• • •
“I feel guilty.” Toni slumped down in the driver’s seat. We were parked on the street outside Evan’s house. We’d taken Cooper’s car because Evan wouldn’t recognize it.
“For lying to Reece about where we were going?” I asked.
“Yeah. Couples shouldn’t lie to each other.” She bulged her eyes out at me with a silent but not subtle message.
“Evan and I are not a couple. And I’m not lying to him.”
“Just breaking into his house,” she mumbled.
“You shouldn’t feel guilty,” I said, turning the subject back around. “You’re protecting Reece. It’s cute.”
She gave me a skeptical look.
“Who knows, maybe you’ll learn some tips that will help him conquer that King Mother house he wants to throw a party in.”
She stiffened. “Here comes a car.”
I followed her gaze up the long driveway. Only one car was making its way down. Damn, I thought. I needed them all to go to the game. But then it got to the bottom of the drive and I realized it wasn’t Evan’s car. It was a sleek black sedan. And as it turned onto the road, I counted three heads: two in the front, Evan’s in the back. They’d all left together.
I grinned. “Time to go.”
We easily slipped through the iron bars of the gate surrounding the property, making me think it was more ornamental than protective. I hiked up the hill, Toni two steps behind me. The Murphys owned so much property, there wasn’t a neighbor who could see us, but we jogged just in case.
Toni groaned. “I feel like I’m in a James Bond movie. I shouldn’t feel like that, Morgan. I should be drinking lemonade on my deck.”
“Zip it.”
“It’s not too late to turn into a sane person.”
I glanced over my shoulder. She gave me a withering look, and I realized she was scared. But she’d cover it up with one-liners and keep going if I wanted her to.
“Why don’t you go back to the car?” I suggested. “Be the lookout.”
Instead of grabbing the chance, Toni actually looked offended. “You’re trying to get rid of me,” she accused. “You think I’m going to mess this up!”
“No, I don’t. I was just thinking—”
“You’re not getting rid of me, Morgan. I’m great at this stuff. I’m a ninja.” She pushed past me in a huff.
“How are we going to get in?” Toni asked once we reached the back of the house.
“Evan mentioned that the den window isn’t wired to the alarm system right now. They had to replace it. So I just have to find the den.”
Toni pointed at one window whose frame was a brighter white than the others, like it was more freshly painted. “How about that one?”
I stepped into the landscaping and squeezed between two bushes. The window definitely looked new. I cupped my hands to peer through the glass. The room inside had a bookcase and a desk—looked like the den.
“This must be it,” I said.
I’d been hoping the windows would be open, it being the first warm day and all. But they weren’t. I made a deal with myself. If the den window was locked, I’d leave it at that. Walk away. But if I could open it, well, then that was an invitation from fate. It wasn’t breaking and entering if I didn’t have to break anything to get in . . . right?
I pushed up against the sill. The window groaned . . . and opened.
I looked back at Toni.
“Last chance,” she said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
I’d been repeating the words it’s not too late to back out to myself for the last hour, like a mantra. They made me feel better. What I was doing was clearly crazy, but if I could still back out, there was no reason to be scared.
We were here now, though. The Murphys were gone. The window was open. There was no backing out. Not anymore. I put a finger to my lips so Toni would stop trying to talk me out of it. Panic desperately wanted to settle into my bones, but I pushed past it. I had to get answers.
The screen slid up easily. I motioned to Toni.
“Me?” she said, aghast. “Why do I have to go first?”
“Because I’m tall enough to climb in myself without a boost. You’re not.”
“Stupid DNA,” she growled.
I locked my fingers together to form a step and Toni put one foot onto it, then pulled herself up to the ledge and through the window. Her face popped back up a moment later and I breathed a sigh of relief. With a little maneuvering, I grabbed the ledge, got some traction with my feet on the siding, and pulled myself up and in, careful not to make too much noise when I dropped to the floor.
I stood up and let my eyes adjust. Toni was already wandering around the unfamiliar room. It was very masculine, with leather furniture and a large mahogany desk. It wasn’t just a den. It was Mr. Murphy’s office.
Toni pointed at the huge, imposing chair behind the desk. “I want to sit in that, facing the other way, then spin around slowly and say something evil. Like in the movies.”
“Maybe next time,” I said. “You take the left drawers, I’ll take the right.”
She snorted. “You’re no fun.”
The first drawer slid open easily. I flipped through the stack of papers. They seemed like regular business documents, some invoices, bills, stuff like that. The bottom drawer had file folders that were all labeled with company names. Nothing that looked personal. Evan said his dad did consulting now. That’s all this was.
“Anything?” I asked Toni.
“Nothing secret-y, no. Let’s go.”
“Not yet,” I said.
Toni groaned. “What are you expecting to find? A hidden birth certificate? A secret diary?”
Secrets have a way of revealing themselves. “I don’t know. Just look.”
I went over to a tall bookcase against the wall. One shelf held framed photos. Evan and his sister. The whole family. One of just Evan and his mom. One of his father and uncle—identical aside from Evan’s uncle’s beard. I picked up a small frame and froze.
