The Knight (Coleridge Academy Elites Book 2)

by Lucy Auburn

  The Knight

  Coleridge Academy Elites: Book Two

  Lucy Auburn

  Copyright © 2019 by Lucy Auburn

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Get Updates

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  27. It continues…

  Read Next: Phoenix Academy

  Read Next: Blue Phoenix

  Read Next: Fae Like Me

  Also by Lucy Auburn

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  This book contains triggering content.

  Reader discretion advised. Please read with care.

  This book ends on a cliffhanger.

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  Chapter 1

  The lights are blinding.

  Red, blue. Red, blue.

  They shine through even my tightly-closed eyelids.

  I feel hot and cold at the same time. Cold from the remains of the storm sticking to my skin. Hot from the heavy blanket weighing me down. Cold from the New England winter closing in. Hot from the fire kindling inside me, sparking to life after finding a new target to burn.

  I'm sure we've got enough rope left to do the job.

  Fingers on my neck. Pressure on my nose and mouth. I force my eyes open, wondering if I'm dead. Wondering if I'm about to die.

  I don't feel the burn of rope on my neck, or the pain of suffocation.

  If this is the afterlife, though, it's not what I pictured. Way too many flashing red and blue lights. And a flat board beneath me, being effortlessly lifted up into the rear of an ambulance. It takes me a moment to realize that I'm not even wearing my dress anymore. Someone must have cut it off me.

  A calm voice, floating above my head, says, "You'll be at the hospital shortly, Ms. Wilder. Try to take it easy—no, don't sit up. We called your emergency contact. Your mom is on her way."

  Ms. Wilder. It all comes back to me at once: Georgia at the Blind Ball, Holly trying to talk her down, getting partnered with Cole, running outside in the thick storm, and that kiss that made the sky split open and everything come crashing down.

  I told the Elites that Silas killed himself.

  The men who put me in the trunk made it clear that he was murdered.

  I struggle, despite the advice from the EMT, and he patiently pulls the oxygen mask off my mouth. "Is there something wrong? Any pain anywhere?"

  Coughing, I lick my lips. Another voice, this one at my feet, silhouetted by the red and blue lights, speaks up. "Is she ready to give an initial statement?"

  "I'm not sure—"

  "I'm ready." Pulling myself up, the blanket askew on my lap, I squint at the police officer standing at the open doors to the ambulance. She's thin and smartly dressed, her eyes projecting confidence. "I want to tell you everything I know—everything that happened. Those men..." Rubbing my throat, where a rope didn't tighten, I ask, "Did they get away?"

  "We didn't find any men." The officer's voice is calm and empathetic. "We just found you, passed out in the trunk of the car. You're lucky your classmate found you."

  "Classmate?"

  "Young man with a funny name: Ferdinand von Hassell. He's headed to the station to give a statement. I'll let him know you're up and doing well—he was very worried."

  Chills go down my spine.

  Mariana's rapist saved my life.

  There are two pressing questions on my mind now.

  The first is: how did Hass know where to find me? When I look out past the parked police vehicles and their flashing lights, I see nothing familiar. Those two men had to have driven me pretty far into the woods, all the way to where they planned to stage my death—just like they staged Silas's suicide.

  The second is: where is my brother's laptop, and why were two strangers willing to kill for it?

  I have the feeling that Hass knows the answer to the second question as well as the first.

  Rich boys don't find their way to active crime scenes on accident.

  And boys like Hass don't save girls like me unless they're looking for information that the dead won't give.

  They bring me to the hospital first, to get checked out. I try to protest, but it doesn't matter—teen girl gets found chloroformed and stuffed into a trunk, the officials have her looked over.

  My mom can't afford any of this.

  If my dad really is on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana, he should be sending money back. But I doubt that the selfish bastard is. He's probably hoping that he can forget about the family he fucked over—and the son who died knowing what it feels like to have your own father beat you to within an inch of your life.

  I'm all alone in this, which means trying to get out of it as quickly as possible. But the doctor who checks me out wants me admitted the second I try to stand up and fall over, dizzy. He says soothing words about blood tests and CT scans, but all I hear are bills that will bankrupt my mother for no good reason.

  I'm so despondent as the nurse puts the IV in my arm that she checks me a second time for fever, clucking over the state I was found in. Somewhere in my unconsciousness I lost my wet dress in exchange for an oversized hospital gown that won't close in the back. Heated blankets are thrown over my legs, and a TV remote put into my hand, but all I can think about are those two men who took me.

