Chasing Truth

by Julie Cross

  I lift my head and smile at him. “You want me to go to your military school? Have you seen my dresser? I don’t fold. Ever.”

  “It’s not really like that,” he says. “The girls don’t even have regulation bedding in the dorms or anything like that.”

  “Why don’t they get regular bedding? That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Regulation,” Miles clarifies. “In the boys’ dorm we’re issued the same bedding and have to make our beds the same way every morning. The girls can use whatever bedding they want.

  “I’m serious, Ellie. My dad could get you in. With a scholarship.” He tucks my hair behind my ear and kisses me. “You’re so smart. It’s wasted at Holden. They’re a bunch of idiots.”

  This is like the fairy tale where the handsome prince asks the peasant girl to run away with him. To military school. Yeah, that part needs some work.

  I touch his cheek. “I’m not cut out for that place.” For one, I’d never pass the background check. “And Harper’s here…”

  He kisses my palm and says, “I’ll wait until Holden turns into a war zone, and then I’ll come rescue you.”

  A little while later, when I open my eyes long enough to see Miles crawl out of my bedroom window, it hits me that he won’t be around to pop in like this anymore.

  I nearly call him and tell him, yes. I’ll follow you anywhere. Even if it means shining my shoes.

  But I’m an impostor. I barely recognize myself anymore. The way I acted when Justice confessed to me, how crazy I thought she was to lie for Dominic. Who am I to judge? My part in the Dr. Ames con is one tiny example of what I’ve done to hurt innocent people. The list is long. Long and unforgiving.

  I reach for my phone and send Miles a text.

  ME: so what now?

  MILES: sleep? I hear everyone is doing it

  ME: rule #228. But I mean now that Justice and Dominic are being questioned

  MILES: we let grown-ups handle it from here

  I was afraid of that. Afraid of losing our common ground.

  CHAPTER 44

  “Forget it, I’ll buy lunch,” I tell Harper. But she won’t stop digging through the kitchen, tossing items into a brown paper sack. She throws a bag of croutons in there.

  “Aidan manages to pack your lunch every morning, so surely I can figure it out.”

  “And every morning, I tell him he doesn’t have to do this.” Aidan made it home an hour ago and passed out cold. He worked nearly twenty-four hours. I glance at my cell again, my hand on the door. “Harp, seriously. The bus is sixty seconds away.”

  “Fine.” She tosses a ten-dollar bill at me.

  I snatch the money out of the air and fling the door open. When I spin around, I’m face-to-face with two guys in navy FBI jackets, service weapons strapped to their hips. Behind them is an entire SWAT team, vests and rifles. My heart slams against my chest and I’m frozen.

  “Ellie, go!” Harper shouts. “The bus is—”

  She’s behind me now, I can feel her there, holding her breath, taking it all in.

  “We’re looking for Agent Lawrence,” one man says.

  “I’m here. What’s going on?” Aidan appears in the kitchen, his sweats hastily pulled on.

  Before anyone can get any answers, the SWAT team pushes their way into the apartment and head straight for Aidan.

  Aidan lifts his hands, shocked. “Whoa, what—”

  He doesn’t get to finish his statement because one of the FBI agents begins shouting orders at him. The handcuffs come out next.

  “You’re under the arrest for the murder of Simon Gilbert—”

  My backpack slips off my shoulder and falls to the floor. I stand there unable to move or speak. Shock fills Aidan’s face and then, as if processing something, he goes perfectly still, unreadable. Like he’d been the night I was caught breaking into the Gilberts’ home.

  “You have the right to remain silent…”

  “No!” Harper grabs Aidan’s arm, refusing to let go.

  The cuffs are on him now, his hands behind his back. The SWAT team plus one special agent lead Aidan toward the door, rifles still poised to act as needed. Harper won’t let go. She’s following them out the door. One agent attempts to pry her hands from him and she elbows him in the side.

  “Let go,” Aidan tells her so firmly she obeys.

  “Do you understand these rights I have just read to you?”

  Aidan drops his gaze to the floor and nods. “Yes.”

