The Knight (Coleridge Academy Elites Book 2)

by Lucy Auburn

  He pushes her, and as she falls down to the concrete ground her arms flail wildly, knocking aside one of the empty boxes protecting my left side from being seen. Eyes widening, I crouch down lower, heart racing wildly.

  Georgia says, "Please don't leave me." Some part of me breaks for her, and I wonder if this is what it feels like to forgive a girl like me, a broken girl who does terrible things because she's hurting inside. "I promise I'll be good."

  Towering over her, Hass looks down at Georgia like she's prey. He's so close that all he'll have to do is swing his head in my direction and I'll be spotted. I pray, for Georgia's sake and my own, that he's done letting out his rage on her.

  "Make sure you keep that promise," he says, an almost gentle croon in his voice, "and I'll reward you. Now hush so I can finish this call. Wipe yourself off and wait in the car for me."

  Turning on his heel, he paces out the hanger door and puts the cell phone back to his ear. I breathe out a sigh of relief that he didn't spot me, barely able to believe my own good luck.

  Then Georgia stands up, sniffling, and reaches out to brace herself on one of the crates next to me. I startle, looking up, and meet her eyes.

  For a long moment we stare at each other.

  I can see her figure out that I saw what he did to her.

  She looks at my face. At the camera. Back to my face again. I lick my lips, darting my eyes to Hass, wondering if I can say something to keep her quiet before she shouts out to him. Once he knows I'm here, I'm doomed.

  Instead of saying something, though, Georgia straightens her little black dress, combs her hair back over her shoulder, and turns away from me. I watch her walk to the car. She only glances over her shoulder, once, from my hiding place to Hass, then climbs inside the car, silent as the grave.

  It takes me a while to figure out that she's not going to tell him she saw me. She's going to keep my secret. And, I imagine, she expects me to keep hers too—or there'll be consequences. The thought of keeping what Hass did to myself makes my stomach churn, but as long as he gets arrested for what he's about to do on the other side of the plane, at least Georgia will be safe from him. Even if she doesn't know she needs protection, I plan on giving it to her.

  Girls stick together.

  Even when we loathe each other.

  I just hope that I'm able to get a good angle on what's about to go down, one that will show quite clearly the criminals Hass is working with—and the terrible thing he's about to do. Switching my attention back to him, I watch as he finishes up his phone call and slips his cell back into his pocket. My eyes dart to the baggage cart I'll have to hide behind to get photos of him—getting there will mean crossing an open area with nothing to keep me from being spotted if he looks over his shoulder.

  Raking his fingers through his golden blond hair, Hass paces towards the aircraft parked some distance from him. This is it—he's going towards the girls. It's now or never. Taking a deep breath, I wait until he's crossed in front of the baggage cart, then pace around the side of the crates and fast walk in a crouch.

  As the wind whips around my hair and the sun sets in the distance, I feel like any moment this will all come crashing down around me. He'll turn and see me. Georgia will open up the car door and tauntingly announce my presence in an ultimate betrayal of what little faith I have in her. Blake will decide to save his own skin instead of remaining lookout for me.

  I'm halfway to the baggage cart when I make a mistake.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I look towards the parked sports car where Georgia is. She's not looking at me, though—she's staring into the passenger side mirror, delicately sponging a bruise forming on her cheek, one the shape and size of Hass's broad hand.

  It's what I see past the car, out on the road, that makes me pause for a long moment, one in which anything could happen.

  From a distance, the figure is nearly unrecognizable, unless, like me, you've been staring at him for months, hatred and lust alike churning inside you. Black hair, a naturally tan complexion paled by winter months spent studying, tall, broad shoulders with an impossibly expensive down-filled jacket draping them—Blake Lee is standing right in front of the trees, out in the open, abandoning his spot inside the car and the safety within.

  Because from where he is, he can see me.

  Can protect me if something goes wrong.

