by Lucy Auburn
Looking at this "Robert Pierce," I find myself seeing green eyes, hearing the sound of lightning striking a tree, and feeling a snake coil around my ankle, ready to bite. This has to be because of Cole—or one of the other Elites—which means there will be a catch.
But if he can get me Silas's laptop, then I'll take his help.
"He's my lawyer," I tell Officer Lopez. "Not that I need one, right?"
"Of course not," she says lightly. "Now, for that statement..."
I tell her how Silas died, one night in a storm, hanging from a tree. My voice goes hollow as the story spills out like blood. It feels like something that's pulled out from the heart of me against my will. Lopez doesn't look surprised at my words, which makes me wonder if my brother's death came up when they ran my identity through whatever database they have. Clearly my disguise as Brenna Cooke wasn't as thorough as I wanted to believe. There must have been something I forgot to take care of—that or, Hass straight up told them my real name, which is entirely possible.
I want him to pay for what he did. To Mariana, to me, and to Georgia even. But I won't be able to do that without evidence, and right now the only evidence I have, I can't give to the police without betraying someone's confidence. And neither Georgia nor Mariana would testify against Hass.
"Brenna?" Officer Lopez is watching me. "Is there something you wanted to tell me?"
Opening my mouth, I consider telling her all about what I saw Hass do to Georgia. But what did I really see—him push her against the wall, her squirm and tell him no? Afterwards she was mad that I intercepted, so I doubt she'd back up my version of events, truthful as it is.
"Whatever it is," Lopez continues, "you can tell me. I promise."
My Elite-appointed lawyer frowns in my direction. "Brenna, it's my duty as your lawyer to tell you not to incriminate yourself in anything."
Incriminate myself? Last I checked, I'm the victim here. Unless something else happened while I was unconscious in the trunk of the car—or Holly has decided to press charges for identity theft.
That's not a story I'm here to tell. This story has a far more unhappy ending, and Officer Lopez probably can't do anything to change that. Not until they identify the assholes who kidnapped me, something I have the feeling will prove to be unusually difficult, given how random all of it was.
"I just... my brother, I think he was killed."
The officer's pen pauses on her notepad. "What makes you say that?"
"Something those guys who took me said.” Reaching up, I rub my neck, the ghost of a rope felt there. "You'll find them, won't you?"
"Of course." Reaching out, Officer Lopez squeezes my hand, and I'm filled with an unexpected comfort. "We'll do everything we can in patrol to find them on the streets. Any suspicious activity, any men who fit their description, and we'll take 'em in. Speaking of, that description..."
I give her a rough sketch of both of the men, though the truth is I didn't see anything identifying about them. It was night, there was rain—and tears—in my eyes, and I barely paid attention to them. By the time I realized what was going on, they were knocking me out.
I'll never forget their voices, though. I tell the officer this, heart in my throat as I remember the words that will haunt me.
There's a knock on the door, and someone new comes in: a non-uniformed officer by the looks of him, with a badge hung around his neck. It's the detective, and based on the look he shoots Officer Lopez, he's none too keen on the fact that she took my statement first.
"Officer Lopez, if you could wait outside in the hallway while I take the witness's statement." He looks at the lawyer and grunts. "Pierce."
"Lyons."
Lopez hands me the bag full of my stuff. I try not to take it too eagerly. "We'll keep an eye out for those men, Brenna. I promise that we'll find them."
"No need to make that promise, Officer." Lyons narrows his eyes in her direction. "I'm on the case."
"Of course," she says, somehow managing to sound polite and yet doubting at the same time. "I'll just wait outside, then, make sure no one shows up to kidnap this young woman a second time."
I watch her leave, then open up the plastic bag. It's sealed tighter than I realized, with a large red label on it and my named scrawled at the top. My student ID is inside, along with my phone, and the clutch I took to the dance, all of its contents emptied: gum, a tiny thing of hand sanitizer, a bottle of ibuprofen, two tampons, and a keychain pepper spray Wally insisted I take with me to Coleridge. Grabbing the phone first, I push the power button and watch its cracked screen flicker to life.
