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Nathan knew what Dr. Green was doing: distracting North from thinking about Sang and what she’s doing while he was cranky.
North’s wild eyes blinked rapidly a few times before he seemed to chill out. “I’ve an SUV I brought in this morning and a big box van in the garage.”
Nathan spoke carefully. North was tense today. Without much sleep, and his Jeep gone, they all probably need to proceed delicately. “The BMW was fished out. It was brought there.”
North snorted. “That’s going to be a helluva job. I have to pull out all that leather. I don’t know if I can restore it to what it was.”
“Of course you can,” Dr. Green said. He blinked at his laptop and inspected whatever was on the screen. “It’s been done before, I’m sure.”
“And I have to swap plates,” North said. “Guess I’m taking Mr. Blackbourne’s car, but I probably need Vic with me when I leave. So he can drive it back.” He looked at Nathan. “Which means you or someone else needs to take the SUV.”
“Sure,” Nathan said. Whatever he wanted.
“With Hendricks actually gone”—Dr. Green waved his hand shortly—“what do we do now? Where do we go from here?”
North put out a hand. He raised one finger like he was counting off. “We need to find out who took the Jeep.”
“Volto,” Nathan said. “I told them.”
“Yes, but who dropped it off?” North said. “Volto didn’t drop it off. Who drove it and parked it out front?” He raised another finger. “I don’t know why the food was switched out at all.”
“What was in the boxes in the truck?” Nathan asked.
“The same shit,” he said. “Meat. Lettuce. It’s like a one to one swap for the most part. Mostly produce. Although I didn’t have time to ask the guys why they agreed to swap it while I was sneaking back out.”
“Who were they?” Dr. Green asked.
“They have a warehouse near North Charleston,” he said. “That’s where I ended up. When I left, I noted the address. Victor tracked down the owners, who also own a couple of restaurants in the area.”
Dr. Green lifted his gaze from the laptop to North. His eyes were glazed over, lost in thought. “Doesn’t make sense. Taking food from a school to restaurants downtown? Did the food look old? Is he selling old food out the back?”
“And replacing it with restaurant food?” Nathan asked. “None of that makes sense at all.”
“Don’t ask me,” North said and lowered his hand from counting off. “There’s so much fucking going on, I don’t even know where to start. Like what the hell was Kota up to last night?”
Nathan’s face caught between being horrified and trying to calm himself down. He didn’t want to get North riled up about this.
Dr. Green refocused on Nathan. “Right, what was he doing at Lily’s?”
Shit. Nathan was hoping to keep that under the radar for the most part. But he’d have to tell them about it sooner or later.
Did it have to be now? With North?
Without facing either of them, he swung slowly in his chair. His jaw tensed as he spoke. “Kota went out to talk to her about Sang. We wanted to ask her...to see if Sang was really into...this. We didn’t expect everything to turn upside down like it did.”
North and Dr. Green were quiet for a long moment. Nathan kept looking at Mr. Blackbourne’s desk, hoping what he’d just said explained itself and he didn’t have to go further.
North eventually spoke, slow, dark, deep. “What do you mean, really into this?”
The tense air around them thickened immensely. Nathan dared to look him in the face, trying to be as delicate as possible. “We wanted to be sure Sang isn’t being influenced by us. If she’s really into this idea or if she’s being pressured because we want it.”
North’s hard face tightened at the mouth, his jaw shifting like he was grinding his teeth. His dark eyes wide.
Dr. Green snapped up before North took a lunging step at Nathan. Nathan jumped from his chair, backing away but not looking at his face any more. He was afraid of this.
North barked at him “What the hell are you fucking doing to us?”
Dr. Green put a palm on North’s chest to stop him from lunging. “Stop.” His voice drew in power, a lot like Mr. Blackbourne did. “Not here. Those cops will hear and will come in.”
“Let them,” North growled. “Before I tear his face off.”
Nathan didn’t take the threat seriously. North’s barking worried him more. Like Dr. Green said, they didn’t need attention. This was the wrong time and place for this. Not with everyone up in arms about what was going on.
“Calm down,” Dr. Green said. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.” He kept a palm on North’s chest and slightly turned his head so he could look at Nathan. “Tell us. Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing?”
Nathan glared at North across the room. “I don’t know why you’re angry about it. Don’t you want to be sure?”
“I’m angry because you did it without asking us.” He pointed to his own chest. “You went behind our backs for this?”
