Drop of Doubt

by C. L. Stone

Victor’s eyes unfocused from his computer and his head slid around, tilting. “What?”

  I held up the clock. “Do you love it?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

  “If I take it apart, will you be mad?”

  He laughed. “Oh. Have at it. You can put it back together again.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  His eyes blazed with amusement. “I’ll get you to buy me a new one.”

  I knew Victor was teasing, but just in case, I wanted a backup plan if I broke it. “It’s like ten dollars or something, isn’t it?” Not that I had ten dollars with me, but I thought I could get Luke to let me work at the diner a little bit.

  “Knowing my dad, it’s probably a couple thousand ten dollars.”

  My eyes widened and my mouth dropped open. He had a drawer full of them! I gazed down at the desk sets, wondering exactly how much money the drawer contained under the guise of simple desk top knickknacks. What was the pencil cup worth? Or the discarded business card holder? How come they looked like regular desk sets that I’d seen over the years?

  Silas boomed with laughter. He plopped a hand on his chest and his broad shoulders shook. “I love her face.”

  I placed the clock carefully back on the desk. “So I shouldn’t play with it.”

  “Play with it, Sang.” Victor said, turning back to his screen.

  “Nu uh.”

  “If you don’t do whatever it was you were going to do with it, I’ll let Silas use it for baseball practice.”

  Well, in that case ...

  ♥♥♥

  I had the pieces of the inside of the clock splayed out on Victor’s desk before he took a break and sat back again, stretching. I hunched over the corner of the desk with the opened clock. I used a pair of tweezers to clutch a magnetic pin, trying to stuff it back the opposite way it had been inserted previously. If I was right, when I put the clock together again, the gears would rotate backwards.

  Victor watched as I positioned the pin inside where I wanted, having to break part of the interior casing to get it to fit right. He grinned. “You’re breaking it on purpose now.”

  “Yup,” I said, partially paying attention as I looked back at the other parts, figuring out which pieces went back inside in reverse order. I picked up one of the larger cogs and inserted it into the clock’s body.

  Victor stood up, standing over my arm, looking down on me as I worked. It was distracting. I started second guessing which cog was next.

  Victor lowered his nose to the top of my head as he hovered. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Kind of,” I said, finding the piece I was pretty sure I wanted. I slowed myself a little, not wanting to screw up with him watching.

  He let out a slow breath against my hair. “What are you doing?”

  “Right now I’m being distracted,” I said softly, teasing. I stilled my hand, turning my head slowly so I didn’t bump him. I had my mouth open, ready to say something else silly, but as I faced him, he hadn’t moved away. He gazed down at my eyes, his nose almost touching mine. He remained there, stationary and looking curious.

  Those fire eyes stole whatever words I thought I wanted to say. My lips moved but only my breath was released.

  The computer monitor flashed. Victor dragged his gaze away from me to check it. It gave me breathing room. I leaned over the side of the chair to see what he was reading.

  The screen blinked the name of a telephone company and an address. A small image displayed a map of downtown Charleston.

  “I was hoping this wasn’t what we were looking at,” Victor said. He eased himself back into his chair.

  “What is it?” I near-whispered.

  “Your caller isn’t using a cell phone. He used a pay phone.”

  “How did he send that picture to all of you?”

  Victor sighed, sitting back. He ruffled his fingers through his hair. “I’ll check, but I’m going to guess he was smart enough not to use a cell phone for that, too.”

  “Can’t we figure out which phone booth he used?”

  “I’ve got a guess. It might be the one across the street from the school. There’s a shopping center. If he took off from school, it’d be the closest place to get to and make that call. Unless he got into a car and drove elsewhere.”

  I got up on my knees in the chair, leaning over the arm to look closer at the screen. “Can we put cameras there? At that payphone?”

  “There’s no telling if he’ll use it again. We can’t put cameras on every pay phone in the city. We might get lucky and the shopping center has one focused on the pay phones. It’ll only be helpful if they’re recording. Too many ifs. It’s a long shot.”

