No Saving Throw

by Kristin McFarland

  “What should I do—fake a fall, or something, and threaten to sue? Oh, or I could say I saw someone shoplifting, and—”

  “No,” Bay said. “Nothing that might bring the cops here.”

  I cleared my throat. I’d underestimated Allison’s enthusiasm. “Uh, a fake fall might work,” I said. “Or maybe you could try to sell her something, or ask for directions . . . ?”

  “Don’t do something too out of the ordinary, or you’ll be more memorable,” Olivia advised. “You run into that in RPGs—sometimes it’s better to keep your head down and be discreet. If you make a big fuss, the villagers are more likely to remember you, or—”

  “We only need a few minutes,” I said, cutting in before she could go into the finer points of heroic character development.

  “What are we looking for?” José asked.

  “Financial and phone records,” I said. “If we have time, emails from Donald to Meghan.” I’d settled on those three things as the most likely to help. I doubted he would conveniently leave his cell phone behind for his meeting, but a girl could hope. Financials might be easy to find, and photos could be taken of emails with no problems.

  “You’ve thought this through,” Bay observed.

  “I’ve learned a thing or two from Veronica Mars,” I said, grinning. It was no joke, though—we needed a paper trail, but financials were the simplest thing to track. Plus, email was just obvious. Donald at least was clueless enough to have sent Meghan something about their collusion on the grant. While I doubted either of them was dumb enough to have admitted to murder online, I might get lucky proving their guilt elsewhere.

  “I’ll take the computer,” Bay said.

  “We’ll go with Allison,” Olivia said, indicating herself and José. They would “help,” I had no doubt. Donald’s secretary would have no idea what had hit her.

  “Do you want help searching the office?” José asked.

  I shook my head. “No, I think it’s best if Bay and I are the ones breaking in.” I couldn’t ask any of the other gamers to risk jail. Bay would never let me go alone, so I didn’t even try to stop her, but at least I could protect Olivia and José. Lying to a secretary wasn’t a crime, and I doubted the cops would charge them with accessory to a trespassing as wimpy as this one.

  Probably.

  “Will we do the same for Meghan’s office?” Bay asked as we all stood.

  “More or less. She’s there, though, so we’ll have to be more careful.”

  “I’ll create a scene,” Allison said happily.

  Her excitement didn’t fill me with much confidence.

  When we got to Donald’s office on the main floor, I was relieved to see that Max had gone off on one of his rambling perimeter checks of the building. He strolled through about once an hour, looking in on the shops, peeking into bathrooms, and generally lurking. If he wasn’t so old and nonthreatening, he would have been arrested for loitering decades ago. He did a thorough job, though, and that’s why everyone in the building put up with him.

  Luckily for me, he was off haunting one of the other floors.

  As planned, Allison went toward Donald’s office first while José and Olivia disappeared around the corner. Bay and I lurked, stalker-like, at the balcony railing, looking down toward the fountain below.

  Allison rushed through the open doorway of Donald’s office, panting as if she had run up three flights of stairs. We could see into the office over her shoulder as she gasped something to Donald’s secretary, who stood, alarmed. Together they rushed back through the doorway and around the corner to the scene of whatever fake emergency our coconspirators had concocted.

  “Damn,” Bay muttered as they disappeared. I looked at her, alarmed, and she grinned. “I never thought she’d be so into role-playing. I’d have suggested it ages ago.”

  “I do not need to know about your sex life.” I tugged her shirt. “Come on, we won’t have long.” I trotted ahead into Donald’s office, Bay hot on my heels. His secretary’s desk was abandoned, and there was no one in the closet-sized waiting area. Luckily, the inner door to Donald’s private sanctum was unlocked. I left the door ajar behind us, so we could hear when Donald’s assistant and Allison returned.

  “Hurry, hurry,” I muttered, mostly to myself, as Bay slid into his computer chair and grabbed hold of his mouse.

  I turned in a circle. Donald’s office was tiny, even smaller than the one I had in Ten Again, and he kept it in regimented order. If the man did anything here besides sit in the chair and stare at the computer, there was no physical evidence of it. At the computer, Bay frowned as she read something.

