“Isn’t it the worst place to put a bomb, then?” Victor asked. “I mean, the main house is going to have people inside, then there’s these other buildings and the barns. But the dance is happening out here, with tents and along the lawn. This guy wants his bomb to be noticed, not overlooked. And with so many witnesses, how is he going to drop a box around here and just walk away?”
Luke shook his head and pointed where the water stretched out, surrounded by trees. “There’s just a lot of places for him to walk onto the property from a distance away, drop one off and then run away again to make his phone call.”
“He hasn’t made a bomb yet,” Victor said. “He might even know how. It might just be another empty box.”
“Technically, he doesn’t even have to actually make one,” Luke said. “He just needs to make a scene. It doesn’t have to be real to get attention. Rumors can be worse. You should know. They’ll write about you, too. Victor Morgan victim of a prank while attending an event at historic Middleton.”
Victor scratched at his eyebrow. “I think they’re more interested in it being Middleton Place. The city isn’t going to take it lightly that it becomes a target of a bad prank.”
“It’s just bad that it is this school,” Luke said. “If Ashley Waters is the school having the event, and there’s a bomb threat here, it means they blame the school, and they could get banned for forever from here and other locations. Plus, the police will make a very public investigation.”
“We’ll have to make sure it doesn’t happen,” Victor said.
“Mr. Blackbourne wanted a trap,” I said. “How do you set up a trap in a place like this?”
The breeze started to pick up. Luke tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. “Well, the event itself is the trap,” he said. “A time and a place is hard to pick out when dealing with someone who seems to work at random. Knowing a likely time and place is being a step ahead. It’s just catching him in the act. We have to visually see and identify who is leaving the box, if there is one.”
“We might have to set up a network,” Victor said. “At the school, he called the main line. But with so many calls coming in and out during the day, it’d be a mess to sort through and wait for him to call. The problem here is, who is he going to call when he leaves his box around? It’s not like there’s a main line. I mean he could call the security office.”
“He’d leave a box first, wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe not. Maybe we’re too worried about a box. But really, he doesn’t even need a box,” Victor said. “All bomb threats get checked out, box or not. He doesn’t even need to be here. He can be on the other side of town and call something in.”
I followed the boys around the house and across the front lawn. They started angling toward the stable and the long line of fencing protecting sheep, chickens and horses.
“Let’s go,” Luke said, pointing to the stable, which had the doors wide open.
“Should we?” I asked.
“It’s what we’re here for,” Victor said. He reached back for my hand and tugged me along.
I wasn’t exactly sure what we’d do in a barn, but I was curious. The smell was overwhelming to me, though. The closer we got, the more the scent of hay and barn animals thickened around us. I wrinkled my nose, holding a finger to it, wanting to sneeze but unable to.
At that moment, my phone buzzed. I lifted it from my bra and checked it while the guys moved ahead toward the barn.
It was from Silas, a text message. When I opened it, I was surprised to find a picture.
He had his arm lifted to take the picture, showing a bit of his muscular bicep. But the photo was mostly his face and his shoulders. There was the slight curl of his lips in a smile.
Seeing him now, looking right at the camera, I froze as if he was right there looking at me. My heart fluttered, excited, wanting to stare and at the same time feeling as if he was in person on my phone. I remembered the photos we’d taken together at one football game. I often forgot I could take pictures with my phone.
A text message followed.
Silas: Aggele, send me one of you?
My lips parted, and I rubbed the edge of the phone with my finger, thinking. It took a moment to fiddle with the camera to get it right.
I took a shaky photo. When I was sure I’d captured my face, and it didn’t look too bad, I send it to Silas.
His reply took only a minute.
Silas: Send one of you smiling, my flaxen angel.
My mouth dropped open this time and my cheeks heated. He’d never called me that before, and I was unsure how he meant it. If he was teasing...but he didn’t seem to be.
