by Hart, Rebel
“It has to be pretty crazy to go from being Emmett’s target to being his girlfriend,” he states frankly.
“You must think I’m a fucking idiot.” I hide my face in my hands, feeling certain that he’s judging me. Hell, I’m judging me.
“No, not at all!” he assures me. “I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“It’s more than that…” I offer lightly, unsure if I should open up about everything that’s going on or not. “Have you noticed that Bernadette is gone?”
“Of course.” He nods through a big bite of a burger. “I just figured she was upset about everything with her dad. That, and avoiding school now that she doesn’t have the old Elite gang to back her up.”
“Actually…Emmett and her mom don’t know where she is,” I reveal, feeling terrible for saying it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you that. He really wants to keep it a secret.”
“Why keep it a secret?” Malcolm asks.
Relief washes over me. Something about hearing another person point out how odd it is to keep this under wraps makes me feel saner and less guilty about questioning Emmett. But I still can’t escape the nagging feeling that I should be defending him.
“He says he has too many enemies around here and doesn’t know who to trust,” I explain, swirling a fry in some ketchup. “He’s worried the cops are loyal to his father and are working against him. But we haven’t had much luck figuring anything out on our own, and it’s just been…stressful. I guess that’s what seems to be driving him straight into Vivian’s arms.”
“That is a lot to put on you.” He nods, studying my face for any sign of resentment.
“I said I would help…so I am. The best I can. But I’m feeling pretty useless at the moment. I think I’m just making things worse.” I slump down across the table, releasing a groan of exhaustion. “Sorry to be telling you all of this. Just promise you won’t tell anyone else. Whether it makes sense to me or not, Emmett wants to keep it a secret and I want to respect his wishes.”
“Of course,” he replies reassuringly. “I won’t say a word to anyone.”
We’re silent for a moment as we eat our assortment of fried foods. As much as I love my mom’s cooking, this is exactly the kind of guilty pleasure I’ve been needing without even realizing it.
“Hey, I think I might know a way to help,” Malcolm says after a while.
“With Bernadette?” I perk up, hoping he can. If we can get that mess squared away, Emmett won’t be under so much stress and will hopefully stop finding excuses to run to Vivian. Maybe we can finally have some semblance of a normal relationship.
“Yeah, have you tried hacking her phone? Tracking her through it or anything like that?” he says with a tinge of excitement in his voice. I’d forgotten he was a software guy. This kind of thing is right up his alley.
“Neither of us have any kind of clue how to do that.” I laugh. “I didn’t even know that was an option.”
“Oh, yeah,” he says confidently. “As soon as we’re done eating, I can take you back to my place. I have enough equipment there to pull it off, I think.”
“Can we do that without having her phone?” I ask. “Emmett never found it.”
“I can do it with just her phone number,” he replies with a twinkle in his eye.
“That would be amazing!” I beam, jumping forward to give him a big hug. I ignore the lingering look in his eyes afterwards. “You would do something like that?” My eyebrows raise. “I know you don’t like Emmett very much. And I shouldn’t be pulling you into all of this.”
“That’s the difference between me and the Elites,” he explains. “They may let their personal grievances get in the way of who they help and who they don’t. But at the end of the day, a person is missing and could be in danger. If I have some assistance to offer, I will.”
I smile at him and look away with flushed cheeks. This is the kind of thing that makes Malcolm so attractive, and I don’t know why I can’t make myself fall for him.
“It seems you’re a better guy than me,” I admit regretfully. “Sometimes I feel like the only reason why I want to find Bernadette is so I will have Emmett back all to myself.”
“Don’t beat yourself up too much,” he offers, lightly placing his hand over mine across the table. “She’s not exactly…a pleasant person.”
I think back to when my father shot Thomas Jameson. The sounds of Bernadette’s screams. She was mortified and devastated. Emmett was the one standing there with a calm, cool stare. But his determination to find his sister is somewhat redeeming. He can be loyal to his family. And protective. Just not towards his father.
I feel a renewed sense of hope as we drive to Malcolm’s. Maybe I can finally get a lead on this thing and prove to Emmett that I do care about what he’s going through. Originally, I’d wanted to find Bernadette so I could push Emmett out of my life again. But things changed quickly. Now I want us to find her so I can have more of him.
14
Chapter Fourteen
Malcolm’s mansion is nothing like Lily’s or Emmett’s. It’s clean and sleek. Nothing like the old-fashioned classical architecture I’ve seen everywhere else around here. And the inside is the same, with carpets and marble flooring so white I’m scared to walk on it, and bright white walls broken up by modern, abstract art pieces in bright colors that pop against the starkness.
“This place is exactly how I imagined it would be,” I marvel as I take in the clean, minimalist vibe, the big, open, almost too-empty rooms. He shoots me a discerning look. “I just mean…I envisioned it being really modern. With you and your dad being tech guys and all.”
“My place is actually around back,” he tells me as we walk through to the back doors. “I just wanted you to have a glance at the main house. My parents have great decorating taste.”
“You have your own place?”
