by Gray Gardner
“I know,” Conrad said, sitting in his chair and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I Googled her.”
“So—any other helpful info?” she asked, a little too eagerly.
“No,” he grunted, leaning back. “Do you know how many people have that last name?”
“Enough to make a web search impossible,” she conceded, resting her chin on her hand as she leaned over on her elbows. “Now I’m terrifyingly curious.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Director. Director. I…Yes, and I’m… I know. I know.” George couldn’t get a word in as she paced in the darkness between the dorms, Nelson yelling at her through the phone.
“This is a step in the wrong direction, Agent George! I know how close you are to busting this supplier and getting me out onto that campus is only going to slow us down and maybe even blow your cover! The priority is to maintain your cover at all costs!”
“I understand.”
“Now I know that this professor is onto you and you need a little more time so I’m going to come out there tomorrow and watch you play soccer with the other children, but I swear to God if I ever have to come out there again it had better be to identify your remains. Do you understand me, Agent George?”
“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes and leaning back against the cold brick wall as a chilling wind swept through the buildings. She took a quick drag of her cigarette. “I completely under—”
Director Nelson hung up and George slumped her shoulders and exhaled a long stream of smoke. There was nothing worse than having your boss yell at you. Except maybe being forced to hang around a guy you know you could never have.
Why would he ever want her? She was just some kid to him right now, and he had this salvation thing going on for her. That was his only interest. It had to be. And if he ever found out what she really did, he would never want anything else to do with her. She was a liar. That was how she made her living. She helped national security, sure, but it was a thankless job. She helped people by lying all the time. Individuals usually never seemed to understand that.
Pity party over. She popped her neck and took a deep breath of the crisp night air. She turned to go inside and ran smack into Mrs. Croney, The Crone.
“Oh shit,” she groaned, as the old lady snatched the cell phone out of her right hand and the cigarette out of the other. Friday night. But she was certain that The Crone had been making rounds at the boys’ dorms.
“Well, the dean will be disappointed to be awakened at his hour, but I’m confident it won’t be a wasted trip,” she sneered, grabbing the sleeve of George’s pajamas and pulling her towards the administration building. She already had her cell phone out and was mumbling into it.
Okay, maybe this was the worst thing. She’d never seen the dean before, only heard horrifying stories, mostly from James Clancy. And she was already weakened from Nelson’s reprimand, so she was ripe for defeat. She was about ready to start crying and pleading her case when they were intercepted outside of the double doors to the dean’s office by his assistant.
“Mrs. Croney, I got your call and you do realize that he is out of town?” the assistant said very self-importantly as he adjusted his glasses.
George relaxed a little, but The Crone tightened her grip. “Then let’s call the Dean of Academics, Mr. Vann.”
Conrad and Claire were enjoying the crisp night air on his front porch with some wine and cheese when they saw lights turn on three houses down. He was glad for the distraction, because even though he loved his sister more than anything, she was really nosey when it came to his love life.
“Dr. McCarthy’s house,” he nodded, slowly standing as Claire shrugged her shoulders.
“Another professor?”
“No, Dean of Academics,” he replied, turning to her with a curious look. Usually it was the Dean of Students called awake at terrible hours. “Wait here a second.”
“No way,” Claire chirped, jumping up and following him. “This has been the most exciting twenty-four hours I’ve had since I graduated from college.”
Conrad sighed heavily, jogged through the grass and cut off Dr. McCarthy as the middle-aged black woman slowly stepped off her porch. Her robe was wrapped tightly around her, and she looked half asleep. She was a little startled, but relieved to see them.
“Oh! Conrad. And Claire. You have better news for me than what I’ve just received, I hope.” She grinned, putting her glasses on.
“Just wondering why you’re out so late.” Conrad smiled.
“Ha, says the youthful professor,” she chuckled. “I just got a call from Mrs. Croney.” She held her hand up and counted off the offenses with her fingers. “Seems some kid was just caught out of bed, smoking, talking on a cell phone, and… What was the last one?”
“Bad language?” he guessed, rubbing his forehead. Jane.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “You know the kid?”
“Unfortunately,” he exhaled. “She also happens to be my best student.”
“Do you mind then? I need my beauty sleep.” She nodded, turning and walking back inside like he’d already accepted.
He wasn’t about to let Jane get away with this.
“Not at all,” he replied through his teeth, turning and storming towards the administration building. He was out of sympathy now. She couldn’t keep getting caught. Most students would have been long expelled by that point.
“Conrad, I think you really need to count to ten or something,” Claire said, looking worried as she followed her angry brother towards the lights of the three story colonial building ahead.
“She just doesn’t listen,” he uttered, not slowing his stride.
“Dude, you are way too angry to confront a student right now.”
“Claire,” he began, stopping and turning towards her, “go home.”
Her mouth dropped open as he continued on to the Dean’s office, but she marched after him with determination and grabbed his sleeve. “What are you going to do?”
“Tell her she’s out of chances,” he replied, stomping through the breezeway and throwing open the door to the large hallway. And spank her little ass bright red.
