by C. L. Stone
I tried to recall the last couple of days. Did I ever once mention the Academy to him? No, I’d made sure not to. He’d met Brandon, and without knowing it, met Corey, too. At the time, I was protective of it. I didn’t want any repercussions on the boys when I was flirting with danger with Blake. Would they have mentioned this Academy to him? Probably not. They wouldn’t even mention it to me until I questioned it further.
He knew now. He did have Doyle the hacker, and a lot of money. He found out about me, my real name. What else did he know?
How much did he know about the Academy?
Kayli: What do you know about it?
Blake: You said you didn’t meet Brandon until a couple of days before you met me. Was that true?
Kayli: Yes.
Blake: You don’t know who you’re dealing with. Trust me, sweetie, you need to get away from them. They’ll put you in danger. They may already have.
Hypocrite. Because they raided his boat? He was the one shipping drugs out of the country to dump them in a well.
Kayli: You tried to poison people.
Blake: Hush your mouth. You shot me. You wrecked my yacht. I think we’re even. Call me.
I groaned, putting the phone in my lap, willing to ignore it for the moment. He had no idea what he was talking about. Still, how did he know? It was a trick. Maybe I should turn off the phone, so he couldn’t trace the phone any more.
Maybe I should keep tabs on him, though. If I kept communication open, I could figure out his game. Better than being in the dark, wondering when he’d strike next. I didn’t care much for surprises.
Kayli: I can’t call right now.
Blake: I can’t text details to you. They can listen. Why are you coming to Florida? Are you after me again?
I guessed right. He was tracking. Doyle was on to me.
Kayli: Not about you. We’re heading for St. Augustine.
Blake: I’m in Palm Beach. I’ll meet you. Keep your phone on.
This was too close.
He tried to tell me before he was helping, a good guy. He tried to get drugs out of the country, drugs that were dangerous. He was targeting a village, where the drugs had come from, to return them. He wanted to poison the well, a warning not to do it again.
He said it wouldn’t hurt anyone, but he had lied to hide what he was really up to. Could I trust him?
I held the phone in my hands until the screen turned black, wondering if I should turn the phone off completely, cutting off his ability to find me. It could all be a lie, a trick to find me again and seek revenge.
I glimpsed at Raven. I looked back at sleeping Corey. I had a chance now to tell them about this. To ask them.
I knew their answer. Turn the phone off. They might insist on going back. Marc would barricade me into his room, maybe insist on flying me out of town, like they had before when they thought Blake was after me.
Were they trying to protect me from Blake, or were they trying to protect their Academy secrets?
I clutched the cell phone, my heart splitting with what I wanted to do. Part of me wanted to wait until Raven stopped somewhere, and take the opportunity to jump ship. Run. Don’t look back. I created the mess. If I ran for it, I’d find some quiet town, get a job, start new. The espionage. The secrets. I could leave it all. My own past could be forgotten completely. They’d forget about me, and fight amongst themselves.
Only there was Wil.
I glanced again at Corey, sleeping. He’d invited me in. Trusted me.
I left the phone on, but told myself I just wanted to see what Blake would do. I’d hear him out, learn what he knew about the Academy. If it looked like he was full of it, I’d tell Corey. He’d understand.
They’d want to find out what he knew. I wanted to know more about the Academy. Seeing what Blake had to say could have been the answer I was looking for. Either way, I’d find out.
If it was a trick, I knew where to kick Blake so he’d go down easy. Hopefully he wasn’t coming with a gun for revenge. I’d have to take my chances.
I folded into myself, pretending to sleep, but I couldn’t. My mind was alive, wishing the guys could have just been honest with me from the start. The lies were piling up around me, and every moment that went by, I knew eventually the towers would fall.
I would probably go down with them.
THERE WAS AN OLD LADY
I tried to text Blake again during the drive down to Florida, but he didn’t answer.
I sunk into my seat, with my arms over my stomach, pretending to sleep. Instead, I was glaring out the window, trying to smother the heat in my heart. Being put in the middle, trapped, didn’t sit well with me.
