Daring Hearts: Fearless Fourteen Boxed Set

by Box Set

  “Can you tell I have makeup on?”

  “If someone is this close to you, they will know. Otherwise, they’ll think you have naturally flawless skin.”

  He made some faces and moved his jaw around in a circle. “It feels weird.”

  “They say you get used to it.”

  “What do you mean ‘they’ say? Did you get used to it?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve only worn foundation five or six times. When I have a really bad breakout and the concealer is too obvious. I don’t like the stuff.”

  My brother studied me for a moment. “You have really good skin. I always thought you wore makeup.”

  “Blush usually. Sometimes eyeliner. Lipstick if I have to.”

  “You said Felicity is really good at makeup. I thought she had gorgeous skin.”

  I nodded. “She does. She doesn’t wear a lot either. But for some reason, she’s got a gift for giving makeovers.” I grinned at him.

  “Don’t tell her I complimented her skin, Townsey. She’ll start following me around again.”

  “I won’t.” I might. I might threaten him with it. For fun.

  “I’m going to go look in the mirror and see how ridiculous I am.”

  I gave him my sweetest smile and blinked my eyelashes. “You’ve always been ridiculous, Graham.”

  He pounced for me and I ran before he could grab me and give me a noogie. My brother had given me enough of those over the years.

  * * *

  Since we had slept most of the day, Graham and I stayed up until three watching movies. When Joe called out in a cheerful voice from inside the loft, I wanted to smother him or myself with a pillow.

  “Donuts!” he said. “Get your fresh donuts and news hot off the presses!”

  Normally I’m all about the donuts, but it was way too early. I piled both pillows on my head.

  “Hey Sleepyhead,” my brother said from the door of my room. “Joe’s here. He brought donuts.”

  I mumbled something in response and thrashed under the covers.

  “Right. I’ll eat your donuts then. No problem. You might be interested in the news though. Sounds like the police had an interesting night.”

  I stilled. Hmm. If they raided the frat house, I wanted to know.

  “We both know you can’t resist,” he said. “So quit trying and get up. He brought coffee too.”

  “Save me a chocolate donut,” I said. “I’m coming.”

  My brother snorted as he backed away and shut the door. “You snooze, you lose.”

  The one and only time that expression was so completely on point. I wanted to throw my pillow at him, but I’d miss. Instead, I crawled out of the pile of covers and stretched before getting dressed.

  My first thought when I reached the kitchen island should have been about the news he was bringing. Instead, I saw the donut box that could only hold six and wondered, who buys just six donuts? And the man is a police officer for crying out loud. He’s supposed to be an expert.

  “Joe brought us each two,” Graham said, disappointment in his voice. “He’s trying to eat healthier.”

  My father’s friend patted his flat stomach. “It gets harder as I age.”

  My brother passed me a mug and the container of hot coffee. “This should help.”

  I poured myself some and added a little cream. The first sip of the hot coffee tasted like heaven.

  “What happened at the frat house?” my brother asked.

  I slipped onto a stool and helped myself to a chocolate-iced donut.

  “To be honest, we weren’t expecting to catch them with much of anything. We thought they’d stash anything illegal somewhere else because of your visit the previous night.”

  “They didn’t seem all that bright to me,” I said.

  “Tell me you got enough to put them behind bars.”

  “We did,” Joe said. “In fact, we found enough marijuana to prosecute for intent to distribute. We found enough Rohypnol to drug half the women enrolled this semester. We also confiscated their phones. By this morning, our guys found videos of the assault on you as well as video documentation of multiple crimes against women.”

  My brother had kept a lot from me.

  “Can you identify any of the perpetrators in the videos?” my brother asked.

  Joe nodded. “There were a couple who didn’t bother to hide their faces. The house was wired with cameras. Ladies room, men’s room. They were opportunists. Looks like they were selling some of the footage to specialized markets.”

  “You stopped them though?” I asked. “They can’t hurt anybody else.”

  “We locked them up for now. Most will get out until the trial. Some will get plea deals. The fraternity will be closed down at this university. A lot of good has been done.”

  My brother said, “They won’t all go to jail, Townsey. Some of them will take the fall for others. The state will pick and choose the strongest cases to prosecute.”

  “I should have tased them all.”

  “I didn’t hear that,” Joe said. He took a sip of his coffee.

  * * *

  I spent four hours working on the Paxton PI work that needed to get out. Normally I worked all day on Sundays and part of the day on Saturdays. With the additional work I was taking on, I’d have to be very careful to stick to a schedule for homework and PI work.

  Later that night, I set up all the credentials that I needed for the contract work. Then I waited until I knew my brother's office manager, Lori, was off line and my brother was online. True to form, he was logged on remotely from the restaurant where he was keeping an eye on the subject of his surveillance while hoping nobody noticed his inexpertly applied foundation.

  Lori had been a godsend for my brother. She had walked away from her lawyer job almost two years ago when she found out she was pregnant with triplets. She worked twenty-five to thirty hours a week for us, and she accomplished the work of four people. The triplets were fourteen months old now, and Lori promised she wasn't going anywhere.

