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About the Author
Copyright Page
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To Aunt Judy
For her courage, her grace, her laughter …
… her love
Acknowledgments
In a busy year full of excitement and possibility, I’m incredibly honored and humbled to thank the following people for their assistance with this book:
My editor, Holly Ingraham—for her kindness, her humor, and her keen editorial eye. It’s been so fun bringing Echo Lake to life with you.
My agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan—I’m so lucky and excited to be part of Team Courtney’s new venture.
The entire St. Martin’s team, for the gorgeous cover, the fabulous book-love, and for making me feel so welcome.
My critique partner and cheerleader extraordinaire, Jennifer Brodie—for just being indescribably awesome. Always.
My bunnies—for five amazing years of what ifs.
Markus B—for generously sharing his expertise on at-risk teens and outdoor education. And for taking me rock-climbing and not dropping me, even if I made it tempting.
The men in my family, who inspire my book-heroes. You, every day, are the real heroes.
Most importantly, to my girls, because truly, there’s no greater gift than you.
Chapter 1
“First offense—itching powder on the headmaster’s toilet paper.” Gabriela sighed as she let her eyes land on the four teenaged girls seated in the lounge area of the dorm. She loved them like they were her own, but right now, she’d happily rent any one of them out as birth control. They’d make even the most anxious parent-to-be think twice.
“Second offense—baby powder in her blow dryer.” She took a deep breath. “Third offense—the crickets in her bedroom. I still don’t think she’s found them all.”
Madison—blond, beautiful, ringleader Madison—snickered. “Pritchard deserved it, and you know it. She’s a bi—”
“Madison.” Gabi’s voice was firm, her eyebrows hiked. “That’ll be enough. None of those things even comes close to what you guys did last night. You have no idea how much trouble you’re in right now.”
“Is this when you say, ‘Fourth offense: sneaking off to a boys’ school in a stolen vehicle’?” She rolled her eyes. “Because we’re going to be all overdramatic here?”
Gabi lifted her eyebrows even further, but Madison just shrugged in response. “I just don’t think it’s as big a deal as you and Pritch-bitch are going to make it. As usual.”
“Wrong. It’s a huge flipping deal. You hotwired the school van, for God’s sake.”
“But Gabi—” Waverly started to plead, but Gabi put up a hand.
“Sorry, girls. Briarwood Academy has an ironclad code of conduct, and you smashed it to smithereens. The board called an emergency meeting this morning, and the headmaster has been in touch with all of your parents. You will be very lucky if they don’t expel you.”
Gabi paused, letting that sink in. She noticed Waverly’s arms dropping a bit, Eve’s eyes darting around the room, Madison biting her lip. Good. These four suitemates had been at each other’s throats all year, and in an irony of ironies, the first time they’d actually collaborated on anything, they’d chosen something that could get them all thrown out on their snarky little butts.
Sam—short for Alexandra-don’t-ask—narrowed her eyes. “She seriously called our—parents?” Her voice caught on the last word, but only she and Gabi knew why.
“Well, if the police get involved, there’s no way we can have your families hearing about this from them first.”
“The police? But Gabi”—Waverly’s hand moved to her throat—“didn’t you defend us? It was just a prank sort of a thing. Not, like, a criminal thing. Jeez.”
Gabi shook her head. Waverly had probably been dragged along against her will, as usual. The girl needed a serious spine transplant. “Don’t make me list the criminal offenses here.”
Madison rolled her eyes. “Not that we’re going to be dramatic. Again.”
Waverly looked up, eyes starting to water. “But you’re our housemother. Don’t you have leverage here? Can’t you help us?”
Gabi bristled at the title, just like she always did when it was spoken out loud. She was, in essence, the residential director for the entire boarding school, but Headmaster Pritchard preferred the antiquated term. Pritchard also preferred a school where everyone knew her place in the pecking order, and she liked that Gabi’s was firmly below hers, despite her master’s degree and eight years of employment.
Gabi shook her head. “My leverage—such as it is—ended the minute you all stepped your pretty little heads off campus. You took it too far this time, and you’re going to have to deal with the consequences.”
Just then, the lounge door opened, and Priscilla Pritchard stepped through, the picture of composure … and a cat-ate-canary smile that made butterflies take flight low in Gabi’s stomach. Priscilla was dressed in her customary navy skirt, navy blazer, and Hermès scarf—the green one, because it was Friday. Not a hair escaped her fashionable bun, and though she was pushing sixty, Gabi suspected her Boston colorist was paid extremely well to make sure not one silver sparkle ever peeked through her blond strands.
Priscilla crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “Ladies.”
Silence greeted her, which—strangely—made her smile grow even bigger. Gabi swallowed. She had a bad feeling about this—worse than the one she’d had as she’d climbed the fire escape of the Pendleton dorm and rounded up the girls twelve hours ago.
Finally, she spoke. “I assume you expect I’m here to expel the whole lot of you. And fortunately for me, your parents all agree that expulsion is a punishment that would match the crime.”
