by Sofia Daniel
I turned the smartphone face-down on my lap and placed my hands on top of its cover, trying to work through events. Miss Claymore’s number was programmed on my phone from the time she’d given me private lessons. I couldn’t see someone trying to fake a message from her. But Miss Claymore was the least trustworthy person I knew. Behind the dedicated, stern facade was a woman who couldn’t keep her hands off Sebastian.
“What was that message?” asked Cormac as he turned into a highway.
“It was from Leopold.” The lie slipped from my lips. “They’re still waiting to hear from the surgeon about Sebastian’s grandfather.”
“They’re down in Brighton, aren’t they?”
“Yes.” I clicked my contacts and selected the option that said SHARE MY LOCATION.
Forcing deep breaths in and out of my lungs, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think. Leopold had suspected Miss Claymore, and the story of her affair with Sebastian had colored my view of her.
What if Sebastian had been right about her when he had said she wasn’t the type to take her anger out on an innocent party? I hadn’t actually seen Miss Claymore do any of the things I had suspected she had done, but I automatically blamed her because her motive seemed the greatest.
“Cormac?” I asked.
“Yes, Willow?” he replied in a voice full of warmth. Warmth that seemed inappropriate for someone who had supposedly just been jilted.
“Where are we going?”
“Not back to the academy.” He snorted. “If that lot are planning on ambushing me, they can think again!”
The wind roared in my ears, and blood drained from my face, leaving me light-headed. Perhaps the ambush Cormac feared wasn’t really anything related to being pigged. Perhaps what he really feared was a truckload of arresting police.
“Where are we going, then?”
“I’ve got to pick a few things up, then we’re driving down to Southampton and taking a ship to New York,” he said.
Despair washed through me like warm acid, burning through my nerve endings and everything I believed about Cormac. My shoulders sagged, and all the strength drained out of me with the realization that there was something deeply wrong with my best friend.
I pressed the record function on my phone and cleared my throat. “Where’s Geraldine?”
A smile curled his lips. “It’s hard to decide what I love about you the most. Your big heart or your intelligence. How much have you worked out?”
“Are you going to hurt me?” My voice shook.
He reached out and placed a hand on my arm. “Never.” He said with so much conviction, it brought tears to my eyes. “I’ve done a lot of things to further my goals, but I swear to you on Corrine’s life that I will never hurt you again.”
So, Miss Claymore really wasn’t the cause of all my problems. “It was you who knocked my mom’s car down the side of the mountains.”
“That was an accident.”
“Why?”
“When you took up with Garraway, it was the perfect opportunity to hurt Miss Claymore for pressuring Corrine in her final year of life.” He spared me a glance and then continued down the highway. “Corrine’s biggest source of anguish was getting expelled and returning alone to a foster home.”
“But you would have gone with her,” I replied.
“Yes.” He sighed. “But she didn’t want to ruin my chances of getting a good scholarship.”
“How did you use me to hurt Miss Claymore?” I asked.
“The anonymous, harassing notes were a start. As was messing up your room. Sorry about the watercolor of your family. We can have another made as soon as we’ve settled in America.”
I stole a glance at the smartphone on my lap then snapped my gaze back to Cormac. “What else did you do?”
“Blame Garraway for being so stubborn, not me.” He wagged his finger. “I thought he would report Miss Claymore for harassment and for the notes, but he said nothing. Then when you decided to leave the academy, I borrowed someone’s car and put on a black wig to make you think Miss Claymore was chasing after you.”
I shook my head. This was so convoluted. “And knocking my car down the side of a mountain was an accident?”
He spluttered. “How was I supposed to know you didn’t use your handbrake!”
“And you forced alcohol down my throat and made it look like I was drink-driving.”
“Sorry about that. I panicked when I saw you jump out of the car.”
