by C. L. Stone
Kota tried to refocus. He had other things to worry about. He had Academy business to take care of.
The bar in downtown Charleston wasn’t overly crowded for a Friday evening, but they were several hours early. The inside smelled of mildew and alcohol mixes. Rock music played through overhead speakers. Six customers clustered together comfortably at the carved wood bar. Two bartenders leaned on their elbows over the bar top to talk with the patrons. Kota guessed the customers at the bar were regulars. They seemed more at ease than the sixteen other people gathered at seven other tables by the empty stage.
Kota absently touched the bridge of his glasses on his nose. He located the door beyond the far side of the bar marked with a sign: Green Room.
He opened the door, counting off heads as he entered the room. Seven, including Mr. Blackbourne and Dr. Green. They were missing Gabriel and Victor.
He nodded to the others, tugging the drumsticks out of his back pocket and placing them quietly on the table. He sat on one of the available stools surrounding the table in the middle. A family meeting was long overdue.
As soon as he sat down at one end of the table, the door opened behind him and Gabe and Vic walked in. Gabe’s hair was spiky in the back today, ready for a night of guitar playing and singing for a crowd. His bright orange shirt had zigzags of contrasting green. They were there to draw attention tonight, and Gabriel was making sure that happened.
Victor was in jeans and a plain black t-shirt he’d borrowed from North. It was one of the few times Victor ever wore something so plain. Victor hooked his finger at the end of the sleeve, tugging as if uncomfortable. Kota knew Victor didn’t like playing piano in front of other people in general, although their faux rock band was less of a stressor for Victor than the elaborate concerts his parents demanded he participated in.
Luke’s blond hair was swept back into the clip he’d taken from Sang. He and Nathan would trade off bass and second guitar for the night. North would take over drums if Kota wasn’t there, but North and Silas needed to set up equipment and work the floor tonight. They were the distraction as the bar owner—an Academy member—had his own important task.
What that was, they didn’t know, and they didn’t need to. When it came to favors, they did as they were told. They had to trust in the Academy.
Mr. Blackbourne quietly tugged a little black box out of his pocket. Kota recognized the device. With the right frequency, out of human hearing, it could disable recording devices that might have been missed in a security sweep. Whatever they wanted to talk about tonight, they didn’t want anyone outside the group knowing about, including the Academy.
They eyed one another. No one wanted to begin.
Her situation was not as straightforward as their family problems had been.
Mr. Blackbourne cleared his throat. “Mrs. Sorenson will be taken to the Mayo Clinic in Florida. She’s en route now.”
Kota nodded in approval. “For how long?”
“We don’t know,” Dr. Green said. He propped his elbows on the table, leaning forward. His eyes drooped and his usual warm smile was a little faint. Kota had the feeling he was working overtime at the hospital again, mostly due to Sang’s mother. “At least two months, maybe three. We’ve ensured that she’ll be staying at least that long to give her time away from the girls as well as time to hopefully be ready for surgery and to recover. Apparently when the medicine was corrected, it cleared her mind up. It forced this secret out in the open and she’s not in the right place to deal with it.”
And poor Sang had to deal with it, instead. “Sang’s father,” Kota said, “Has asked her to remain in the house to watch over it while her mother is gone. Marie is staying, too. He expects her to get her license, and basically live alone with him paying for it. He’s left them for another family.” The other seven knew, but wanted to get Dr. Green caught up since he’d been busy with Sang’s mother.
“We found him and his new family,” North said. His hands made fists against the table. “The woman is at least ten years younger than him, and she has two boys, one our age and one in college. From what we can tell, Mr. Sorenson has been living there for a while. We don’t know if the kids are his yet, but I don’t think they are. He’s claimed the house they live in on his taxes as a vacation home. The woman doesn’t know about Mrs. Sorenson or Sang and Marie. Her Facebook status claims she’s married to Mr. Sorenson. I don’t know if he faked a wedding with her or if she’s jumping the gun. He’s still officially married to Mrs. Sorenson according to the state. Mr. Sorenson and his… mistress and their family are living on the other side of the state, close to the North Carolina border. This is why it took him so long to get here.”