Dammit. She was going to expel them. And maybe they deserved it, but Gabi had way too much skin in this particular game to be happy about it.
As if by silent signal, the girls transitioned out of their defensive postures, apparently believing there might be more power in pretending they didn’t care. Madison and Waverly probably didn’t, actually. They’d just transfer to another boarding school, decorate their new rooms in next year’s designer colors, and stir up trouble once again.
But Sam and Eve wouldn’t know a designer color if it landed on their heads. If they lost their scholarships at Briarwood, they’d be headed back to Boston—back to foster homes that would hardly notice they were back … if they even landed in the same ones they’d come from.
“Have any of you ever heard of Camp Echo?” Priscilla raised her eyebrows, that snarky little smile lurking at the corners of her lips. At her question, Gabi’s butterflies started banging on the walls of her stomach.
Priscilla took a couple more steps into the room, then sat down in a hard-backed chair facing them. “It’s a lovely little place on the shores of Echo Lake, Vermont, just three hours from here. Briarwood recently bought the property, and the board is anxious to get started using it. Luckily for us, it seems we have suddenly be
en presented with the perfect opportunity.”
Gabi sat down hard. Oh, holy hell. Priscilla was sending the girls to … camp?
“So.” Priscilla put her hands together like a delighted grandma on the verge of giving her grandchildren a new car. “With the permission of all of your parents … or guardians, we have come up with an alternative to expulsion. The four of you will leave your rooms next week only to take your exams and eat your meals, and on Friday, you’ll pack your bags for a four-week stay at Camp Echo.”
Madison narrowed her eyes. “Not possible. My father would never have agreed to this.”
“He did.” Priscilla pointed to each girl in turn. “As did everyone else’s. You’re lucky this is the consequence we came up with. You’re extremely lucky the board didn’t elect to send you to my first choice of camps, where you would have to make your own clothing, your own soap, and your own shelters.”
Gabi felt her teeth almost bite through her bottom lip. As much as she was relieved that someone had taken expulsion off the table, Priscilla was far too delighted about this consequence to have Gabi believing the girls were headed to some sort of pristine lakeside paradise for half the summer.
There had to be a catch.
Eve adjusted her arms so they were tighter to her chest. “This Camp Echo—does it have, like, cabins?”
Priscilla shrugged her shoulders delicately. “I haven’t been there, but I was assured by the director just now that the facilities would be appropriate for the situation.”
Gabi darted her eyes toward her. Right now, “appropriate for the situation” would be pup tents in bear country, with loaves of bread for pillows.
Waverly blinked hard. “But I’m supposed to go to Paris.”
Gabi pictured her own flight reservation, currently tacked to the bulletin board above her desk. Next Friday night—apparently now after she’d seen this little crew off to Camp Echo—she’d be boarding a flight to Barbados for a well-deserved trip to paradise. Ideally, it would have been a honeymoon—say, with her favorite rom-com hero—but with her thirtieth birthday looming, she’d yet to find a guy she could imagine lasting much past the honeymoon.
It wasn’t that her expectations were unrealistic, of course, even if the girls did accuse her of living in some sort of Hollywood-induced romancelandia. And it wasn’t her fault that she firmly believed a guy, with the right influence, could actually turn out to be perfect. It was just … well, she had no idea what it was, really. But here she was, twenty-nine years old, living in a tiny apartment at a girls’ boarding school, and oddly enough, Prince Charming hadn’t yet found his way to her door.
So she was taking her own damn self to the Caribbean. Maybe, among the lovestruck honeymooners at the tiki bar, she’d find a kindred soul looking for his happily-ever-after.
Right.
Sam drew her knees up to her chest, settling into the corner of the couch in a defensive move Gabi recognized from when she’d first arrived at Briarwood. The girl could hotwire a school van, drive across state lines without a license, and probably drink a twenty-one-year-old under the table, but right now, she actually looked scared. Gabi almost felt sympathetic, until she remembered the hours she’d spent on the road last night, praying that the girls were alive.
“How are we getting to this camp?” Eve asked.
“You will be driven there in the school van—using the ignition key this time.” Priscilla smiled, pleased with her little attempt at humor. Then she looked straight at Gabi. “Ms. O’Brien will be taking you.”
Gabi felt her eyes go wide.
Wait just one flipping Barbados minute. Oh, no, she wouldn’t be.
“I’m sorry, Pris—Ms. Pritchard. I have a flight that evening. We’ll need to find someone else to drive the girls.” Gabi knew damn well that Priscilla was aware of her trip. It had taken the woman a full month to hem and haw over whether Gabi could be allowed to take the two-week unpaid vacation, but maybe in the chaos of the morning, she’d forgotten.
Gabi felt her stomach clench as her lips tightened. The girls’ heads all swiveled to look at her. They knew how much she was looking forward to this trip. They’d been cutting out tropical pictures for her bulletin board all spring. They’d planned her sightseeing itinerary down to the minute for her, and they’d loaded up her tablet with ten of her favorite movies to watch on the beach.
