by Julie Cross
“ADHD?” Miles suggests.
I shake my head. “Who knows? But obviously he’s loyal to some things in his life. When he doesn’t care about something he doesn’t bother pretending.”
Miles sinks back in his chair, thinking. “Those articles were trimmed and cut with precision. Perfectly placed into that envelope.”
“You saw them, too?” I ask, and he nods. “Seems like something a psychopath would do.”
“What if…” Miles stands, paces the room. “Dominic did have something to do with Simon’s death, and what if someone knows about it and is tormenting him with the articles, and planted the bugged pen in his bag…?”
“If that’s true, why would Dominic keep the articles there?” I ask.
“You’re right. Doesn’t make sense.” Miles stops pacing and sits back down. “It’s more likely the FBI is still keeping an eye on a handful of Holden students.”
“Then wouldn’t they be keeping an eye on me?” I say. “Also, the device I found in Dominic’s bag wasn’t FBI issued.”
“And you know that how?” Miles drills.
“I have a friend who looked into it for me.” Still looking into it, actually. And unfortunately before Miles caught me in his secret room, he found Connie’s device on Dominic’s keys and promptly destroyed it. Not sure if she’ll continue to help me after I tell her this.
“So what you’re saying is that we don’t know who’s spying on Dominic and why he carries around those articles,” Miles concludes. “Basically we learned nothing from his room.”
“That flash drive’s looking pretty good right now, huh?”
Miles eyes it and then picks it up off the table, holding it in one hand. “I think I can get a warrant to view this evidence.”
“A warrant? Seriously? On what grounds? You have a hunch that the FBI screwed up a homicide investigation?”
“The grounds for it aren’t a problem. Plenty of criminal activity to justify searching that house and online activity.”
I perk up. “The house? You mean Dominic’s dad? What’s he into?” Dominic’s family is old money. It’s a lot harder to figure out what those families do and what type of trouble they could get into.
Miles gives me a bewildered look. “I’m talking about Dominic. About the crimes I’ve witnessed.” My face must be blank because he adds, “Did you miss the drug dealer he has on speed dial hanging out here last week?”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “Dominic’s not like a criminal criminal. He hasn’t established sainthood like you, but still…”
“Ellie, he purchases, uses, and occasionally gives illegal drugs to friends in exchange for cash.” Miles pauses, offering me a chance to retract my statement. When I don’t, he continues. “Where I come from, that’s a crime. And people who commit crimes are called what again?”
I hold my hands up, surrendering. “I guess if you want to get all technical.”
“The grounds for search aren’t a problem, like I said. It’s the deception involved. Making it seem like I’m looking for something related to…to my…”
“Schoolwork?” I prompt, knowing he still won’t admit it out loud. Maybe they put a silencing spell on him at that military school.
“But I would be searching for something else. Reporting it like I’m not using the information for my own agenda.”
I lean on one elbow, looking him over. “Keeps you up at night, huh?”
God, we are so different. I’d have been halfway through that drive by now.
He flips the plastic thumb drive between his fingers. I’m waiting for a lecture or a textbook answer, but when Miles looks up at me, I’m caught off guard by the intense stare.
“Can I ask you something, Ellie?”
Oh no, not with that look. “What?”
“What are you hoping to find? With all this digging into Simon’s death? What’s really keeping you from adopting the suicide conclusion that closed the case?”
Right now, I have a gut feeling. Not exactly what Miles wants to hear, I’m sure.
“What’s keeping you from closing the case?” I ask, turning the table. “Are you really hoping to find proof of an accident or maybe even find a murderer?”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, his face inches from me. “I’m hoping to find the truth. Something better than evidence strung together to create a believable story.”
My heart pounds, realization hitting me. “Because you have a piece that doesn’t fit the story.”
I think I’ve known this since the moment he revealed his true self after holding me at gunpoint. I knew there was something real and tangible that brought Miles here.
