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“Thanks, V.”
He smiles. “Any time.” He ruffles my hair, and it doesn’t bother me to be touched unexpectedly by someone who’s not Josh. I trust him, so it actually feels a little good.
“Just text me if you need us, okay?” he says.
When Vance leaves, I check my phone, finding that there’s been some speculation about the identity of the person who ran out on the field to be with me, and that the Fairplay newspaper is reporting him as my stepbrother. Hmm, okay, so I’m not outed. But when I come out, I’ll have to out myself as being in love with my stepbrother. I guess I can handle that.
I’ve got both arms locked around my sleeping Miller when Luke walks into the room. He comes to stand down at the foot of the plane bed, sliding his hands into his pockets. “You feeling okay?”
I nod. “Ankle’s sore, but V gave me some stuff for it.”
“That’s good.”
I’m a little surprised when he sits down on the edge of the mattress. “You tired?” He glances at his watch. “We’ve still got an hour till we land, if you want to catch some more Zs. If it gets bumpy, we’ll check on you.”
“I’m not that tired. Not till that pill hits.” I laugh. “Then I’ll be out.”
“Ezra.” His eyes find mine, and my heart misses a beat. “I came back here because I want to talk to you about something. If you’re up for it.”
I try to keep my face neutral as I nod. “I’m up for it.”
His lips press together. “It’s…about Alton.”
My pulse fucking soars—so much I feel the blood whoosh in my head—and I glance down at Miller. I think of telling Luke that we should wait, but then I reconsider. If Mills wakes up, so what? It’s not like I’m going to keep this shit a secret from him anyway.
I nod at Luke. “You can tell me.”
He blows out a long breath. “I’m sorry for the timing. Just, things are moving faster than I realized with this. I wanted to let you know as soon as I could.”
My stomach does a roller coaster flip, which makes me feel a little pukey. “What do you mean?”
“To be honest, I’m a little nervous about sharing this. When we first started, it didn’t occur to me that you might have objections, but…” He gives a shake of his head. “Ezra, we’ve been working behind the scenes to get the so-called Alton ‘Academy’ shut down. Evermore has been. Now we’re…getting close to success.” He blinks at me, his brow furrowing. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod so he’ll continue.
“We have someone on staff—a younger guy. I didn’t know his history until we started bullet pointing things we wanted the Rainbow Initiative to cover…but it turns out, this guy had been somewhere…not dissimilar. When he found out about Alton in particular, he wanted to go. You know, infiltrate. Naturally, we said no way. He didn’t look the part” —Luke waves his hand— “but anyway. As it happens, this guy is on our IT staff. Tech savvy. So what he did instead was access Alton’s camera network.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach.
Luke lets out a long breath. “We’ve been watching since early September. It took time for our guy to access all the cameras, but we’ve had what we think is all the different cams, from all of the cameras, since October. What’s there is…pretty incriminating,” he says softly. “It’s been hard for us to watch.”
My throat aches, and he gives me a sympathetic look that makes tears prickle my eyes.
“Now we’re working with attorneys and some other consultants. We’re preparing to sue Alton and its administration on behalf of some of the victims. There’s another team from the church in charge of reaching out to them, but we’ve already been in touch with some. And one of them is your…is Riley.”
That name hits me like a kick to the chest. I guess I flinch, because Miller stirs and Luke’s eyes widen slightly.
“Fuck,” I murmur. And then, “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. How do you feel? The major reason I’m mentioning it, other than an obligation I feel to keep you informed, is that when we file suit, we’ll be turning what evidence we have over to law enforcement. We’re already laying that groundwork. There’s a good chance the place will be shut down, or the ones in charge will shut it down and try to go underground. At the same time, we have two people in Congress who are working with us on initiatives to outlaw these practices entirely.”
He blows another breath out, and I realize he looks unhappy. I don’t know why, but seeing Luke McDowell look defeated makes me feel a wave of sadness.
“Sorry,” I say, awkward and soft. “If it’s making you feel triggered or something.”
