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.”