Payback, page 24
“I installed a tracking device in the Jeep after your little fast food expedition at the mall the other night,” he says.
Dylan and the Wolves’ party flashes through my head. Belk knew I was up to something when I wasn’t with Charlotte and Henry.
He’s worse than Dr. O, you know. He does whatever his master wants. No questions.
The black SUV waits just down the empty road, and as we make our way toward it, I consider running one last time. Screaming my warning through the night. But I don’t do either, because he will shoot me before I complete my task.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Get in.”
He opens the back door, like he has dozens of times for any of us at school. I shouldn’t get in the car. Isn’t that what people always say? If you get in the car, you’re dead.
“Come in, Brynn.”
My stomach bottoms out.
Across the middle seat, Dr. O sits beside the far window, faintly illuminated by the moonlight. He’s wearing a black wool coat over his shirt and tie, and his slacks are as neatly pressed as always.
Has he come here for me? Or his sister?
Does he even know she’s here?
“A little faster, please,” Dr. O says. “You’re letting in the cold.”
Terror shudders through me, tinged with rage. He sent Geri’s dad—Frank Allen—after my mom. She’s with him right now. My friends are a half mile down the road. They don’t know what’s coming for them.
I have to figure out a way to stop this.
I get in the car.
Belk closes the door and waits outside. My gaze bounces from Dr. O to our traitorous security guard. I’m ready to bolt out of the car and tackle him should he make a move toward the cabin.
“How was your campus visit?” Dr. O asks, his voice as lethal as Belk’s gun.
“What do you want?”
Dr. O sighs.
“Have I not been fair to you, Brynn?”
I don’t answer. My hands are fisted and ready. I perch on the edge of the seat.
“Have I not given you everything I’ve promised? A home. An education. A future?”
There is no future. It’s all a lie, that’s what Damien said.
“Where’s my mom?”
He shifts in his seat. “Enjoying a date in the city, last I heard. She was taken to an Italian restaurant called Vincenzo’s in Uptown. It’s a lovely location. Excellent beef brasato.”
I can’t handle this fake small talk. “What do you want?”
“The same thing I’ve always wanted,” he says. “Useful information.”
My lips curl back from my teeth. “You mean compliance.”
He shrugs. “Compliance is mandatory at Vale Hall; you agreed to this when you came on.”
“Get to the point. If you’re going to kill me—”
“Oh, Brynn,” he says, voice heavy with exhaustion. “I don’t want to kill you. I need you. Now, it seems, more than ever.”
I stare at him. “You tried to murder me today.”
“Not true,” he says, the shadows on his face cut deep as he scowls. “Mr. Belk was merely trying to eliminate some dangerous information. Files that had been stolen from my safe.” His head turns slowly toward me, his cool gaze meeting mine for the first time. “You wouldn’t know about those, would you?”
A shiver works down my spine as I bite the inside of my cheek.
“They are dangerous weapons in the hands of someone like Margot Patel. Did you know she showed up at a meeting I had at the mayor’s office this morning? She managed to steal Mr. Belk’s firearm. If not for Mayor Santos’s daughter, Camille, recognizing her, I might be dead now.”
My stomach twists. Margot tried to kill Dr. O. She brought a gun to the mayor’s office. I picture Camille Santos—Caleb’s old mark—standing beside her mother in the press conference announcing Dr. O’s position. She could have been killed.
“Margot ran before I could speak to her. Mr. Belk tracked her to an abandoned train station in Sycamore Township,” Dr. O says, facing forward again. “Security assumed it was an attack on the mayor, of course. She has many enemies since her public dismissal of the Wolves of Hellsgate.”
I got her.
Was Margot trying to attack Mayor Santos? Blame the attack on Dr. O? My thoughts fly through explanations, but don’t land on an answer that makes sense. I can’t even say for certain that Dr. O is telling the truth.
If he is, if Margot tried to murder him in front of all those people, then she’s farther gone than I thought. She’s a danger to all of us.
My gaze switches back to Belk, who hasn’t moved. Questions fly through my head, too slick to grasp on to. Why didn’t Margot shoot? What did she do with the gun? Did anyone else see her?
“You have nothing to say on the matter?” he asks.
I don’t.
