Corey made a noise like a moan-grunt. He masked it by rubbing his hand over his mouth before he continued. “No, not that. Go back and try again.”
Poor Corey. He was falling for the ruse. I knocked gently at the door frame. They turned, staring.
“Uh,” I said. “Can I help?”
Corey’s eyebrows scrunched together. The old lady started to shake her head. “Oh no, dear,” she said.
“Hang on,” I said, holding my hand up. “I may not know too much about a lot of things, but I think I know a computer virus when I see it.”
The woman looked at me as if I could rescue her. “You... do?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, widening my eyes. “Happened to me not too long ago. You know how these viruses are. It can make computers act up. Makes money in your bank account look like it’s gone. Sets your Facebook account to send out spam messages. Once I got an email from an Egyptian prince offering a million dollars. Turns out it was just a virus.” I stepped forward and pointed to the virus scanner that was on. “Try clicking on that.”
The woman changed course with her mouse and clicked on what I asked. Quickly. She was eager to do anything that wasn’t going to reveal the true reason why the money was gone.
As I fake-trained her on how to use the virus thing to scan, Corey shook his head, made some noises and gave me all manner of stares to ask me to back off and let him work.
I jerked my head toward the door, trying to tell him to get lost. When I had the woman scanning the system, I pointed Corey toward the door, and flailed my hand at him, motioning that we had to go. He didn’t listen.
The virus protection program came up with two non-interesting pieces of malware. I pointed to the two and made my eyes wide. “See? You had viruses,” I said. “I betcha if you run the cleaner, that’ll fix everything.”
“Well, I’ll be,” she said. She clicked to allow the computer to clean itself. “You are probably right. I’m so sorry you all had to come all this way for something I could have done. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Corey sighed and shrugged. “I guess that solved it.”
The grandmother smiled, and if I hadn’t known her for the snake she was, I probably would have fallen for it, too. “You poor dears.” She stood from her chair. “Here. Let me fix up a quick basket for you to take home.”
??????
With our arms loaded with pie leftovers and sandwiches made with homemade bread, and lots of sweet remarks about how nice we were to clean her kitchen and fix her computer, Corey and I joined Raven out by the car.
“You were right,” Raven said to me. He opened the passenger side door.
“Who was right?” Corey asked, his head turning from me to Raven. “What just happened?”
“Granny lied,” I said in a low tone. “Can we get out of here?”
Raven nodded and motioned to the car. “Let’s go.”
“Why are we leaving?” Corey asked. He got into the back as I hopped into the passenger seat. He buckled in and then reached over, clutching my shoulder to get my attention. “What’s wrong? Is it your brother?”
“No,” I said. “Mrs. Gunther lied to us. She didn’t lose her money in a Ponzi scheme.”
“Huh?”
“Kidnapping,” Raven said, as he started the car. He knocked Corey’s hand off my shoulder so he could grab onto the back of my chair and look behind himself to back the car out of the drive. “Fred, the grandson, kidnapped his daughter under a custody bond.”
Corey’s face altered from confusion to shock and then realization as he put the pieces together. “She paid them off?”
I nodded. “But that leaves Fred still gone with the daughter. And the grandmother is still out nearly all of her savings. Even if the bail bond people stop looking, the police probably are still trying to find the girl.”
“Sara,” Raven said. “I talked to Axel. Her name is Sara.”
“Sara,” I said. “The police will be looking for both of them. Granny’s going to be a suspect when they learn she paid off the bail bondsman. Isn’t that obstruction of justice somehow?”
“Axel’s on the way,” Raven said. “With Brandon and Marc. Kevin’s going to hang back and keep an eye out on the BOLOs for Wil.”
Corey blew out a sigh and sat back. “What do we do?”
“Find a home base,” Raven said. “We’ll go from there.” He turned the car out of the neighborhood and rolled out.
A HOME IS A HOTEL AWAY
When we got out of Mrs. Gunther’s neighborhood, Raven drove back toward the beach and tourist areas.
Corey held out his phone and tapped at it with a forefinger. “I see a Hampton on the beach,” he said after a few minutes of searching.
“We’re going to a hotel?” I asked.
Corey nodded. “We’ll find a place to stay and wait for the guys. I need a place to regroup and get online to figure out where Fred’s going.”
Raven leaned forward in his seat, looking out the windshield. “I see it,” he said.
I studied the area Raven pointed out, and squinted at the hotel, feeling a little odd. It was bigger than the one I’d been living in, with a fancy pool on the outside, and beach access. There wasn’t much tourist activity since it was October, but the lot was still half full. Across the street was a combination of beach homes, gift shops and restaurants.
Raven pulled up under the awning near the front doors. Corey hopped out. I waited with Raven in the car while Corey went inside and paid for a room.
I slumped in my seat, my head rocking back and forth against the headrest. “From one hotel to another,” I said.
Raven grunted. “Not the same, Little Thief. This is a much nicer hotel. Bet we get our hand towels folded into swans here.”
It was still another hotel to me. I eyeballed Raven. This whole thing was becoming a mess. Now it wasn’t so simple a job, and Axel and the others were heading down. Should I insist I go back? Could I use the excuse that I needed to be back in time for Wil? Yet, as I sat there, I couldn’t do it. I still didn’t know about the Academy at all. I was running out of time before Monday and they’d know something was up if I wasn’t insistent on seeing Wil. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you join this Academy thing? What’s it about?”
He shook his head. ?
??No. Not that.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“Can’t talk about it.”
I rolled my eyes, staring out the window. “That’s so stupid.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Raven grunted, tilted his head back and looked right at me. “What do you want from me?”
The edge in his voice had me staring right back, ready to square off. “Tell me what the Academy is.”
“You already know. Why are you asking me?”
The heat in my chest grew. I clenched my fist and then punched him in the arm for being a jerk who wouldn’t just answer me. “Because I don’t know the details,” I said. I pointed to my chest. “Look at me, Raven. I’m hundreds of miles from home, on a mission for some little girl and grandma with you guys. I don’t know anything about you.”
Raven snapped a loose fist back at my forearm, lighter than I’d hit him, which left me a little disappointed. His lips softened into a mild expression. “What do you want to know?” he asked in a quieter tone.
If he was going to be compliant, I guess I had to come up with something good. “Who is your boss? Who’s in charge?”
“Axel.”
“Okay, who is his boss?”
“No one.”
I rolled my eyes and sat back. I wasn’t getting anywhere. “Never mind.”
He snapped his arm out, capturing my face between his fingers. He forced my head to turn to him. “I answered your question,” he said. He clutched my jaw, holding strong and steady, and his eyes flared. “There is no boss. He’s not under orders. He does what he wants. No one fucks with Axel.”
“He’s not the boss,” I said, understanding his frustration. He was trying to explain, it was just something I was missing. “I mean, who runs the Academy?”
“We do,” he said.
“You guys are in charge of the entire Academy?”