Priscilla cleared her throat. “Actually, Ms. O’Brien, we need to talk about your trip.”
Gabi’s stomach fell.
Or … maybe she hadn’t forgotten at all.
* * *
“Boarding-school girls?” Luke Magellan shook his head in confusion later that afternoon. “Here?”
Oliver nodded, rocking back in his rickety lawn chair as he sent a hand through his shock of gunmetal-gray hair. “Nothing I could do. Briarwood bought the property in April. They own us now. And I guess they’re getting started on the ‘using us’ part.”
Luke looked out at Echo Lake, glistening in the early summer sun. The beach was quiet, the dock was quiet, the dining hall was empty … just like he’d thought it was going to be all summer. No boys on the tire swings, no boys paddling the lake, no boys whooping and hollering from the diving raft.
Utter, awful silence.
He put his hands on his hips, completely mystified. “I don’t get it. First, they buy the place as a completely transparent tax write-off. Then, despite their promises to keep it operating as you’ve run it for three decades now, they close us down for the summer and hand us a project list that makes it very clear they actually have no such intentions. And now they’re sending us a group of little rich girls who are this close to expulsion? What the hell are we supposed to do with them?”
Oliver blew out a pained breath. “I don’t know.”
Luke paced the dock, automatically stepping over the three loose boards he hadn’t had time to fix. Then a thought occurred to him. There was no way this Briarwood headmaster would send her students if she knew the true shape of the facilities right now. The girls’ parents would shit bricks.
He turned back to Oliver. “They know we don’t have anywhere for them to sleep, right?”
“We have tents.” Oliver shrugged slowly.
Luke snorted. “Right. You’re thinking a limo full of Briarwood girls are going to roll in here and be okay with us showing them to their army canvas?”
“I’m thinking these particular girls have reached the end of the Briarwood rope, if the alternative was to send them home for good. Tents might be the least of their problems.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “Why didn’t they just expel them, if that’s what the girls deserved?”
“Two words: rich parents. You piss them off, you kiss your future endowment money good-bye. Briarwood wants the money, so Briarwood has to keep the kids.” Oliver shook his head. “But it sounds like the board insisted on a consequence that matched the crime. Maybe they’re using the girls as an example to their other wannabe-miscreants. I don’t know.”
“So they chose Camp Echo.” Luke sighed. “They know that besides the dining hall, every last thing here is on its last legs, right? They know you and I are the only staff members left?”
As he said the words, he swore silently. How could they not know? They owned the place now, damn it all.
“They know. And it might just be me, but it seemed like the headmaster was actually happy to hear it.”
“Then she must be extremely pissed at this crew. We’ve got no programs, no counselors, no nothing. And they wasted no time demoting me right down from director to camp handyman. Who’s supposed to supervise them all summer? Who’s going to keep them from running wild all over this property?”
Oliver looked down at his notepad. “Gabriela O’Brien. The housemother. Apparently she drew the short straw.”
Luke felt his eyebrows go skyward as he pictured steel-wool hair and flowered muumuus. A housemother? “And is this … housemother responsible for entertaining them?”
> “Apparently.”
“Well, this is just. Shit. What are we supposed to do with an elderly woman here? We can’t make her sleep in a frigging tent, Oliver.”
“You want to give up your cabin?”
“Hell, no. It’s all I’ve got left.” Luke rubbed his forehead with both hands. “But I’m not going to put her in a tent, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, not sure we’ve got other options. I can’t put her in the back room of the admin cottage with me. People would talk.”
Luke smiled for the first time as he pictured Oliver’s living quarters, which were just about big enough to turn around in, as long as you held your breath so your stomach caved inward.
“We don’t have time to build them a cabin, not with our other priorities here. They’ll be here in a week.”
Oliver nodded. “Let’s play it by ear. Maybe she’s not elderly. Or maybe, if she is, she’s the type that loves a good summer of roughing it in the wild.”
“She works at Briarwood. The roughest thing they have there is the oatmeal, and even that’s probably organic and steel cut and gluten-free.” Luke felt his eyebrows pull together. “We’ve got a project list a mile long. What we need is a work crew, not a bunch of rich girls sunning on the beach.”
“Unless you turn them into your work crew.” Oliver bounced his eyebrows.
Luke leveled a look his way. “This is just the first step, Oliver. You see that, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—first they send a group like this, and they frame it as a desperation move, nowhere else to send them, yadda yadda. Next, we hear about how maybe they were a little hasty in their decision to keep Echo running as a boys’ camp, because look how well suited it was for their girls. And then we get a bunch of mumbo-jumbo paperwork that excuses us from our positions because their original mission has changed, but best of luck in the future—”
“Yadda yadda?”
“Exactly.” Luke nodded. “I’m just saying. This smacks of a plan, not an emergency at all.”
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