by C. L. Stone
“Was that Kota again?” I asked.
“It was Mr. Blackbourne,” he said, tucking the phone into his pocket again.
I stiffened. My hand tucked into my bra, feeling for my phone, as if Mr. Blackbourne was right there. “Is he where we’re going to?”
“No,” he said. “He’s over at Middleton Place and wants you to join him and a few of the others over there. I’m to drop you off before I go.”
My heart thundered as I looked over my clothes. I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and felt underdressed, again, for going to see Mr. Blackbourne. He’d mentioned shopping, but I wasn’t prepared for it yet. And why meet at Middleton? I smoothed my hands over my shirt. “I wish they gave warnings.”
Silas smirked and dropped his foot on the gas as we headed out. “And proper weekends off.”
Flirting
Silas did stop quickly at a Starbucks to buy a couple of egg sandwiches and coffees. We finished them on the way before we got to Middleton Place.
Once we turned into the property, we were on a winding road. Near the end, there was a big estate home, set amid gardens, a still pond, and stables. It was like stepping back in time, seeing a bit of an old, almost forgotten life. Since it was late in October, many of the flowers had finished blooming, leaving a rich expanse of greens and tiny bursts of color here and there from late-blooming flowers.
It was such a beautiful spot. I leaned against the door, trying to take in everything around us. Would the homecoming dance happen inside the building? The school had over two thousand students, but even if only half of them attended, the building didn’t appear big enough. Out in the distance was a set of blocky, modern glass buildings, and there was a sign that said it was an inn. The buildings were modern in comparison to the rest of the estate. I couldn’t imagine the dance would be held there, either.
I recognized Kota’s and Mr. Blackbourne’s cars next to each other near the entry of the building. There was another vehicle, too, parked further down the lane, closer to the stables that I didn’t recognize. I had to imagine it belonged to someone who worked here.
Silas pulled up to the curb, stopping the car and then hopping out to open the door.
“I can go find them inside,” I said, “if you have to go.”
“Can’t do that,” he said. He held my hand as I stepped out of the car, and continued to hold it as he closed up and we headed toward the building. “I’ll make sure you’re with one of the others before I leave.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to protest, to suggest that I didn’t need a babysitter, but he was right. There had been a few close calls with Volto and too many other people, and this was a new place.
Silas continued to hold my hand as we walked through the doors. I held on, and my heart thundered, wondering what the others would say. A tremble swept through me, wondering if Kota was inside and if he’d learn that Silas considered me his girlfriend now. I wondered what it meant for the others. Silas didn’t talk about it, and I didn’t ask anything, but now I wish I’d done so.
While the outside had smelled like fresh cut grass and sweet flowers, the inside of Middleton Place was a mix of old wood, aged leather and fabrics. The floor creaked as we entered. The space was smaller than I expected, but I imagined the home had been built for family use, so it would have been practical at the time.
Victor stood in the hallway. His head was bent over his phone as he tapped the screen with his thumb. He stood facing one of the antique tables with a flower arrangement in a pretty vase. He tapped again at his phone, and a light flashed as he snapped a picture of the vase and flowers.
I was drawn to how his lips were curved in a pleasant smile. His brown wavy hair was brushed back from his face, and the fire eyes were set to an amused flicker. The shirt he wore, today an off-white with a hint of blue, had the sleeves rolled back to his elbows and the top button was undone. It suited his trim body, and I thought it was handsome the way he looked comfortable and casual in what was probably a very expensive ensemble.
I tried to recall the car in the parking lot, wondering if I got the coloring mixed up but I was pretty sure Mr. Blackbourne’s car was gray and Victor’s was more a silver color. Mr. Blackbourne must have picked him up.
Victor turned and his gaze settled on me first, his fire eyes coming to life with a gentle smolder. He turned to Silas and nodded, but then looked down at our joined hands.
My cheeks burned. I’d held hands with the guys before, but for some reason, this felt so different. I thought Victor could see right through me and know how different this was.
Victor made no reaction, and simply waited until we were closer before he stepped forward, holding out his arms toward me. “Good morning, princess,” he said.
Before I could think of something else, Silas released me, and Victor wrapped his arms around my waist and hugged me.
I returned the hug, feeling Silas behind me and sensing his gaze. I wanted to enjoy Victor’s hug, but I was a mess of feelings. What about Victor? I cared about Silas, but my heart felt divided. I cared about Victor, too. Would caring about one mean splitting myself off from the others? It wasn’t normal, but I couldn’t help but feel the guilt of wanting to please them both, because I cared about them both.
I buried my thoughts and tried to stay calm. I had to trust them to know what to do.
Victor released me and then gave a short wave to Silas. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked.
Silas nodded. “Just look out for her. I’ll be back.”
“Call if you need anything,” Victor said. “I mean it.”
“I know,” he said. Silas stepped toward me, holding out his arms. He gave me a short hug and then a kiss on the forehead. “Behave.”
My heart did a flip at his kiss. “Come back soon,” I said quietly.
He grunted and squeezed me tighter until my feet were off the ground. “As soon as I can,” he said. He released me to the floor and then turned, walking off.
