Scammed

by Kristen Simmons

“I know you,” I say. “You work at that restaurant in Uptown. Risa’s.” She picked Mark’s pocket, then miraculously found his wallet again as we were leaving. Goth Girl.

  “Not anymore I don’t,” she says, all defiance and grit.

  I recognize her tone. It used to be mine.

  In a snap, I realize why she’s here.

  “This is June,” says Moore. “Our newest student.”

  Heat blossoms on my cheeks. I don’t want there to be a new student. She doesn’t understand the risks, or what’s at stake. But I can’t tell her, because I don’t know this girl. I have no idea if I can trust her, or if she’ll take everything I say straight back to Dr. O.

  Above, on the landing, there’s a creak in the steps, and when I look up, Henry is coming down the stairs. His presence is a punch to the gut; his eyes are puffy, his hair a mess. At the sight of me, he shoves his hands in his pockets and glares at the floor.

  I think he means to talk to me—maybe he can tell me something about this girl—but he shoves past, nearly knocking me over on the way by. I stare at his back in shock as he retreats to the kitchen.

  “Wow,” says June. “Friendly group.” His attitude seems to please her.

  I tear my eyes away from Henry, ignoring the wash of guilt in his wake. “I didn’t know we were getting a new student.”

  “June will be a wonderful addition to the program.” Dr. O’s voice behind me makes me jump. “I’ve heard only positive things about her.”

  I spin toward the director, and though his voice is pleasant, his hard stare is filled with blame. He’s angry at me, maybe because I left without telling anyone. Maybe because I challenged him last night about Caleb’s dismissal.

  It doesn’t matter. He hit his sister. He expelled Caleb. The gratitude I once felt in his presence is gone.

  I hate him.

  But I don’t show it. I lock it inside, because I have a job: protect my friends. Do what I didn’t let Caleb do.

  “From who?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I wish I could suck them back in. I look again at Goth Girl—June—and swallow acid down my throat.

  Caleb recruited her.

  He followed her to Risa’s, where she worked. He reported back to Dr. O if she would be a good fit for the program.

  “You’re from Sycamore Township,” I say, voice faltering.

  “That’s right,” she answers, as if she expects a fight on this.

  I want to scream.

  I want to tear these expensive paintings off the wall and chuck them across the room.

  The new recruit wasn’t an alibi Dr. O. fabricated. She was Caleb’s actual assignment.

  I didn’t believe him.

  I didn’t listen about the police report, or Dr. O being dangerous. I didn’t believe him, even when he gave me his trust.

  “I’d say a welcome is in order,” says Dr. O.

  “Welcome,” I whisper to June.

  She shrugs her bag higher on her shoulder. “Can I get some food or what?”

  With a look that screams warning, Moore leads her back toward the kitchen.

  “Brynn,” says Dr. O.

  He’s already retreated to his office, and I follow, ready for anything as he shuts the door behind me.

  “Where were you today?” His smooth exterior has been shed. Now he’s pure anger encased in a designer suit. Is he that upset about my absence, or has something else gone wrong? I need the answer to that question so I can respond the right way, but this new version of him has me rattled.

  He attacked his own sister.

  She filed a restraining order against him.

  “Did you do it?” His words press through the cage of his teeth. “Did you take that phone and hide it in the senator’s house?”

  The warning ringing in my ears goes silent. I search his face for tells, for some sign of a game, but all I sense is anger.

  He thinks I took Susan’s phone—that I planted it on the senator.

  Which means he didn’t do it.

  Grayson found a way into that safe.

  He protected himself the only way he knew how—by sending his father to jail in his stead. He’s playing the odds that his dad won’t admit what really happened—that his son ran Susan off the road—for fear of being charged with the cover-up of her death.

  “Answer me!” Dr. O bellows.

  I jump, mind flashing to the restraining order Margot showed me. I pull my sleeve over my hand, hiding her number, written in pen on my wrist.

