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“It’s—” he paused as another phone rang in the building, one a little closer. He glanced up, at the door, like he wondered about answering it but then shook it off. “It’s partially me.”
“What do you mean?”
He refocused on me. “I wanted to slow it down a bit. We gave ourselves time. Let’s take it. Let’s sort ourselves out. Prove to them this can work.”
Oh. I hadn’t realized maybe I didn’t want to hear from them until we were ready. And then I remembered part of why I was able to stay with them and not join another team was because I was in the middle of this Ashley Waters operation. It bought us time.
And with being his assistant in this, I became even more vital than ever. He also had control over my records in the school, protecting my ghost status without asking favors of anyone for it.
Piles of folders and paperwork on my desk distracted me for a few moments. Trust in Mr. Blackbourne was all I had regarding the Academy and where I stood with them now. I needed to remember that. Only part of me was still nervous about needing to go through whatever test or try out to join officially. There was still that small chance I wouldn’t make it, and the thought hovered over me constantly.
Another phone rang from another part of the offices. We both looked at each other, eyebrows raised, asking the other who would be calling the school so late. The phone system had a line set up to direct people to office hours. Someone was bypassing this to allow the phone to ring through.
Someone knows we’re here?
Mr. Blackbourne stood slowly and walked around the desk. “Maybe we should check this out.”
“Be careful,” I said, rising. “Volto...”
“Could be,” he said, but he passed me to go to the door and out into the hallway.
I followed, curious as to what was going on and wanting to stay nearby.
Another phone went off as we approached. Both of them were near the front desk in the lobby area. Mr. Blackbourne went to one, picking up the receiver to put by his ear and pushed a button on it to answer the right line. “This is Mr. Blackbourne of Ashley Waters High School.” He waited. An eyebrow arched. “Explain it to me,” he said.
The phone opposite was still ringing. He waved to me, wanting me to answer.
Me? I went to it, picking up the receiver. I figured out how to answer the right line by pressing a blinking button.
I spoke. “This is...” I paused, hesitating to speak my name. “...Ashley Waters High School.”
There was silence on the phone at first, and Mr. Blackbourne speaking behind me was all I heard. Suddenly a woman spoke. “I know it’s late, but I need to report my child is sick and won’t make it in to school tomorrow.”
Calling about it this late? Why not call about it in the morning? Or leave a message? “Oh,” I said. “I could...take his name down for you if you’d like. The normal person who does this isn’t here...”
“I figured,” she said. “I was hoping someone was there, though. I wanted to warn you, I think it’s something in the food. He’s got food poisoning or E. coli of some sort.”
Food poisoning? “Are you sure?” The question slipped from my lips. I looked over my shoulder as I spoke, seeing a tense expression on Mr. Blackbourne’s face as he listened.
“I’m sure,” she said. “This isn’t the flu or strep. I’ve got him at the clinic and the doctor here says it’s food poisoning. The last thing he ate was lunch at the school.”
“Do you know what he ate?”
“He says the hamburger option,” she said. “From the cafeteria.”
Mr. Blackbourne was speaking behind me again, asking the same question into the phone as I had.
I didn’t know what else I should say, but I mumbled into the phone. “I’m so sorry. We’ll look into it. Thanks for telling us.”
“Sure. Just leave a note for my son? I’ll be keeping him out until he’s over this.”
She gave me his name and I wrote it down. I was only glad she wasn’t yelling at me about the situation.
After I hung up, I turned to Mr. Blackbourne.
He was saying goodbye and hung up as well and turned to me, his eyebrows raised. “Food poisoning?” he asked me.
I nodded. “An isolated case, you think?” Although as I said it, I knew that two cases probably meant there were more.
He turned to the phone again, hit a bunch of numbers and started to listen. “Checking the message system.” As he did, he waved at me and pointed to a computer nearby. “Go through the emails.”
I went to the computer, turning it on. There was a password required, but the password was listed on a sticky note on a notebook nearby. Not very secure.
