What was she going to do? She was getting in deep with Jess—a connection that went so far beyond the physical, to the place where trust and commitment could live. But how could she hope that could happen if Jess didn’t even know her real name? Something had to give here—either the investigation, or the relationship, but she couldn’t have both anymore.
Hiding the truth from Jess at this point was no longer evasive—it was outright lying.
Worse, she couldn’t even say she’d tried to avoid this complication. The magnetic pull she felt toward her had been enough to make her close her eyes to the complications. So many complications…but she wasn’t a dishonest person at heart. She knew she had to tell her and accept the fallout. Hearing the truth now, from her, had to be better than the betrayal Jess would feel if she found out by accident from someone else.
The situation at St. Marguerite’s was getting more intense by the day, and when things got wound up that tight, they had a tendency to snap.
Tomorrow, she would confront it head-on. She would tell Jess the truth about who she was and reveal everything she’d discovered about St. Marguerite’s history…and then apologize like hell to Padriag, but explain to him why she’d had to blow her cover to Jess.
Three a.m. came and went while she went back and forth with her decision. The alarm went off at five thirty, before she’d ever fallen asleep.
After dragging herself out of the shower and into the least-wrinkled clothes in her hamper, she hesitated for a moment at her closet before strapping Padraig’s gun to her ankle. This job was making her increasingly uneasy, and the gut she relied on so often in this job was telling her to be careful today.
She entered through the staff room where no metal detectors had been installed yet and made a note to scope out other places around the school where someone could sneak in weapons.
Jil traveled slowly through the atrium to the cafeteria. No sign of Jess—not in the hall, not in her office. Just as she was doubling back from the library, she saw her slip into her office by the side door. Shaking out her hands to stop them from trembling, she crossed the space to the door and knocked quietly. Could she really do this? Tell her the truth and expect her to accept it? There was more at stake than just their relationship. Jess could expose her, kick her out of the school and she could be fired. Padraig could lose the contract.
Still, she couldn’t lie to her one more minute. She’d just have to trust Jess to understand. Maybe she could help with the other, unofficial investigation she was carrying on. Yes, that’s where she’d start. She’d tell Jess everything she’d found out, and then ease into how and why she knew those things.
She knocked on the door.
Jess opened it
“I need to talk to you,” Jil said.
Jess hurriedly shut the door, a worried expression on her face. “What? What is it?”
Jil took a tremulous breath and sank into the couch.
Jess leaned forward, brows knitted. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Jil laughed shortly. “I have. Tommy Deloitte. Edward Cartright. Regina Francis. Bobby Hansen. And Alyssa Marco.”
At their names, Jess blanched. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been investigating the deaths at this school,” she said quietly. She looked over her shoulder, not able to shake the feeling that they were never completely alone. It seemed sometimes that the walls had ears.
“What do you mean you’ve been investigating?” Jess sat back. “I thought we agreed you’d forget what I told you.” She dropped her voice. “What I shouldn’t have told you.”
“You’ll understand everything soon, I promise. But doesn’t it strike you odd that all the students who died were gay?”
Jess frowned. “How do you know that? There were only ever rumors.”
“Rumors are all it takes sometimes.”
“Alyssa?”
“Had a girlfriend,” Jil said. She thought about bringing up Bex, but decided against it.
Jess frowned again. “What are you doing? Why are you raising these ghosts?”
“Because the reason behind their deaths is still alive and well in this school. We have to do something about it—expose it—before others get hurt, or worse.”
But before Jil could say anything further, a loud, cracking boom made them leap to their feet. Jil grabbed Jess’s wrist, instinctively to protect her. And in a second, they were both dashing for the door.
Gunshots.
In the main office, the admin team stood white-faced and trembling, all watching the door as if they expected an armed gunman to come through at any second. Without a moment’s hesitation, Jess ran to the lockdown alarm, smashed the glass with her fist, and pushed the button.
Instantly, the school was filled with a whining, buzzing, insistent alarm.
Jil directed all the admin staff into Jessica’s office. “Not a word,” she said. “Get away from the windows. Get behind the desk and don’t talk.”
Mark Genovese stormed through the doors to the main office, his jaw set. “What the hell is going on?” he barked.
“We’re having a lockdown,” Jess replied tightly. “Get in your office.”
Mark looked taken aback for a minute, but he grabbed Cynthia, the other VP, and hurried her into his office.
“What about the students?” Cynthia asked, standing in the doorway, bewildered.
“They know what to do. We’ve had a drill.” Jess shut the door firmly. “Get into an office, Julia,” she said, casting an eye into the hallway. The atrium was eerily empty. And the alarm buzzed on and on.
Jess grabbed the PA microphone. “Staff and students, this is a lockdown. Proceed to the nearest room and follow lockdown procedures. I repeat, this is a lockdown. Proceed to the nearest room, and follow lockdown procedures.”
From the corner of her eye, Jil saw something that made her heart stop. The flash of a contraband green baseball cap. Gideon was standing alone in the atrium, his back to the office. And he was walking into an empty hallway.