  Frantically, I try to think of an answer he might buy. I can’t tell him I went with Charlotte to serve as a wingman on her assignment, because Charlotte’s already been intercepted—Belk was sent to pick me up instead. If I say I went back to The Loft, I’ll be disobeying a direct order, and endangering the program.

  He’ll never buy I was picking up something for school, or seeing Mom—I’m sure he’s keeping tabs on her now that she works for Wednesday.

  I have one shot, and I pray it’s good enough to buy me time.

  “I didn’t touch that phone. I was in the city looking for Caleb.”

  His shoulders draw back. His chin lifts. He’s a cobra, ready to strike.

  I am Brynn Hilder from Devon Park. I’m not afraid.

  “Why would you do that?”

  I force my feet to stay planted.

  I paint an angry expression on my face, and match his fury.

  “Because you kicked him out,” I say. “And I want to make sure he’s all right.”

  His shoulders drop. “Did you find him?”

  This is a risk. He kicked Caleb out because he knew what was on the police report I told him Caleb had found—that Susan’s head injuries were caused by his hands. If he thinks I’ve found Caleb and I know the truth about that restraining order, I’m as good as done here.

  “No.”

  As long as he thinks I’m upset about Caleb, he won’t dig into my true whereabouts. I hope.

  “Where did you look?”

  “Everywhere,” I say. “Shelters. Restaurants. Places we used to go. Everywhere. He’s MIA.”

  Dr. O’s gaze presses through me like I’m made of glass, but I don’t falter.

  “You had nothing to do with Matthew Sterling’s arrest,” he says.

  “No.”

  He sizes me up for another long moment, then places one hand on the doorknob. “If I find out you’re lying, the way you did when you told me you couldn’t stop Grayson from leaving you at the crash site, you’re done here.”

  He knows I let Grayson go. Has he known the whole time, or did someone tell him after I blurted it out the night the detectives came?

  Dr. O opens the door, but before I walk out, he sags, regret infusing every muscle.

  “Caleb is a bright, resourceful boy,” he says. “He’s going to be all right.”

  It’s not much proof Dr. O hasn’t sent the dogs after him, but it’s all I have.

  CHAPTER 37

  Five minutes later, I’m up in in my room getting my books for the class Moore insists I attend, when I hear the crinkle of paper against my right hip. Pulling up the hem of my shirt, I find a note sticking out of my pocket and carefully draw it out.

  Roof. Tonight.

  My heart trips at the thought of Caleb, somehow here, waiting for me, but I know that can’t be right.

  Caleb’s gone, and it’s my job to find him.

  This is Henry’s handwriting.

  When he came down the stairs, he bumped into me, hard enough to throw me off balance. I’ve done the same on the train when I’ve snagged someone’s wallet, only this is the reverse. Henry didn’t take anything. He planted something.

  The next classes pass like hours in a torture tank. Shrew drones on about the betrayal of Othello. Grayson is still in his room. Henry won’t talk to anyone.

  And Belk is lurking, always.

  The only comfort I have is Sam, who, without making a big deal about it, finds a way to touch Charlotte at every opportunity.
His foot beside hers. The back of his knuckles against her thigh. The brush of his hand when he passes her a book.

  Knowing they’re okay is enough to get me through dinner.

  As soon as the hall quiets, I turn on some music and sneak toward the supply closet. Up the ladder I climb, taking care to mind the squeal when I pull up the rungs. Racing through the dark, I find the attic window, pausing to remember the times I hurried to meet Caleb here.

  I should have trusted him.

  I’ll find him, and make it right.

  Henry is waiting for me at the concrete ledge in front of the spire, exactly where Caleb used to sit. He’s chewing his thumbnail, the shirt beneath his sporty jacket wrinkled. I rush toward him, unsure if he’s going to talk or throw me over the ledge.

  “Henry, I’m sorry,” I say, before he can start. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, but there’s something you need to know…”

  “I did something bad.”

  It’s then I see the panic in his red-rimmed eyes and the tremble in his jaw. It spurs a chemical reaction inside me, and in an instant, I’m ready to defend us against whatever might come.

  “What?” I glance again to his shirt, thinking of yesterday, in the pit, when I walked in on him and Grayson.