I watched as he left, my fingertips touching the dip at my neck. It was hard to see him go. I wanted to ask him a million questions. I bit my tongue to stop them from rolling from my lips, and stilled my feet to stop myself from running after him. I wanted to go with him. I wanted Victor to go with him to make sure he was okay. Secrets within the Academy often meant danger, and I could only hope this wasn’t one of those instances.
Victor grasped my hand, his fingers interlocking with mine. “Sweetie,” he said quietly. “You okay?”
I smiled softly and nodded, unable to find my voice to answer. I needed to trust. Victor wouldn’t have let Silas go off alone if he didn’t trust him to come back.
Victor’s fire eyes glowed. His thumb traced gently over the back of my hand, tickling my skin. “Come on,” he said. “You should see this place. It’s pretty nice.”
I let him guide me deeper into the building. We followed a hallway, our shoes making echoes around us. “What are we doing here?” I asked in a quiet voice. I’d recalled Mr. Blackbourne mentioning we were going out to get ready for homecoming today, but he didn’t mention coming here.
“We need to get to know the building,” he said. “And the grounds outside. Luke’s here, scoping things out and getting an idea of the layout. Mr. Blackbourne and Kota are talking about security issues.”
“And you’re here rigging up cameras?” I asked.
The fire in his eyes lit up to a roar. “You know me too well.”
Victor tugged on my hand, and I followed him out to the back of the estate onto a terrace overlooking a massive landscaped lawn. The lawn was tiered at the far end, gently lowering itself to a waterway at the bottom, like a canal. The space was lined on left and right by gardens with manicured bushes and roses and other flowers I didn’t know the names of.
Out on the lawn stood Mr. Blackbourne and Kota. They were looking out toward the waterway. Kota was pointing to the water, talking. Mr. Blackbourne had his hands on his hips, listening. Mr. Blackbourne was in his suit,
and looking polished. Kota was wearing jeans, and a collared shirt. With Victor in his Armani shirt and black slacks, I was the one out of place wearing shorts and a well-worn T-shirt.
Kota was the first to redirect his attention to us. His expression shifted from serious to something much lighter. He adjusted his glasses with a touch of his finger and his green eyes lit up as he smiled. “Good morning,” he said.
Mr. Blackbourne turned at the same time I was saying hello to Kota. The gray eyes focused on me, and started to drift down to what I was wearing but snapped back up to my face. “Miss Sorenson,” he said.
“Mr. Blackbourne,” I said, my heart racing. Part of me was waiting for him to comment on my clothes, but he never did.
“Where are we at?” Victor asked.
“This place is impossible!” A voice echoed from the house behind us. Everyone turned.
Above our heads, leaning out one of the windows, was Luke. Some of his long blond hair hung loose as he peered down at us. He addressed Kota and Mr. Blackbourne. “There’s hidey holes and exits all over this place. These blueprints of the original construction don’t include all the new additions and where walls were moved. And the grounds are just expansive. Then there’s that inn they’ve built on down the way. This will take more cameras than we’ve got at the school. It’s going to take more than ten of us to handle security.”
“We may need to reconsider our position here,” Kota said. He raised a hand and motioned to Luke. “Come on down.”
Luke nodded and then in a flash, he was scrambling through the window, clinging to the side of the wall. He held on to the bricks and slowly climbed down.
“Don’t...” Kota said, stopping short and then grunting when Luke touched down to the lawn before he could finish. Luke jogged up beside us and Kota shook his head. “I hate it when you do that.”
“What?” Luke asked, blinking, but there was a curve to his lips; he knew what he’d done, and was amused by teasing Kota.
“Let’s try to not overestimate the stability of this place,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “We also shouldn’t show off. It’s good to keep your skills up to par, but we also don’t need people knowing exactly what you can do.” He motioned for everyone to come closer. Luke moved to wedge himself between me and Kota, standing close to me.
“So what are we doing?” Victor asked. “I mean, we can’t just let whoever it is roam wild with another bomb threat. Even if it’s just another empty box, this isn’t the type of venue that will allow a threat to go unnoticed. The news crew will get called in. There will probably be someone from the news team here to cover what’s going on, anyway.”
“We need to take care of these ongoing bomb threats now,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “And as quietly as possible. We’ll bring in the Academy.”
The others seemed to be holding their breaths like I was, only I think I was holding mine for a different reason. Bring in the Academy? Weren’t they the Academy?
“We can’t do that,” Kota said, although in a voice much softer than before, like he wasn’t sure.
“We can’t ask them,” Victor said. “We can’t afford it.”
“This is beyond the scope of our mission,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “And we’re risking the lives of students every day we let this go. I’ve given this a lot of thought. This isn’t about uncovering what Mr. Hendricks might be up to. This is about safety and this is an historic landmark. It’ll be in the Academy’s interests to preserve it, and to save the reputation of what is already a dangerous school. We’ve got a time and location that more than likely will be a target. We should take advantage of it. We need to set up a trap.”
“How?” Luke asked, echoing my thought.