  I wait for him to turn back, to look at me, and when he does, I hang on to this tiny thread of hope. Please tell me you didn’t do it. Please, Aidan. He holds my gaze for several seconds and then is led out.

  Harper seems to pull herself together. She turns to the remaining special agent. “You’re taking me to the field office. I will not sit around here while you interrogate an innocent man!”

  When he agrees to take her with him, I finally grapple for my voice. “Harper…”

  She turns to me as if she’d forgotten I was here. “Ellie, God…okay.” She exhales. “I’m going to go fix all of this and you’re gonna stay right here. Got it?”

  She gives me a quick hug, and I almost don’t let go. What the hell is happening? The agent leads her out, and I’m left standing in the kitchen, a mess around me—literally. Harper tore the place apart trying to pack my lunch, and then the SWAT team did their own damage.

  Some force deep inside me takes over and suddenly I’m in motion, picking up fallen and out-of-place items. My chest grows tighter and tighter. I tug at the collar of my school polo, trying to relieve myself of this pressing weight. Is this my fault somehow? Because I added Aidan to our list of suspects? No, that doesn’t even make sense. I focus on the tasks in front of me—put pickle jar back in fridge, pick up cereal box from floor, sweep fallen Cheerios from counter…

  “Why aren’t you on the bus?”

  I jump at the sound of Miles’s voice and the appearance of him in the doorway. The open milk carton slips from my hand, hitting the tile floor with a thud, and the glug glug of milk flowing out follows. My breaths are coming in short spurts, my heart beating rapidly.

  “You’re not on the bus, either,” I say stupidly.

  “Yeah, well, I spotted the FBI camped out and figured I should make myself scarce. Looks like we’re in the clear, though.”

  Clyde appears behind Miles. “That was a whole SWAT team on the premises. What’d you do? Make friends with another big-time dealer?”

  “Aidan,” I manage to say. “They arrested Aidan. For Simon.”

  I try to draw in a breath, but air won’t enter. I shake my arms, the panic increasing. I don’t even see Miles’s reaction, but soon he’s crossing the milk river and right in front of me, his hands on my arms. “Ellie, what’s wrong?”

  “I…can’t…breathe…” I force out; I’m tugging at my shirt, pulling as hard as I can.

  Miles undoes the buttons. “Do you have asthma?”

  I shake my head.

  “Heart condition?”

  Spots form in front of my eyes, and I barely notice the larger, heavier steps crossing the kitchen. Then Clyde is beside Miles, the paper bag Harper tried to use to make my lunch in his hands. He forces me to sit down, my back against the wall. He holds the bag over my mouth and nose. “Breathe slowly…relax.”

  I close my eyes and listen to his voice. Focus. These are my lungs and they will accept air. My head pounds from lack of proper oxygen, sweat trickles over me, the bag crinkles open and closed. Even though they’re sitting in front of me, I hear Miles and Clyde arguing as if from outside the apartment. Focus. Breathe.

  Soon, my lungs relax, accept air. My body turns to Jell-O and I slump over against Miles. For a moment all I feel is relief. Relief from not dying. But I know it’s short-lived, and the panic will return soon. I close my eyes and continue to slow my breathing. Clyde pulls the bag away and looks me over. “Good, keep breathing like that. You’ll be fine.” He turns to Miles. “Let’s go
back to our place.”

  For a moment, I’m sure they’re going to leave me here, maybe to hide from the FBI, but then Miles places my arms around his neck and scoops me right up off the floor.

  “Grab her school bag and phone,” he tells Clyde, and I take note of the fact that it’s the first time I’ve heard Miles say anything to his uncle without sarcasm or venom behind the words.

  Miles deposits me on their apartment couch, and he and Clyde walk around locking windows and doors, closing the blinds. They move in unison. They’re worried about media showing up here. I allow myself a good five minutes to relax into the couch, thank the universe for clean air and lungs and whatever else. And then slowly, with each passing minute, the panic returns. Though this time it’s more of an urgent need to do something rather than a pathetic inability to breathe—that’s something that happens to amateur con men, not a seasoned veteran like myself.