  I spotted the filing cabinet then, a short standard-issue steel box sitting in the corner behind the desk. I squeezed around Bay and wedged myself up against the cold metal. The top drawer slid out with an angry screech of neglect. The first folder I saw held a lease agreement for the café on the ground floor, the next the lease for the gift shop, and on down the line. I snagged the folder for Chic, thinking it might be useful, and tossed it on the desk next to Bay.

  The second drawer had the contracts for the janitorial staff, utility bills—I’d seen those before, for my grant application—and a folder marked “Banquet Hall Plans.” Not helpful.

  The third drawer had financial documents: two-year-old bank statements, an ancient purchase contract, and a thick stack of copied rent checks.

  “There’s nothing here,” I said.

  “That’s because it’s all here,” Bay said. I stood up, banging my head on the top drawer pull in the process. I swore, and Bay shushed me as I moved to stand over her shoulder, my eyes watering. “Look,” she said. “He has everything digitized. Financial records, messages from your stepmom’s auditing firm, everything.”

  As my eyes cleared, I saw that she was right. He used the same sort of accounting software that I did, but nothing was password protected. Everything was there, from his monthly revenues to his projected earnings. I swore again when I saw the number, bright red and ominous.

  “Shut up!” Bay hissed. She glanced wildly at the door. “They’ll hear us.”

  “Well, copy the file!”

  “What? How?”

  “I don’t know, you’re the computer chick—”

  “I’m not a super spy, Autumn, just take a picture with your phone!”

  I did as she told me, snapping photos of several of Donald’s account statements, as well as his high-level financial plan for the rest of the year. None of it looked good. Donald would be more than broke by the end of this year unless some serious cash came his way to cover some of the building’s bills.

  Bay clicked back over to his email, pulling up one from Meghan with a subject line that read, “funds required.”

  “Look,” Bay said.

  There was an incoming message from two months ago, just before the semifinalists for the grant had been selected.

  Hi Donald,

  I’ve attached the projected final figures. It looks like $18,000 should cover it. I know it seems like a lot up front, but you’ll bring in a ton of money as a result. I think this is a great plan.

  Let me know what you think,

  Meghan Kountz

  I snapped a photo. “Quick, pull up the attachment,” I said. Bay started the download, but her phone buzzed at that moment. She looked down at it.

  “That’s Allison with the wrap-it-up signal,” she said. “Damn.”

  “Well, we’ll look at Meghan’s computer, too.”

  She closed the open windows and hurriedly stopped the document from downloading. I bounced on my toes, waiting, until she released the mouse and stood. “Come on!”

  We darted out of the office and back to the balcony railing. I gripped the smooth wood, my heart racing. “We did it,” I hissed. “We found proof.”

  “Easy there,” Bay said out of one side of her mouth. “We’re not done yet.”

  At that moment, Allison and Donald’s secr
etary reappeared. The secretary looked ruffled but not angry. Allison gave us a thumbs-up behind the woman’s back, and I could see Bay’s muscles relax. “One down,” she murmured. The secretary nodded to us as she passed, and she disappeared back into Donald’s office.

  Exaggeratedly casual, we sidled over toward Allison, then began strolling down the hallway toward Chic.

  “That was amazing,” Allison squealed in a low voice. Bay shushed her, too, but I could see they were both smiling. When we were out of the secretary’s sight line, José and Olivia popped out of a shop entrance, grinning.

  “Did you get what you needed?” Olivia whispered.

  I nodded a yes, and they high fived quietly in response. We marched down the hallway toward Meghan’s store, our fabulous five, and I felt like we needed to be in slow motion with a killer soundtrack to reinforce our awesomeness—but there was only silence and the sound of Allison’s super-cute heels on the tile floor.

  “On to Meghan’s?” Bay muttered.

  “Yup,” I said through gritted teeth. “This will be the difficult one.” I stopped in front of the gift store and looked at Allison. “What’s the plan here?”