The four hour car ride down to St. Augustine was cut down to three, thanks to some stellar Russian driving. When we were close, we stopped at a big discount department store. Corey insisted I buy some shoes. I went off by myself as the guys went to find other things. I sorted through the shoe department and found a pair of flip-flops, the cheapest I could find.
When I showed up at the counter, the clerk had already scanned what the boys wanted to purchase and they were holding up the line waiting for me.
Corey took one look at my selection and cocked an eyebrow. “That’s it?” he asked. “Did they not have your size in anything else?”
“I only need one set of shoes.” I pointed to the boots I’d worn in. “I can only wear one pair at a time. These would work fine.”
“But you’re tripping in them. And flip-flops only work for so long. You need more. You can’t run in flip-flops.”
“I need to run?”
Raven sliced his hand through the air. “Don’t let her buy any more here. She needs Macy’s. She needs...what’s that other one called? That girly store. The one with the underwear.”
Corey made a confused face and scratched lightly at his eyebrow. “Victoria’s Secret.”
“No ... wait, is that the one that usually has the big displays right in the window? Half-naked with tits?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, then that one. Victory’s Sequence.”
“Victoria’s Secret,” Corey said.
“Yeah,” Raven said. He opened his wallet, pulling out cash to pay. “It’s what I said. Victoria’s Sequence. Don’t waste the money here. These will do for now, but she needs good shoes if she needs more than one.”
I had no comment for this, but Corey shared a small smile with me while Raven paid for our purchase. I hadn’t realized Raven had opinions about girl clothes.
When we got back out to the parking lot, Corey took the wheel while Raven sat in the back and sorted what we’d purchased, giving me the flip-flops.
I turned in the passenger seat. For some reason, I’d thought they’d been buying snacks or drinks. Instead, Raven started pulling out boxes of cell phones and some computer peripheral stuff. “What’s all this for?” I asked.
“Work,” Raven said.
“You mean this job we’re on?” I asked.
“We’re going to get back some money,” Corey said. He turned the SUV out of the parking lot, heading south. “This little old lady got scammed out of her savings. We’re going to help her get it back.”
Not what I was asking about, but I’d take what information I could get. “How are we getting this money back?”
Corey found the sunglasses Raven had been wearing and put them on. He adjusted them on his face, checking himself in the mirror and combed his hair with his fingers. “We have to convince her we can help. She’ll have to trust us.”
Watching Corey checking himself out in the mirror was adorable. I almost forgot to continue the conversation. “But how do we get it back? Shouldn’t we call the police about this?”
Corey shook his head. “If it’s anyone handling this, it’s probably supposed to be the FBI, and it’ll be hard to get her money back. These internet scams are pretty hard to track down and there’s millions of them.”
“So how are you going to get the money back?”
>
Corey turned his head, flashing a smile. “I don’t know yet. We’ll find out when we get there.”
That wasn’t very reassuring. Shouldn’t they have more details before they take on a job like this? How do they know it isn’t going to take that long?
St. Augustine, as we approached, was very much a tourist town of a different sort. Charleston was a tourist town, but it was refined. St. Augustine had billboards displaying ads for albino alligators, a Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum, a fort, and lots of shopping. Corey wound his way downtown, and I got eyefuls of palm trees and blindingly bright paint on homes and businesses. I’d never seen so many happy yellow and vivid pink buildings anywhere else. Very flashy.
I thought I could enjoy it more if I wasn’t worried about the people I was with, or the fact that I had a playboy billionaire chasing me using possibly illegal GPS hacking. At least I was getting a good view out of it.
I watched Corey driving and Raven doing his thing to the cell phones. “So this lady that lives here, does she own an alligator?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Corey said and grinned. “From the advertising, seems like everyone in Florida has one.”
“I want one,” Raven said. “Right next to my tiger.”
“You mean a tattoo?” Corey asked. He adjusted the rearview mirror, looking back at Raven that way. “The one on your leg?”