Adrenaline rushed through my system, and my heartbeat so hard, so fast, that pain spread through my chest. I was in a convertible, speeding down the highway at eighty miles an hour with a boy who had lost his fucking faculties. There was no doubt in my mind that trying to escape would mean my death.
“Did you put me in that cave, too?” I asked.
“Garraway’s fault. If he had pointed the finger at Miss Claymore, I would never have attacked you.”
“Why not hurt her directly instead of doing it through me?” I blurted.
Cormac shook his head. “I must seem completely unreasonable to you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, in case this was a continuation of last night’s peculiar dream. That was the understatement of the millennium. “Why?”
“The police needed to reopen Corrine’s case.” Cormac reached across and patted me on the knee. “Everything you suffered needed to mirror Corrine’s death. The last time we tried to frame him, it didn’t work, and I couldn’t let her down this year.”
“Wha—” I choked on air and had to thump my chest to clear my windpipe. “Last time? What are you talking about?”
“Corrine’s death,” he said, as though the answer was obvious. “We staged it so the police would arrest Kashaayah.”
I shook my head. “She’s alive?”
“She wanted to die, and I helped her. All the symbolism was there. Pork ribs in the body cavities to indicate the pull-a-pig game, her body laid out on a beautiful Indian rug, and she even chose the brand of single-malt whiskey those reprobates enjoy as her poison of choice.”
“Why didn’t you stop her?”
“Corrine was going to throw herself out of a fourth-floor window in the east wing if I didn’t help her. I didn’t want her leaving this world in pain or surviving and ending up like Bianca Byrd.”
“Did you—”
“Miss Byrd deserved what I did to her. She bullied my sister relentlessly, just as she bullied you.”
I considered opening the door and jumping out of the car, but we were in the middle lane and going too fast. On our right, a Mercedes overtook us, and a lorry trundled toward us on the left. Leaving a moving vehicle would mean a certain death. At least if I played along with Cormac, I might have a chance of survival.
“How did those girls know the circumstances of Corrine’s death?”
“They didn’t.” Cormac turned the Aston Martin down a highway that led to the mountains. “I gave Geraldine the idea for the sister’s dilemma and the penalty, hoping you would report the girls to the police and make them reopen the case.”
A shiver ran down my spine. It made sense in a twisted sort of way. Anyone aware of what had been found in Corrine’s dead body would have looked twice when they discovered what had happened to me. Especially since that information was never made public.
As the incline steepened, the road narrowed from two lanes to one. The clouds thinned, letting through the full strength of the sun. Sweat beaded on my temple, and my throat dried. I had to get out, but how? If I ran through the mountains, Cormac would chase me until I stumbled and fell to my death.
“Did you poison Bruce Wilmington’s hookah?” I asked.
He tilted his head to the side and gave me a fond smile. “Sorry. Ashley did that all by herself and even placed recording devices in peoples’ rooms. She tried to disguise herself as she did the rounds, but I noticed.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He blew out a weary breath. “I didn’t spot what Ashley had done until af
ter she’d stolen all my evidence against Kashaayah. After she threatened Wilmington, I told him she’d gathered enough evidence on him to frame him for Corrine’s death. Your sister really is a piece of work.”
“So, Bruce really beat her up?”
“He roughed her up a bit and dumped her in the hallway. It was me who dragged her to Kashaayah’s room to finish the job with a cricket bat.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle a sob. “Why go so far?”
“Revenge for everything she did to you.” He raised a shoulder. “And it was a prime opportunity to get Kashaayah locked up.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to protest his innocence, but of course, Cormac knew this. He’d fucking helped his sister to die.
Cormac continued down the highway at a steady pace and whistled as though all was right with the world. I glowered at the side of his face. Of all the people I’d suspected of causing shit at the academy, I had never imagined the prefect I had befriended.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I just can’t believe how much you fooled us all.”
“Nothing about my feelings for you were fabricated. You love me, I see it in your eyes.” He chuckled. “Even though right now, you look like you want to wring my neck.”