  I can't see his eyes from here, but I can feel them on me. Watchful. Quiet. Ready to swoop in at any moment. Like a lighthouse on the shore or a distant sign pointing towards safety, he's there, and he's not going anywhere.

  Until now, I didn't believe.

  But it's really true.

  Blake Lee is falling in love with me.

  Chapter 16

  I swallow, feeling like a fish out of water, frozen on the asphalt. Then I hear Hass's voice and startle out of my stupid, selfish thoughts, remembering all at once where I am. Rushing in a crouch towards the baggage cart, I slid into a space behind it and rest the camera lens on one of the shelves, pointing it right towards the girls and the thugs keeping watch over them.

  Except it's less like keeping watch and more like keeping them trapped there, with nowhere to run and no one to witness what's going on—just me and my camera.

  From here, unlike across the street, I can zoom in well enough to take photos of the girls and the thugs. I quickly focus on each of their faces and snap as many as I can, hoping maybe once we turn this all over to the police they'll be able to identify who the girls are and help them out—assuming, of course, enough of the cops aren't paid off by Hass's family to look the other way. The blog will help with that; just like with the governor's scandal, it's hard to get officials to stop investigating you when the public is calling for blood and truth.

  I'll make sure the world knows who these girls are and cares enough about them to try to save them, even if they're the only ones willing to do anything.

  This kind of active investigative work, more than anything I did with the Legacies blog last semester, is invigorating. It makes me feel like I'm really doing something as I zoom out to capture all the players on camera and hit the record button to get some video.

  Maybe after graduation I can find a way to keep doing this sort of work. Someone has to keep the rich, privileged monsters of the world in check—whether they're my age or adults. If Silas could see me now, he'd be proud. I'm making sure his death wasn't for nothing.

  Despite the wind, I manage to pick up some of the conversation going on between Hass and the men, and it chills me to the bone.

  "This one has been trained." The taller man, with dark hair, motions towards the ice blonde girl in the middle, who has vacant eyes and long sheer sleeves that barely cover up her reason for needing them. "She is very docile, easy to manipulate."

  "Too old," Hass says dismissively, though to my eyes the girl doesn't look much older than eighteen or nineteen. "I want a fresh one I can break in on my own." He paces down towards the girl on the right, a black-haired girl with dark brown skin who flinches even as she raises her chin at him defiantly. "This one has spirit. Does she speak English?"

  "No," says the second, shorter man, in an Eastern European accent. "That is part of the appeal, though. You can talk freely about her without worry. And she can be trained."

  "Huh." Hass considers the girl, and I clench my fist, wishing I could castrate him with my mind. She doesn't look much older than sixteen, and has the lithe body of a dancer—no doubt what she thought she'd get to do when she was trafficked. Imagining him breaking her like he's been trying to break Georgia makes my stomach churn.

  But he dismisses the girl with a wave of his hand. "Too much work. This one I like, though." Stalking towards the third girl on the other end of the line, who cowers back from him, he surveys her sharp cheekbones, dark hair, and ice-pale skin. "Eastern European?"

  "Yes. She was born in Latvia, procured in Poland. Her English is fluent—though she stutters. A nervous habit."

  The way this tur
ns up the corners of Hass's mouth is enough to make me grind my teeth nearly to nubs. He inhales deeply as the girls cringes away from him, acting almost as if he can smell her fear—and for all I know the psychopath can. I watch him nod sharply, then pull out his phone and ask, "How much?"

  One of the men leans forward to rattle off a number, and I don't catch this part of the conversation. But it's clear things are about to wind down—which means that Hass will return to his car, while the girl, apparently, will be driven to his family's empty apartment to await his presence and find out what nightmare her life has just become. Before he walks past this baggage cart and sees me, I have to get back to the airplane hanger, footage intact, or her nightmare will never end.

  Ending the recording, I snap the camera screen back on the body and tuck it into my jacket. Then I glance over my shoulder to judge the distance from here to my hiding space—it's so much further than it looked on the way over. Suddenly it feels like the sky itself has widened, and everyone is staring in this direction, just waiting for me to dart out and get caught.