“So do you,” Miles says. “Or we wouldn’t have bumped heads investigating the same things.”
“Bumped heads, or something else?” Not the time for a make-out joke, but the comment slipped out before I could stop myself. “And if you have something, why not hand it over to the authorities? What’s that rule you quoted about destroying evidence again?”
“I haven’t destroyed anything. And I need more to work with than what I have. Then I will go through the proper channels.”
“So you do bend the rules?” I watch him closely, and after a second, he looks away. My gaze travels to the note Simon wrote him, pinned to the wall. “For Simon, you’ll bend the rules,” I conclude. “What was it like for you two after he wrote that note?”
“Hard,” he admits. “We were both honest and neither of us got what we wanted. He wanted me to feel the same about him, and I wanted my friend back.”
Weight presses on my chest. This keeps happening to me. I tease Miles, I get pissed at him for driving me insane, and I daydream about making out with him again, lots of shallow feelings and mostly lust. And then he says something that allows me to see inside him and it becomes this heavy weight on my chest, something more than shallow. Much more. But I can’t do the same. Not to someone who hates everything I’m about, all the parts I keep hidden. Not to someone leaving soon. Going back to a squeaky-clean life of civic duty. This is the truth and it hurts already. Imagine how it would feel if I did let him see me?
“Did you keep in touch after he left Marshall Academy?” I ask, getting back to business.
“Yeah, we did. But it wasn’t the same. There was always this invisible thing between us, and no matter how hard I tried to get rid of it…” He stops, clears his throat. “All I know is that he would have done anything for me if I’d asked. Despite what happened between us. If I needed him, he would have been there. And I owe it to Simon to do everything I can to find out the truth about his death. Whatever that is.”
“So let’s find the truth,” I say. “No more follow-the-rules B.S. The FBI closed the case. They left us no choice.”
“If we’re going to work together, we have to really work together,” Miles says. “No more deviating from our plans without telling me. No more handing over evidence to secret sources or whatever you did with that bugged pen—”
“That was before our civil union,” I argue.
“I know,” Miles says. “But from now on, we’re a team. And you don’t lie or turn on your teammates, got it?”
I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry. “Got it.”
But that might be a lie. I’m not sure I know how to be a team player. In my family, we obviously had to work together. The Dr. Ames con would have never worked as a solo job. But honesty with one another was never part of our team rules. If you’re good enough to con a con artist, then you should do exactly that. The only person I’ve ever trusted in my family is Harper. I would add my mother, but if my dad asked her to lie to me, she would, so I never really knew with her.
We sit in silence for a long moment, and I’m half expecting Miles to draw up a contract or make us sign in blood. But he doesn’t, and the silence makes me more nervous. “So, does this mean we’re looking at the flash drive?”
“Yeah.” He tosses it on the table and grabs his laptop. “We are.”
; “Only took you an hour to get on my train.” I pull out my own laptop. “Good thing I already downloaded everything onto my computer because we’re gonna have to double time it to make up for the wasted time dealing with your moral compass.”
“Jesus, you are impossible,” Miles says.
I grin at him. “Impossible or impossibly amazing?”
“You’re at least a hundred different impossibles.”
“I do like to aim high.” I type in my password and open the folder on my desktop labeled “wtf.” “Care to be more specific?”
Miles types in his own overly complicated password. “Impossible to get you to turn off your game, impossible if you don’t get your way. Impossible to ignore.”
Impossible to ignore. Like the view from the window when Miles is in the pool. Unfortunately, they closed the pool for the season last week. My face warms. I try to focus on looking through Dominic’s documents, but then I feel eyes on me.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head, the flash drive poised in one hand ready to be inserted, but he stops and places a hand on my cheek. “Awfully warm.”
I shoot a glare at him. “It’s hot in here. I’d open a window if you had one.”
He’s still staring at me thirty seconds later. “Impossible to get inside your head, something I’d love to do right now.”