  I looked back at Victor. He was sitting back, rolling his head against the back of the chair and sighing.

  “Do we dust for fingerprints now?” I asked.

  He swiveled his head back around until he was gazing at me. “Who do we look like? The Hardy Boys?”

  Silas chuckled at us without looking up from the laptop screen.

  I exhaled, sliding a fingertip across my brow. “Why not try it out? Put cameras on those phones. We’ll go back tomorrow and see if he tries calling again.”

  “Princess, you’re not going back to school until we can figure out who it is.”

  “But he hasn’t done anything to me,” I said. “And it’d be the quickest way to figure out who he is if we get him on camera.”

  Silas grunted. “We’re not using you as bait.”

  “Yeah, but it isn’t like Mr. McCoy. This kid’s been avoiding us. The more I think about it, it just seems like some kid who just wants attention. I bet if we just go in and let him use his beeping messages from the pay phone, we could catch him. He may prove to be harmless.”

  “We’ll see,” Victor said. He absently tapped at his keyboard.

  I frowned, sitting back. Was he even listening? He seemed distracted. Or he’d already dismissed the idea entirely, he just wanted to amuse me.

  I sighed, turned back to the clock, suddenly disinterested in piecing it back together.

  But Victor went back to typing at the computer, now trying to focus on the picture and where it came from. Silas went back to reading through the text messages.

  I went back to my self-invented puzzle.

  ♥♥♥

  When my clock was finished, I pushed the battery back inside and snapped the back shut.

  “There.” I put the clock down in front of Victor’s keyboard like a kid vying for attention from a parent. “I made it run backwards.”

  Victor shifted back on his chair, diverted from his typing. He lifted an eyebrow, picked up the clock, watching the second hand tick counterclockwise. “Huh. Where’d you learn that?”

  “I didn’t get a lot of toys when I was growing up. I think there’s an unpacked box filled with broken clocks in the shed at home.”

  “I want to see,” Silas said, standing. He stretched, crossing the room to Victor’s desk.

  Victor planted the clock on the desk toward him.

  Silas picked it up and scanned the face. His eyes made the same quizzical expression Victor’s did. “When were you going to tell us about this trick? What else can you do?”

  “I can help scan text messages.”

  “I’m already done,” Silas said. He placed the clock back on the desk. “Unless we turn your phone on and get more coming in, so far it’s all from stupid guys mostly trying to hook up. There were a couple of girls texting in.”

  Victor harrumphed. “What do the girls want?”

  “They wanted to know which one of us she was dating and asking for our phone numbers.”

  My eyes widened. “What?”

  Victor laughed. He snatched up my hand and squeezed it. “There you go. Now you aren’t the only one getting harassed.”

  “Not jealous, are you?” Silas asked, a smirk teasing his mouth.

  “Someone already has your ph
one numbers,” I said, not ready to admit that I might have been a tad jealous. “If someone sent that picture to all of you, someone has your phone numbers.”

  “But we weren’t getting text messages like that,” Victor said. He smacked the keys on his keyboard and sat back. “And this picture was sent from a throwaway email, from a proxy server IP. I’ll need to do a lot more to track it further, and it might be futile anyway. If he went this far, he probably used a school or library computer, or public Wi-Fi with a stolen laptop, or a number of other things. It’ll take a while to track this down and we might not have that much time.”

  “Because we can’t skip school forever?” I asked.

  “That and Mr. Blackbourne would give me a hard time if we take too long with this. He really hates wasting time.”

  I sighed. “Let me go back to school.”

  “No, Sang.”

  “You had cameras recording Mr. McCoy, right? How did you do that?”

  “Tagged his phone. There’s sensors in the cameras so they’ll record when he’s close.”

  “But they record the surrounding area, right? Not just focused on him?”

