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But he had done it in his own way: secretly, alone.
“Sang?” Silas’s voice floated from downstairs before his footsteps sounded on the stairs..
I rushed to the closet, moving the clothes back into place to hide what I’d found, and then closed the door. I wouldn’t betray Luke by telling the others.
I returned to the lower part of the room just as Silas opened the door. He peeked his head in, looking around the room first before looking at me. “He’s not here?”
I shook my head. “Not here.”
Silas tilted his head forward, black strands of hair crossing in front of his eyes. “Check the other rooms?”
“Not yet.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow. “You okay?”
I forced a smile and hurried to the door. “Just worried about Luke.” That much was true.
Still, I wanted to ask Luke about why he’d taken the clothes. But how could I? I wasn’t sure if I should admit I had poking around in his stuff.
Should we even mention we were here? The reluctance Silas had about spying on Luke made sense, and I realized how complicated this would be if we did have to confront Luke about anything.
But I wouldn’t be able to confront him about anything unless we could find him.
I just hoped I could be the one to talk to him first.
HUNTING A SPY
After checking the rest of the upstairs, Silas and I started down the steps to find Nathan standing in the foyer. He had his hands on his hips, his blue eyes dark and serious, his lips tight.
“His phone’s in the kitchen,” he said, looking up toward us when we were about halfway down the staircase. “It was in the pantry, behind some cereal boxes. I put it on the counter.”
Silas stopped on the stairs, tilting his head as if straining to listen. After a pause, he continued down, ahead of me until the three of us gathered in the foyer. “So he is here somewhere?”
“I don’t see him around,” Nathan said. He looked over at me. “I don’t know why he hid his phone. What time did you call him?”
I searched my bra and then my pockets before I remembered Silas still had my phone. I tugged at his sleeve, cuing him to pull it out from his pocket to hand to me. The pink case had a few scratches from when I’d dropped it, but the rest seemed fine. I checked the call list. “Maybe an hour ago?”
Nathan frowned, looked around the space and then shook his head. “I don’t like this. Something’s wrong.”
I pressed my lips together, anxious. “What if it’s Volto?”
Nathan’s frown deepened and he pulled his own phone from his pocket. He pushed a button and then held the phone out, putting it on speaker. He pushed a finger to his lips, indicating to us to keep quiet and let him talk.
The phone in the kitchen rang. I silently stepped toward it. Why was Nathan calling Luke’s phone?
It rang a few times and I expected it to go to voicemail, but then the phone in the kitchen stopped, although the ringing coming through Nathan’s phone continued.
After two more rings, there was a click. “Hey man, I’m sorry I didn’t stop by the diner. I got roped into some Academy work.” Luke’s voice sounded like he was in a tunnel, but it was certainly him.
Nathan’s jaw tightened and his shoulders dropped before he forced a smile on his face and said, “Oh no, don’t worry about it. I wasn’t calling about that. Just had a quick question.”
“Shoot.”
Nathan pointed to me and Silas and then toward the phone in the kitchen. “Uh…I found this empty pickle jar with money in it. Looked like one of the tip jars, but there wasn’t a name on this one.”
As we listened to Nathan’s made-up story, Silas shooed me on further into the kitchen. Luke’s iPhone was on the island near the sink. It appeared to be silent now.
“Did you ask around?” Luke asked—we heard his voice from Nathan’s phone in the other room, not the phone on the counter.
“Yeah, no one’s claiming it. I thought it might be yours since you were here earlier. If no one claims it, I was just going to dump it into Sang’s jar.”
Silas pushed a button on Luke’s phone. The screen showed a timer running, like he really was on the phone, but I didn’t see anything else. Silas put the phone back down, frowning with deep concern.
“Might be mine but give it to Sang anyway,” Luke said and then chuckled. “Girl makes bank even when she’s not there.”
It was odd to hear Luke so casual, even laughing, when he was hiding from us. On the phone, he sounded completely normal.
“Okay,” Nathan said, leaning into the doorway of the kitchen, his eyes on us. “Heading this way tonight? You know, maybe if you’re not busy this week, we’ll have a game night like we used to.”
“Sure,” Luke said. “Maybe tomorrow. I’ll have to let you go now, though. Stuff happening.”
“Understand,” Nathan said. “Be careful.”
“Always,” Luke said, and hung up.
After Nathan disconnected the call, we all stood in the kitchen, looking between Nathan’s phone in his hand, and the phone on the counter.
“Kota would know if this was an actual Academy job he’s on, right?” Nathan asked Silas.
“Supposedly,” Silas said. “Unless Mr. Blackbourne didn’t tell Kota.”
“Would he ever tell him to leave his phone?”
“Yes,” I said, frowning, remembering a night when we’d taken an emergency cell phone only, leaving our own phones behind. We didn’t want our own phones with us when we were committing a crime: breaking and entering, theft.
They looked at me, their expressions concerned.
“There’s no way we can tell what he’s doing then,” Nathan said. “And we can’t go after him, especially if he’s doing something dangerous.”
“He is answering his phone,” Silas said, his voice subdued and low. “He’s clearly okay.”
Nathan shook his head, lifted his eyebrows and gave another sigh. He moved forward and picked up Luke’s phone. “Damn Luke. You’re too good for your own sake.” He took it over to the pantry and positioned it back where I could only assume he’d found it. “This is why Mr. Blackbourne probably didn’t tell us about it. We’d sit here and worry and want to go help him out, but we can’t.”
“We should stop calling him,” I said quietly. “And looking for him. We might blow his cover or something.”
Nathan grumbled and headed to the door. “I don’t know what he’s up to, but if you’re trying to ask about his little pranks, we’ll all have to wait until later…and just hope he’ll get out of this job clean.”
Silas and I shared a look. Luke might be safe for now, but I still didn’t like the situation. Kota had seemed to know Luke would be on the last job. This time, Kota didn’t know. We were told to trust, and we tried, but Luke going off alone without any of us really bugged me.
Silas headed out. I followed, my head down, not wanting to leave so soon, but without much choice. Luke wasn’t here. Trying to find him now could put him in danger.
We’d have to trust him this time.
???
Later, we were on the road, headed back to Sunnyvale. Silas asked to go to the diner. “I want to help North out,” he said. “And ask him about the house. Maybe make plans to finish one of those rooms next weekend.”
Nathan pulled the Jeep into the diner’s parking lot, leaving it there for North. Silas went into the diner.
Nathan and I scurried into the woods and then went across the small plank of wood to his back fence. He opened the gate, letting me in.
I walked ahead of him toward the pool, now covered with a thin blue sheeting to protect it from leaves and keep it clean through the winter. I dipped down, pulling the sleeve of the black hoodie up on my arm, so I could touch the cold water.
“I was tempted to push you in again,” Nathan said behind me, nudging me with his leg. I stood, spinning on him and he smiled. “But I wouldn’t want to have to jump in after you. Too
cold for that.”
I smiled, but it wasn’t genuine. Things didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t let go of the sensation that there was a puzzle I needed to piece together.
Nathan fixed his gaze on my face and then lifted his hands to cup my head in his palms, forcing me to look into his eyes. “Sang,” he said softly, gently tracing his thumbs across my cheeks. “What’s wrong?”
What could I say? The whole day had been a rush of what Luke had been doing and discovering secrets, and now I had so many questions hanging over me, some I couldn’t even tell him about. “Long day,” I simply said.
The corner of his mouth lifted a little. “Worried?”
I nodded against his hold.
His lips twitched and then he leaned in. I closed my eyes as Nathan kissed my lips gently.