  Something unlikely happens: my eyes are drawn to Blake's figure standing in the distance, and I somehow gain confidence from knowing he's there. Even if the worst happens, he'll make sure that they don't hurt me, or worse, kill me—of that I somehow feel sure, despite everything. Blake Lee isn't the type to stand watch over a girl for no reason.

  Taking a deep breath, I rise into a crouch and walk as fast as I can, nearly running despite my crouch, towards the airport hanger door. I can feel Georgia's eyes as I pass by the sports car, but shockingly she does nothing, says nothing, as I rush behind its hood and back into the darkness of the hanger. My spot with the crates and boxes is maybe twenty feet away at the most, and just in time, too, because I can hear Hass's footsteps in the distance as he walks in my direction.

  Overeager to get back to safety and be done with this thing, I hang a sharp left and run a few steps—only to trip and fall on the concrete floor. My breath leaves my body as I fall down, rolling towards my right side, and the camera spills out of my jack. It slides across the smooth concrete, just far enough for a sliver of setting sun to land on it.

  Hass is moments away from walking close enough to see the camera—and then me. I can't save it, and the evidence, without being discovered. Which means it's as good as lost, all because of one clumsy moment when I couldn't keep my feet under me.

  Those girls deserve better than a screwup like me trying, and failing, to save them. All I had to do was not fuck this up and I couldn't even manage that. The only thing left is to run and hide, on the off chance that Hass won't spot me the instant he sees the camera.

  Before I can make my way towards the hiding place, though, something extraordinary happens.

  Georgia gets out of the car, swings the door open wide, and calls out to Hass. "Ready to go, babe?"

  "That I am," he says, suddenly in a buoyant mood, the slime ball. "I hope you're ready for seven courses, because I'm treating you special tonight."

  How quickly he changes from the shitheel who shoved her to a smirking, charismatic rich boy treating his girlfriend out to dinner. It's like there are two sides of him, completely separate, and this must be the side that makes Georgia primp and preen.

  Her car door, at least, hides me and the camera from view. Before anyone can see, I reach out to snatch the evidence up and slide into the hiding place between the crates, feeling like I finally got a tiny bit of luck.

  As I watch Hass and Georgia, though, I realize it wasn't luck at all.

  He strolls over to the driver side of the door, opens it up, and slides in. As he's turning on the radio and adjusting it, she looks over her shoulder—right to the spot where I just was, along with my camera.

  The expression on her face when she sees that I'm gone is unmistakably relief. Her eyes briefly flick to my hiding place, and she purses her lips, yet again saying nothing. Making me wonder if I ever really knew the mean girl who stood up in front of everyone and exposed me for a fraud. Maybe I've never really known anyone at all—including, especially, myself.

  Shaking her hair out, she slides into the passenger side of Hass's expensive car, closes the door, and doesn't look back once as he peels out of the parking lot impossibly fast and sends his expensive car down the road. On the other side of the private jet, a black SUV takes another passenger for another ride—this time, without a fancy seven course meal on the end of it. Just a nightmare that I hope I'll be able to stop in time.

  "Took you long enough." Blake gives me a scorching once over, his eyes narrowed, as I walk towards him. "What were you doing, picking boogers out of your nose? Nevermind, I don't want to know—as long as you got what we came here for."

  He sounds just as irritated and hostile as ever, but underneath it is something new, or at least something I've never paid attention to before. It turns out that while he was getting angry and resentful towards me, he was also feeling something else: worry about my safety. And it's that worry more than anything that makes him give me another once over with his eyes, which are narrowed in anxiety as much as anything else.

  "I'm fine," I tell him. "Not a scratch on me."

  "I didn't ask if you were okay."

  "Didn't you?" I pitch my voice up into a singsong, teasing tone, taking another step towards him until we're close enough that the fog of our breath on the air mingles together. "You've been standing out here this whole time. Waiting for me. Watching to make sure I get back in one piece."