Then power back down again, the battery symbol flashing red.
Great—the damned thing ran out of battery while I was in the trunk of a car. That makes it pretty much useless to me. I won't be able to call someone to grab Silas's laptop out of my room, and now I've got this detective watching me impatiently. At this rate Hass, or someone else, will get the laptop and wipe it of whatever evidence is on it before I even figure out why those guys killed for it.
Glancing at "my" lawyer, I ask him, "Can you do me a favor?"
"Of course. Detective Lyons, if you could give me some alone time with my client—your uniformed officer already took her statement, after all, and she's had a long night."
The detective makes another grunting noise, sealing my impression of him as one of those bro-like dudes who speak solely in monosyllables. "Just one question before I pop out to grab myself a coffee: what are you doing with a false ID and the social security number of a dead infant?"
Panic seizes my chest. "I, uh..."
"Don't answer that," the lawyer says, making me grateful for his presence in the room. "Detective, unless my client is under arrest?"
A keen smile breaks out on the detective's face, and I change my estimation of him from, suddenly realizing he has to be clever to have gotten to his position in the department. "Not yet," he says, "but, Brenna Wilder, whatever is going on here, you're better off just telling us the truth now. Not just because me and my guys will figure it out, but because whatever you're up to, it nearly got you killed tonight."
"Detective."
"Fine, fine, I'm leaving. Confer with your client and figure out her defense—she's going to need one if it turns out she's involved with something bigger than just a fake ID."
The detective heads out into the hallway, passing by Officer Lopez, who's standing alert and on watch. As the door closes behind him, I find myself wishing very badly that I'd never started digging into anything at all.
Then again, if I hadn't, I wouldn't know the truth about my brother's death.
That alone is worth whatever trouble I'm in now. I can take it all—just as long as the real murderers get arrested.
"What can I do for you, Ms. Wilder?"
The lawyer is looking at me expectantly, but there's something I want to know before I trust him with this particular task. "Who hired you?"
"A concerned benefactor."
"That's not a name."
He lifts his brows, looks down at his phone, then glances out the little window into the hallway. Something crosses his face, and he nods; craning my head, I try to see who he's looking at, but either there's no one there now or they're at an angle I can't see, unlike the very tall lawyer.
"I can tell you that I've been hired by a group called the Elites."
The way he says it makes it seem like he doesn't even know what the term means, but of course I do. Cole Masteron, Tanner Connally, Blake Lee, and Lukas DuPont are the four reasons why I came to Coleridge under a false name in the first place. They run the social circles of the school, despite being first years—the equivalent, at a public school, of the junior year of high school.
I came here loathing them, and found myself ensnared in their web. Ruining them and their reputation got me more than I bargained for: I was taunted by Cole, teased by Tanner, got my tests stolen by Blake, and at least some of the girls interested in them cut the safety line to my harness
while I was indoor wall climbing, then they even went so far as to throw me into the enclosure that holds Coleridge's mascots, four wolves who are barely tamed.
I survived it all. I even made it to the end of semester Blind Ball, despite all the mistakes I made along the way, including betraying someone who I didn't realize actually cared about me, my rich socialite roommate Holly, getting exposed in front of the whole campus for stealing and lying about my name, and accidentally doing to one of the Elites what they did to my brother Silas: falsely accusing him of sexual assault.
Coming here was supposed to take down the four rich boys who carelessly pushed my brother to commit suicide. The truth has turned out to be far more complicated than I expected. Now all I have to show for my efforts is the attempted kidnapping that I nearly didn't make it through and a lawyer hired by boys who I know must hate me as much as I once hated them—feelings that have been complicated by kisses that never should've happened.
I don't understand why they would hire a lawyer to protect me.