  They could be anywhere.

  They could've even followed me to the hospital. It's not like it would be hard to figure out where I am—Great Falls is a small place, and if they have access to a police scanner, they'd figure out what's going on pretty quickly.

  I just don't know why they left me alive, or how Hass found me. I know what I suspect: that he's somehow involved in this, money and all, so he—or more likely, someone more senior—called off the hit. Then he found my body in the trunk of a car, while the guys who took me got a chance to get away.

  It's the only thing that makes sense to me.

  And it means I have to get back to Coleridge right
away, so I can head to my room and grab Silas's laptop before someone else gets to it. Right now Hass could still be giving a statement at the station, but as soon as he's out he'll probably take that laptop—or get Georgia or someone else to take it.

  If it has something on it that was worth killing my brother over, I need to know. But there's no way I'll be able to get back and beat Hass there before the doctors are done poking and prodding me to the tune of too much money.

  I need help.

  "Excuse me." The nurse turns just as she was about to leave my room, a patient expression on her face. "Do you know where my things are?"

  "That dress of yours had to be cut off, honey. I'm sorry."

  I don't care about the dress. It wasn't even my money that paid for it. "I mean my cell phone."

  "The police took everything. Officer Lopez might know where it is. Is there something you need?"

  "To call my mom," I lie, trying to sound like a scared seventeen-year-old girl. It's not hard, because I am one. "I know she's on her way, but I haven't gotten to talk to her yet."

  "Oh, sweetie." The nurse reaches into her scrubs. "You can borrow my phone."

  Now I have to lie again. "I uh, don't have her number memorized." An arched brow at this. "You know, Generation Z... anyway, when will the cop be by with my stuff?"

  "Officer Lopez should be by soon to take your statement. She'll have your things with her, unless they have to go into evidence—at least that's what I know, from dating a cop." Shrugging, the nurse puts her cell phone back into her pocket, still looking a little judgmental about my claim that I don't know my own mother's phone number. "Just settle in and relax, sweetie. I'm sure your mom will be here in no time."

  "Thanks."

  Clearly I've taken up enough of her time, because she heads out the door in a hurry to finish up the rest of her rounds. Once she's gone, the room falls into a strange silence, and everything that's happened to me floods back in.

  Georgia's cruel face as she told the entire student body of Coleridge who I really am: a liar.

  Those photos of me and Silas up on the screen, his smiling face flashed there, alive and golden in the early summer sun.

  Cole taking my hand and insisting we dance together, two snakes too clever to realize we were each biting our own tails.

  His handwriting in his journal, and in that note, sealing his own fate—but leaving out the part where there was a body in the trunk of his car. He told Holly that he never knew about that part; I wonder how he lied to her so easily.

  Then I'm thinking about the storm. The kiss. How I raised my voice and let the fire out, trying desperately to burn someone beside myself.

  And then—the car nearly hitting me. Two men getting out. I try to pause the memory and see their faces, but they were backlit by the headlights and darkened by the storm clouds overhead. Their voices are seared into my memory, but their faces skitters at my mind and away, replaced by the sweet smell of chloroform and the burn of rope around my wrists.

  What should we do with her?

  What we did with her brother.

  His muddy shoes limp on dangling feet. Body swaying in the wind. Bruised and broken, dead and unmoving.

  I thought he put the rope around his own neck.

  I sought revenge for the boys who made him want to do it.

  But he was my brother who got up after Daddy's fists made him black and blue, defiance in his eyes and venom in his voice. I should have known he wouldn't have given up fighting so easily. I shouldn't have ever believed he did that to himself.

  All this time that I let the lie fester inside me, I wasn't looking for my brother's murderers. That sick realization is like a bruise forming in my middle, or a sharp object hollowing me out from the inside. I can feel the fire I tried to burn out growing in my chest and stomach, desperate to get loose and rage against the men with the rope.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to see their faces. One was taller and thinner; one was shorter and thicker. They had short hair. Mid forties to fifties. I can't remember anything else.

  I hate myself for not being able to remember.

  I hate this hospital and its damned procedures for keeping me here when I should be running straight to Coleridge to look for that laptop.