  Since I had access to everything in the office, it wasn't hard to keep track of my brother's password or Lori's. My brother always scribbled his on the notes from whatever case he was working on. Lori kept a methodical list which she kept taped to the bottom of her center desk drawer.

  Her current password was Diaperpoor.

  For a second I was tempted to pull up her budget and see how much she was spending on diapers and formula. But I didn't want to invade her privacy. Plus, her live-in nanny had to be the biggest expense.

  I logged on as Lori and sent my brother an email. “Carol Lawrence, new contract employee, checks out. Let me know if I should add her to the database.”

  I hit send and waited.

  Less than five minutes later, my brother replied.

  “Maybe I do need a break. I don't remember asking. Add her. I'm sure we'll find some work for her.”

  It was almost too easy.

  I deleted both messages. Now I had to wait for my brother to be offline so I could email Lori. Then I'd just wait for an assignment to come into Carol's inbox.

  Chapter 4

  Hearst didn’t come over on Sunday, which was weird, and I was a little bit worried about him. He didn’t like to be home alone, and I couldn’t remember a time when he’d stayed away for twenty-four whole hours.

  On Monday, when he pulled up in front of the building in his dad’s newest Mercedes, which he drove most of the time for the sole reason that he wasn’t allowed to touch it, I rushed to climb in and settled my heavy backpack on my lap.

  I buckled up and took a good look at my friend. “You are the only good part about Monday morning.”

  He laughed. “That’s a sad statement on your life.” He put the car in gear.

  “Wait! Let me see your cheek first.”

  He turned his head so I could see. “It’s doing fine. Not as red as it was.”

  The piercing did seem to be healing.

  “Don’t worry, Townsey. I
won’t wreck my moneymaker.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Just because you won the genetic lottery for prettiest boy ever doesn’t mean people only value your looks.”

  Hearst glared at me. “There are guys way prettier than me.”

  Yeah. True. The thing was that most, if not all of them were models or actors. His mother had attempted to force him into some modeling when he was little. I tried to think of it as her attempt to bond with her son. He was probably right though. It was probably all about bragging rights for her.

  “Did your brother ever get all that junk off his face?”

  “Most of it. He’s going to have to wear makeup again today.”

  Hearst laughed.

  With a shake of my head, I said, “I don’t know why you find it so funny. You wear guyliner every day.”

  “That’s different. First, I do it to be ironic. Second, it’s eyeliner, not a full coating of makeup over my whole face. It’s basically a pencil, not a bottle of paint. Third, it’s Graham. I can practically feel his misery coming through the walls right now.”

  “The irony is that you actually believe you do it to be ironic,” I said in a droll voice. “Now if you can tear yourself free of the misery permeating from my brother, maybe we should get to school.”

  Hearst had already stopped for coffee which was a clue that he hadn’t slept well. We always got coffee, but he only got it before he picked me up if he woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep. Whatever went down with his parents had really messed him up.

  “Did you eat breakfast?” I asked. “A man can’t live on coffee alone.” I only called him a man if I was trying to persuade him to do something. To me, men were people over twenty who wore suits to work. Hearst was a boy, and I had to force myself to keep a straight face when I called him a man.

  “I had a bagel,” he said. “Let me guess, you had cereal.”

  I was something of a cereal addict. I mean, the stuff was good, easy to fix, and readily available. “You love it as much as I do.” I’d seen him pour an entire box into a pasta serving dish and eat it in one sitting.

  “Best dinner ever.”

  He ate a lot of cereal and a lot of pizza. When I was hanging out at his place, he ordered us entrees from local restaurants and slapped it on his parents’ credit card. He’d gone through two episodes of deciding to learn to cook since I’d known him. Both had been short-lived. During the first, he’d perfected eggs and pancakes. He’d focused primarily on homemade french fries for the second. He could open a restaurant that served nothing but fries and make some bank.

  When we pulled into the parking lot at school, he started his typical grumbling. “Do we have to go today? We could skip and go do something fun.”

  “Park already, freak-tard,” I said. “We don’t have time for this today.” The truth was that he wouldn’t skip school even if I agreed. He maintained that it was part of his deal with the principal and that he’d be expelled if he got into any trouble. I suspected it was something else. He was a people person, and even if he was scowling at them and ignoring them, he was around people when he was at school. The other thing was that he could hide it all he wanted, but he was something of an intellectual. He loved learning, reading, studying, discussing. He belonged in school. He belonged at a really good college where he could study the esoteric subjects that inexplicably interested him.

  With a loud, over-acted sigh, he pulled into a parking space.

  I struggled to climb out of the car from under the weight of my books. Then I leaned in to grab my coffee. Hearst came around and slammed the door for me. He had his second cup of coffee in his hand. The first had been drained long before he picked me up. We were coffee lovers, and Hearst’s unlimited budget served us well. We must have spent over a hundred dollars a week on coffee. That wasn’t including any coffee we drank later in the day. One of the perks of having a rich friend who was determined to be a ne’er-do-well wastrel.

  We headed for our locker, which we shared. Standing near our locker was the strangest sight I’d seen in a long time. Three freshmen boys were obviously waiting for Hearst. Two of them were still at that awkward middle school stage and hadn’t hit their growth spurt yet. The other was tall and impossibly skinny, as if he’d been pulled and stretched by some archaic machine.

