So much of this doesn’t make sense. The way Emilio seems to get away with anything on this campus never really worked for me. Just because he’s giving half of the staff and administrators some bribes doesn’t mean they’d let him bring in alcohol and drugs with impunity. How’s he still going, especially now that everyone knows what he’s up to? Why didn’t my sister’s article ruin him?
It doesn’t make sense.
Unless he has help from the inside.
It clicks into place. Dean Wotherspoon, Lesley, Emilio. He’s working with the dean somehow, and the dean’s connected with Cask, and he’s the one that got Lesley from them. But what’s Emilio doing with Dean Wotherspoon, and why was he so insistent on hiding it from me?
I look back at the house. I spot Lesley talking quietly to Emilio in the kitchen through the window. He’s scowling and he looks toward me, and I flinch back—but there’s no way he can see me.
He said to trust him, and I want to.
I desperately want to.
But there are too many secrets floating around Saint Parras, and I still don’t know the truth about my sister.
Emilio insists he didn’t kill her—but he never said that what happened was an accident.
What else is he hiding from me? What else is he lying about?
I’m going to find out.
Chapter21
Kaye
Things are quiet for a few days. Emilio leaves on a smuggling run and the rest of Calico House throws an enormous beach party in honor of Lesley coming home. It’s a rager, one of the most debauched parties I’ve ever seen, and I spend most of the night at Lesley’s side. “I don’t want to be alone,” she says to me around midnight in the middle of a sea of people.
I know what she means. We stay together until two in the morning and walk back to the house arm in arm.
Emilio comes back the following morning. Most of the guys are too hungover to help unload so I take on more of the work than usual. “Lazy assholes,” Paola says, glaring at Terrence as he pukes in a corner, wipes his mouth, and hefts a case into his arms again. “Can’t keep themselves together.”
Back at the house, we stack everything in the basement as Lesley logs it all, and I try to get a few seconds alone with Emilio. I want to ask him about the run and see how he’s dealing with Cask and Lesley and everything else. A black cloud still hangs over him, and although the rest of the house is acting like Lesley’s return ended hostilities, I can tell he has a different idea.
I can’t manage to get him alone. Every time I try, someone gets in the way, or he has an excuse to go do something. It feels like he’s dodging me, but I can’t figure out why.
Around five that evening, he slips out the back door, heads around the side yard, and makes his way toward campus.
I give him a ten count before I follow. As I step out onto the main path, I catch sight of Lesley sitting on the front porch. She smiles at me grimly and nods, and I wonder if she knows what I’m doing. I nod back and hurry away.
Following Emilio isn’t easy. He’s not trying to lose me, but he’s also walking fast and ducking down side paths. I have to be careful or else he’ll spot me, and I nearly lose him once or twice, but I manage to find him again over near the soccer fields.
In the same place I found him when he went into Dean Wotherspoon’s house.
He slips down the underbrush and heads to the very last house again. He walks up the deck, and this time, instead of using a key and letting himself inside, he knocks.
I hide behind a tree, heart racing.
This is a mistake. I shouldn’t be doing this. Following Emilio is a huge breach of trust, but I know he’s not telling me something important, and I know it has to do with the dean. What’s their relationship? Why would the dean be helping a student smuggle illegal items onto the island? Maybe he’s taking a cut, or maybe Emilio is bribing him some other way.
I have to find out what’s happening here. Lesley got sucked into this nightmare, and I’m afraid it’ll only get worse.
The door cracks open. They exchange some words, and I catch a glimpse of the dean himself, staring out into the trees like he’s searching for me before he disappears inside.
I count to twenty then follow.
This is dumb. This is extremely dumb. I’m going to get caught and a whole lot of bad things are going to happen. Emilio will hate me. The dean will expel me. I’ll never find out the truth about my sister. But I keep going. I’ve come so far and now it’s time to follow through. I wanted to know Saint Parras’s secrets, and this has to be the biggest, the secret that might reveal all the others. I head up the deck and try the back door’s handle.
It’s unlocked. I slip inside.