Unless they're afraid that more of their secrets might come out if the police look too closely in my direction, discovering, perhaps, that the reason why I was targeted by killers was because I looked too closely at a strange accident Cole was involved in. What could've been a simple night of reckless drinking and driving has gotten not just him in hot water, but also the governor, whose son was in the car with Cole—and who covered up the accident in the first place. Investigators are still looking into the body of a young woman found in the trunk of that car, and somehow I get the feeling the Elite don't want them looking too closely.
I just don't know why.
I thought a lot of terrible things about those rich boys, but I never thought they were murderers.
If they have blood on their hands and I accept this lawyer's help, that means tying myself to them in ways I never would've accepted before I stepped foot on Coleridge's campus.
But my life has gotten complicated, and I can't turn down help, no matter where it comes from—or whose money pays for it. There are too many questions that need answers, and people who need to pay for what they've done.
Chief among them, the two men who put a rope around my brother's neck and hung him from that tree.
"I need you to go to my school, or have someone go there or something, and get this laptop from my room." I hand over my student ID, which still has my false name on it: Brenna Cooke, a girl with secrets. "The laptop has evidence on it."
He raises his brows. "Evidence you don't want the police to find? Because, Ms. Wilder, I have to warn you that impeding a police investigation isn't covered in my services."
I wonder how much extra that kind of help costs. "It doesn't incriminate me. It's my brother who I'm afraid will be exposed on it, and he's dead. But I think it could prove who took me. I want to know who it was."
"Fair enough." Pocketing the ID, he studies me. "You know, Ms. Wilder, I've seen many clients try to take justice into their own hands. It almost never ends well."
Frowning at him, I point out, "I can always call someone else to get the laptop." And I can—if I have any friends left, or get any battery back on my phone. "Just do this one thing for me. Consider it the cost of whatever retainer they're paying you. After this, I won't need representation."
"For both our sakes, I hope that you're right."
Chapter 3
Time passes painfully, physically slowly. I can feel every drip of the IV as it slowly dilutes the chloroform going through my veins. One of the nurses lends me a phone charger, and I manage to respond to Wally and Mom's concerned texts; they're on the way here, but still at least a couple of hours away.
I want nothing more than to jump out of my hospital bed, run down the hallway, and go straight back to the Rosalind dormitory to get my brother's laptop out of my room. It kills me that I didn't figure out sooner something else might be on it—Lukas even pointed out that there was some kind of used-up space on the hard drive. But I know nothing about computers, and knew even less, apparently, about my own twin brother.
A drug dealer for some kind of criminal ring that ultimately killed him, and nearly killed me too.
He was in so deep that I didn't even see him drowning.
I'm lost in my thoughts when a knock comes on the door. Before I even get the chance to respond, Tanner Connally saunters in.
Behind him, I hear Lukas's European-accented voice say, "We should decide what we're going to say—oh, you just went in. Fabulous. I'm sure that'll end splendidly."
Looking up into Tanner's light hazel eyes, I feel a chill go down my neck. He's observing me with concern, even as he walks confidently into the room like he owns the hospital itself. If I didn't know better, I'd almost swear that he's actually worried about me.
An impossibility.
One his slight frown and the dark circles under his eyes communicate anyway.
"You sure do know how to leave a party," he says, his deep voice falling into his signature drawl as he leans up against the window across from my bed. "Next time my dad has one of his boring fundraiser and drags me with him, I'm leaving via mysterious circumstances, and showing back up on the police blotter. It really has a certain flair to it."
He would turn this all into one big joke. "Be careful. If you disappear, you might not come back."
"Is that some kinda threat?" A crooked smile twists his mouth at one end. "Aw, I'm touched. I knew you cared."
I sigh, looking to Lukas for someone reasonable. "What are you two doing here? Did you come to see how that lawyer you bought is working out? Because I wasn't arrested."