“We’ll undercut all the other offers for catering and security. We’ll swarm the place with our people. We know he’ll be here. We want around the clock monitoring up to and through the entire event. We want the event to be controlled by us. We’re the band. We’re the photographers. We’re the decorators. We’re involved in every piece. We set up the net, and anything that passes through those doors or enters these grounds, we’ll know about.”
“If this is Volto,” Kota said, “if he’s monitoring at all, he’ll notice if we start calling in Academy members.”
“If it is Volto, and he does notice, then we’re more in trouble than we thought, and we need to know as soon as possible,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “We need to find our security breaches, if there are any. Playing in the dark is not what we do. We’ll lure him out and expose him.”
The more they talked, the more my heart sped up. The Academy. They’d be here. I tried to picture it, more people like them, smart, strong, secret. For the longest time, I’d imagined their small circle to essentially be the majority of the Academy. I knew there were more people, but they were all I knew and I couldn’t imagine what the others might be like.
“It’s risky,” Victor said. “We’ll be exposing a lot of us to Volto and Mr. Hendricks.”
“We end this now,” Mr. Blackbourne said decisively. “Another bomb threat is another distraction away from Mr. Hendricks and we can’t afford to lose out on this job. We can’t sacrifice these kids for that, either. Safety first. Whether it is Volto or not, this constant threat has to go.”
“What about Sang?” Luke asked.
I perked up, looking at Luke, but he was focused on Mr. Blackbourne. Kota’s head turned toward me, though, and I met his gaze. He wondered, too, as did I.
What about me?
“Miss Sorenson will be here,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “As expected.”
“They’ll...” Luke started to say, and then pressed his lips together.
“They might notice her,” Victor said softly, like he was trying to finish Luke’s thought.
I picked up my head, waiting for more of an explanation. Were they talking about the Academy people? Were they still worried about it?
“They’re already starting to notice her,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “She’s not invisible. We can’t hide her forever.”
“What if they want to meet her?” Kota asked. He never once turned his gaze from me, like somehow I held the answers.
“Are you going to stop her or deny them?” Mr. Blackbourne asked. “The more we’re quiet about her, the more suspicious they’re going to be about why we’ve taken her in and don’t want to talk about her.”
A silence settled in. Kota’s eyes started shifting, and I knew that meant he was thinking, calculating. The others seemed to be sorting out this information, too.
The question popped out of my mouth. “Do we not want them to...to know about me?” I asked quietly.
Looks were exchanged, and a silent communication happened, first with Victor and Mr. Blackbourne, and then Victor was checking out the others. There was a flash in his fire eyes, something strong. Panic? Worry? It was hard to tell.
“We can’t control everything that might happen,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “It’s inevitable. One way or another, they’ll want to talk to you, whether you know it’s them or not.”
“Why wouldn’t I know?” I asked.
“They may not tell you,” he said. “At first, they may talk to you without you ever being aware of who they are. They’ll feel you out, see if you’re receptive to their ideas. They’ll try to figure out how much you know about us and how you feel about—”
There was a sudden crash, like a door slam, or something being dropped, somewhere inside the building. At the sound, everyone turned, Victor and Luke stood beside me, drawing in close and hovering protectively.
Mr. Blackbourne motioned to Kota. Kota signaled to us to stay where we were, and stay together before he followed Mr. Blackbourne, like his shadow.
The two of them went back inside to investigate, leaving us out in the yard.
“We’re not the only ones here, are we?” I asked. “I mean we shouldn’t be surprised by some noise.”
“It’s probably that security guard,” Luke said. “He’s been mostly sitting in t
he office, but I bet he has rounds.”
“Can’t take any chances,” Victor said. He tugged my arm, encouraging me to walk. “If we’re here to talk about security, we need to know who works the grounds and find out what is normal around here. Come on, let’s check out the garden.”
My heart was still busy thumping against my ribs, and my body was alive with not only the beautiful place, but the news about the Academy, and my role in it. I’d been thinking about joining, unsure if I wanted to be involved for the right reasons. The boys were involved, and I wanted to be part of what drove them, but I still didn’t feel like I fully understood what the Academy was about. It was hard to feel like I could be a part of something if I didn’t understand what they did.
The others were a mix of either encouraging, or on the fence and leaving it up to me. Sometimes the way they talked, I wasn’t so sure.
Victor walked toward one of the patches of gardens, and followed it along, closer toward the canal that seemed to weave through the grounds. At some point, it was Luke walking beside me, and Victor ahead of us as he explored.
When Victor got to the center of the garden, he stopped, looking out across it, with hands in his pockets and a pleasant smile.
“Always has to take center stage,” Luke said quietly beside me. He winked at me and walked toward Victor to join him. I followed.
Victor started pointing toward a distant tree-lined ridge. “We could put people up there,” he said. “Within the gardens and then circle around the whole place.”
I scanned the area and then noticed a large building that looked like a barn not too far from the main building. “What is that?” I asked. “I mean, do they have animals here?”
“Probably,” Victor said, and turned to look at what I was talking about. “I think I heard chickens around here somewhere.”
“They’ve got sheep,” Luke said. “And there’s horses for carriage rides. And there’s all these hiding places. Mr. Blackbourne was right, it’ll take the entire Academy to cover the grounds. This is the worst location with it being so open.”