“Toni,” I whispered.
She hurried to my side. “What is it?”
With a trembling hand, I gave her the frame. “Look. There’s Evan, about age one or two. And his mom is pregnant.”
Toni sighed and put the photo back in its place. “Settle down, conspira-zilla. Didn’t you say he has a younger sister? That’s her baking in there.”
“Oh, yeah.” I felt stupid for not realizing it immediately. What was wrong with me?
I caught Toni staring. “What?”
She chewed on her lip. “If I say something, will you promise not to take it the wrong way?”
“No.”
Toni rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll say it anyway. I think you want there to be something here. Some big conspiracy waiting to be unearthed.”
I crossed my arms. “And why’s that, Dr. Toni?”
“Because maybe then Flynn’s death wouldn’t seem so senseless.”
I inhaled sharply and turned around. I felt sucker punched.
Toni put a gentle hand on my arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said—”
“No, you’re right.” I turned to face her. “I should just admit it. I don’t want his death to have been random. Me picking him up, us fighting, him walking down the road, the car coming. I want it to have been purposeful. I want to find out that someone was after him and that if they didn’t get him that night, it would’ve been the next day.”
Toni quietly asked, “Why?”
“Because then I couldn’t have prevented it. I couldn’t have stopped it by keeping him in the car a minute longer, keeping him happy, having him at the party with me instead of standing in the middle of the road.”
Toni reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders. “It’s not your fault, Morgan. It never was
. You have to accept that. You want this so badly that you’re pushing these crazy theories. You’re going to go too far and hurt Evan. You’re going to push him away and lose any chance at moving on. And, honestly, I think he’s good for you. Better than Flynn ever was.”
She was right. I knew she was right. And I was wrong to break in here. Evan had been nothing but straightforward with me—showing me the photograph with the warning on the back, bringing me to talk to that cop at the station, telling me the truth about his family. And I repaid him with betrayal. I felt sick.
“We have to get out of here,” I said.
Toni’s face lit up in agreement and then just as quickly shut down as we heard a thump in the hallway behind us.
I froze. Toni’s widened eyes looked to me for instruction. I knew I should burst into action—move, run, something. But my feet were like lead, and my heart had stopped beating. Next came a scrape, the sound of a shoe sliding forward on the floor.
Someone was there, standing in the hall, equally frozen, listening for us.
I pointed at the window and motioned for Toni to get out first. If anyone went down for this, it had to be me. It had been my dumb idea. Toni stealthily slipped out without a noise. I shimmied out next, a bit clumsier. My shoe stuck on the window ledge, and my drop to the ground was anything but ninja-like. I got up, brushing mulch off my jeans. Toni was already down the grassy slope, halfway to the car. I started to run, casting one last glance over my shoulder.
A shadow stood in the window. Watching. I didn’t stop. I kept on running, so hard my lungs ached, feeling the person’s eyes on my back the whole way.
CHAPTER 22
Late Monday afternoon, Toni and I sat on the floor of my room, flipping through magazines. But all she wanted to talk about was our little adventure. As frightened as she’d been before the crime, she seemed proud of it afterward. She regaled me with the story again and again as if I hadn’t been there myself.
“You should’ve seen your face when we heard a sound in the house,” she said. “You were all . . .” She contorted her face into a grotesque expression of shock, and then doubled over laughing.
“It’s not funny,” I said, closing my magazine. “Someone saw us.”
She shrugged. “We didn’t get caught. You saw a shadow that could have been anything. If someone really saw us and recognized us, we wouldn’t be in your room right now. We’d be at the police station.”
Unless it had been Evan who saw us. He wouldn’t turn me in. But it would be terrible just the same. I almost wished—if someone had to see—that it had been one of his parents. I’d rather have to apologize to them than face the shame of knowing it was Evan watching me run from his house. I looked at my phone on the floor beside me. No blinking light. No new calls or messages.
“Hey,” Toni said, “a watched phone never buzzes. Why don’t you just call him?”
I flopped backward and stretched out on the floor, my eyes on the ceiling. “Because I did something horrible. I went temporarily insane. I don’t even know what to say to him.”
I’d felt nauseated all day, waiting for the phone or the doorbell to ring. I didn’t want to call him because I didn’t want to act like I’d done nothing. If someone had seen us, that would only make it worse. Deepen the lie.
“Are you going to stay for dinner?” I asked, changing the topic. “My mom is coming home at a good time tonight. She can make us some macaroni and cheese. Extra-orange, the way you like it.”
“No, thanks. I have secret plans tonight.” She wagged her eyebrows. Those plans involved Reece, I was sure. “You want to come along?” she asked.
The last thing I wanted was to be the third wheel at their love-apalooza. “Nah. I’ve had my fill of adventure for the week, and it’s only Monday.”
“Your loss,” she teased.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered.
