I breathed out a sigh. Mission over.
I was collecting my bag when I heard more footsteps in the hallway. I waited just inside the door and out of sight, not wanting to run into another administrator.
Mr. McCoy materialized in the doorway.
I backed up a step, surprised that he returned. My tongue caught in my throat.
“Mr. McCoy,” a familiar voice sounded from the hallway. “Could I bother you for a second?”
Mr. McCoy glared at me, looking like he wanted to tell me something but now with someone else around, wouldn’t admit it out loud.
He turned away from me, addressing the speaker. “Yes, Dr. Green?”
“I’ve got something interesting. I think you should see it.”
“Not now, I’m in the middle of something.”
Dr. Green appeared in the hallway just in front of the door. “Oh,” he said, glancing in and spotting me, but the surprised look appeared fake. He’d known I was there. “Sorry, hate to interrupt.”
“You do have that habit,” Mr. McCoy said.
“Shouldn’t you be in class?” Dr. Green asked me.
As he said it, the bell rang.
“I believe you’re due for a music lesson, aren’t you?” Dr. Green continued, and his eyes telling me what I needed to know. Head there now. I suspected Mr. Blackbourne was waiting for me.
I took only one more glance at Mr. McCoy before walking around them, marching quickly down the hallway.
Escaping.
A BROKEN SCREAM
The hallways were jumbled with other students transitioning between third and fourth period classes. Since the guys weren’t next to me, I paid special attention, kept my head down, and took the shortest route to class.
I was shuffling in with others inside a narrow hallway when a sharp bump of an elbow hit me in my breast. The pain radiated through my shoulder. I clutched at my chest where I’d been hit.
“Oops,” called a smoky female voice.
I straightened, turning, caught off-guard by a familiar face when at the moment, with the lighting changed and my thoughts still stuck on the encounter with the principal, it took me a moment to recognize her.
But there was no mistaking those sharp eyes that spliced into me, and that raven dark hair.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t see you,” Jade said, although her tone made it seem like she wasn’t sorry and she had seen me.
I removed my hand from my chest. “Pardon me,” I said, willing to take the blame just to escape her. It was how I dealt with anyone at my old school wanting to cause trouble. Excusing myself and bowing my head and running. It was a rare occurrence but it usually worked.
Jade stepped into my path. “What’s wrong, sugar? In a hurry?”
“I have to get to class.”
She smiled, but it was like looking at the mouth of a cobra, hypnotic and deadly. “Tell North I said hello, won’t you?” She turned away, heading down the hall.
I pushed her out of my mind, but a second thought had me wondering. She was on the list of names associated with Mr. Hendricks. Was this really a random encounter, or was she pinned with following me? Or North?
???
North and Nathan were waiting outside the door to Music Room B.
“What kept you?” North asked, his voice a little gruffer than normal, like he’d been using it more lately. Or yelled a lot more.
“Jade ... uhm,” I said. I stumbled for the rest but realized it probably wasn’t important right now.
“Who?” North asked.
I waved my hand in the air. “Nothing. Crowded hallway. Sorry.”
He made a face but opened the door.
“Should we go in with her?” Nathan asked.
“I’ll go in,” North said. “You go to class.”
“Both of you will go to class,” Mr. Blackbourne emerged in the doorway. “Now.”
North straightened. “We need to—”
“Appear completely normal. That’s an order.”
North grunted, glaring but turned, stalking off. Nathan shifted a short look to me but retreated to the hallway to go to class.
Mr. Blackbourne focused on me. “Miss Sorenson.”
“Mr. Blackbourne.”
He directed me inside. I dropped my bag and violin case into one of the chairs.
“It was an interesting choice of topic to discuss with Mr. Hendricks,” he started. He collected his hands behind his back. It was only the slightest lift of one of his eyebrows that told me his mood in an otherwise barren face. There was just a spark of curiosity. “What made you think of it?”
“I wanted to know,” I said. I plucked my phone out of my bra in full view. If he’d been watching, he knew where it was, anyway. I flipped through the phone, finding the list of people and showed it to him. “He’s toying with you.”
Mr. Blackbourne collected my phone, studying the image. “Students and teachers.”
“He knows that you know people are following you. He’s happy about it. It’s like he ...” I paused, knowing the answer, but unsure how to phrase it.
“Wants to keep us contained,” he said. “If he can’t figure out what we’re up to, he’ll make it impossible for us to work. He does it by not allowing us the privacy needed to do whatever he suspects we’re up to.”
I tapped my finger against the side of my chin to think. “So he planted people to play babysitter. And if you did happen to do something, at least he’d have a witness. It isn’t Ms. Johnson, but McCoy has participated.”
“Was it something that Mr. Hendricks said?” he asked. “How do you know one is McCoy?”
“McCoy told me. Well, he didn’t say so, but he ... I don’t know. I’m pretty sure he is, though. And there’s someone else, too. At least watching Kota.”
“Kota did mention you pointed out the differences in the cars. You were correct. They were different, something we didn’t not
ice. It was a good catch.”
“I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have drawn attention to it. I didn’t have anything to offer.”
“Which is exactly how it should be,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “Just keep your eyes and ears open.”
I swiped my fingertips across the material of my skirt, trying to remember what else to tell him. There seemed to be so much. I glanced back at my book bag, retreated to it for the slip of paper. “There was this, too.”
“Of course,” he said, as if he expected this. He flipped over the paper, examining the indentions. “It appears to be monetary figures.”
“It was next to a document about insurance on the football team. I took photographs of the page he was looking at.”
The corner of his mouth tilted up a millimeter. “You’re becoming quite the little team member, Miss Sorenson.”
Was that a compliment? I blushed, unsure how to respond.
He held up my cell phone. “Do you mind if I transfer these to my phone?”
I shook my head. Of course I didn’t mind. I expected him to do something with it, even if he just told me they weren’t useful and to throw them away.
He pulled his phone out, a similar iPhone, and started pushing buttons on it, and mine.
I watched as he worked, rubbing the material of my skirt between my fingertips. “Mr. Blackbourne?”
“Hm?” he said, still concentrating on the phones.
“Why did Mr. McCoy come back?”
“He made an excuse to Mr. Hendricks to return to his office. He claimed to have forgotten his cell phone, which clearly wasn’t the case.”
“Do you think he knows about my parents? Since he’s watching Kota?”
“He hasn’t mentioned it.”
I smoothed my skirt again when I realized I was probably wrinkling it. I didn’t know how to say this next part. It felt like something I should have said to Kota or someone else. “What’s to stop him from coming to my house? Or stopping me in the street if I’m walking to Kota’s?
His eyebrows lifted first, as if he heard the question but for a split second, was surprised by what it meant. His head lifted from the phones, and he gazed at me. He must have been calculating something entirely different and suddenly faced a question he hadn’t been prepared to answer. “When I asked you to keep away from Mr. McCoy, I meant in any capacity, not just in school.”