Get into a classroom. Go. But when she saw him heading the wrong way, she had to act.
She grabbed her gun from her boot and headed for the door.
Jess stared from her to the gun and back to her again, her face a mixture of shock, fear, and bewilderment. “What the hell are you doing?”
And then she looked past Jil’s shoulder and saw the same thing. Her face blanched.
“Stay here and get inside that office,” Jil instructed. “Do not come out until I come get you. Do you understand?”
Jess nodded, for once not arguing. Her worst nightmare was coming true.
“And lock the door after me.”
Another shot went off.
Jil realized she couldn’t see Gideon anymore.
And then she ran.
Gun in hand, scanning up, down, and side-to-side, she streaked through the atrium to the staircase. Every statue and every painting seemed to have eyes that followed her. She passed the door to the cafeteria, seeing through the wired glass that two huge tables had been stacked against the doors from the inside. Smart move.
In the chapel, Maggie stood paralyzed, her back flat against the wall. When she saw Jil’s gun, she gasped, her hand going to her throat.
“It’s okay,” Jil said, and Maggie breathed again.
With her gun, Jil pointed to the altar, and Maggie ducked quickly under the altar cloth into better hiding. Jil closed the chapel door behind her and heard the click of the automatic lock. Then she was on the move again. So many choices. So many routes. For God’s sake, she hoped Gideon had ducked into a classroom or a bathroom by now.
She put her back against the wall and crept quietly down the stairs to the basement. Someone was in this school with a gun, and by the time anyone got there, it might be too late. Another shot sounded, not far from her position. And she had to stop to breathe before she could force herself forward. Any second now, she expected to come across a wounded student�
�bleeding or dead—but so far, nothing.
She didn’t have a bulletproof vest on. She hadn’t fired a gun in almost five years. But today she was chasing down an armed criminal in closed quarters. Not exactly how she’d anticipated her day going.
The alarm buzzed, hollow and throbbing all at once. It obscured anything else she might have heard, and she whipped around from side to side, counting on her vision to spot danger before it attacked her.
She looked down, under the water fountains in the alcove to see two terrified-looking students, one with her hand clamped tightly over her friend’s mouth. Her friend was shaking so hard she was whimpering. They both had streaks of mascara on their faces. Jil put her finger to her lips and pointed at the two girls, beckoning them forward. The braver one crawled out, but the other one was rooted to the spot. It was easy to see why they hadn’t made the dash for safety. The little one was too terrified to move.
Jil grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out. “Shh,” she said, helping her to her feet. “Let’s go.”
She covered them with her gun and led them down the hall to the nearest room—which happened to be the boys’ washroom. Jil just pushed them both inside. “Lock this door from the inside. Then lock the doors on the stalls, kneel on the toilet seats, and don’t move,” she whispered.
They just nodded and disappeared. A moment later, the dead bolt on the door slid home, and Jil was on the move again. As she passed a statue of Jesus, she paused. It used to be Jesus. Now it was Jesus without a head. She wondered if someone had crashed into it on their way past—running without looking. But no. She bent closer and looked. The whole head was blown off. It looked like it had been shot.
A sound like a firecracker made her jump. She sprinted soundlessly to the end of the hall and peered around the corner. The gym was to the left. Another staircase to the right. Briefly, she peeked into the gym. It was empty. If Rosie was smart, she would have put her kids in the supply closet at the back and locked the door.
Rosie was smart.
Jil dashed for the stairs, creaking open the door as quietly as the old metal would let her. Once inside, she stopped dead, listening hard. One landing up, she spotted a door to the outside. Then nothing but stairs all the way up, stopping at every floor. That gunman could be anywhere.
And who the hell was it?
She could hear nothing now except the crunch of gravel outside. The police were arriving. Unfortunately, they would take a while to come inside. A lockdown meant no one entered or exited the building—because there might be bombs triggered to doors, and if they were opened, the whole school could blow up.
That was the theory, at least.
Quietly, Jil started creeping up the stairs.
She peeked through to the second floor and found an empty hallway.
Silently, she turned around and began the ascent to the third floor. The sound of her shoes on the rubber stairs made her cringe, but she kept going. She thought she heard someone breathing, but there was nowhere for them to hide.
On the third-floor landing, she flattened her back against the wall and peered around. A flash of green turned the corner.
Jil opened the door and sprinted down the hall. With four feet to go until the junction, she stopped, then began inching toward the corner. With her gun in front of her, she whipped around, gun ready to face the gunman.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she breathed, lowering her weapon.
Gideon’s wide eyes stared at her, like a baby deer caught in the headlights of an enormous truck.
“Gideon, what the hell are you doing?” Jil sputtered. “I could have shot you!”
Gideon breathed deeper, his shoulders shaking. “I wish you would,” he said. He raised his hand, and that’s when she saw a semiautomatic in his trembling fingers. Instantly, her gun was back in the air, pointing at his chest.
“Drop your weapon!” she barked. Her heart thundering in her chest, Jil stared him down. His eyes full of tears, his lips trembling uncontrollably, he held tight to the gun.