"Yet." Tanner raises a brow in my direction. "Didn't you steal from Holly? Come to think of it, Georgia's dad had to cancel her credit card a while back. Was that you too? You act so suspicious and distrustful, but you're the one no one should trust. Maybe you should work on yourself first before you fuck up someone else's life."
"Hush," Lukas says. "Brenna almost died tonight. That's why we're here—we want to see if you're okay. Or at least I do. Things got... heated in the storm."
He has an intense look in his blue eyes as he approaches the bed, almost studying me. His dirty blond hair is a mess; it doesn't look like he combed it. And while Tanner somehow managed to fall into a pair of jeans and a loose T-shirt at some point tonight, Lukas is still wearing what he wore to the dance, albeit without the suit jacket or the pompous tie. There's a slouched and worn-in look to him, like he was tossed around in an industrial sized dryer after going for a swim in a pond.
A moment passes between us, and I know we're both thinking about the things we said. Worse, the things we did. What I did to him with my stupid, naive little blog. And what he did to me—what I thought he did to me—with my brother's reputation and his untimely end.
"They killed him."
The sound of my voice is louder than I expected, and I twitch at its volume. Speaking the words aloud to them, unlike to Officer Lopez, makes it all seem fresh and real. But also messy. Like a scabbed-over wound, recently picked with grubby fingers.
"Those two men who took me," I continue, "they said something when they were..." My hands go up to my neck, and I find myself struggling for the next breath to finish the sentence. "When they put me in the trunk. They said they would do to me what they did to Silas."
Lukas freezes, his facial expression oddly devoid of emotion. What Tanner does is the opposite in every single way: he curses up a storm, a filthy word barely springing from his mouth before another one rises on its heels, tripping over each other on their way to my ear. Pacing in front of my hospital bed, every muscle in his body tense, he makes me feel like I should be doing the same thing with the same energy.
But all my anger died with the toxic cocktail of chemicals still racing through my veins. It'll take hours, maybe even days of recovery before I feel strong enough to burn as I did before. Maybe it's for the best—when I come for those men, I want to be ready. The fire inside me has a history of hitting the
wrong target when it's released from its cage too eagerly.
"We came here to warn you about something, but I guess it'll be the least of your concerns." Lukas runs a hand through his already-messy blond hair, tossing it wildly around his head. "That detective is talking to Cole and Blake right now. He wants to investigate you for falsifying your identity. The school administration found out what you did."
My blood freezes. "Am I going to be expelled?"
Tanner rolls his eyes. "Shouldn't you want to go home now, you bloodthirsty monster? You almost died. Also, if what you said is true, then you can't blame us for what happened to your brother anymore—last I checked we're not murderers."
"I don't want to go home," I protest, even as I find myself wondering if I'm insane for saying it—and even worse, meaning it.
Leaving Coleridge should be the first thing on my mind, but for some reason it's not. I've paid too steep a price to give up on the academy now, after everything. And I'm not done here. Not yet.
Not until the right people pay for the hollow ache inside my chest where a brother's love used to live.
"I need to know what happened to Silas. I don't have all the answers yet." I shouldn't be explaining this to these two wretched, terrible boys who pulls at my conscious and makes me want to scream, but here I am saying the words anyway. Maybe it's something they put in my IV. "There is no home for me until I know why I had to put my brother in the ground."
Lukas is watching me. "Understandable."
"Brutal," Tanner counters. "And very, very stupid. Are you willing to die to sate your curiosity? This is how you got burned in the chapel, you know."
Frowning, Lukas says, "I thought you burned her."
"She's a good liar." Tanner narrows his eyes at me. "You should let the police do their jobs, and get out of here before that detective decides to charge you with something for using a fake social security number."
"You know about that?" I glance between them. "I guess Georgia figured it out."
"Cole did, actually," Lukas says, and my hands knot up into fists in the sheets at his name. That kiss is still seared into my mind—a kiss far less sweet than Lukas's lips on mine, leaving an imprint behind on my lips, which burn with hunger and hatred alike for him. "He's talking to the detective right now."