“Yeah,” Raven said. He had taken out a cell phone, opened the back, and used his pocket knife on the inside.
“You should get a crocodile,” Corey said.
“What’s the difference?”
“One’s ... more badass than the other,” Corey said, smirking.
“Which one is bigger?”
“Crocodiles.”
“Then it should be a crocodile.”
“Wait,” I said. “Where’s the tiger?” From what I could recall, there was only a bear on his back, with three Russian towers on his chest, and more along his arms. But then, he seemed to have tattoos all over, and on some parts, I didn’t get a good look.
“Hang on, I’ll show you.”
“Not in the car,” Corey said. He looked at me, grinning. “It’s on the back thigh, close to his butt.”
“It’s not on my ass.”
“It’s close.”
I laughed. Corey did, too.
Corey used the GPS to locate the address we needed. We pulled up to a duplex at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was a cozy area. Homes were cookie-cutter; each one like the other except painted different. The neighborhood yards were neat, trimmed, with little weather-beaten gnomes and plastic flamingos cluttering flower beds.
The duplex we stopped in front of was neat with gardens and a tidy front porch with a bench swing on one side... The other side of the duplex across the fence was gross. The grass was brown. It was a smudge among the green and bright of the neighbors’ lawns. Trash bags were piled up from the door and covering the entire porch, except for a small path to the door. Paper notices were tacked to the screen door.
“Tell me we get the one on the left,” I said. I looked at the left, with the bright green grass and how it fought against the brown on the right; the brown was starting to creep over the fence line, despite someone’s effort to hide it with rocks for a makeshift border.
“We’re here for the one on the...” Corey paused long enough to give me a moment of terror. “Left, yeah. 234A. B is on the right. We’re here for A.”
I let out a slow breath, temporarily relieved. Someone’s grandmother lived next to a slob. At least her neighbors around the rest of the cul-de-sac seemed decent.
Opening the door, I got a nice ocean breeze. While the temperature in Charleston was starting to almost reflect fall weather, it didn’t appear St. Augustine had been affected. It wasn’t sweltering, but it still had a warm twinge.
After I got out of the car, I realized I had a problem. The cell phone I had that Blake was trying to track me on was kind of big, and I didn’t have a pocket. I kept it in my hands, feeling odd carrying something, because I liked to keep my hands as free as possible—my thief instincts.
I was also worried Blake would show up with guns blazing while we were hanging out with someone’s grandmother. What was I going to do then? I needed a moment to call him, if I could.
Raven hopped out, stretched and grunted. The black T-shirt he wore tightened against his shoulders.
"You coming in?” I asked.
An eyebrow lifted in question. "Yes.”
I eyeballed his tattoos that were visible. "Are we going to scare her into letting us help her?"
He made a face and reached into the car. He pulled out a blue dress shirt and shoved his arms through the sleeves. When he buttoned it up, he smoothed it out over his body, and reached under to tuck the T-shirt into his jeans. He pulled the ring from his lip. He combed his fingers through his hair to smooth it over.
When he was done, he turned to me, his hands out and open, in presentation. “Good?”
Before me was a completely different person. The punk look was gone. Outside of the hole in his lip, which anyone else probably wouldn’t even look twice at, there was no trace of the hardcore Raven. This was Raven, the nice guy next door.
I think I had a heart attack and my jaw dropped. "You clean up nice."
He smirked, shoved an arm around my neck and directed me to the door. "You should see me in a lux," he said.
I nearly tripped in my flip-flops as he maneuvered me toward the duplex. "A tux? A tuxedo?"
"Same."
Corey found his dress shirt, putting it on and tucking it into his jeans. He flashed a smile at me. “Ready?”
We stood together on the tiny front porch. With the boys dressed up, I smoothed my hands over my shorts and tank top, feeling almost naked next to them. "Wish you all told me we were dressing up,” I said, not that I had dress up clothes.