Victor’s left hand drifted up, two fingers swaying in the air as if to redirect attention. “He’s got four different savings accounts under different names in a separate bank apart from his checking account. He’s labeled the four saving accounts. One is marked ‘house,’ which I’m guessing is for funding the house for Mrs. Sorenson and the girls. There’s also one marked ‘school’. The others are just initialed; one is marked with an S, the other with an M. You can imagine who those might be for. He funnels money out from each of his paychecks. The amounts in Sang’s and Marie’s accounts are enough to carry them both through college, unless they become doctors. I’m not sure what the school fund is for. The amount is way too much for them to need for high school books and fees. College, too, maybe.”
“We know,” Mr. Blackbourne said, and he focused on Kota.
Kota pursed his lips. He hadn’t wanted to reveal this to the others, because he didn’t want to worry them and he was sure he could figure out an answer to this before now. With everything that had happened though, Mr. Blackbourne silently commanded him with a look to spill it. Kota sighed. “We found letters of acceptance for both Sang and Marie into a…a boarding school of some kind.”
“Boarding school?” Gabriel asked, sitting up sharply.
“It’s more like a prison,” Kota said. “Very restrictive. Very hush, hush. An all-girl school, and she’d be enrolled until she was at least eighteen. If she entered, she’d be forced to stay. I think it’s a place for troubled teens. The administrators have a bad reputation. There are a lot of abuse reports that get buried by the local police station.”
“And he wants to send her there?” North asked. “Fucking Christ.”
“If he’s told Miss Sorenson she needs to stay until the end of the school year,” Mr. Blackbourne said, “it could be possible he has enrollment established and he just needs to wait it out until then. He may have planned to dump the girls into a boarding school earlier but kept them around because Mrs. Sorenson was so sick. He needed someone to babysit her.”
Kota sat back. The others around him shifted uncomfortably. Kota knew the feeling. Sang’s life was a twist of complications, most of which she didn’t know about yet. Her father had lied to her. He wasn’t trying to take care of her. He wanted to stash her away.
“Well that’s it,” Gabriel said, his fingertips drumming on the table. “We can’t let her go to this… thing. No fucking way. She’s coming home with us.”
“We have to tell her the truth,” Victor said. “When she hears her mom’s going to come back and her dad wants to drop her into a boarding school, she’ll come with us.”
Mr. Blackbourne frowned. “From what you’ve told me, it seems pretty clear Mr. Sorenson wants her to stay at home. I believe the reason is if she goes off to live on her own, and if someone discovers a young girl living on her own, social services might ask questions. If they look into it, they might discover who her real mother is. We need to investigate the details before we can confront Mr. Sorenson. Mr. Sorenson might be opposed to us taking her, as he might be worried we’d draw attention to this. However, the details are pretty buried. The only ones who might know the truth are Mr. and Mrs. Sorenson.”
“And Mrs. Sorenson isn’t talking right now. She’s barely tolerating treatment,” Dr. Green s
aid. He raked his fingers through his hair. “And if we take Sang, what do we do with Marie?”
“Marie is trouble,” Luke said. “She’s sneaking booze from the liquor cabinet from Danielle’s house. I found the bottles in her room. Marie isn’t doing her homework and failing her classes. I’ve heard she’s selling off some of her mom’s pills for money at school, too. She’s going to end up in jail before too long.”
“But Sang feels responsible for her,” Kota said. He didn’t like Marie, either, not since she’d lied to them all, and stolen Sang’s phone and clothes. He’d pitied her before because of the situation, but Marie was the complete opposite of Sang. “Sang’s lost two mothers and a father in one night. How can we ask her to take off on her sister? She’s hanging onto the last piece of family she has.” Kota admired Sang for trying her best, but it left them with little choice. The silly girl was too loyal for her own good. “And once she learns about this boarding school, she’s not going to want Marie to go there, even if she might deserve it.”
