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“He must have informed Mr. Morris at some time.”
“We had to figure out a way to get him to back off because he was getting too close. The longer he chased us, the more angry he got. It wasn’t until he felt he lost you that he started calling out to Morris and the other person he’s got working for him.” He moved in the shower, the wet tiles squeaking a bit as he shifted. “He’s desperate. They’re hoping the longer he goes without being able to get to you, the more he’ll slip up. He’s got to be close.”
“How did they find us at the hotel?”
“Phone signals from the others,” he said. “Eventually, we let McCoy catch up to Luke with the phone. He realized you weren’t with us and left.” He grunted. “Fucker is after you for some reason. He’s telling Morris you’re dangerous.”
“I heard him,” I said. “Morris was talking to Kota and North and me. He...”
“Don’t trust him,” he said.
I nodded. I believed it now. With McCoy hunting me and Morris willing to help even after I warned him about McCoy, it meant he didn’t believe me. Or didn’t want to. Maybe he’d known McCoy longer and trusted him over a girl he didn’t know. I didn’t have an answer, but I would make sure I let Mr. Blackbourne make decisions on how to handle Mr. Morris from now on. “Kota gave him an address. One to the Academy.”
“It was a lie,” Gabriel said. “Mr. Morris has someone looking at the place now. They’ve spent all night tracking you down and they’re still out there somewhere. Although now they’re following a fake Sang. Hopefully they’ll be able to keep them away for a while.”
My heart dropped. A while. How long could we keep this up? “Who was the girl?”
“Another girl from the Academy. Someone about your size. She doesn’t really look like you up close, but with the right wig and clothes, anyone trying to look in on her through a car window or from a distance might not notice. She’ll stay at the hotel tonight with the others. Then someone will drive her around the city tomorrow. Wait for McCoy to fuck up somewhere. We want him to talk to Hendricks, and vent, maybe tell us what he plans to do with you. We’re hoping he’ll dish the dirt on Hendricks and what he knows while in a conversation with him.”
She’d spend the night with them? They’d be alone in a hotel room with another girl. I knew I couldn’t think of it that way.
She was helping. She was Academy. I needed to remember that.
I sat back against the mirror. “Why?” I asked. “What could McCoy do if he found me? Why is he chasing me so late at night, like he’s going to do something?”
“Because Kota talked to Morris,” he said. “When McCoy finally called him, Morris told McCoy what he said. McCoy thinks we’re spreading lies about him, messing up his reputation. He wanted you before, but now he’s really pissed. So we’ve got to get you out of the way for now. But now they’ve got Mr. Blackbourne following McCoy. See? He’s in deep shit now if Mr. Blackbourne’s the one hunting him.”
Uh oh. Was that better? “Will that make a difference?” I asked.
“Sure will,” he said. Gabriel shifted in the shower and I could tell he was applying soap and scrubbing off the makeup. “Once he gets any information he wants from McCoy, they’ll snap him up. Of course we have to do it carefully now. Mr. Morris is on his side. And Mr. Hendricks is waiting for information. If we snag him too quickly, they’ll know it’s us. We need to do it right.”
It seemed like a crazy idea. “Do I stay out of school until then?”
“Tomorrow, yes. After that, I don’t know. This other girl is supposed to draw them away and make it look like you’re driving around downtown on your own all day. She’ll have a couple of people with her, maybe another girl or two. You and I have to float around outside of town. We’ve got one burner cell phone to use in that bag. The battery isn’t in it so there’s no GPS signal unless we turn it on. It’s just for emergencies.”
We were completely out of reach of the others. “Then what? We spend a day away and then?”
“We go back,” he said. He turned the shower off and then stood still behind the curtain. “We’ll stop by the hospital first to get news and more instructions. Our only job now is to stay out of Charleston and avoid being seen too much just in case. Can you bring the bag?”
I jumped off the counter to go get his bag so he could change and then we could talk face to face.
By the time I got back with the bag, he had the door closed. I knocked and he reached out with one hand. I smiled as I hooked the bag over his fingers. I had been in a towel before and he’d open the door right up. Gabriel was more modest with himself than he was with me.