“You look nice," Corey said. "And you're a girl. She'll probably trust us more with you here." He stabbed a finger at the doorbell.
I'm not normally shy, but I stood behind Corey's shoulder as we waited. Old ladies weren't really my thing. They were like babies. You had to be delicate. Talk softly, watch your language and set a good example. Not my strongest talents.
The locks were thrown and the door opened. A short old lady appeared wearing a pastel flowered dress and with peach colored hair all curled up. She squinted out at us. "Hello?” When she spotted the boys, she looked puzzled. When she noticed me, she opened up the door a bit more. “Can I help you folks?"
Worse than I thought. The old woman hunched over a cane, with wrinkles a mile long. She was one of those old farts who lived over a hundred years , would never die, has a house full of ceramic Jesus babies and goes to church with a homemade baked pie every Sunday.
I questioned my sanity. Maybe I should have volunteered to wait in the car.
"Hi, Mrs. Gunther," Corey said, taking on a Charleston accent, thickening the syrup. "Sorry to surprise you, ma’am, but your grandson called us. Harry thought we could help."
"You're friends with little Harry?" She asked, her voice lightening and she opened the door wide now. "Oh, that's so nice. He isn't here, but come in. I've got a strawberry rhubarb pie."
Oh boy. I made my eyes wide as possible and stared at Raven. Get us out of here.
"I love strawberry pie," Raven said.
Five minutes later, I was seated on the tiniest sofa between Corey and Raven with doilies falling on my shoulder, a fine China plate balanced precariously on my knee and a glass of lemonade on the coffee table. The house smelled like old people. The sofa material was stiff and scratchy. There wasn't a TV in sight. How in the world did this woman live?
“It’s so nice to meet Harry’s friends,” she said. “I don’t get too many young visitors. These days, it’s just the postman and the neighbors. I go to church with Mrs. Blume up the road. Her car looks just like my late husband’s…”
Yeah, she was a talker. Stories rambling into each other and
going on forever.
"Mrs. Gunther," Corey started for the tenth time since we had been in the house. "We came over because Harry mentioned…a computer problem.” He turned to me for a quick moment, winking, telling me this was the ruse he was going with, before looking back at Mrs. Gunther. “You’d been complaining about it being slow and not working right?”
"Oh, Harry makes a fuss but I told him not to worry. When I talked to him, I was just a little confused, but it’s fine. Fred’s fine, too.” She paused, took a long sip from her glass.
Was Fred the other grand kid who talked her into a Ponzi scheme? I exchanged glances with Corey.
Corey hadn’t eaten more than a bite of his pie because he was the one talking and making the courtesy nods and noises required in conversations. He cleared his throat. “Oh, was Fred here?"
She paused again for full a minute, like she was thinking and then nodded. “Yes, sweet Fred. He fixed everything. Harry doesn’t have to worry about it. The amount wasn’t that much and I didn’t need it.”
I got the impression she assumed we were actually here looking into the money problem. She wasn’t worried Fred used it in a scam? Two hundred thousand dollars wasn’t anything to sneeze at. We were strangers, though, so it wasn’t like it was our business. If she didn’t want us looking into it, there was nothing we could do. Suited me just fine. I’d be happy to check out a few albino alligators and head home.
Corey slid me a look, silently begging me to help.
Me? I groaned internally and put my empty plate on top of the coffee table. "Ma'am, Harry said he'd feel better if we helped. He said Fred was in over his head and too embarrassed to tell you. This … investment might not be the right one for you."
Corey's look changed to please shut up.
I shrugged. What did he want? I couldn't lie to her. There were Jesus babies in the room.
Mrs. Gunther brightened. "Harry does worry about me too much."
"Exactly," I said. "Harry was worried about you. If you really feel strongly about it, though, would it hurt to show us? He only wants you to keep what belongs to you. Corey here is a real pro at this, though. If you show Corey everything is fine, Harry will believe him and he won’t have to worry about you. We may even be able to find a better investment for you and Fred."