  “I thought he liked me.”

  I don’t like where this is heading.

  “Grayson?”

  Henry nods. “He said he liked me. He kissed me. He said he wanted this to be over, and I just wanted to help him, you know?”

  Dread is sinking in my gut like a stone in a still lake.

  “What did you do?”

  Henry heaves out a breath, his fists balled in the pockets of his jacket.

  “He gave me the security code to his house.”

  My thumbs dig into my temples.

  “I just wanted to help.” He tilts forward like he might throw up. “I took that cell phone he wanted out of Dr. O’s safe—I got it that day he gave me the money to frame Luke for embezzling, when he and Sam knocked down the raven statue outside the office.”

  I remember the anger in Sam’s eyes and Grayson’s quick retreat. It was staged. Grayson created a diversion so Henry could rob the safe.

  “Grayson said I should put it in his dad’s office, in this locked cabinet above his desk.”

  In a blink, I’m back in our classroom, the night they were talking about Othello. When I showed up, Grayson sent Henry away—I’d thought he was just being Grayson, but Henry said he had something to do in town.

  He’d almost forgotten his bag. Did it already have Susan’s phone inside it?

  “Okay.” I need to focus. Think. “It’ll be okay.”

  I can still see the police arresting Matthew Sterling outside the campaign office. The press screaming questions as he was shoved into the back of a cop car.

  Grayson’s afraid of him, so this can’t be all bad. Dr. O may be a threat, but that doesn’t mean Matthew Sterling isn’t.

  “It’s not okay.” Henry’s voice hitches. “When I was at Grayson’s house, I found this in a folder in his dad’s cabinet.”

  Henry pulls a picture out of his pocket, creased down the center. He hands it to me with quaking hands.

  I unfold it.

  It’s a casual photo, taken at some fancy dinner. There’s a chandelier in the upper corner. A red tablecloth beneath a gold candelabra. Front and center, Dr. O is smiling at the camera, the buttons on his tuxedo jacket stretched as he rests his arm around the shoulders of a boy, no more than fifteen.

  Grayson Sterling.

  My stomach drops.

  “What is that?” Henry asks. “What are they doing together? I didn’t think they knew each other.”

  I didn’t, either.

  “Brynn, they’re clearly friends.”

  I can’t look away from Grayson’s smiling face. From Dr. O’s hand, curled around Grayson’s shoulder. Your director, Grayson called him, as if they’d never met. The first day he showed up after Belk found him in Nashville, Grayson was petrified Dr. O worked for his dad and was going to turn him in.

  I bought it all.

  But this picture tells a different story.

  Grayson and Dr. O know each other.

  Henry suddenly jerks back, gripping my arm with the force of a snakebite. To my left, someone is coming around the corner beside the pipes. A boy. Broad shoulders. My height. Dark hair.

  “I must have missed the invite,” Grayson says. His lips curl in a cocky smirk as Henry pulls me another step back.

  “Who are you?” Henry asks.

  “I think we’re past that, aren’t we, Henry?”

  “What is this?” I flash the picture at Grayson, already striding toward us. He squints a little, and then blows out a breath.

  “Holiday benefit, I think? Probably some charity thing. You go to enough of those, they all start to blend together.”

  Adrenaline surges through my veins as Grayson steps closer.

  “Stop there,” I tell him.

  “Or what?”

  Dangerous, Caleb whispers in the back of my mind. Troubled, Matthew Sterling said. Margot knew he couldn’t be trusted. Geri’s dad, a hitman, told her to stay away from him.

  I thought I knew Grayson better than they did. I thought I saw something they didn’t.

  But Grayson and Dr. O are in this—whatever this is—together.

  Beside me, Henry is braced for a fight—frightened but ready. Automatically, I scan Grayson’s hands for a weapon.

  “I trusted you,” says Henry.

  Grayson wags a finger at us. “You know better than to trust anyone, Henry. Isn’t that the first rule of this place?”

  “I got that phone for you.” Henry’s voice cracks. “You told me you needed it to clear your name. You said your dad was going to have you killed if he didn’t go to jail.”

