions!” He pressed a palm against his forehead, and then brushed at the tight curls, cut short against his scalp. “I can’t keep this up.”
Corey looked at me and then back to Kevin. “We’re doing what they are telling us. Leaving.”
Kevin squinted his eyes at him. “That’s right we are. I’m taking my fiancée with me a
nd we’re getting out of here. She’s already pissed I’m asking her to move and leave her family without telling her why.” He walked around Corey and then me in a wide circle to get to the front door. He pointed a finger at me as he left. “I don’t want to hear about any more schemes. No more running around.”
Corey frowned. “It’s not that simple.”
Kevin stopped short of exiting and approached him in an aggressive rush, enough to have Corey back up a step. “It is that simple,” he said. “It was always simple. Do what they said. In some cases, it was to not do stuff. Not doing stuff is the easiest.” He angrily switched his gaze to me. “I should have known this was all a bad idea.”
I’d never seen him so angry.
It was my fault.
Corey stepped between us. “We can’t change what happened.”
Kevin stopped glaring at me to simply frown at Corey. “I trusted you all. You told me it was important. You told me we needed to. I believed you.” He headed to the door again. “Maybe when Mindy and I leave, we’ll just go on our own. Seems safer.”
Corey only looked at the floor, letting Kevin walk out.
I bit my lower lip, unsure what to say. I couldn’t blame Kevin at all for anything he’d been saying. He was scared. We’d pushed him to do highly dangerous things. Now he was being forced to leave this life, possibly for good.
“He’s not happy with any of us,” I eventually said.
“He’s got a reason. They want to get married and have a family.” He went to his computer and tapped a few times at his keyboard and then brushed a palm across his lips. “To be honest, he’s been drifting away from us. He started out just like us, but he’s…”
“Gone straight,” I said. “He’s about to be a family man. Doesn’t want to take risks.”
Corey smirked and refocused his attention on me. “Sometimes I think it’d be better if we did the same. If we left all this and went off and just…did stuff for us.” He shrugged. “But then, that’s selfish.”