George didn’t have much time. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before, but it was brilliant.
Get called to the dean’s office. She now had full access to all of the student’s records. As for The Crone and the dean’s assistant, technically there was a point on a person’s spinal cord that could be adjusted with a little pressure, rendering them unconscious. Her old partner, Diaz, called it the sleeper hold. God damn Diaz. She tried not to think about him and his dead ass.
Sleeper hold.
She pulled the bodies into the office with her and locked the door. The Dean of Academics would have to get out of bed and get dressed, so she figured she had at least ten minutes. She fell to her knees in front of the C drawer in the filing cabinets and pulled out James Clancy’s file, then to the W for Christian’s.
Bingo. Requests for the past two years to go off campus to visit Dr. Whitman and intern at the Surgeon General’s office. Finally, a paper trail. Now they could get a warrant. She hurriedly took pictures of the files with her retrieved phone and shoved them back into the drawers right about the time there was loud knocking at the double doors.
“Jane? Mrs. Croney?”
The two bodies on the floor remained still. She looked around. The knocking continued. She desperately ran around in circles, pulling on all of the windows and glancing over her shoulder every five seconds. She recognized that muffled voice through the door. Damn it.
How did Dr. Thomas end up coming?
A flickering fluorescent light caught her eye in the corner of the room. It was a bathroom. If it had a shower, maybe it had its own hot water heater. She ran over and began opening closet doors, finding a hot water heater and thanking God as she grabbed the curved metal tube attached to it and pulled. Now she just had to count on Dr. Thomas’s determination to get into t
he room. She positioned herself between the assistant and The Crone, then let her body flop to the floor.
Dr. Thomas kicked the door open when he heard a thud and found the three of them on the floor. He and Claire ran over and knelt by the bodies, checking for pulses and breathing. He could hardly describe the panic he felt when he saw her lifeless body.
“Do you smell that?” Claire asked, raising her head and wrinkling her nose.
“Gas,” he nodded, grabbing Mrs. Croney up in his arms and grunting. “Call nine one one and get out of the building.”
Claire nodded and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, running out with her brother as she dialed. He reached the frigid grass outside and lay the aging woman gently down, then ran for the assistant.
George had one eye open as Dr. Thomas raced back in. If he really had been a medic he’d go for the oldest people in the room first. They were the most susceptible. And he did. He grabbed the dean’s assistant and ran out again.
Claire passed him on the stairwell. “They’re coming. I’ll get the kid.”
Conrad nodded as he burst outside and lay the small man down next to Mrs. Croney. Their vitals were good, and they looked pretty peaceful, so he figured he’d just wait for the professionals. The tiny town down Highway 66 was big enough to have a police station and a fire station. EMS had a ten-minute response time to the school.
When Dr. Thomas’s girlfriend came in and picked her up off of the floor, George thought that she might fake a muscle spasm and punch her in the head. She decided against it as she was brought out and laid in the cold grass next to the other two. She probably shouldn’t wake up until they did. She sure wished she could miraculously recover and get out of there, though. She was anxious to get back to Nelson with some good news for once.
The paramedics arrived, and the entire school was awakened. George opened her eyes and was forced to sit with a blanket wrapped around her and an oxygen mask on her face. Dr. Thomas, surprisingly, never left her side. He looked so concerned.
“How did this happen?” he kept asking, pacing around, and rubbing his whiskers.
A fireman finally told him there was indeed a gas leak and it was fixed, but no one should enter the building for a couple of days. The readings from the air samples were low.
As for The Crone, the assistant, and the kid, the paramedics said their vitals were strong and after a good night’s sleep they’d be absolutely fine. They were lucky Dr. Thomas had broken in, though.
“See? It’s good that I worry about you,” he smiled, gently holding the back of George’s head.
“I’m sorry, I, I don’t remember much.” The Crone frowned, holding her oxygen mask in her hand. “I remember calling Dr. McCarthy.”
“Where is she?” the fireman questioning her asked, looking back at the building.
“Oh, she’s at home, safe,” Dr. Thomas nodded, as Claire nodded behind him. “I came in her place since it was so late.”
“What about you?” the fireman asked the assistant.
He shook his head and closed his eyes, holding it in both hands. The sleeper hold sometimes left a bitch of a headache.
“And what do you remember?”
George looked up from behind the mask and shook her head. She just wanted to get out of there. Unscathed.
The Headmaster approached, so she wasn’t going to get to leave anytime soon. She nodded at the appropriate places and gave sad, blue eyes whenever he looked her way. Then he patted her shoulder and helped Mrs. Croney to her feet, offering to walk her home. Dr. Davis did the same for the assistant. The other professors wrangled the students looking on back to their dorms.
“Do you have someone who can walk you back to your dorm?” a paramedic asked, removing George’s mask and checking her eyes with a light.
“I’m fine,” she replied, knowing full well that Dr. Thomas was going to step in and drag her back to her room. He hadn’t left her side for two seconds.
“She’s not going home,” Claire huffed, leaning down and smiling at her. “She’s coming with us.”