  “She’s alone in the store?”

  “Best I can tell.”

  “Okay, good,” Allison said. “That means her phone is there, and you might get access to some things her employees wouldn’t know about. Anyway, we’ll distract her again—same basic play, and you guys can slip in.” The woman was diabolical, but she had a point; Meghan being here alone might mean she’d left her guard down, and we would have the opportunity to take a look at things she didn’t want other people to see.

  “It’s a smaller space, so we’ll need to move faster.” I nudged Bay, who was staring at her girlfriend with open surprise. “I think we’d better just go straight for the computer and hope for the best. Hopefully she has it up and running.”

  She nodded. “You got it.”

  We stepped aside while Allison, José, and Olivia went ahead to Meghan’s store. We could see them through the glass wall, José trailing after Allison and Olivia as they moved into the store, pausing occasionally to look at a price tag. Meghan emerged from her office, a bright smile plastered on her face. She moved toward Allison instinctively, Stylish calling to Stylish. Olivia and José drifted deeper into the store, out of our sight.

  I glanced at Bay. “This is going to be tricky.”

  She looked up from the display of little carved wooden angels in the gift shop window. “No joke,” she said. “I was just thinking . . . are you sure you want to do this?”

  “What?”

  “Well, with Donald, if we got caught, you’d probably be able to get away with saying you were looking for him or something. But with Meghan . . . you two aren’t exactly friendly. If she catches us, it’s not going to end well. You could get in real trouble.”

  “It’s a little late to be getting cold feet,” I said, annoyed. I was more annoyed at myself for being annoyed at all than I was with Bay herself. The woman was always right—that was why I hired her—and if we were on different sides, then it might mean I’d finally crossed the line between enterprising and delusional.

  “I could text Allison and call it off,” Bay said. She had a pleading tone, and when I looked into her eyes, I saw she was serious.

  “I—” I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, but it didn’t matter. At that moment, I saw Allison and Meghan rush toward the front of the store. Whatever distraction they’d planned was underway. I let go of my doubts and plunged ahead. “Come on.” I grabbed Bay’s sleeve and dragged her into Chic.

  We could see Meghan and Allison hovering over José and Olivia. Olivia appeared to have faked a faint, and Allison was hysterical at the sight of her prone body. Bay and I slipped between the clothing racks as we approached the office stealthily along the store’s back wall. We could hear Allison’s voice, high pitched and nervous, and Meghan’s shrill replies.

  The office door, marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, was shut but unlocked, and we slipped in without a problem. The office was also a storage room, much larger than the office in my own store. A computer sat on a desk to one side, overlooking the rest of the unfinished space. A dozen boxes were stacked on the bare floor along one wall, several of them half-unpacked, and plastic-wrapped clothing spilled out of its packaging onto the floor.

  Bay went right for the desk. She moved a packet out of the chair, perching it precariously on the desk, and I saw that it was a bubble-wrapped stack of earrings. Somehow the expensive accessories looked cheap and gaudy, seen in their cellophane wholesale cocoons. Bay ignored them and squinted at the screen as she slid the mouse around the desk.

  “No luck. The accounting software is password protected, and it’s not open,” she said almost immediately.

  “We just need the email.” I stood behind her, one hand on the back of the chair. “Look, she left it pulled up.” I pointed at the screen.

  Bay navigated to the email hosting client and pulled up Meghan’s in-box, a swamp of orders, business communications, and even some personal messages. She scrolled the messages, making my eyes cross as hundreds of them whirled by.

  “There’s nothing here from Donald,” Bay said. “She must have been using a personal account.” She turned to look up at me. “Pull up the photos on your camera. Maybe she left her web browser logged in. If we know what service she uses, we can pull it up.”

  I pulled up my image gallery, but the photos didn’t make the address clear. “Crap,” I muttered, scrolling through. “It’s not here.”

  Bay swore. She pulled up the browser and began typing in the names of several popular email hosts in separate tabs. I tucked my phone back into my pocket and looked around the office for anything else that might help—a filing cabinet like Donald’s, a murder weapon, a to-do list with “Commit fraud with grant money” scribbled on it. I didn’t find any of those, but I did spot her cream-colored leather purse tucked under the desk. I snatched it with a wordless cry.