I glanced at the others. Luke was waving at a sheep but Victor had turned around and was looking at me. His head was tilted, his eyes swirling with flickering flames, curious.
I aimed the camera, trying to smile and capture another photo. I sent it along and hurried on to Victor.
“What are you doing?” Victor asked when I got up beside him.
I was about to answer when my phone buzzed in my hand again. I gave in to the knee-jerk urge to check it.
Silas: I love it. You’re so beautiful when you smile, my little night flower.
My mouth fell open again and I was staring. Night flower? Me?
Another photo popped in, and it was Silas again, only this time, he had pointed the phone at a mirror. He’d lifted his shirt, and flexed his stomach muscles. The lighting was just right to show the lines in his abs. His arm was flexed to show off the muscle. He was looking at the camera in the mirror, so not direct, but there was a smile on his face like he was having fun.
Victor was next to me in a second and saw before I could think to hide it. Should I hide it? My face was on fire. Silas was incredible, good looking, but the things he was saying, what he was sending me, while it was still him, was overwhelming.
Victor, to my surprise, laughed. “Oh my god, he’s flirting with you.”
“Who is?” Luke asked, turning from the sheep and catching interest in us again.
“Silas,” Victor said. He took my phone from me and showed Luke the photo.
He may as well have lit me on fire, I was blushing all over. “Guys,” I said quietly, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted. Silas was being very intense. I was partially relieved to have them there and seeing what was going on. I was eager for them to tell me what to do, to say it was okay.
Luke took a look at the picture. He laughed and then reached out to tap the screen, scrolling to see what we’d written and the other photos. “Oh man,” Luke said. He laughed, shaking his head. “I’ve heard of him doing this before. He’s taking the boyfriend and girlfriend thing a little far, isn’t he?”
“What’s that?” Victor asked before I could say anything. “And why is he calling her ‘night flower’?”
“It’s a Greek thing, I think,” Luke said. “I heard him talking to North one day about what if Sang had been in Greece, and the differences between the boys there and boys here. He was saying when Greeks think a girl is interested, she’s done for. The guys bombard them with sweet talk.”
“Does he think other people are listening in that he has to carry it out through text?” Victor asked. “I’ve never heard him talk like that.”
“Honestly? Sounds like rough translations from Greek pet names or something,” Luke said. He tapped at the phone and typed something into the search engine. “Yeah, it’s probably stuff they call girlfriends. Maybe he’s in a spot where he has to pretend he’s got a girlfriend. Greeks flirt hard, and girls usually like that.”
Girlfriends and boyfriends flirt. I knew that, though I was still new to flirting. My heart was racing so hard, and I wanted a cool place to sit down and absorb it all. Silas was an intense boyfriend to have.
I knew it wasn’t for show. He wasn’t pretending. Maybe since I’d agreed last night, he was doing what most Greeks do with girlfriends... showering me with attention.
I smiled a little. He had corny jokes.
I realized now maybe he was using the sweet talk, the corny ones, to make me laugh. I tried to envision Silas saying things like ‘night flower’, and I wanted to giggle. Then it suddenly made sense. He’d commented before about wanting my photo. And he likes to make me laugh with corny jokes. That was more like Silas.
Luke curled his finger to Victor, taking my phone. “Lift your shirt,” he told him.
Victor chuckled. “What?”
“Just trust me. And suck in your abs a bit.”
Victor lifted his shirt. Compared to the other guys, Victor was a little smoother, softer. Unlike some of the others, he was hairless at the waist. Or maybe it was just faint enough that some wouldn’t notice. In the right light, there were lines in his abdomen and the angle of his hip going down like a “V” toward his pants, but he wasn’t as cut as some of the others and at the right angle...
Luke aimed the camera closer to Victor’s stomach. “Turn to the left a little. And lift it higher.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Shh,” Luke said.
“It’s not like he can hear you,” Victor said with a little grin. “He’ll kill you. You know that?”
“That’s his own fault for sending selfies when he knows she’s with us.”