“I agree,” Dr. Thomas nodded, taking George’s arms and gently pulling her to her feet.
George shook her head. This was unacceptable.
“I’m fine! Aren’t I fine?” she asked, frantically looking back at the paramedic as Dr. Thomas put his coat on her shoulders. She absolutely didn’t want to be anywhere near Dr. Thomas and one of his hook-ups.
Oh God, his coat smelled like him.
“Fit as a fiddle,” the paramedic agreed, writing something on his clipboard. “Though, she is only sixteen. It might be prudent to keep her under observation tonight. Be good as new in the morning.”
“Good,” Claire grinned, as she and Dr. Thomas stood on either side of George.
“Then let’s go,” he agreed, leaning over and looking her in the eye. “Thank the nice paramedic.”
George’s mouth dropped open as she stared at him, then she rolled her eyes and turned around. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” he grinned, giving her a small salute. “And tomorrow you’ll be good as new, ready for that paddling you were probably going to get in the Dean’s office.”
Everyone laughed. Except George, who scowled.
This was all very humiliating. And now she had to go and sleep in a strange house when she should be calling Director Nelson and conveying the good news. She had photo evidence in a phone in her underwear and now she had to wait until morning to contact her boss.
Dr. Thomas and his girlfriend fussed over her for at least an hour, getting her food and a coke and making her comfortable in the guest bedroom.
“I’m going to live,” she finally said, holding up her hands as Claire folded down the sheets on the bed and Dr. Thomas checked the thermostat to make sure it was warm enough. “You two can just keep right on playing house without adding me as a new variable in the equation.”
“Oh, a math analogy,” Claire winked at Dr. Thomas, walking out of the room and leaving the two of them alone. They were so perfect for one another.
He shook his head and put a hand on his hip, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder. “Jane, you know that’s my sister, right?”
“Sure, they’re all your sisters,” she nodded, sitting in the middle of the bed and turning the TV on with the remote. Yes, it was an extreme relief to hear, but the last thing she wanted to do was talk about it. It was a relief, though.
He walked forward and grabbed the remote out of her hand, shutting it off and looking down at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Hey, I know how it works,” she answered, raising her brow and shrugging. “You’re a good-looking professor, you talk a big talk and use really big words and get girls to come home with you. I get it, okay? Why stray from a formula that works?”
“Are you talking about the time you were spying on me and my intern?” he asked, holding out his arms. He didn’t know why she was so mad. He had just saved her life. Would a little gratitude from this girl be too much to ask for?
“I wasn’t spying!” she replied, then closed her mouth and looked away. Damn it. He’d won that one.
“I knew it.” He nodded, putting his hands on his hips and snickering. “I knew you’ve been breaking in here. What the hell are you thinking?”
She was so mad and had so many things to say, but nothing came out except tears. She knew why. She wasn’t really mad at him. She was upset with the situation. She threw the covers over her head and lay back.
“Jane. Jane, are you crying?”
“No!” she replied, voice muffled.
He ran a hand along his whiskers as he shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. He hadn’t meant to make her cry. He just wanted a little honesty. Why did she insist on breaking every rule? He wanted answers. Those were real tears, though, so he decided to leave her alone.
“Look, I’m sorry. We’ll talk in the morning.” He paused at the door. “And you will get that spanking tomorrow.” He turned and quie
tly shut it behind him.
“So?” Claire asked, bouncing up and down in the kitchen. “What’d you get out of her?”
“Tears.” He huffed, eating popcorn out of the bowl in front of her.
“What? You made her cry? Jesus, Conrad, you’re losing it.”
“No shit,” he mumbled, leaning over the counter and letting his head fall into his hands. This had to be the most complicated and most confusing situation he’d ever found himself in.
Was she really a fucking adult? Was she just a kid? Damn it all.
“I just secured the warrant,” Nelson said under her breath, smiling for the first time in weeks. She looked down at George as they paced behind the bleachers on that cold, wet, Saturday morning. “The tactical team is going in at noon. You did a really good job, George. Really.”
George smiled as the fog hung over their heads and people milled around the bleachers above them. She’d woken up at Dr. Thomas’s house and had tried to sneak out before anyone else woke up. He and his sister, if that’s who she really was, were already up having coffee. As she recalled the morning, she skipped over the part where Dr. Thomas called her into his office, made her place her hands on the desk, and smacked her over and over with a ruler.
George assured him that she’d be at the soccer game at ten sharp, and she kept her word. She and her boss were discussing the case behind the bleachers until 9:59, when George had to excuse herself.
“I’ll be cheering for you, I guess.” Nelson sighed, walking to a table in her federal-agent-looking trench coat and buying a black and red pennant to wave around. The other moms all had on sweater sets and pearls underneath their camel hair and tweed coats. Nelson didn’t seem to notice.
“Jane,” Dr. Thomas smiled, shaking Cricket’s dad’s hand and walking over. “Is that your aunt?”
“Oh, uh,” she stuttered, as he walked around her and approached Director Nelson. God, why did she freeze? Walk away.
“Ms. Nelson?”