I laugh darkly. “You can try, but you would be going where no man has gone before.”
“A challenge,” he says. “Be careful with those. I have trouble resisting.”
Resisting a challenge or me? But I don’t ask that because Miles is right. It’s complicated. I dig my heels into the investigation. “How about you tackle all the folders full of C-level papers and I’ll search through the photo and video files.”
Miles dives into a piece of brilliant literary analysis by Dominic while I open a picture folder labeled: Family Vacation 2006.
From my experience, studying an asset through computer data, it’s always a long, tedious search usually offering tiny morsels of gold buried in thousands of bytes of useless data. So when a very leading photo pops up before my eyes not five minutes in, I nearly fall out of my chair. Instead I lean in closer just to see if my eyes are correct, then I promptly slam the laptop shut. “Oh my God!”
Miles looks up, startled. “What?”
I wave a hand at the laptop. “Uh…think I found something.”
“Okay…?” Miles slides the laptop in front of him and opens it. “What— Oh shit.”
I shove back my chair and start pacing the room. Several things are beginning to make sense. I conjure up the image of our biology classroom last semester. Simon on my left at our lab table, his gaze constantly fixated on Justice. If I were in Simon’s spot, looking the same direction, I’d have a clear shot of Bret and Dominic’s—
“How did I not think of this the second I saw that note?” I point to Simon’s love letter to Miles on the wall.
Miles expands the photo, zooms in on it. I stop pacing and lean over him to examine the photo. Dominic DeLuca and Simon Gilbert lip-locked. I blink. Check again to make sure it’s still there.
“That’s the suit he was wearing the night of the dance,” I assess.
Miles nods. “It’s too close up to tell where they are. Outside somewhere. Do you remember him leaving at all during the dance?”
“He went to the bathroom a couple of times,” I say.
Miles flips to the next photo. It’s a screenshot of an email sent to Dominic from [email protected]. The email is blank, no text, but the subject line reads: PHOTO OF YOU, and a thumbnail-sized version of the scandalous photo is clearly attached at the bottom.
“This is who sent the picture,” I say.
Miles nods. “He probably deleted the email to be safe.”
We continue to flip the deliberately mislabeled 2006 Family vacay folder and find more screen shots of emails. All blank. All from the same address. Same photo attached. There are dozens of them dated about a week apart, spanning all the way back to the end of last June. Right after Simon died.
I start pacing again, shake out my arms. My head is a mess. Too much, too soon, maybe. “Now we know why he carries those articles.”
“And why he hates you,” Miles says, jumping up from his own seat.
I turn sharply to face my teammate. “Dominic hates me? I know he glares a lot and barely says anything, but hate…why? Because I went to the dance with Simon?”
“Think about it, Ellie. If this”—he waves at the make-out photo—“happened during the dance, you would be Dominic’s top suspect, the most likely to notice Simon vanishing.”
My forehead wrinkles. “And then what? Follow him outside, let him make out with another guy, and then kill him?”
“Dominic isn’t exactly open about his dating preferences, as far as I can tell. We might be thinking about catching a killer, but he’s thinking about keeping his affair a secret.”
I stare at him, still not following completely.
“Dominic thinks you’re tormenting him,” Miles explains. “And he can’t say anything because you know something he doesn’t want anyone to know.”
I sink down into my chair. Dominic thinks I’m blackmailing him. God, that does explain a lot. “But I’m not sending these pictures, and I didn’t put the bugged pen in his bag.”
“I know.” Miles turns to face me. “Someone is out there targeting Dominic. He could be in danger and not even know it.”
CHAPTER 26
MILES: Bret’s gonna ask you to homecoming
I stare at the text, confused as hell. Especially considering Miles was sitting beside me on the bus less than five minutes ago. Did he exit the bus and head right to a gossip session at his locker?
ME: r u undercover as a 14 year old girl now?