  Silas lifted a brow and leaned a bit against the dragon desk. “You want the cameras on you?”

  I nodded. “Let’s go back. Please? You guys are around me all the time. Fix the cameras to record around me and we’ll see who is snapping pictures or maybe following us around.”

  Victor frowned. “He’s saying he’d hurt us, or you. It was a warning. I don’t want to take you back if he’s got something in mind.”

  “But—”

  Victor shook his head, grasped the arms of his chair, standing. “We’re not doing it,” he said sharply. “If he’s done all this, he probably already thinks he can get around us to get to you. We’re not prepared for him.”

  I stood, squaring off with him. “What’s wrong, Victor? Why can’t we just do it this way? It’d be the fastest. Is it because I’m a girl?”

  “Sang—“

  I waved my hand in front of myself. “I didn’t want to think so before, but Mr. Blackbourne is right. You guys do treat me like a helpless girl.”

  Victor jerked his head back as if I’d struck him.

  “Whoa,” Silas said. “Where’d this come from?”

  “Would you have hidden out of the way like this if this was about North?” I asked. “Or Gabriel? Or either of you? No, because I’ve seen it. Gabriel got into that fight in school and he was half-provoking those goons just to see what they could do. Now just because it’s me, you don’t want to do it. This would flush the guy out quickly. I get sent in to deal with Mr. Hendricks all the time. Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “Gabriel had those clowns right in front of him,” Victor said. “He could see who they were. We’re watching Hendricks when you’re with him. We don’t know who we’re dealing with when it comes to this guy.”

  “Because we didn’t know he was doing it. Now we know and we can watch. If you all keep treating me like some delicate ... snowflake ... flower thing, it’ll take longer.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Victor said.

  I threw my hands up and scoffed. He wasn’t listening. It seemed like the easiest solution even if it was risky. I turned away from them, heading toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Victor asked.

  “I’m going to go do homework.” I twisted the door handle, opening it and paused, gazing out into the hallway, not wanting to look at either of them. “I’m sorry,” I said, in what I hoped was a softer tone. I didn’t want to be angry at them. I didn’t want to be rude. I just couldn’t talk to them right now.

  HOW WE WORK

  “Aggele mou?”

  I was sitting on the white couch. I’d barely started on the homework because I’d spent a lot of time fuming, just staring at my notebook or outside at the grounds. There was no reasoning to it, either. I knew, inside, the boys were doing what they thought was best.

  I glanced up, spotting Silas in the archway. He had his arms folded across his broad chest, leaning against the doorframe. His muscles bulged around the white tank, and he looked massive, like Greek god perfection with his broad face and the olive tint to his skin.

  His dark eyes caught mine. “Are you okay?”

  I sighed softly, closing the history book and carefully placing it on the trunk coffee table. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so demanding. I was frustrated.”

  “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

  “No.”

  Silas dropped his arms and started forward. He picked up my history book, setting it further aside. He sat on the table, putting his elbows on his knees, leaning toward me. “You know I like it when you talk to me.”

  “I like talking to you, too.”

  “How long have you felt we’ve been treating you like a helpless girl?”

  A finger drifted up, hovering over my lip. “I don’t know. Maybe a little before North and I argued that one time.”

  “Do you still think we don’t take you seriously?” Silas’s big brown eyes traced over my face, curious and apologetic. “We don’t mean to. I don’t mean to.”

  “I don’t mean to say it like that,” I said.

  Silas pursed his lips. He bent over, hoisting my feet up from the floor. He placed them in his lap. His big hands smoothed over the tops of my feet. His warming fingers soothing. “Tell me what I’ve done wrong.”

  His words struck me. How personally did he take this? “Silas, it isn’t your fault.”

  “We’re doing stuff that bothers you. We can’t change if you don’t tell us.”

  “It’s not wrong,” I said softly, trying to figure out the right words. “You mean well, and I understand it. It’s why I haven’t said anything. Sometimes I just don’t understand why.”

