“What’s that?”
“Hairpin.”
Chase raised an eyebrow as I stuck it into the keyhole at the front of the handle. “You done this before?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“You know what you’re doing?”
“I watched a YouTube video this afternoon.”
I thought I heard Chase snort behind me, but I was too intent on the keyhole to turn around. Instead, I wiggled the piece of metal up and down, side to side, slowly moving it in any direction I could just like the guy on the video. Too bad I had no idea what I was feeling for. And, unlike the guy on the video, five minutes later the door was still locked.
“Got a plan B?” Chase asked.
I blew a big breath of air up toward my hair, straightening and looking around the campus.
Truth was I did not. I spent most of my life trying to get out of school. Breaking in had never been high on my list of priorities.
I looked up at the main building. This part of the school was two stories high, though the east and west wings, which had been added on later, were only one story. Behind us sat rows of portables. In all, there were over a hundred classrooms, most dark at this hour.
Most.
As I squinted across the quad, I noticed a light in one of the windows of the science wing.
“There,” I said pointing. “Someone’s inside.”
Chase spun around. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s probably just the custodian.”
I bit my lip, watching as a figure moved in the room. Right. The custodian. Who was in there mopping experiments gone wrong off the floors, wiping notes off the whiteboards, and taking out the trash. And who probably had a set of keys to get in . . .
“That’s it! I know how the cheat thief got in!”
Chase raised another eyebrow at me. “Don’t tell me you think the custodian is stealing the answers?”
I shook my head. “No. But he has to get in and out of the building, right? To take out the trash and stuff?”
Chase nodded. “I guess.”
“So when he goes in and out, you think he pauses to lock the door behind him each time?”
A tiny grin played at the corners of Chase’s mouth. “I doubt it. He probably just locks everything up when he’s done.”
“Which means some of the doors must be unlocked while he’s working.”
“Let’s go check it out.”
We quickly crossed the quad, staying out of the line of any outdoor lighting, then moved close to the building as we approached the science wing. I ducked under the window with the light on, peeking just my eyes and nose above.
As we’d guessed, a custodian was in the room. Big guy with buzz-cut hair and a pair of coveralls on. He had earbuds in, his mouth moving to the music as he dipped a gray mop into a bucket and swished it along the floor.
Chase tapped me on the shoulder, then pointed to the left. Two windows down there was a door. I nodded, following him as he crouch-walked toward it.
He stuck a finger to his lips in a silencing motion as he slowly tried turning the knob.
What do you know? It opened easily in his hand.
I did a silent yes and a fist pump as we slipped inside.
The hallways were eerily quiet, the only sound a rhythmic ticking of a clock encased in a protective metal cage on the wall. I blinked, letting my eyes adjust to the dark as I got my bearings. The good news was that we were inside the school. The bad news was that Mr. Tipkins’s room was in the math wing, on the opposite side of the building.
Chase led the way as we slowly walked the length of the corridor and turned right at the end of the hall to enter the main building.
It was even darker here, the ancient architecture not affording much natural light as all the windows were high and tiny. I squinted through the darkness, doing my best to make out familiar shapes. A water fountain outside Spanish. A bank of lockers at the end of the hall. A poster about the upcoming homecoming dance on the wall next to the trophy case.
I put my hands out in front of me, feeling my way through the building as I followed Chase.
Ten dark, stumbling minutes later (I know because I pulled my cell out to light the way as we rounded the corner to the math wing), we finally hit the door to Mr. Tipkins’s classroom.
Where we encountered another lock.
“Still got that hairpin?” Chase asked.
I nodded, pulling it from my pocket and sticking it into the keyhole.
But fifteen minutes later, I was still wiggling the hairpin to no avail. And I was beginning to seriously rethink our theory about how the cheats had gotten out. Okay, it was possible that the thief was a lot better at picking locks than I was. It was possible he had better tools than a bent hairclip from his mom. But it was growing less likely by the second.