  Grayson rolls his shoulders back, looking past us, into the dark.

  “I may have exaggerated.”

  “He’s innocent?” Henry makes a sound like he’s dying. “I just framed an innocent man.”

  I think of Matthew Sterling, sick and exhausted, on the stairs of the Macintosh Building, begging for information on his son. He’s a troubled kid. He left his medicine. He’s missed appointments with his therapist. He needs help.

  The senator never threatened Grayson. He probably covered up Susan’s accident to protect his son, not himself, and sent those detectives to find Grayson, not hurt him.

  He tried to save Jimmy, too, and failed.

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” Grayson says. “I’ve done far worse for that old man.”

  I shiver. Far worse.

  Someone is dead because of him, Caleb whispers.

  “You killed Susan,” I whisper. “You drove her off the road on purpose.”

  Grayson’s gaze finds mine, and for an instant, I see a flash of regret, gone as quickly as it comes.

  “Why would you do that?” I ask.

  “I guess we’ll never know,” he says.

  I believed him. He had me convinced that it was an accident. That he never meant to hurt her. But now all I can think of is Geri’s dad, getting rid of Jimmy Balder, and I wonder if Grayson isn’t doing the same thing for Dr. O—cleaning up his messes.

  “They had to get her out of the way,” Henry says, thumbs digging into his temples. “That’s why he wanted me to plant the phone on his dad, to get him out of the way.”

  “For what?” I ask. “What are you and Dr. O doing?”

  “Cleaning up the city,” Grayson says with a smirk. “Sometimes you have to do bad things to get rid of bad people.”

  “You are the bad people!” Henry shouts.

  Grayson flinches, and for a moment, the sharp edges of his ego are stripped away, leaving a glimpse of the scared kid who drove me to Susan’s crash site three months ago.

  “That depends on which version of the story you read,” Grayson tells him.

  My brows lift. He killed Susan, and now he’s saying she d
eserved it? I never met her, but everything I’ve heard points to her being on the good side. Now that I know what I do about Grayson and Dr. O, I’m pretty sure Matthew Sterling is on the good side, too.

  I have to quiet the roaring in my head. Think. But none of this makes sense. Why did Dr. O tell me to befriend Grayson and make him comfortable if Grayson was already reporting everything to Dr. O in their little meetings in his office?

  Does he suspect Grayson isn’t telling him everything, the way he suspected Caleb wasn’t?

  “You told me you were hiding in Nashville.” I can’t even fathom all the lies he’s told. “If you and Dr. O were such pals, why wouldn’t you come here instead of running away?”

  “Those men my father sent weren’t kidding around,” he says. “I did have to hide. David put me up in a hotel there.”

  David. The familiarity of Dr. O’s first name makes my stomach turn.

  “Why would you take Susan’s phone from Dr. O? He needs it to blackmail your father.”

  “Well now he can’t.” Grayson’s jaw clenches and then suddenly relaxes. A tell—his anger always gives him away.

  He clears his throat and looks to Henry. “I guess this means we’re over, pal. Let’s not make it awkward, okay? I plan on sticking around for a while.”

  Henry stares at him as if they’ve never met before. I’m sick on his behalf. Grayson was set on getting that phone from the beginning, and when I didn’t help him, he moved on to someone who could.

  But something’s off with this equation. Grayson wouldn’t have needed to get the phone if Dr. O had planned on using it against the senator all along. Dr. O was genuinely upset about Sterling’s arrest—he thought I had had something to do with it.

  Grayson and the director may know each other, but they’re not on the same page, and judging by the blades in Grayson’s voice when I mentioned his dad, something tells me that’s the pressure point.

  Is it possible Grayson’s being blackmailed, just like I am with Mom, and Geri and Caleb are with their dads?

  What would make someone go that bad? Kill another person, then send his own father to prison for the crime?

  “What’s he got on you?” I whisper.

  Grayson’s gaze shoots to mine, and I see fear. Cold, steel fear.

  I’ve hit the nerve.