  Her phone was right on top, with a flashing text message indicator. “Yes,” I muttered, scrolling through. “I can see if there are any calls to Donald—”

  I unlocked the screen: no password. I guess she distrusted her employees more than she did her friends. The new message opened up. It was from Craig.

  Congrats, babe! You’re one of the last three finalists!!

  I felt the blood drain from my face. They’d announced the final competitors for the grant competition, then, and Meghan was one of them. If Meghan and Donald had tried to fix the contest, it had worked. She was in. It didn’t help us, though.

  “Weird,” Bay said.

  “Hmm?” I murmured, distracted, staring at Meghan’s long line of messages from Craig. There were affectionate, lovey-dovey messages and prosaic coupley messages, a living record of their relationship. And it culminated in Craig’s congratulations for her success—success over me, again.

  I took a deep, shaky breath. I needed to focus, not wallow in regrets for a bizarro life I didn’t have and didn’t want. I pulled up the call logs, then, and began thumbing back to Friday night. If she’d made a call to Donald between eight thirty and nine at night, then maybe I could convince Jordan to listen to me, to consider the possibility that Paige and Nick were innocent, and the cops might consider looking into Meghan’s whereabouts the night of Wes’s death. I frowned as I scrolled through the records—there were a lot. Apparently Meghan spent as much time on the phone as she did preening.

  The records ended abruptly at one minute past midnight on Saturday. The history had been deleted.

  “Crap,” I said again, interrupting Bay as she took a breath to speak.

  “What is it?” Bay asked.

  “She’s deleted the call logs. Hiding something.”

  Bay twisted in the chair, looking up at me. “Are you okay? You look weird—”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.” I dropped the phone back into her purse.
“We should go, there’s nothing here.”

  “Actually, there might be—”

  The office door, which we’d left ajar, thumped open, bouncing off the wall. Meghan stood in the doorway, her eyes wide. Allison peered over her shoulder, waving frantically at us.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Meghan asked.

  “I—uh, I can explain.”

  Bay pulled her hands back from the computer.

  Meghan smiled. “You are so going down.” She pointed at her desk. “Pass me the phone—I’m calling the cops.”

  16

  “No, you’re not.”

  My heart almost stopped. Visions of Detective Keller with handcuffs, an interrogation room, criminal lawyers, and newspaper headlines danced across my blackening vision and faded into a puff of relief when Craig stepped out from behind Meghan.

  I sagged backward against the desk. I never thought I’d rely on Craig MacLeod to be my knight in shining armor, but here he was to save the day, and I was grateful.

  Meghan turned on him. “Oh, yes I am. I am done with this shit. She’s been trying to sabotage me since we both applied for the grant, and now she’s actually trespassing on private property to do it! The cops need to know she’s behind all of this—”

  “I’m trying to sabotage you? Are you insane? You’ve been working with—”

  “We’re not really in a position to make accusations here, boss,” Bay cut in.

  I rounded on her. “Excuse me . . .” I trailed off. She widened her eyes at me, clearly trying to send me a psychic message of some sort.

  She had a point. I shut my mouth and turned back to Craig. I smiled in a sickly way, half-apologetic, half-sheepish. “It’s not what it looks like?” I offered.

  “This is insane, Autumn,” he said. “Meghan would be perfectly justified in calling the cops. You shouldn’t be here, whatever it looks like.”

  “Shouldn’t be here? She’s committing a crime! Trespassing! Breaking and entering!”

  “I didn’t break anything,” I grumbled. She was right, though. Even if they didn’t arrest me for trespassing, Detective Keller would probably say I was obstructing justice or interfering with an investigation, and I could end up with some actual jail time—and something told me I wouldn’t last five minutes behind bars. LARPing a tough-as-nails character was one thing, and standing up for what was right was another; but wearing an orange jump suit and taking communal showers . . . nope.