I almost jumped out of my skin when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to see a text from Sam.
whats taking so long?
locked door, I responded.
hurry. cold out here.
I slipped my phone back in my pocket and found Chase leaning over to scrutinize the lock.
“You know, maybe we don’t have to pick it,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow his way. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the locks aren’t state of the art. In theory, all we have to do is slip something between the latch in the handle and doorframe plate, and it should slide open.”
I blinked at him.
“I watched a couple YouTube videos, too,” he confessed. “Got a credit card?”
I shook my head. “My allowance is twenty bucks a month. I’m not exactly on Visa’s list of high rollers.”
Chase shrugged, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He slipped his driver’s license from its slot and turned to the lock.
“Here goes nothing,” he said under his breath as he slipped just the edge of the card into the doorjamb. It went in easily enough, so he slipped the rest of its length in, holding on to a small edge. Then he slowly slid the card lower, angling it in toward the door. He turned the handle and pushed.
Only nothing happened.
“Admit it,” I said, blowing out a breath of frustration. “We have lock pick fail.”
“Patience, grasshopper.” He tried again, sliding the card up and down, trying to finesse the latch from its housing.
Grasshopper was just about to give up and go back to her cold friends outside when I heard a click and Chase’s license slid lower than before. He froze, then slowly pushed on the door.
And it opened.
He turned to me, and in the dark I could see his teeth gleaming brilliant white as a grin spread across his face.
I should never have doubted him.
“Ladies first,” he said, holding the door open for me.
“Gracias.” I stepped into the room and pulled out my cell phone to provide some illumination. Maybe it was the dim lighting making my other senses stronger, but the room smelled different in the empty darkness. Like pungent dry-erase markers and mildewing books. I took in shallow breaths, quickly going to the file cabinet Mr. Tipkins had told me held all his test copies.
I pulled at the cabinet door. Locked.
I was getting really tired of all the locks.
Chase pulled out our trusty hairpin again and went to work, jiggling it into the hole.
I wandered over to Mr. Tipkins’s desk, feeling like I was in forbidden territory. The top was littered with papers, some marked with grades at the top in red pen, others still waiting to be given sentencing. I couldn’t help peeking a little. I shifted the papers, looking at the graded ones. It looked like Chris Fret was failing this class, too (poor guy!), but amazingly, Connor had gotten an A on the last test. Which immediately put him higher on my list of suspects. He hadn’t struck me as the brainiac type.
I moved on to Mr. Tipkins’s desk drawers, trying the top one first. It opened easily (no way, something in this school was actually un
locked?), revealing a stash of pens (mostly red), paper clips, some gum, and a couple pieces of hard candy that looked like they might have been there since the school was built. I moved on to the next drawer down, finding a stapler, hole punch, and a couple more boxes of pens. The third drawer held a paper bag that, if the stench was any indication, contained a long-forgotten lunch. I quickly shut it, trying not to breathe too deeply, and pulled open the bottom drawer. Inside were more student papers, crinkled and unorganized. I shuffled a couple (wondering who else in the class might be getting grades that were too good) and saw a flash of metal at the bottom of the drawer.
A key.
“Chase?”
“Just a minute. I’ve almost got it open.”
“Think this would help?”
“What?” Chase spun around.
I held the key out to him on one finger, unable to help the grin I could feel spreading across my face.
“Where did you find that?”
“Desk drawer.”
He grunted like he wished he’d thought of looking there himself, then grabbed the key. Which, I was happy to see, slipped easily into the lock.
Chase turned it, and the file drawer slid open, revealing every test that Mr. Tipkins had ever given.
“Bingo,” I said. “Anyone could have broken in here.”
Chase nodded, handing the key back to me. “Anyone with YouTube and a credit card.”
“Or a driver’s license,” I pointed out, putting the key back in Tipkins’s drawer.
My phone buzzed in my pocket again.
“Geez, hold your horses, Sam,” I muttered as I pulled it out.