“I can’t stop,” he said. “I can’t stop now. They’re going to get me, Miss.”
“Who? Who is bothering you?”
“Everyone.”
Jil stared at him, trying to figure out if he was high, or paranoid, or just so scared that he couldn’t see reason anymore.
“They’re everywhere I go,” Gideon choked out. “In the locker room, in the cafeteria. Even at the convenience store down the road. When I’m with my sister. Especially when I’m with my sister.”
“Why haven’t you called the police?”
Gideon laughed and the gun wobbled in his hand. Jil took a step back.
“Sorry, Miss,” Gideon said, chagrined.
“Gideon, put down your gun.”
“I won’t hurt you, Miss.”
“You might not mean to, but someone will get hurt here.”
“You have a gun too.”
“Yeah, and I promise you that I’m a better shot. You can tell anyone you like that I put you in a chokehold and put a gun to your head. You can even pretend I shot you. But I need you to put that gun down.”
Gideon clenched his jaw. “I can’t,” he said through gritted teeth. “They hurt Bex. I can’t let them do it again.”
“We’re going to get you out of this mess,” Jil promised.
Gideon just shook his head.
“Gideon, I know it feels like they’re everywhere, but they’re not. They only want you to think that. The whole world isn’t out to get you.”
“They are,” he sobbed. “They’re everywhere I go, and I can’t take it anymore.”
“Let me help you.”
But Gideon just shook his head. He raised his gun again, toward a stained glass window.
So Jil tackled him to the ground. None too gently either. Anyone who happened to be disregarding the lockdown drill and peeking out the classroom window would have seen Ms. Kinness, the religion teacher, tackling a seventh-grade student, and putting him face-first into the ground. At gunpoint.
“How was that?” she whispered into his ear, as she leaned over him.
“Good,” he grunted.
“Too hard?”
“Let up a little on the left,” Gideon wheezed. And Jil released her grip so that his skin turned back to its normal color.
“Sorry,” she muttered. She had the presence of mind to tuck her gun back up into her boot before the sound of footsteps got close enough that eyes could see it.
“S’okay. Are you the police?”
“Not anymore.”
It didn’t take long for the real police to arrive. They thundered through the hall like Sherman tanks, hauling Gideon to his feet and handcuffing him. He looked terrified, his eyes searching out Jil’s. “It’s okay,” she mouthed to him.
Then Jil spotted Morgan in the brigade. “Hey!”
“Hey,” Morgan said. “Still here?”
“Yep.”
“Almost done with whatever it is?”
Jil sighed and closed her eyes. It seemed like it was just beginning, actually. She didn’t know when the hell she was going to get the rest of the answers.
“He’s fourteen,” she said instead. “And I know there’s a lot more to this. Please do me a favor?”
Morgan nodded. “Sure.”
“Get an advocate and a lawyer there pronto?”
Morgan pursed his lips. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
At that moment, Jil spotted Jess at the end of the hallway, staring at her silently, as if she’d never seen her before. From opposite ends of the G building, they watched as the police officers took Gideon away and secured the school. The students emerged from their classes to run down the stairs into the arms of their waiting parents, who were barricaded into the parking lot by police.
One minute, Jess was standing twenty feet away. The next, she was gone. And her voice played out over the PA system—steady and strong, as usual. Through a speaker, you couldn’t see t
he look on her face, the whiteness of her cheeks, the tremble in her lip, or the anger in her eyes, which Jil was certain registered loud and clear up close.
“Staff and students, the lockdown is over. Thank you all for your cooperation. The lockdown is over. It is safe to come out. Please proceed in an orderly fashion to your next class.”
How could she even suggest it? Jil shook her head. How could she even think students would proceed quietly to Calculus when, ten minutes ago, a student with a gun had come through the halls?
But of course, most people wouldn’t have known what the lockdown was about. Only people in the top floor of the G building would know. Others, in opposite ends of the school, had probably been playing cards and whispering to each other as they crouched low behind desks. This was so common for them. They’d had a drill. They probably took it no more seriously than a fire drill.
Shit.
And what else was she supposed to say? “Please proceed anxiously and wildly to the parking lot to skip the rest of the day?” Not likely.
And Jil realized, in that moment, how much of what Jess said and did was dictated by her job, and not her personal feelings. She was desperate to know the real Jess. The woman behind the suit. Her real thoughts, her real feelings. Everything about her. But that came with a price. She’d have to reveal herself too. She’d have to tell her something—anything—to take that look of shock and betrayal off her face.
Jess was waiting at the front doors to the main office, watching students straggle by. “Off to Biology?” she asked pleasantly. Two junior girls nodded, subdued. “Good for you,” she praised them. They lifted their heads a little higher and walked on. “Hello, gentlemen.”
“Miss.”
“Make sure the younger ones you pass in the halls get on to class, would you?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Good boys.”
Jil stopped at the bottom of the short staircase that led to the top of the atrium and met Jess’s gaze. Jess just turned and walked away, toward her office, not looking back. Jil knew her well enough to follow, silently, through the cubicles to the back corner.
UnCatholic Conduct Page 24