Mr. Blackbourne sliced his hand through the air. “We’ve got two options,” he said. “Our first is to tell Sang, and let her know the truth. Marie would be informed and she’ll probably go her own way if she hears about the boarding school. Somehow we have to convince Mr. Sorenson to let Sang come with us. If that happens, we need to know what we’re dealing with. If Mr. Sorenson did rape a sixteen year old girl, this might become a devil’s deal, and we’d have to ensure him that his secret will stay buried if she remains with us.”
Kota frowned, and from how the others’ faces darkened, he could tell they disliked this option. Not that they didn’t want Sang, but if Mr. Sorenson was that kind of person, they wouldn’t want him to get away with this. Who knows what else he might have done?
Victor cleared his throat softly. “What’s plan B?”
Mr. Blackbourne sighed. “Our only other option is to bring this to the Academy.”
“She can’t join the Academy,” Kota said, frowning. Mr. Blackbourne had to be crazy to think Sang should join. When assignments filtered through to them, they picked which ones they wanted to take on. Academy girls were often asked to play the role of bait. Sang was too sweet, too trusting and too reckless to say no to those dangerous assignments. He wanted to get her out of danger, not throw her back into it. But outside of his desire to keep her safe, there was no way she could join. Not right now. “She doesn’t trust us.”
“And we don’t have time to get her to trust us that much,” North said. “Between school and dealing with Mr. Hendricks, we’ve only got a few months before that mother returns and kicks her out anyway.”
“I’m not talking about making her a member,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “Besides what you’ve mentioned, we’re also still not ready, unless we were willing to take the risk that she’d join another group.”
There was a chorus of grumbles in the negative. Kota knew better. Despite their group being the team lead because they adopted her, she was still new to them. Another team could easily swoop in and lure her into joining them. Kota was pretty sure Sang liked them, but did he want to risk losing her? If joining the Academy became the answer, the only team he wanted her to join was theirs. As it stood now, the Academy wouldn’t allow it. A bird in a dog squad usually never worked out. So that confirmed it for him. He didn’t want her to join.
Mr. Blackbourne’s mouth curled up in the corner. “I guess that answered the other question I had. So we do want to keep her?”
“Yes,” Kota said, though his voice was lost as eight other members, including Dr. Green, all answered the same, some louder than others. There was no question about this. Sang was staying.
“What are we talking about?” Nathan asked. His face was drawn, blue eyes dark. “We’ll ask for a favor from the Academy to help us get her out?”
“Correct,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “We have them help us find out the truth about Mr. Sorenson. It’ll be the fastest possible solution. We could possibly use the Academy’s private school façade, and make Mr. Sorenson believe that our Miss Sorenson has been accepted under a scholarship. He might be willing to give her to us if he believes a school is willing to take her in for free.”
“If he can put her in sooner,” Kota said, almost liking this idea, even though he knew a catch was coming, “if he was told she was accepted before the end of the school term, he’d probably jump on it. Especially if he doesn’t have to spend his school fund he’s set aside.”
Mr. Blackbourne’s eyes brightened. He planted his hands on the table in front of him, leaning against it. “We’d have to find an acceptable place for her sister, although that might be a problem because of her failing grades. We’ll have to have the Academy pull a few strings for us. With their protection, Miss Sorenson would be out of reach if Mr. Sorenson’s past is too horrible to ignore. But on top of Mrs. Sorenson’s hospital requirements and dealing with Mr. Sorenson’s past, if we wanted to ensure she stayed with our group, our quickest answer could cost us.”
Dr. Green sighed. “Can we afford this? How many favors are we talking about here?”
“From my last count, it’ll cost us everything, including the favors we’d earn completing our mission at Ashley Waters. That’s if we’re successful. We couldn’t afford it otherwise.”