Only this text wasn’t complaining about the cold weather.
someone coming!
Uh-oh.
“Uh, Chase? Sam says someone is—”
But I didn’t get to finish as Chase grabbed me by the arm, pulling me to the floor. “Someone’s coming,” he whispered.
Sure enough, the light in the hallway outside flipped on, and I heard the click of footsteps echoing through the corridor.
And stopping just outside Mr. Tipkins’s classroom.
Chapter Sixteen
MY EYES WHIPPED AROUND THE ROOM FOR SOMEWHERE TO hide. Under a desk? At the back of a cabinet? Behind the poster of the seven different types of triangles?
Chase must have done the same thing as he grabbed me by the arm. “Quick. In here,” he said, pointing to a supply closet at the back of the room. Thank God it was left unlocked at night, and the door opened easily as Chase shoved me in front of him then stepped inside, quickly closing it behind him.
Just as we heard the door to Mr. Tipkins’s room open.
I sucked in a breath in the stuffy dark space. It was small, just big enough for the two of us to fit, though not big enough to afford either of us any personal space. Meaning Chase’s body was right up against mine, creating a warm, unsettling feeling in my belly that felt very . . . personal.
As I tried to decide if I liked the feeling or not, the classroom light turned on.
I shifted to look through the crack in the closet door, feeling Chase do the same beside me. (Very close beside me, causing his leg to rub against my leg in a way that had me leaning slightly closer to a “liking it” decision.)
A figure moved across my field of vision, and for a quick moment, I thought maybe we had been lucky enough to catch the cheat stealer in the act. But as he shifted to the right, I saw a familiar plaid, short-sleeved, button-down shirt and pair of baby-poo brown corduroy slacks cross the room.
Mr. Tipkins.
I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer that he didn’t need any supplies tonight as he moved to his desk and sat down. He grabbed the stack of uncorrected papers I’d seen earlier and shoved them into a brown leather briefcase with scuff marks along the edges. He opened his top drawer and grabbed a couple red pens. Then he pulled a couple papers from the desk, uncapped a pen, and started marking.
Oh no. Please tell me he’s not settling in for a night of correcting papers here!
I shifted, my right leg rubbing against Chase again.
The air in the closet was getting warm. It was dusty and smelled like old wood.
Though I noticed, as the minutes stretched on, there was another scent mingling with the old closet smells, too. Fabric softener, soap, and a faint woodsy smell that was surprisingly like the men’s department at Macy’s. Cologne? Body spray? Deodorant? Whatever it was, I found myself not entirely hating being stuck in the closet with Chase.
He shifted, his body pressing up against mine, and I felt the lean muscles of his chest against my arm, his breath warm on my neck. Irrationally, I started thinking of all the things we could do in a dark closet together to pass the time while Tipkins corrected.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but my left foot was starting to fall asleep (crowded up against a stack of textbooks), and the air in the closet was getting seriously warm (or maybe that was just me. Was it my imagination or was Chase leaning closer?), when I felt Chase’s breath tickle my skin.
“Tipkins is moving.”
I looked through the crack in the door, forcing myself to focus despite the way too personal quarters. Chase was right. Mr. Tipkins had gotten up from the desk and was moving . . . toward the filing cabinet.
“You locked the cabinet, right?” I whispered.
I felt Chase shake his head. “I didn’t have time.”
Oh, fudgecakes.
I watched, dread curling around in my belly as Mr. Tipkins leaned down to unlock the cabinet. He stuck the key in the hole, turned, then frowned. His bushy eyebrows furrowed together as the realization hit that the cabinet was already unlocked.
He straightened up, glancing over both shoulders, surveying the room for a possible answer as to why it was open.
I shrank as small as I could, hoping he didn’t see the guilt emanating from the closet.
Luckily, he simply shoved the key into his pocket and opened the cabinet. He removed a couple sheets of test answers, stuck them in the briefcase, then shut and locked the cabinet. He dropped the key back in his desk, then gathered the briefcase in his hands and walked out of the room.