“Very perceptive,” I muttered.
“One day, we’ll laugh about this.”
We may as well have been disagreeing about his tea-making skills. “Do you think so?”
“It will take a while for you to adjust, but there’s a study that says it takes a captive ten weeks to warm to their captor. Once Stockholm Syndrome kicks in, we’ll both start a new life in America.”
The part of me who imagined escaping him on the ship died a slow, painful death. “I suppose you’ve got somewhere to keep me until then?”
“You’ve seen it,” he replied.
I shook my head. “If you mean my cottage—”
“My tent. I’ve stashed enough supplies for three months. Longer if we catch fish in the lakes.”
“Cormac,” I said with as much compassion as I could muster. “Right now, no-one thinks you’ve done anything wrong. You can stop the car near the academy and let me walk the rest of the way back. I won’t say a word to anyone, and I’ll tell them I went out on a hike.”
Not answering my question, Cormac turned into another highway, taking the corner way too fast for me to jump out without breaking my neck. I didn’t press him to answer because it would mean having to admit what he had done to Geraldine. Right now, I needed to focus on not becoming his next victim.
The road’s incline steepened, indicating the start of the mountains. Soon, it would narrow to a single track and become too dangerous to negotiate at speed. I rubbed my throat and gulped. If I got the chance, I would have to jump.
We sped past craggy shrubs, which offered a soft landing, and thin strips of pastureland occupied by slumbering cows and sheep. At places, there was nowhere for me to jump—just a sharp drop down the mountainside and into the river. With the occasional stone walls and the bends and twists of the road, timing my escape was near impossible.
“Damn!” Cormac snarled.
“What’s wrong?”
“Is that Garraway’s jeep behind us?”
I twisted around in my seat to find the familiar vehicle, complete with an outline of Sebastian in the front seat. My heart surged with hope, but I forced my face into a neutral expression. “It looks similar.”
“Do you not know the registration number of the twat you’re screwing?”
Channeling my inner Ashley, I focussed on the least important part of the sentence. “Do you have to be so rude?”
Cormac snarled and sped down a sharp incline. My stomach lurched, and I clutched a handle on the dashboard. These old cars didn’t have airbags. If we crashed, there would be no buffer between us and a messy, painful death. He slammed on the brakes and turned around a bend in the road, making the tires screech.
My phone slid off my lap. I shot forward, grabbed the handset, and stuffed it down the bodice of my dress. Eventually, I would escape Cormac, and my recording contained all the information I needed to free Prakash.
“You don’t know what they were like before Corrine died,” he snapped. “A bunch of bastards who used to mock me for being a scholar.”
“Cormac.” I held back a sob. “Slow down.”
“So Garraway can whisk you off into the sunset and break your heart?” He laughed. It was a shrill, blood-curdling sound. “No.”
“He’s not like that. Stop the car. The boys won’t stop looking if you take me away.”
He shifted down to a lower gear as he drove the Aston Martin up the steep incline of a foothill. The engine revved, sounding like it was being pushed to its limit. I glanced into the rearview mirror to find the jeep keeping up. At the top of the hill, the road made several downward curves along the valley before it twisted out of sight. Cormac shifted back into gear and raced down the track.
Hair blew in my eyes, and my heart jumped into the back of my throat. I jerked from side to side as Cormac negotiated the road at high speed. All plans of jumping fell away, along with my hopes of getting through this car chase alive.
I squeezed my eyes shut and clung harder onto the dashboard, but it did nothing to stop the car from lurching me about with its rapid, sharp movements.
“Cormac,” I whimpered. “Are you trying to kill us?”
After several moments, he yelled, “Fuck!”
My eyes snapped open. We were driving down a long stretch of road with high mountains in the distance. Twisting toward us at an alarming speed was a red Audi TT. All the moisture left my throat. With Prakash still behind bars and awaiting his trial on Monday, this could only be Leopold. Perhaps he had demanded access to Prakash’s room to take his car key while Sebastian had raced ahead.