“My dad already has me doing a lot of work for our company,” he explains. “Coding and developing. Things like that. So, they let me have the pool house so I’d have a quiet place to focus.”
“You’re really lucky,” I gape, wondering if the Hendersons are even wealthier than the Jamesons. It’s not too hard to imagine it by the looks of this place.
“I’m really busy,” he shrugs. “They know I stay focused on work and school and am getting ready to take over the company one day. I don’t fuck around. That’s why they trust me to have my own place like this.”
“Don’t you ever make any time for at least a little fun?” I tease as we walk out into the backyard of sprawling greens decorated with elaborate landscaping and lustrous fountains.
“I just took you to Ritzville tonight, didn’t I?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. You did and I ruined it.” I shrink in embarrassment. “I was a complete bummer and now I’m just dragging you into doing more work.”
“No, I love this kind of stuff,” he assures me. “It’s way more fun than my real work. I want to do work with investigations and the criminal justice system one day. This is right up my alley.”
“Oh…well, I guess I don’t feel so bad then.” He leads me past their glowing swimming pool to the house nestled behind it. The inside is a lot like his parents’ house, but darker and with a more eclectic vibe. “This place is almost more amazing than the main house. It’s so clean. Let me guess…maids? Everyone around here seems to have those.”
“No, actually,” he corrects me. “I clean it myself. It’s part of my routine. Helps me keep my head together.”
“Wow…new money really is different from old money,” I accidentally blurt out.
“How so?”
“Your work ethic and sense of responsibility,” I clarify, wishing I didn’t have such a big mouth.
“You mean old Emmett doesn’t have those kinds of things?” he chuckles back, making me feel terrible.
“No, he does. I’m sorry,” I wince, squeezing the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know why I said that. You seem to have that effec
t on me. I keep blurting out all sorts of things around you.”
“Well, here it is.” He waves his hands across the biggest desk I’ve ever seen, neatly organized with various screens and controls. “This is where I do all of my work.”
“It’s a lot more elaborate than my old laptop, that’s for sure.” I admire the setup, wondering what all of the different gadgets could possibly be for.
Malcolm sits down at his desk and goes to work. He babbles off a string of technical jargon that goes way beyond my understanding of computers. I try to keep up, but I mostly just try and stay out of his way. But I’m relieved he seems so knowledgeable and has so many tools at his disposal. Maybe I’ll leave here with something that’s actually useful for Emmett.
“Is this legal?” I ask hesitantly, as he outlines the process of hacking someone’s cell phone data.
“Not at all,” he answers smugly.
It makes me a little nervous, but if you can’t trust the cops around here…what else can you do?
“Okay, I’ve got all of her cell phone data from the past six months,” he tells me after a long string of typing and clicking and speaking to me in what might as well be a whole other language.
“Wow, just like that, huh?” I gasp. “Anything recent?”
“No, it looks like all activity stopped about two weeks ago,” he says as he clicks through pages of encrypted data.
“Sounds about right. Emmett said she had already been missing for a few days before he came to me. What about the last location?”
“It looks like the last traceable on the phone was the Jameson Mall,” he replies, still scrolling through. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the last place she was. The phone could have died there and never been recharged. Or it could have been dropped.”
“The mall? Huh.” Not a surprising spot, but knowing it’s the last place her phone was used feels important. “Well, that’s more than we knew before. Anything else useful?”
“I can pull up her calls and messages,” he trails off into more typing. “Looks like these were the last numbers she exchanged texts and calls with. The texts seem to indicate meeting up at the mall, which makes sense.”
“What are the numbers?” I ask impatiently. He angles the screen so I can see. He flips through the contacts in his phone, letting me look over his shoulder as he compares them to the ones on the screen. It doesn’t take us long to find a match. “Those are Lily and Vivian’s phone numbers. You don’t think…Do you think this means they have something to do with her disappearance?”
“Based on that alone, I’d be inclined to say no,” he speaks candidly, pursing his lips. “Though you shouldn’t rule it out. Whatever happened to Bernadette could have happened right after meeting up with them. But what’s strange is…if I pull up the records from their numbers…Look at the timestamps here.” He angles the screen in my direction again and points to a transcript between two phone numbers.
“That’s Lily and Vivian talking to each other, right?”
“Yeah…all the way past the meet up with Bernadette. The three of them were exchanging messages up until their locations were traced to the mall,” he explains. “Then Bernadette’s texts drop off. But Lily and Vivian’s continue.”
“So, Lily and Vivian kept using their phones to communicate with each other…” I try to follow along with him. “Even though the three of them were, in theory, all hanging out together in person?”
“It would appear so.”
“Well, what do the messages say?” I ask eagerly. Not only could this be a crack in the case, but, out of wild curiosity. I would love to know what those three talk about when no one else is around. “Vivian and Bernadette still had some tension between them after the investigation and everything. Could Lily and Vivian just have been talking shit about Bernadette through texts while they were hanging out with her?”
“The texts don’t look like anything out of the ordinary. But it’s still strange.” He makes a clicking sound against his teeth. “Makes it look like they were coordinating around something Bernadette didn’t know about. Something they didn’t want her to know about. Or maybe just one of them was hanging out with her while the other one kept tabs on them.”