I clicked around and found a few hundred emails. Most were from earlier today, about grades or other things regarding students. The latest ones, however, were notices that students would be kept out of school.
Not all of them were sick, but many said they were. Some with angry tones about it was the school’s fault. Some saying it was food poisoning.
“They’ve been calling in,” Mr. Blackbourne said. He hung up the phone and took out his own.
“What do we do?” I asked, moving away from the computer.
“I’m calling in...” He paused and then looked at his phone. “There has to be a protocol for this.”
“Mr. Graves,” I said. “He’ll know.”
“Yes, I can call him,” he said but he looked up. “But we can’t tell him what we know. About the truck that came in to swap out food. An investigation into that might lead to him calling around about what happened and why.”
“It may be too late,” I said. “There are kids sick. Won’t parents talk to each other? And we have to take that food out. We have to be sure no one else gets sick. We have to find out whatever it was.”
He lowered his phone and gazed out, thinking. He pressed a palm to his forehead. “This whole thing was a set up.”
“What?”
He turned to me, leaning into me with a sharpness in his steel eyes. He stage-whispered to me, “Ms. Johnson coming to us, making us aware to monitor her. Knowing we’d be watching after school, possibly recording what was going on. Mr. Hendricks suddenly unavailable. But how did he...” He paused, turning away from me again and putting fingers to his lips, head dipped as he continued thinking without speaking.
I wasn’t sure I was following him. “You’re saying Mr. Hendricks delivered food like that here?”
“I think he knew the food was contaminated,” he said. “He’s set us up so it’s...me.” He turned to me again and his eyes brightened up. He snapped his fingers shortly once. “There’s paperwork somewhere. He’s going to show a money trail. That I sold good food out the back door and brought in cheap, old stuff.”
“You can do that?” I asked. “Sell school food?”
“And replace it, yes,” he said. “Stuff on the brink of going bad, perhaps. Past the expiration dates. That restaurant probably saw a golden opportunity to switch out food with little cost.”
“But it was all produce,” I said. “Didn’t North say that?”
“It’ll be that, too,” he said. He nodded firmly once. “Perhaps stuff that was returned to that warehouse because it was contaminated. The owners owned restaurants.”
Another phone rang, the one he was nearby. He went to it, hovered a hand over it and then pulled back, allowing it to ring. “We need Victor to cover these phone lines. We need Dr. Green and possibly Dr. Roberts. We need to get ahead of this.”
I swallowed thickly. I didn’t know what to do. If he was right, if this was a set up, we had to tread carefully.
Hendricks was smart. He possibly wanted Mr. Blackbourne to take the heat for this. With the police distracted by investigating Mr. Blackbourne, Mr. Hendricks could escape with whatever money he’d gotten from the school and disappear.
We couldn’t let it happen.
“The amount doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “A bunch of food in a swap? Is this his big money pay off? It doesn’t seem like it would be a lot. Was this what he was doing?”
Mr. Blackbourne was typing into his cell phone. He shook his head as he did so. “No, it isn’t a ton of money. For three people in his conspiracy? Possibly more? No.” He looked up from his typing, gazing at me. “This was just to take me out. His scheme was something else. Something he’s already got perhaps. But if I get pinned for this, I’ll be under investigation for the rest of it, if it’s ever discovered.”
That was what Mr. Hendricks seemed to do. He got other people to do the dirty work, to line them up as the fall people so he could get away. Mr. McCoy and his awkward behavior. Possibly Mr. Morris with monitoring students and teachers. Anyone in his path, he used.
Mr. Blackbourne had become his next target.
The Contractor
Nathan
Victor, Silas and Nathan loaded into Silas’s car. Nathan was in the back seat. A contact Victor had called said to meet him downtown. They were on the way. The hour was late. While passing dark patches where he could see nothing, there were the occasional streetlights or buildings lit up behind a thin wall of trees that separated I-26 from the city on either side of them.