“Persistent fuckers, aren’t they?” Cormac growled.
“Stop the car before someone gets hurt.” I hoped that between Leopold, Sebastian, and Miss Claymore, one of them had called the police. Or better still, the mountain rescue team.
Cormac shook his head. “I miscalculated.”
“Huh?”
“I wanted to wait for Kashaayah conviction of murder before taking you, but you’d already fucked him and had started fucking the other two. They would have pigged you even worse than the knights pigged Ashley.” He shook his head.
“What?” I could only guess that he had been eavesdropping through Ashley’s bugs.
“Pregnancy,” he said. “Although I would have stepped up and taken care of you and the baby, I wanted to wait until we finished our degrees before starting a family.”
“I thought we were going to be brother and sister!”
He sped along the gentle bends of the road toward Leopold. “They’ve corrupted you. When we start our new life, you’ll learn the benefits of celibacy.”
The landscape at our sides turned into a blur of green as we accelerated toward Prakash’s car. I curled my fingers around the Aston Martin’s passenger seat door handle and pulled, but the door jammed. The red Audi took up the middle of the road, trying to force Cormac to stop.
“S-slow down!” I screamed.
Cormac revved the engine and increased his speed. The wind rushed through my ears, causing every hair on my body to stand on end. Beads of sweat on my skin turned to ice. He was just as suicidal as his sister and wasn’t planning to die alone. We were less than thirty seconds away from a head-on collision, and every muscle in my body—including my heart—seized.
“I won’t slow until you promise to stay with me forever,” he shouted over the roar of the wind.
“A-all right, I will!”
He chuckled. “Liar.”
“Give me time, for fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “You can’t expect me to be calm after hearing you were behind every shitty thing that happened in the academy.”
“I didn’t molest Bianca.” He stopped accelerating but still maintain
ed a breakneck pace through the bends in the road. “That was her father’s doing. And I might have been responsible for Garraway’s little accident with the Porsche, but I didn’t get Miss Claymore to sneak into his room at night. She was just depraved.”
The road bent toward a straight stretch of about two-hundred feet in length. At the speed Cormac and the red Audi drove, we would take a second to collide.
“Stop,” I screeched.
He flared his nostrils and drove toward Leopold, who swerved into the shrubs at the roadside. I twisted around in my seat to find him in a cloud of dust.
“Ha!” Cormac slammed his palm on the steering wheel, sounding the horn. He slowed to a less hair-raising speed and continued around the track.
The road narrowed even further as it twisted around the mountain. On our left was an immeasurable drop. On our right, a grass-covered slope. A shudder ran down my spine. One careless twist of the steering wheel and we would hurtle down the valley.
I lowered my head and sucked in huge gulps of air. Nothing seemed to reach my lungs, making my surroundings spin. Sweat dripped onto the skirt of my pink dress, and spasms squeezed my stomach.
I raised my head one more time to beg him to think things through, but as we rounded a sharp bend, I caught sight of three police cars blocking the road about a quarter of a mile ahead.
My breath froze in my lungs. How the hell would Cormac react?
He turned to me, his eyes cold. “This is your doing.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to me!” he roared.
Hopeless, desperate tears ran down my cheeks. “If you explain everything to the police, they’ll understand. There’s a defense called diminished responsibility, and—”
“I’m not mental,” he snapped.
“Corrine’s obsession with Prakash affected you more than you realize.”
He put his foot on the accelerator, lurching the Aston Martin forward. “Did you ever watch Thelma and Louise?”
My heart stopped.
My stomach plummeted.
My fingers unhooked the seatbelt.
This was the end.
Chapter 23
What happened next was difficult to describe, but if I imagined my mental state as a clock face, twelve o’clock would be calm, six would be fear, nine would be terror, and eleven would be blind, useless panic.