  I snatch my phone from the coffee table and call Harper. It rings and rings and then goes to voice mail. “I need an update!” I say.

  I hang up, dial again. No answer. “Dammit, Harper, tell me what’s going on!”

  Before I call a third time, Clyde plucks the phone from my hand and replaces it with a can of soda. “Drink this. I’ll go down to the field office and check in, okay?”

  “Try not to end up in a cell,” Miles says.

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Clyde is already throwing on his coat, unaffected by his nephew’s hate.

  I catch his arm before he leaves. We aren’t related; he doesn’t have a blood obligation to help me. “Thanks, Clyde.”

  He looks embarrassed by the gratitude but gives a nod. “I’ll call you in a few.”

  When the door shuts, I turn to Miles, notice his statue stance, and realize he was dropped nearly as big a bomb as me. I don’t know what to say except, “You don’t think he did it, do you? I know we said it could be anyone but…”

  The silence that sits between my question and his answer becomes an entire continent. I push to my feet and pace the room, despite my shaking legs. “What evidence could they have on him? And what about this other guy Dominic mentioned? Is that not an important lead to pursue?”

  Logic might be coming out of my mouth, but in my head, I can’t consider Aidan because I can’t mentally conjure an image of him, standing before Simon, pointing a weapon at him and pulling the trigger.

  Maybe there is logic to that. “He has no motive.”

  “He was the last one to see Simon, was in the room with Simon and the gun,” Miles recites from our notes.

  “That’s setup,” I protest. “A scenario that could be played out, but it’s not motive. Other than psychosis or sociopathy making Aidan predisposed to be a killer, tell me one reason why he’d do it.”

  More silence sits between me and my partner in crime, but eventually he clears his throat and speaks one word. “Money.”

  I pivot to face him. “Money?”

  “He’s a trained marksman. Served three years in the military doing that job.”

  “You think he’s been secretly moonlighting as a hit man?” I shake my head.

  “He wouldn’t need a career at it,” Miles says. “One big job could be worth over a million dollars.”

  “Okay, so where’s the money then?” I demand. “Simon’s been dead since last June. It’s November. Surely he’s been paid by now.”

  Miles winces at my frank statement of Simon’s death, and I immediately stop pacing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s fine,” he says.

  The walls close in around me; realization hits hard. I look at Miles, desperate for some thread to hold on to. “You’re not gonna help me prove he’s innocent, are you?”

  He locks eyes with me, holding my gaze, and I remember what he said when I discovered his real purpose for transferring schools. If he didn’t fucking kill himself, whoever did this is gonna pay.

  That anger, that hatred, that quest for revenge is in there still, and he’s got it aimed at Aidan now. A feeling of hopelessness sweeps over me. Why can’t it be Dominic? Or the mystery guy Dominic saw?

  “I don’t want it to be Aidan,” I whisper.

  “I know.” Sympathy fills Miles’s face, and he moves closer.

  I brush off his attempt to touch me and pull myself together. “Lead me there, then. We don’t agree on the why. So how?”

  “The FBI used Aidan’s statement to close the case,” Miles says, and now he’s pacing. “The fact that he saw Simon in possession of the weapon that would eventually kill him. Aidan heard the gunshot. He found Simon dead.”

  “Yeah, but why are they just now arresting him? Two days ago, we were leading them to Dominic,” I argue. “And then it turned out Dominic and Justice had a false alibi. And wait…what about the mystery guy at the door? The probably Caucasian guy? Definitely not Agent Lawrence. Where the hell does Aidan fit into this?”

  “New evidence surfaced. Could be anything from emails, texts, phone calls to whoever may have hired Lawrence. Pictures of him meeting suspicious persons. Or maybe Dominic’s confession led them to this mystery guy, who saw Aidan inside the house.”

  “But we already know he was in the house! He was supposed to be in the house!” The panic rises in my throat again, and my chest tightens. I shake my arms out and force it away. “But it’s Aidan… You don’t know what he’s done for Harper and for me. You have no idea—”

  “Which makes you a great character witness for him,” Miles says.

  “Me? Yeah, right. Harper, maybe,” I say without thinking. I look up and catch something on Miles’s face. “What?”