  "Because if you don't, we won't..." His eyes flick down to my mouth, then back to my eyes again, and he swallows. There's something crazed in the back of his gaze, feral and impossible to deny. "I don't care what happens to you."

  "Sure." I've never been more confident that a boy is lying to me than I am right here, right now, standing toe to toe with him. "And I don't want you to kiss me right now."

  His eyes flick behind me, then back to my face, then to the air above my head. In a strangled voice he says, "You don't?"

  Instead of telling him it's a lie, I close the distance between us until our mouths are a breath away. Eyes still open, I look up into his deep brown gaze, which is conflicted in every way imaginable.

  Quietly, he murmurs, "What about the others?"

  "What about them?"

  "What if..."

  "Are they here right now?" I ask, my mouth nearly brushing his. "Last time I checked it's just you and me."

  "Oh, fuck."

  Grabbing the back of my neck with one hand and my waist with the other, he crushes me against him all at once, every drop of his lust pouring out of him as he bends my body against his and seals our mouths together. The kiss is scorching from head to toe, every inch of us touching. I can feel his arousal grow as he deepens the kiss, tongue and lips hungry, desperately getting as close to me as he can.

  My body responds to him, my thighs parting to let his knee press between them, heat flaring in my abdomen. I feel reckless and wild as I realize that my body, and mine alone, is turning the statue that is Blake Lee into a living creature of flesh and blood with roaming fingers and a hungry mouth.

  He's electric, alive, pouring his lust and hunger into me. His mouth is a greedy thing. I curl my fingers around his neck and press my hips to his. My nipples brush against my bra as he grabs me and pulls me close. I can feel his fingers dip beneath my jacket and flirt against the warmth of my skin at the edge of my shirt, cold rushing in and prickling goosebumps rising everywhere he touches.

  I moan into his mouth.

  His erection bumps, clumsily, against my hip.

  Then the camera lens digs into my rib cage, and I remember all at once why we're here together. Awareness floods me, along with regret and shame, even though I know I would do it again. Kissing Blake Lee is a mistake I'd make a thousand times—especially because, as I pull back from him, he pants wildly, trying to bring us close again. There's no rush of power quite like the rush I get from seeing the raw desperation on his face.
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br />   He'd take me anywhere, do anything, just for more of my touch. Watching him shudder and struggle to pull himself together, running a hand through his hair and wincing as he tries to sort out his suddenly tight pants, I feel a rush of power. This feels better than any revenge I could have imagined—especially because the thought of Blake on his knees in front of me, mouth being put to good use, is a thrill of its own, one I never dared to imagine before.

  There are girls in countries all across the world who would stab someone to experience what I just did. Girls who dream of the taste of him on their lips, musk and fresh mint as I wipe my hand across my mouth, so warm I could take my jacket off and feel nothing.

  In a hollow, ragged voice, Blake says, "That was..."

  "A kiss." I clear my throat, hearing the burr in my throat and blushing at how wanton I sound. My lips are raw and sensitive where we kissed, his unexpected stubble like a rash around my mouth that tells every secret. "It's just a kiss. No one has to know."

  "Right." His eyes dart all around us like a wild animal. Impulsively, he says, "If no one has to know, we could do it again."

  I can't stop myself from smirking, part happy girl with an incredible, impossible crush—the kind of feeling I never thought I'd have at all, much less towards a boy like this—and part a creature of revenge, watching one of my targets fall in the most powerful, unexpected way.

  There is no Blake Lee, one of the boys who tried to ruin my brother, left anymore. All I see before me is a boy who would do anything for me, anything at all. Just to have my lips on his.

  It can't last.

  But knowing it's mine is enough to make me happy for a brief, delirious moment, as I revel in the fact that I've finally won.

  So I lean forward, get up on my tip toes, and give Blake another taste of what he wants: me.