  He traced his thumb over my toes. He broke his gaze to focus on them. “But you don’t like some of the things we do.”

  I sighed, trying to remember how Mr. Blackbourne put it. “I know you all are looking out for me, but I can do more if you let me.”

  “What would you like to do? Did you really want to check those text messages with me?” he asked. “I’m sorry. I would have let you if you really wanted. I didn’t think you’d want to read all of the bullshit.”

  I leaned over, dropping a palm over his hands. He stopped rubbing my feet and gazed up at me. Apologies glistened in his eyes.

  “It’s not what you’re doing,” I said, trying to find something to stop him. His sad eyes were breaking my heart. “It’s that you guys are constantly moving forward, rushing to the rescue, covering shifts at the diner when someone’s out. You’re up and gone whenever anyone calls.”

  Silas’s eyebrow rose. “You do it with us.”

  “I tag along,” I said. “Or I feel like I do. I’m here, but I’m standing back and watching the rest of you work and make decisions around me. I don’t do anything. I’m just there. And sometimes I’ll say things and no one pays attention.”

  “We listen to you,” Silas said. “I’m trying to listen.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I felt like I was saying it all wrong. And the truth was, I didn’t know what I really wanted from them. I knew they heard me. Did I really expect them to agree with everything I said? They’d been dealing with this type of thing longer than I have. I felt foolish for being angry earlier. “I know. I want to figure this out like you guys do. I thought maybe if we lured the guy out, we’d solve this faster.”

  He cupped his hands around my toes, warming them. “You think a lot like Victor does, you know.”

  “I do?”

  “He’s usually the first one to suggest we lure someone out by provoking. He even offers to be bait, if he thinks it means he’ll get home sooner. Problems drive him crazy. And I know this guy is driving him crazy. He doesn’t like not knowing who we’re dealing with and how he’s operating.”

  “I don’t like it, either.”

  He foc
used on my toes again. “So you have to imagine there’s a pretty big reason why he’s not the first one to jump on an opportunity to bait the guy and lure him out.”

  I glanced away from him. “Because I’d be the bait instead of him?”

  “Maybe it is a little bit of that,” Silas said. “Or maybe it’s because he hates the thought of putting you at risk when we don’t know what the risk is.”

  “You can’t always predict what will happen all the time,” I said.

  “But we can take educated guesses. We can size up the problem pretty quickly when we have more details. Sometimes we’re surprised.” He clasped my foot a little tighter. “Like with McCoy. What he did to you; we should’ve never let that happen.”

  “You couldn’t help it. That wasn’t your fault.”

  “We’re not always ready for how other people will behave, but when we’re willing to take that risk, we want to at least know who we’re dealing with. With McCoy, we knew most of the time where he’d be. You knew his face and could text us or call if he was close by. You knew not to trust him and to try to fight him off if it came to that.” He slid his thumb across the top of my foot. “We don’t know anything about this new guy. You don’t know his face. We don’t know what he’s capable of; he might just be some kid trying to scare us or get attention, or he might be some asshole with a gun in his back pocket.”

  I opened my lips, wanting to say it would be fine, but I closed my mouth again. Maybe I was wrong. I understood they knew what they were doing. I trusted them, of course. Maybe I was too eager to prove myself. Would jumping in head first be the right thing to do? “I want to help,” I said softly.

  “Me, too,” he said. He glanced up. “We all do. But we aren’t getting you within firing range of a stalker. Mr. Blackbourne wouldn’t want Victor, or me, or any of us, within range if we don’t know what we’re dealing with. It’s why we all left.”

  “We can’t skip school forever,” I said. “I can’t.”

  “It won’t be forever.” Silas finally broke a smile. “Some of these guys are pretty good at what they do. I bet Victor’s in there right now, typing louder on his keyboard, trying to figure out what to do next.”

  “Can I help?”