  He shakes his head. “Nothing. I’m just saying, you’re a good student, no criminal record—”

  “What, Miles?” I demand. “What’s wrong with my sister as a character witness? She’s not capable of seeing the bad? Love is blind and all that?”

  CHAPTER 45

  My gut is already twisting, knowing this must be something bad. Miles looks absolutely torn, but after he scrubs a hand over his face and looks up at me, I know he’s made a decision. He nods for me to follow him into the secret room. He tugs at a corner of the carpet, peeling it back to reveal a small hole in the floor. From it, he removes a package—a large manila envelope, the kind with plastic bubbles on the inside. He hesitates, but eventually he hands it over to me.

  “Remember that piece of the puzzle that led me here?” Miles says, giving a nod to the envelope. “There’s a reason I kept it vague.”

  I immediately recognize the handwriting on the front addressing the package to Miles at a PO box. Handwriting familiar to me from dozens of biology lab reports. And in the corner I see his name: Simon Gilbert. I almost drop the package. It feels like him, like seeing a ghost, even more so than the crime scene photos. I glance at the postmarked date. It’s from June of last year. One week before he died. Miles gives me a tiny nod, and I slide the package contents out. There’s a folder with a Post-it attached to the front featuring Simon’s neat cursive.

  MB,

  I need your help. Meet me next week.

  You know the place and time. Keep these safe for me until then.

  Thanks,

  S

  Miles wasn’t kidding. This doesn’t sound like the note of a suicidal person.

  I open the folder and glance over a large photo of a woman—a stripper most likely—wrapped around a pole, topless and wearing only a black thong. I give it a closer look.

  “Hey, this is the girl…” I glance up at Miles, waiting for confirmation. I’ve asked about her so many times, and he refused to tell me why she was here in this apartment tossing his clothes into the pool. “But what does this have to do with Harper—”

  My stomach sinks, the air stalled in my lungs. Far off to the right, topless and wrapped around her own pole, is my sister. I toss the photo to the floor in order to see the one behind it. This one is a close-up of Harp, upside-down on her pole this time. I toss the second photo to
the floor and release a breath when I see the third. Aidan in his Marine Corps uniform, stuffing money in Harper’s thong.

  So this is how they met. Aidan watched my sister dance topless. And then he paid her for her performance. And this is what Harper left my family to do? I was alone for five years so that my sister could be a stripper?

  I shake those thoughts from my head. It’s not that simple. Deep down I know that.

  “Why would Simon send you these?” I ask Miles.

  “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I didn’t even consider opening the folder until after he was gone. There was no need. He wanted a safe place for the information until we met up, and I could do that. But then after…I thought maybe there was a connection. Maybe it was a clue. So I went to the strip club and found the first girl in the photo, but not the other one. Not Harper. I told the manager I was her brother and she caved, gave me the address. I checked out the apartment and saw Agent Lawrence, the guy stuffing money in—” He shakes his head, lifts his eyes to meet mine. “And then I saw you by the pool. I recognized you from the dance pictures Simon had posted on Facebook. They were the last thing he’d posted. But you hadn’t been tagged. I didn’t know where to find you other than at Holden.”

  I stare at him, my mouth hanging open. “So you thought it would be a good idea to move in next door, sign up at Holden.”

  “That’s not a secret, Ellie,” Miles says. “You knew that I investigated you first. I told you that.”

  True. He did. But I guess I always thought our first meeting was the day I fished his clothes out of the pool. That was just the first time I met him.

  “Lawrence caught me spying on you guys,” Miles admits. “Last June. I was going a little crazy, not being able to cope with Simon… He caught me in the parking lot, found this envelope. I told him Simon was my friend and that I needed to make sense out of the pictures.”

  “Aidan knows about your history with Simon? Does he know about the honors program?”

  “No, I’m sure he doesn’t. He was really nice about things when he caught me, considering I had topless photos of Harper…” Miles chews on his thumbnail. “He called my parents, though, took me to a diner while we waited for my dad. He let me keep this package as long as I promised to never show the photos to anyone, especially you.”