Kota blew out a loud sigh. This was an impossible choice. The Academy’s system worked on a series of favor and financial debt.
Financial debt was obvious. Everyone in the Academy starts out with financial debt. It’s the value of the education an Academy student requires to become the best at what he does. If it was a private investigation training class or an eight week boot camp or you were starving and needed groceries to get through a human biology class, the Academy took care of it.
Repaying your debt requires completing various Academy missions. Their particular team specialized in recovery. It was the easiest thanks to Mr. Blackbourne’s and Dr. Green’s training. A stolen vehicle. Valuable information. A company’s prototype. Whatever it was, there was a price tag.
Some member’s financial debts were higher than others. Sang’s MRI did cost money, but there were several Academy members on the board at that hospital, and the amount was shifted into their team’s debt account. Sang’s mother was going to cost them several thousand dollars, but money wasn’t really a problem for them.
They couldn’t pay the debt off directly. Victor couldn’t pull out his black card and swipe away what they owed. It wasn’t allowed. The Academy trained their teams well. Recovering stolen money and valuable objects was fairly easy. They enjoyed the challenge. And whenever something like an MRI or tuition to a little sister’s private school needed to be paid, the hospital bill would be covered by an anonymous donor, or a special sponsorship would open up for just the right student. Always in cash. Always untraceable. Anything they needed was taken care of.
Favors, though, were the real core of the Academy. Favors were anything that didn’t have a price. It was usually family problems within the Academy that other members couldn’t handle alone. Little brother getting beat up by kids in school? Hire Silas and North to babysit the playgrounds. When the bullies got a taste of their own medicine, Silas and North would walk away with a couple of favors owed.
When you were finally a member, you were in the negative of ten favors right off the bat, just to keep everyone on a level playing field. Favors varied from different situations. Running a background check without anyone noticing you’ve been snooping around, that was probably worth one or two, depending on how extensive one had to get. Pretending to be a rock band? That was worth three. An operation, like being undercover in a high school for a year, was easily worth at least ten each for the nine team members involved. And since Mr. Blackbourne and Dr. Green didn’t have any favor debt, there would have been surplus that they shared with the rest of the team.
Kota was out of favors. Thirty was the maximum anyone could have. This year at the school, plus all the other favors they’d earn on
side jobs, would have placed him close to zero. That is, if he didn’t end up spending any. He wouldn’t have graduated from the Academy, but at least he wouldn’t be at the max favor debt.
Sang had already cost them a few favors when they asked for an adoption.
Kota’s fingers traced along the grains of the wood on the table. Did Mr. Blackbourne really mean they’d all be back in the negative? Mr. Blackbourne and Dr. Green had already graduated from the Academy, positive on both favors and financials. If they were to revert and go back, what did that mean?
“Why are we playing around?” North asked. His palm flattened against the table. “Let’s take Sang. Fuck her dad. Why is she having to suffer because of what he’s done? And who cares if the police find out? She’s not the one who is going to be arrested. We’ve got some pull. I bet we could get her emancipated with only a couple of favors. Ten at most. She can move in with me if she wants. If she wants a place of her own, we’ll get her one. The police can go chase Mr. Sorenson all day. There’s nothing they can do to her.”
“I agree,” Kota said. “I want to protect her, but if she stays, she’s only going to get hurt. It’s only a matter of time before Marie gets arrested, her mother returns, or her dad tells her to go to this school. We can’t let that happen. The sooner we get her out of there, the quicker she’ll adjust if she’s with one of us. We don’t need the Academy stepping in this far.” That wasn’t a risk he wanted take. If the Academy was to get involved, it would learn everything about her, and other teams would spread word that there was a new bird of interest.
Kota knew better, and the others did, too. Sang was clever, and surprised him with new talents every day. She was quiet on her feet, honest, and no matter what they were doing, she stepped up and did it with them. And if their team was interested in her, there was no doubt the Academy would be drawn to her, too. Asking for their help would almost be a guarantee the Academy would ask for her to join them.
