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Brianna whirled on me as soon as I entered, demanding, “What’s really going on, Alistair? What aren’t you telling me? Because there’s no freaking way you’ve covered up everything Gareth has done just to let him get arrested for something he didn’t even do!” Her voice rose an octave as she yelled at me, and I couldn’t help it: I smiled.
Not a big smile, mind you. I rarely ever graced the world with a big smile. But, as small as it was, it was genuine, which was more than I could say for most of my smiles.
Brianna fumed. “Why are you smiling like that?”
“You care for him,” I remarked. “For Gareth. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t get so worked up over seeing him in handcuffs. I have to admit, for a while, I didn’t know whether it’d work out between you two.” Honestly, I didn’t know if I’d wanted things to work out between them, because I’d wanted her to myself.
But that was a selfish thought, and when it came to family, I could not be selfish.
She took a step towards me, standing less than two feet before me as she pleaded, “Please, Alistair, tell me this is some stupid plan of yours and you’re trying to keep me in the dark because it’s safer that way.”
“And why would it be safer if you were in the dark? The villain already knows who you are, where you live, and what your weakness is. How could this possibly do anything to protect you?”
“Neo wanted to hurt Gareth,” Brianna replied. “So maybe you figured Gareth would be Brett’s next target and you wanted to take him off the board—”
I nodded once, moving around her so that I could lean my backside against the front of my desk. I folded my arms over my chest and stared at her. “And what good would taking him off the board do?”
Brianna was silent for a while, though she never broke eye contact with me. I could see the wheels turning behind those stormy gray eyes, and I knew she was trying to think like me, to use her mind in a way it had never been used before. To beat a monster, you had to think like one. Luckily for her, she was closer to being one herself than she was a mere normal girl, and that was why, when she said what she said next, she was right.
“It throws off his plan,” she stated, “forces him to do something else. But why wouldn’t you tell me? Why wouldn’t you warn me before Rick showed up and fake-arrested him?”
“There’s nothing fake about it. He’s going to the station with Gareth,” I told her. Being the lead of the department came with some perks, so the arrest might not be purely official. “Why do you think I didn’t tell you, hmm?” I lowered my arms, gripping the edge of my desk as I waited for her to come to the only conclusion there was.
It didn’t take her long, a few seconds, tops. “It needed to look real.”
“That it did.”
“I don’t get the endgame,” she muttered. “So, you take Gareth off the board. That leaves you—”
“I’m not as easily captured as a civilian,” I said. “If I were him, I wouldn’t come after me. I’d assume I would be busy trying to get Gareth out of the mess, busy trying to pin the murder charge on someone else. No, Brianna, if I were him, I’d come after you next.”
“Me? I thought he wanted me to see everything crash and burn—why wouldn’t I be last?”
Oh, there were more reasons than one, but I couldn’t tell her the biggest one, so I simply said, “He’s been playing the fast game. He admitted it from the beginning. He won’t waste time when, while Gareth and I are dealing with his arrest, you’re ripe for the taking. When he comes for you, we’ll get the jump on him.”
“You think he’ll come for me here?”
I shook my head. “No, I think he’ll try at the vigil tomorrow.”
That was news to her. “Vigil?”
I nodded. “I spent all afternoon setting it up. It’ll be held at the school’s football field, tomorrow at dusk, to honor Erin and her family. You’ll go by yourself. Rick and I won’t be there, but I’ll have eyes on you.”
“You want to use me as bait.”
“That’s the idea. He’ll be on the lookout for me and Rick, which is why we can’t show our faces there. If he thinks you’re alone, he’ll jump at the chance of taking you.”
“And then what? Your mysterious guys who will be following me will turn the tables and kidnap him instead?” Brianna waited for a reply, but when I said nothing, only staring at her, her mouth formed an adorable frown. “Don’t say it.”
I had to: “You’re going to go with him, so we can find his home base, wherever it is, and make sure he doesn’t have any other bodies lined up.” I had my suspicions, but there was no way to know if I was right. What we could find at his hideout… let’s just say it could go one of two ways. Alive or dead.
I hated keeping secrets from Brianna, but even here, she couldn’t know the full scope of the truth. She couldn’t.
“Why would it matter if he’s got other bodies? If he’s dead, then he won’t have the chance to share them with the class,” she deadpanned.
“Gareth will need to be cleared of any possible wrongdoing, which means we’ll need to frame Brett—which won’t be hard, but making sure we have the full scope of his plan before making the details of his monstrous ways public will make things easier for us.”
Framing Brett wouldn’t be hard at all, although implicating Neo might be, since he was already dead. It was something I was actively working on. I could pay some people to become witnesses and testify, give everything Rick would possibly need to close the cases for good.