“I wasn’t going to risk you all telling her about it,” he said. “Warning her. Or trying to influence her. Kota understood that.” He told them about the diary, how he read it, how Sang had wished to be normal and talked about getting married and having a normal family. “We needed to be sure. So Kota went to ask Lily to talk to Sang about this and be absolutely sure we aren’t influencing the decision. That’s all we wanted. To be sure.”
There was a long pause. Nathan sensed he’d probably not said it all right, but how could they not understand this? They even talked about this in the very beginning, not pushing Sang into any relationship, to let her approach them if it was going to happen.
Dr. Green’s face twisted. He dropped his hand from holding back North. “No. I change my mind. Go ahead and punch him.”
Nathan jerked back as North raised a fist, but he held back. He used it to point at Nathan’s face with a knuckle. “Give me a reason not to, Nathan. Just one. Because what you did was ask Lily to dissect Sang and not trust what she was telling us herself. You don’t trust her?”
Nathan wasn’t totally sure this wasn’t just North being tired and angry with him. What hurt was that Dr. Green was taking North’s side on this. It made him question everything he’d done up until this point. “I can’t do this unless I know,” Nathan said, taking a defensive stance against the wall. “And I can’t let all of you do this to her without knowing for sure she wants it.”
“She can leave whenever she wants to,” Dr. Green said. “And she will if she thinks we’re fighting over her, among ourselves.”
“I’m not trying to fight over her.”
“You don’t think we won’t?”
Nathan looked down, not responding. He knew he would, if he had to. Finding out what she really wanted without any pressure from them...
Dr. Green continued. “We’re all tense over Erica finding out about it, giving her another reason to not proceed. She’s seeing the sacrifice we’re all making for this and what we might have to go through to keep it together.” He paused. “But I don’t think this is about Sang at all. It’s like you’re looking for anything possible to make sure this doesn’t happen.”
“That’s not true,” Nathan said.
“Sure feels like it,” Dr. Green said. He stepped around North to get closer to Nathan. His eyes and face wilder than even North appeared. “You don’t ask our opinion, the ones who are working so hard in keeping ourselves together. For. You. For us. Instead, you ask the only other person in the group who is also unsure about it. You didn’t even tell Owen.” His voice rose. “And you don’t think there’s a chance in hell Owen, of all people, wouldn’t make absolutely sure Sang would be okay with this?”
Nathan winced, pressing himself harder against the wall. “He didn’t ask Lily to ask Sang.”
“He doesn’t have to!” Dr. Green’s voice rose again, waving a hand
around. “Because he knows she’ll never be okay with this with the state we’re in now. And you...” He snatched up a notebook off the desk, and he took a few swats at Nathan around his arms. It didn’t hurt, but it shocked Nathan enough to try to block it. “Stop pointing at Sang and making her your scapegoat, and have her break it off if that’s what you’re looking for. It wasn’t about Sang. It was about you.”
“You just said she was okay with it,” Nathan said. “To trust her. I want to trust her but I don’t know for sure.”
Dr. Green smacked his chest again with the notebook. He was seething. “She’s okay when we’re okay with it. Don’t you get it? Sang’s even said she wouldn’t go through with it unless we’re all happy with this. And she can’t be if you’re going behind our backs to try to pull it apart.”
“I didn’t try to do that,” Nathan said.
“You asked the wrong question,” North said. He turned away from them, looking at the door. His hands were in fists and he was shaking. “You asked Lily to prove Sang was into this. You didn’t ask Lily to help you keep us all together.”
“There’s a difference,” Dr. Green said. “We have everyone else in the outside world who is going to try to do the same thing to us. Question our loyalty. Test our commitment to this. Erica. Possibly Uncle whenever he finds out. The Academy. And Sang.” He threw the notebook at Nathan’s legs, and it slapped against the linoleum floor. “Sang is always asking. Every moment. We don’t need Lily to ask. Sang asks herself. Did you not read her new damn journal?”
“No,” Nathan said quietly.
Dr. Green sighed, shaking his head. “Maybe if you were in with us, I’d see it differently, but everything you’ve said until now has me believing you’d break it all up the moment she showed any doubt. You wouldn’t even try. Do you want to see us broken up? The team split?”
“No,” but he said this weakly. Nathan crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at the desk. Kota telling him to go talk to Lily, his change of attitude when he returned, and the way they were talking to him now twisted his heart.