A second later the light went off, and I let out a sigh of relief as I heard footsteps retreating down the hall.
“That was close,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Chase said. I could feel his breath coming hard beside me.
“Think it’s safe to leave the closet?”
“Probably.” But he didn’t move.
“So . . . do you want to?”
“Not really. I kinda like it in here.”
I rolled my eyes in the dark and shoved him out ahead of me.
Even though part of me kinda agreed.
Fifteen minutes later, we were outside again, jogging around the far side of the school to where Sam and Kyle were still standing under the oak tree. Though it was hard to distinguish one figure from the other as they were firmly stuck together at the lips.
“Ahem!” I said in an exaggerated throat clearing.
Sam detangled her tongue from Kyle’s long enough to look up. “Oh. Hey.”
“Hey,” I said. “You guys are supposed to be our lookouts not make-outs.”
Sam blushed in the moonlight. “You guys were taking forever. We had to find a way to keep warm out here.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Besides,” she pointed out, “we did warn you someone was coming.”
“Did he see you?” Kyle asked.
I shook my head, relaying our brush with Tipkins.
“But you found the test answers?” Kyle pressed when I was done.
Chase nodded. “Yeah. The custodian is the way in. As long as you go in a door he’s opened, it’s unlocked. I’m guessing it’s the same every night.”
“And the file cabinet was easy to get into. The key is in Mr. Tipkins’s desk.”
“So, really, the only lock you’d have to pick is the one to the classroom,” Chase
added.
“And Chase got in there, no problem,” I said, telling them how he’d used his driver’s license.
“So, anyone could have stolen the answers?” Sam said when I was done.
I nodded. “Right. Meaning any one of our suspects could be the person who killed Sydney over them.”
Which left just one very important question: Which one was it?
Chapter Seventeen
THAT QUESTION PLAGUED ME THE ENTIRE WALK BACK HOME as I considered the info we’d gathered over the last week. Clearly the test answers were the key to who had killed Sydney. But how had she found out who was stealing them? Did she know the thief personally? Was it one of her friends? Or an enemy? Clearly I was missing something here, and the empty spot where that something should be was burning a hole in my brain.
The next day, Mom agreed to drop me at the front entrance of school and not walk all the way in. (Thank God!) I felt slightly guilty that her trust in me was based on the erroneous assumption that I’d been tucked up in my room all last night like a good prisoner. But only slightly. (She had, after all, tortured me with Bon Jovi at top volume the whole ride to school.)
As soon as I walked into the main building, I saw a table set up in the hall with a clipboard of names and a cardboard ballot box on top. Jessica Hanson was manning it, handing out little slips of paper to anyone who passed by.
“Hartley!” she hailed me. “Have you voted yet?”
“Voted?”
“For homecoming court. Duh!” Jessica rolled her eyes at me.
I had to admit I hadn’t.
“Today’s the last day,” Jessica said, handing me a slip of paper as she crossed my name off her clipboard.
“Wait—today?” I asked. “I thought we had until Thursday?”
Jessica did another eye roll, and I could see she’d doubled up on the blue eyeliner today. “Earth to Hartley? Today is Thursday.”
I blinked at her. Really? I’d been so caught up in trying to track down Sydney’s killer that I’d totally blanked out the rest of the world. If today was Thursday, that meant that the big football game was tomorrow and the homecoming dance the next night.
Not, mind you, that I was planning on going. Dances, especially homecoming dances, were a date kind of thing, and considering I was currently guy-less, I’d planned on a nice quiet night at home with a package of Oreos instead. I looked down at the slips of paper next to Jessica’s ballot box. Four guys and three girls were named. I noted with a pang the conspicuously empty spot where Sydney’s name might have been. Beside the remaining nominees were empty circles to fill in for king and queen. At the very bottom there was a spot for a write-in vote.
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