“That’s brutal,” I said. “You’d choke hold a guy for treating you like that.”
“True,” Scarlet answered. “But this is all for you and Felix, my sweetie pie.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Girl.”
She clapped her hands and stood from the table. “Thirty minutes at least, okay? Let me work my magic for a bit.”
“Copy that,” I answered. I gave her a high five and Scarlet left.
Stephen set his bag on the table and started rummaging through it. “Remember that investigative journalism thing?”
“Yeah,” I said warily.
He glanced up and, after a beat, smiled.
“Oh my God, what did you find?” I asked, growing excited.
“For one thing,” Stephen said, taking some papers from his bag, “it’s now confirmed that Cass has no clue how the internet works. Literally none.”
“I sort of assumed that when we spent over an hour with him trying to hunt through his emails instead of using a search function.”
“This is better.” Stephen handed over the papers. “I asked Cass about seeing the ‘reports’ emailed about you. I told him I thought it was prudent to put a notice in the school newspaper, and if I could see the reports, I, myself, would write up somethingvery officialon his behalf.”
“And he just gave them to you?” Felix asked Stephen.
Stephen grinned. “Scarlet is right: bullies want attention.”
“Hey,” I said, flipping through the printed-out emails. “What’s up? These emails are from himself to himself.”
“Yup,” Stephen laughed. “He literally typed up a story and mailed it to himself.”
“From his school account!” I continued.
“Yeah, and check out that IP address in the header,” Stephen continued. “I talked with the district’s IT guy—he says that’s the high school’s address. And the date stamp?”
I looked down once more. “Last Wednesday at… 14:27.” I looked at Stephen. “He wrote these from school, during school.”
Felix covered his eyes and sighed. “He couldn’t even wait until after hours to plan framing Bowen.”
“Wow,” Silas said. “That’s… actually not terribly surprising.”
Stephen accepted the papers back from me. “I’ve already made copies and, this morning, personally handed them over to the superintendent. We’ve been friends for years, so when I go to her with a concern, she takes it seriously.”
“What you’re saying is, I might be unfired,” I stated.
Stephen nodded. “Maybe so.”
“Stephen, I don’t know what to say.”
He waved his hand. “Get your job back and don’t leave me to yearbook duties alone.”
“Drinks are on me indefinitely, if I get my position back.”
“Deal,” he agreed.
“If we can get evidence that Bucker and Cass organized this together, or if either one was at least behind Snowy Ridge’s fire, we’ll be in it to win it,” I said.
BUCKER’S WASa fucking dive bar of the worst kind. Like, I’ve been to dive bars. There’s a gross kind of charm to them. Bucker’s wasjustgross. Despite entering from the already-dark outdoors, the lighting was so dim inside the bar that it took a moment to adjust to my surroundings. There was a pool table with one gnarly-looking guy playing, crap music coming from cheap speakers that shot off almost static-looking fireworks of clashing colors, and the smell of… I didn’t want to know… in the air.