  And I hate, just a little bit—maybe more than I care to admit—that I'm still alive.

  At least if I'd died tonight in the hands of the man who killed my brother, I wouldn't be alone anymore, sitting with the realization that I was wrong this whole time about what—and who—killed him.

  Chapter 2

  "Brenna Wilder." I've never been so relieved to see a police officer as I am to see Officer Lopez walk through the door, a plastic bag full of my belongings in her hand. My eyes immediately zero in on the familiar old phone with a cheesy case sitting next to my student ID and painfully thin wallet."The EMTs handed this over, but there was nothing in here that we could use for evidence or pull for prints. Including the rope that was used to tie you up, though we'll send it for DNA testing and see if we get any hits in the system."

  "I just want my cell phone, please."

  Her eyes study me astutely as she closes the door behind herself. "In a minute. First I want to talk to you about a few things."

  Swallowing, I ask, "Wouldn't a detective normally do this?"

  "One will be by shortly, after he finishes taking a statement from the classmate who found you." My cheeks flush at the mention of Hass, and my hand closes over a knife I'm no longer carrying with me. "I wanted to get your statement first, though, while the memories are still fresh. Can you tell me what happened?"

  I open my mouth, and pause.

  Standing outside my hospital door, his face just visible in the little window, is a green-eyed boy I know far too well.

  Cole Masterson showed up here.

  And I can't help remember something he said—about me digging too far, figuring out too much. She's done too much sniffing, one of the guys who took me muttered. I was looking into things I barely understand, and two strange men tried to kill me for it.

  Officer Lopez is studying me sympathetically. She reminds me a little of a softer, warmer version of my aunt, who always makes sure everyone is taken care of, no matter what it costs her.

  Two green eyes meet mine through the glass. I wonder what he's doing here.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Lopez looks out the window—and Cole vanishes in an instant, like he was never there. "Something wrong?" she asks me.

  "Just thought I saw someone I know."

  Taking a deep breath, I decide to try to tell her as much as I can—at least, as much as I dare. I'll leave out the parts about me stealing other girls' identities to buy nice things. And, as much as it pains me, I just can't tell her what Hass did to Mariana. That's not my story to tell, and I've been told point blank not to tell it.

  But I can give her Silas's story.

  The one with the tree on the hill, the snake in the grass, and the rope we cut to bring him down.

  They put him in the ground, but he's not buried yet. Not until I tell his story.

  The dead don't rest easy.

  "I had a brother... a twin." The pain in my chest steals my breath for a moment, and I have to make myself inhale through the tears that gather in my eyes, desperate to be unleashed. "Something terrible happened to him. I didn't understand, but then tonight... tonight..."

  "Yes?" She has a pen and a pad of paper in her hand, her intuitive, empathetic gaze pulling at the part of me that wants to tell me this story. "What happened to your brother, Brenna?"

  "He died." I clear my throat and try to swallow my tears. "There was this storm, and I—"

  Before I can finish explaining, the door to my room opens. A man in a suit walks in, sharply dressed. He immediately meets eyes with Officer Lopez, and something passes between them, a tension that snaps like lightning in the air.

  "I'm Ms. Wilder's lawyer, Robert Pierce." He holds out his hand. "I'll be representing her from here
on out."

  That's news to me.

  "She's not under arrest," Officer Lopez points out, her eyes flashing as she raises her chin. "This is an active police investigation, and there's no need for lawyers here."

  "Of course." Putting his hand down, the lawyer glances at me, and I frown at him. "Ms. Wilder, if there's anything you need, just let me know. I'm here to help."

  Glancing at Officer Lopez, I find myself wondering what will happen if she finds out those two men wanted Silas's laptop. She'll probably want it as evidence. But I need to know what's on it before I hand it over—especially if there's anything else that might compromise his memory, like information about him dealing drugs.

  But I know there's a catch. Between Cole showing up here, and now a fancy lawyer in a suit, something is going on. So I pretend to be confused, telling the lawyer, "I can't afford to pay someone."

  "My services have been arranged on your behalf by a benefactor." Officer Lopez makes a face at this, and I have the feeling she'll be figuring out who this benefactor is right away. "Whatever you need, just let me know."

  "Again, she's not under arrest."

  "And I'm happy to ensure that it stays that way."

  A snort from Officer Lopez. Looking at me, she says, "He's not your lawyer unless you say he is."