She scrambled to her feet and grabbed her backpack. “I’m going to head home and make an appearance, deal with questions about why I’m always out, break up an argument between Mom and Dad or Dad and Cooper, listen to some screaming, then go back out again.”
“Sounds like a solid plan.” I matched her sarcasm and went along with it because I knew that’s what she liked. But my heart constricted. No matter how bad things got with my parents, my house was like a relaxing spa compared to hers.
Before she made it out the door, I called out to her, “Toni?”
She stopped and turned, her bag swinging in the air. “Yeah?”
“I love you, bestie.”
Her mouth tightened, and for a moment I wondered if she was going to cry. Then she smiled. “Back at ya, babe.”
• • •
I felt guilty for betraying Evan, but that didn’t change how I felt about the things in Flynn’s diary or my determination to get to the bottom of it. I scrolled through my cell until I found Cooper, then dialed him.
“You drive her,” he answered.
“Um, what?” I said.
“My little sister wants a ride home. That’s why you’re calling, right?”
“No,” I said. “She left already. I’m calling for something else.”
He paused. “Oh, sorry. What’s that?”
“Toni said you did a lot of research on Stell. For your college essay.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Would you be willing to give me a quick rundown?”
“Sure. It was pretty simple. Their most profitable product, a migraine medicine, was sending a small percentage of patients into cardiac arrest. The guy at the top knew this, but covered it up. The money rolling in was too good to stop production. If the story got out, the company’s reputation would’ve been shattered. So he considered that small percentage of dead customers collateral damage while he quietly worked on a fix for future batches.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“A whistleblower called the FDA. Named ‘Employee X’ in the legal proceedings, for protection. He or she blew the lid off the whole thing and the company went down. The CEO was going to be criminally charged before he offed himself.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
It was the same story Evan had told me. No new information. I didn’t know what angle Flynn had been working. The whole mess seemed to have been closed five years ago. I hung up with Cooper, and my mom called me down to eat.
Dinner with my parents was like a business meeting. We made small talk. They spoke about a local political race. I shared my thoughts on the history quiz I’d taken that day. I didn’t ask them about the note, and they didn’t act like someone had been sending them threats. On the surface, everything seemed happy and normal. And, to be honest, the calm made me feel temporarily better. Even if it was fake.
After dinner I went up to my room to do all the homework I should’ve done earlier with Toni. I left my reading till last and brought the assigned book into bed. Around ten, my eyes started to close. The book dropped to my chest.
My phone buzzed.
I shot up like a firecracker had gone off in my room. I grabbed at the phone clumsily, knocking it off my desk, then sank to the floor to get it. It was a text from Evan. My stomach clenched.
can you come outside now? in car one house down.
I opened my bedroom door. Blue light and soft voices came from my parents’ room. They were watching TV, still awake. I’d have to sneak past them.
I typed back: be right there.
I pulled my hot mess of bed-head hair into a quick ponytail and threw a sweatshirt on over my tank top. My fleece pajama pants were red with white hearts—mildly embarrassing, but I didn’t want to waste time changing. I snuck downstairs, carrying shoes in my hand, and slipped out the front door.
The night was mild and hummed with buzzing insects, the first sign that the long, quiet winter was coming to
an end. Evan’s car was parked in front of my neighbor’s house. The interior light was off, and I couldn’t see him inside. I thought I’d get in like I had the other night, but as I approached, he got out and stood up, closing the door behind him.
My nerves were on high alert, but I told my guilty conscience to chill. This little visit probably had nothing to do with what I had done. He’d found a clue. Or he just wanted to see me.
I stepped closer. His face showed no emotion, his mouth pressed into a thin line. He gave me a long look. The silence stretched between us like a rubber band about to snap.
“Hey . . . what’s up?” I asked in a small voice.
He cleared his throat. “I have to talk to you, and I couldn’t do it over the phone. I had to see you. See your face.”
My hopes withered like a dying flower. He knew. He knew. “What about?”
“I forgot my glove,” he said, his voice flat.
“What?” My mind spun in circles. He hadn’t left a glove here. What was he talking about? But then I realized . . . he didn’t mean here. He’d left it at his house on Sunday, when he needed it for his game.
“I came back just for a minute,” he said sadly. “Figured I’d run in, grab my glove from my room, and run back out.”
It was him. He was the shadow that watched me run away. And he obviously hadn’t told his parents or turned me in. I braced myself for the words I knew would come next. The angry tone. I closed my eyes against it, but it never came.
When I reopened my eyes, he stood in the same spot. Not close-fisted and furious, but confused and hurt. The pain in his eyes was so sharp, I could barely take it.
“What were you doing?” he asked.
“I just . . . ,” I stammered. “I wanted to see if I could find any clues.”
Unreadable emotions flashed across his face, and he turned away from me. Tears sprang to my eyes. I had to explain. I had to make him understand.
I took a step forward, closing the distance between us. “In the car Saturday night, you seemed focused on Flynn’s motives. How Flynn was out to get you guys. I thought you couldn’t distance yourself enough to look at your own family. To see if there was anything they were hiding. Please. I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
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