MILES: Rule #228 violated again. And u know I’m not undercover
Right. The experiential learning program. Turning good boys into men who know drug dealers.
MILES: The dance = operation school records. Setting is perfect for this mission
Look who’s joined my train for real. Breaking and entering is a big jump for Miles Beckett, Hero Who Barely Bends Rules.
ME: got it. So, to be clear, I should say yes?
MILES: not gonna answer that, Rule #228 again. I’m asking Justice.
I’m nearly done reading Miles’s last text when I look up and he’s walking past me in the hall. I grab his arm and pull him into a less crowded hallway.
“You do realize that Justice is expecting a grand promposal-type gesture, right?”
Miles leans against the wall looking cool and calm. “I got it covered.”
“When did you think up this grand plan? During the ten minutes between the bus and standing here with me?”
“Yes, actually.”
I’m not an expert in regular school, either, but I’ve been around since last spring when actual promposals happened, so I’m schooled in the expectations. “You’ve got to do better than a pizza with words spelled out in M&M’s. Plus Justice is gluten free—doubt she’d eat pizza.”
Miles folds his arms across his chest. “Clearly, you have no faith in me.”
I roll my eyes. “I have faith in the fact that you haven’t devoted your valuable time to studying how to ask a girl to a high school dance.”
“Guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
With that cryptic message, he leaves me alone in the hallway, and I have no choice but to head to homeroom. On the way, Dominic DeLuca walks right past me without so much as a nod. It’s weird seeing him now, knowing about his secret affair with Simon. He seems like a different person. Seconds later, Miles appears at his side. Ever since our cryptic conclusion about him being in danger, Miles has kept a close eye on Dominic.
I sit down at my regular desk in the middle of the room and stuff my phone in my backpack.
“Eleanor Ames?” Mr. Chin says, holding a note in one hand.
“Yes?” He stroll
s over to my desk and drops the note in front of me. It’s a request to meet in the guidance counselor’s office after homeroom. I don’t know what this is about, but it’s likely not good. I tap my foot, watching the clock until the bell rings.
The hall floods with students. I’m shoving my way through the elbows and backpacks toward the office when one of several TVs placed throughout the school shifts abruptly from listing tonight’s activities to displaying a giant red heart. The letters J then U pop up inside the heart as if someone is typing it live. I stop in the middle of the hall. All around me, my classmates are doing the same.
J-U-S-T-I-C-E
W-I-L-L
Y-O-U
G-O
T-O
H-O-M-E-C-O-M-I-N-G
W-I-T-H
M-E
??
M-I-L-E-S
The heart vanishes and question marks flash on the screen. A scream of delight erupts from the end of the hallway. I turn in time to see Justice, several of her friends gathered around her, jumping up and down.
A tiny ball of something unknown sits in my stomach. Am I actually bothered by Miles playing Justice? Or is it the fact that he’s not my date?
Miles appears in the hallway near Justice. I can’t hear them but I’m sure he’s asking her for real. When she obviously says yes, he gives her the sexy grin he’s flashed me so many times. And then, before Miles turns around to head back to class, Justice grabs the front of his uniform shirt, yanks him closer, and kisses him. Right here in the hallway, in front of a large audience. Even from my spot far at the other end, I can clearly see Miles’s eyes widen. He hadn’t expected that. That makes two of us.
I stand there, frozen in place, watching them lip-locked. The ball in the pit of my stomach triples in size.
Jesus Christ, Ellie. Get it together.
The air I’d been holding in whooshes out of my lungs, and I turn back around as the applause erupts in the hall. Several of the office staff came out to watch the show, but they trickle back in when I open the door.
“I have a note to see Ms. Geist.” I swallow the lump still in my throat and tell the secretary.
Before she can direct me to the guidance counselor, Ms. Geist opens her office door, revealing Aidan, already seated inside. I refrain from letting my eyes widen, but when Harper appears behind me, out of breath, carting a toddler twin on each hip, I start to panic.