“Like to plan an attack or something?” My eyes dart across the screens, wishing I could keep up with it all.
“Possibly. With this being Bernadette’s last known location and them being the last people she talked to…” he trails off, shaking his head. “It definitely doesn’t look good on their part. The police would definitely consider them their best suspects based on this information. Have you or Emmett confronted them about her disappearance yet?”
“No. Emmett’s been too convinced of their innocence this entire time,” I scoff. “Now he finally has decided to ask them about it…but I don’t know if that’s actually happened yet, or if anything has come of it.”
“Well, you should definitely tell Emmett about this,” he announces as he spins around from his desk to face me.
“Definitely.” I nod with my eyes still glued to the screens. “I want to tell him right away. Would you come with me to talk to him? He’s so paranoid that I’m just accusing them out of jealousy. If you’re there to explain the technical side of it, he might actually take it seriously.”
“I don’t know.” He frowns. “I’d be happy to…but you remember Emmett doesn’t exactly like me anymore.”
“You said the Elites had a lot to do with that,” I uphold optimistically. “I know things appear to be a little weird with him and Vivian right now…but hopefully that’s nothing. And if so, Emmett has changed a lot now that his father’s out of the picture. I know it’s hard to believe, but he’s really nothing like he used to be. Maybe he’s let go of whatever he had against you back then.”
Of course, I can’t bring up just how bad Emmett’s jealousy over Malcolm is. He’d never come if he knew how bad that was. I can only hope he’ll set that aside in light of the news. After all, Emmett asked me to try and set aside my jealousy towards Vivian, considering everything that’s happening. He should be able to do the same.
“If you say so.” He finally nods hesitantly. “I’m willing to try.”
Malcolm prints off large stacks of all of the data before we jump into his car and drive out to Emmett’s motel. I’m relieved his car is outside. If it hadn’t been, I’d have gone into a paranoid fit thinking he was still with Vivian.
“Stay here for a minute,” I tell Malcolm as I unbuckle my seatbelt. “Let me catch him up to speed a little before he sees you.”
“Sure.” He nods with an understanding smile.
I take a deep breath as I walk to his door. I’m still angry with him, but I try to push all of that away in the hope that this will change things.
“Ophelia!” he shouts as he flings open the door, yanking me into his arms. “Where have you been? I waited by your car after practice and never saw you. I’ve been worried sick. I went by your house and everything!”
“Why didn’t you just call me?” I cut my eyes into him, still wondering if he was really with Vivian all afternoon.
“I did!” he shoots back. “Like a hundred times.”
I pull my bag around my shoulder and fish out my phone. The screen is black and not turning on. “Oh, I’m sorry…it’s dead. I didn’t realize.”
But Emmett’s eyes have already settled on the car behind me—on Malcolm waiting inside. “What the fuck,” he growls. “What is he doing here?”
“That’s what I came to talk to you about.” I wave for him to get out of the car and come to the door. “Can we come in?” I push past Emmett before he even has a chance to answer. “Malcolm may have found out something that could help with your sister.”
“You told him about Bernadette?” he thunders, not taking his rageful eyes off of Malcolm.
“I know I shouldn’t have, but we can talk about that later,” I insist hurriedly. “But right now, you really need to hear about what we foun
d.”
“What the fuck are you doing hanging out with her, Malcolm?” Emmett fumes as he marches up to him. “You know she’s mine. You need to back off.”
“Listen, man…I don’t mean any harm.” Malcolm’s hands fly up in surrender, but his tone is even and cool. “I don’t want to cause any trouble between you two. I just want to help.”
“Emmett, please…” I go over and place a hand to his chest, hoping to calm him down. “Just listen to him. It could help us find your sister.”
“Alright, let’s hear it, old buddy,” he says condescendingly, crossing his arms. “Just what is it you think you know about my sister?”
“I traced her phone and went through her messages and calls. Here, I printed it all out for you so you could see for yourself.” Malcolm holds out the stack of papers, but Emmett doesn’t budge to take them. Malcolm tosses them onto the bed next to him instead. “Her last location before her phone dropped off was at Jameson Mall. And she was there with Vivian and Lily.”
“Oh, wow…” he coos cynically “So you mean my sister went to the mall with her friends? Shocking.”
“There’s more,” I insist, holding my hand up to get him to keep listening.
“There was some suspicious communication between Lily and Vivian,” Malcolm continues. “Makes it look like they were planning something against Bernadette.”
“Yeah…those girls are all malicious bitches to each other, you know that.” He shrugs. “They were probably just planning a revenge prank or something like that. This doesn’t prove they’re behind her disappearance.”
“Did you ask Vivian about it yet?” I ask him, growing frustrated.
“She says she doesn’t know anything,” he answers plainly, looking away from me.
“I guess it took her all day to tell you that,” I mutter.
“What?” he bellows.
“Nothing.”
“I want to know what the fuck you two were doing together in the first place,” he demands, bucking his chest up. “Why did you tell him about all of this?”