Gabriel came out dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt, his hair still damp. He glanced at me and wrinkled his brow. “Are you okay in that to sleep? Do you want a shower?”
I grimaced at the shower comment. I was too tired now to even give myself a hobo bath. I looked at my clothes. The sweater was soft, long so it covered my butt. The jeans were tight though. “I can take the jeans off.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. He moved to one of the beds to remove the bedspread and prep the pillows. This room wasn’t as bad with the bleach. Maybe it meant they didn’t use as much of it. I wondered if that was good or bad.
I peeled of the jeans and then slipped in between the sheets next to Gabriel. Gabriel reached to turn off the light by the bed and then hopped up and turned all the lights off in the room.
In the dark, I heard as Gabriel got into the bed next to me.
At first, I was hesitant to reach out to him. I’d done so on the bike, but I’d had to so I could hold on. Now, I wasn’t sure. Had I made him mad before? It was hard to judge his mood. Was he still cranky?
He stretched out on his back until his arm crossed over me. I got an elbow in my arm. “Oy,” he said. “Oh my god, Sang. I’ve been running around all day. I’m so fucking tired.”
“Sleep?” I asked.
“Yes.” He turned over and shifted until he had his arm partially around me. “Fuck me. I want to talk to you but I’m too tired. There’s so much going on.”
His comforting arm was what I needed. I snuggled into him. He rested his head on the pillow beside me and kissed my forehead. Once we’d wiggled close to each other, he rested his head against mine.
“Gabriel?” I said quietly. I wanted him to sleep, but I couldn’t help it. So much had gone on and I needed to know. “Did...did North find you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Dumb shit. He thought I was leaving the Academy for some reason.”
Uh oh. How much did I need to admit? “Luke...said you’d gone rogue.”
“He said we’d abandoned the original plan and went to go grab another girl that looked like you.” He lifted his head slightly, looking into my eyes. “He didn’t say rogue. Who said rogue?”
I needed to tell him. Keeping secrets wasn’t working. If I needed to tell anyone the full truth, it had to be Gabriel. “I was talking to Liam on your phone.”
“Huh? So he said? How did he know?”
“He said Luke said you’d gone rogue.”
Gabriel was quiet for a minute and then he pulled away, putting a hand on his forehead. “Oh my god. I was in the middle of coming up with the new plan and I told Luke to tell him to shut up because we were...I forget what I said exactly, but I was saying fuck this noise about the plan. He probably thought I meant his…Lily’s…whoever. Their plan.”
“Oh,” I said quietly. “I was worried. I showed the texts to North.”
“Well, probably good you did,” he said. “We needed him to pull this off. We needed a third, see? Someone outside to go in with the girl that looked like you. I forget her name. She’s a brat, though. She kept piling up favors. ‘You’re gonna owe me a whole lot of favors after this.’ Geez. I wish I’d never worked with her, but she was the quickest one to respond. I’m glad Luke stole her bubblegum.”
I broke out into a laugh, imagining Luke picking a girl’s pocket just for her gum.
/> “Anyway, North yelled at me a lot, but then he came up with the plan where I got to kidnap you and he and the others stayed behind.” He reached out and pushed a lock of hair back behind my ear.
That didn’t sound like North. “North didn’t want to do this himself?”
“No. He called it a birthday present from the team.”
I was quiet for a long moment. Somehow in the midst of all the chaos, North devised a way to get Gabriel and I together for the evening. He knew I’d been worried about him.
North. I pushed my hand over my heart. He’d helped me. Us. He said we were in this together. My eyes watered, and I wished I could thank him. “Happy birthday,” I said softly to Gabriel.
Gabriel rolled over, pulling me in again. “I don’t even care right now. Fuck it all. We’ve got a whole day to ourselves tomorrow. Maybe we’ll go to the aquarium. Or maybe up to Myrtle Beach. I wonder if the park is open this late in the year.”
I sucked in some air to calm myself. “Where’d you get the bike?” I asked.
“Went and bought it,” he said. “Did it after school. It’s what we were doing, leading McCoy around for a while. Lost him for a bit to see if he’d catch up.”