  How did I know they were here for my friend? All three of them were sporting guyliner, leather wrist cuffs and ear jewelry. One of them had an obviously fake nose ring, probably from last year’s pirate Halloween costume.

  “Look Hearst,” I said, trying not to laugh in front of the kids. “You have minions.”

  “I’m thinking this is just a bad dream,” he said from behind me.

  “We’re having the same dream,” I said. “It’s not looking good.”

  Hearst ignored them and went to open our locker.

  “I wonder why they didn’t dye their hair black,” I mused. “Then you’d have legit mini-me’s.”

  “You aren’t anywhere near as funny as you think you are,” he said, scowling.

  “That leaves me a lot of room. I could still be seriously hilarious,” I said.

  “Um,” a kid said from behind us. He cleared his throat.

  Hearst froze for a moment before turning around and facing the kid. My friend didn’t say a word. He lifted a brow and waited for the kid to speak.

  Unfortunately, the freshman didn’t react well to being so close to Hearst. Maybe it was the new piercing or having to look him in the eye. Whatever the case, the kid turned beet red and averted his eyes.

  I was about to intervene, as I often did, to facilitate communication between Hearst and one of the many people at my school who found him intimidating. The irritating nasal tone of our least favorite teacher, the Hall Nazi, as she was not so kindly called, penetrated our circle of awkward.

  “Mr. Lee! May I assume these young men are friends of yours?”

  Hearst looked at the kids and then at the Hall Nazi. He gave the teacher his bored expression and didn’t answer.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” the teacher snapped. “You three come with me.”

  The freshmen stared at her for a moment and then at Hearst.

  “Come along now boys,” she said. “I don’t have all day.”

  They followed her down the hall toward the principal’s office.

  “I guess we’ll never know what they wanted,” I said. “Unless you deign to talk to them later.”

  He glared at me.

  “All that wasted guyliner.” I sighed. “No telling how long they watched YouTube videos to figure out how to put it on.”

  “You can pretend you aren’t dying to know what that kid was going to say, but I know you. You’ll talk to those kids before lunch or your head will explode.”

  Boo. Yeah, he knew me all right. “I would appreciate it if you would at least admit that you were intrigued as well and politely ask me to talk to them.”

  “I would if I had to. I really would.” He smirked. “But I don’t have to. You can’t stand it.”

  I was about to give him a piece of my mind when the Hall Nazi reappeared. She pointed at Hearst and then jerked her head in the direction of the office.

  “Gotta go,” he said. “I’m sure this discussion will be moot later. Since you will have already gotten to the bottom of this mystery.” He walked away singing the theme from Scooby Doo in a quiet voice.

  “Whatever,” I grumbled to myself. If I was in any way related to that cartoon, it was because he was part Scooby, part Shaggy. Yeah, he totally wasn’t, but he’d hate the comparison so I filed it away for later.

  You see, Hearst may look like the Angel of Death, but in reality, he was more of an Angel of Mercy. He ran a small, low-profit, top secret consulting biz. Basically, he sold his investigative and enforcement services. I met with the clients, and nobody ever knew he was involved. Hard to believe? Well, Hearst somehow managed. Not a soul suspected him of involvement. It was crazy if you thought about it. He worked so hard t
o hide his heart under all that black and metal and bored indifference.

  Once the freshmen trio was released from the office, I’d need to track them down and find out what they had wanted, and honestly, what in the world they’d been thinking. Just because the Angel of Death could pull off that look didn’t mean they could.

  I stashed most of my books in my locker and made my way to trig. I’d have to slip out soon in case they sent those boys home to scrub their faces. With any luck, they’d let them clean up here.

  * * *

  I had to admit I felt like a bit of a creeper standing in the deserted classroom with the guyliner trifecta. I was only two years older, but they could have passed for twelve or thirteen. I motioned for them to sit at the student desks and turned another around after sliding it away from them. I sat down and said, “We don’t have a lot of time, so I need you to tell me what’s going on. Why were you trying to talk to Hearst this morning?”

  They frowned at me. Then the tall one said, “How come he gets away with looking like a metal head and we got in trouble?”

  “People are afraid of Hearst,” I said. “Now enough about him. I know some people who may be able to help you if you have a problem. If it’s just hero worship, tell me now because I’m not into wasting my time.”

  “It’s not hero worship,” one kid said. “We were hoping he would help us scare somebody.”

  This was going to take forever. “Are you guys being bullied?” I asked, cutting to the chase. “Is that what’s happening?”

  “No,” the kid said.

  “Why would anybody bully us?” the tall one said, looking affronted.

  I didn’t bother to state the obvious. “Then what is the problem. Why did you want to scare somebody?”

  “It’s not us,” the third kid said. “It’s Johnny’s cousin.”

  Johnny must have been the chattier short kid. He nodded. “My cousin is a sophomore. He gets bullied pretty bad. We just wanted to get the bullies to stop.”

  “What do they do to him? Do they pick on him when he’s around you guys?”

  They shared a look. “He’s never really around us,” the tall kid said.