Page 84 of Crew Girl

The guys couldn’t believe it either.

“It looks like we’ve stumbled upon a real-life mystery!” Noah said with a swirl of his cape.

Cam took the oar and examined it more closely. “Looks like it was cut with a rotary saw.” He looked at the guys. “Easy enough to access. Every team has one.”

They all got what he was saying. This wasn’t someone messing around. This was a targeted attack.

“Why the hell would someone do this?” Josh asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Ryder said. “It’s probably some dick from Westvale who wanted to make sure we didn’t get anywhere near the podium.”

Baloo staggered back a step and looked pale, as if Ryder’s theory had made him physically ill.

Teagan wasn’t sure, though. “There’s no way they could’ve done it. When we got the boats out of the shed—our locked shed—the oars were always in our sight before we hit the water. Someone must’ve cut it before… in the shed.”

“How?” Perry asked. “You need a key card to get in.”

“And we’re the only ones who have key cards,” Baloo said, color returning to his cheeks.

“So that means…” Teagan’s eyes widened as she figured it out. “It was one of us.”

CAM

His conscience was clean, but Cam knew his reputation as the broody odd-man-out put him in the firing line. Then again, the number of side-eyes and whispered conversations that had taken place since they’d found the oar meant everyone was feeling the heat.

“Who the hell is behind this?” Ryder demanded when everyone was back in the room. “Show yourself, traitor.”

No one leapt up to confess their sins.

“We busted our asses all season,” Baloo despaired. “I can’t believe one of you did this.”

“How do we know it wasn’t you?” Ryder shot back.

“Why would I do it?”

“Why would any of us do it?” Ryder asked.

“Guys,” Teagan cut in. “Calm down. We can’t let this break us apart. We’re a team now, and we’re still going to be a team when we figure this out.” She looked over at Noah, who was standing by the whiteboard. He’d pinned every team member’s photo on it. “Ready?”

Noah nodded. “We need to narrow our time frame. We were all in the boathouse between seven-thirty and eight-thirty, so the sabotage must have happened between eight-thirty and nine-thirty, after Coach’s speech and before we all met up again for the race.”

Teagan held a dry marker up. “So where was everyone this morning?”

“I was stretching with Noah outside,” Quaid said.

“Crabby and I were taking selfies in the erg room,” said Perry, nodding at Crabcatcher for confirmation. He got it.

“I was doing my prerace meditation,” Ryder said.

Crabcatcher held up his hand, like he was in class. “Why are we checking alibis? None of us wanted to lose this race—there’s no motive!”

Noah nodded, back in detective mode. “On the surface there isn’t. We need to look at the motive… underneath… the motive.”

Perry made a strangled noise. “What are you even talking about?”

“All of us have our prerace superstitions, right?” Noah explained. “Our ‘free speed’ if you will.”

Cam was curious where this was going. Free speed was kind of like the first few steps you took off a moving walkway when you had hit a good enough stride to keep it going without any effort.