“I become a U.S. senator in twelve days,” Dr. O says, folding his hands on his laps. “Finally, I’ll have a chance to rid the system of corruption from the inside—not just on a local level, but on a much larger scale.”
Susan’s warning about extra security flashes through my mind. I swipe at the sweat on my temple, hot against the cool interior of the car.
“This should have been an exciting time for all of us. I thought we were on the same page. I thought you wanted what I did, a world without glass walls and ceilings.”
My hands turn clammy as he cites the essay I once wrote for a scholarship—the same essay he claimed had gained his attention to bring me to Vale Hall. It was a lie of course. He recruited me because he’d caught Pete stealing from the Wednesday Pharmaceuticals warehouse.
“Damien Fontego called before this mess with Margot. Apparently, he’d been trying to get in touch with you, Mr. Belk, for some time.” He sends a cold look to the front of the car.
“Lost my phone,” Belk mutters.
“No matter,” Dr. O continues. “He reached me.”
My blood turns to ice.
No, I think. Don’t say it.
Damien wouldn’t.
“At least he recognizes the value of loyalty.”
My eyes pinched closed. I want to wipe Damien’s kiss off my cheek. His dimples out of my head. A new wave of fear hits me. If Damien told Dr. O about what happened, he must have mentioned Marcus. Is Marcus in danger?
I never should have told him we were coming.
“I’m disappointed,” Dr. O says, as if this will trigger my shame.
“Me, too.” The truth cuts too close to my nerves. “This wasn’t exactly what I signed up for.”
He grunts. “I told you the rules when you came to me—before you ever agreed to come to Vale Hall. There are consequences for exposure.”
“Disappearing, you mean. That’s quite a magic trick.”
“Dissolving my students’ identities is a kinder sentence than those who put my students and faculty at risk deserve.”
My eyes flick to the door handle. This is it. This is the end. He’s going to kill me, or have Belk do it. I’m done, just like Jimmy Balder, and Raf, and the others that Dylan mentioned.
But we’re still sitting here. Why keep talking if he just plans on having Belk shoot me?
“I’ve decided to give you one chance to make this right, Brynn. I need you to tell me the truth. If you do, we’ll return to Vale Hall, your mother will return home, and everything will go back as it should be.”
I balk. “The truth about what?”
He inhales with a flare of his nostrils. “How exactly you came to be in contact with my sister.”
The breath squeezes from my lungs. He knows about Susan. Belk must have been spying on us from outside the cabin while we were talking.
That will mean he knows Caleb is here too. And Margot. And Grayson, who already fears for his life.
There is no denying it now. He knows too much.
“And if I tell you, what will you do with that information?”
He sighs. “That’s for me to worry about.”
“You’ll kill her.”
“She’s already dead.”
His blunt tone sends a stab of terror through my ribs. He could murder her, really do it this time, and no one would know because she doesn’t exist.
A panicked sob rises in my throat. I try to swallow it down. I can’t fall apart now. I need to think. I need to change his path.
“And if I don’t?”
“You’re going to find the future very difficult, I’m afraid,” Dr. O says. “New light will be shed on your mother’s boyfriend’s case—Pete Walsh will accuse you of collaborating with drug sales by the Wolves of Hellsgate, and you’ll be arrested and charged for distribution and intent to sell. They’ll find your fingerprints at the apartment of Rafael Fuentes, where a witness, Renee Gibson, will step forward to say you threatened him into an overdose.”
He has Renee.
I’m in a free fall, unable to catch myself. He has one of us. He’s going to pin me for a murder. He’s going to say I was selling his pills with Pete and send me to jail. He’s not going to kill me, he’s going to destroy me.
“Your mother may succumb to similar causes,” he says clinically.
I’m across the car in a shot, my hand fisted in his jacket, the other around his throat. “You stay away from her. You—”
“The wheels are set in motion.” A slight sneer pulls at his lips. “And I am the only one who can stop them.”
I release him as if he’s burned my hands. His warning is clear: I can’t hurt him without hurting my mom.
“There was a bill I stole from one of the interns in Matthew Sterling’s campaign,” I lie quickly. “Something I found when you sent me to work at The Loft. Sterling was paying for power to some cabin off the books, and the bill accidentally got sent to the office. I didn’t know what it was at first. I asked Grayson, but he hadn’t heard about it.” Is this enough to save him? In the dark of the car, I can’t even see Dr. O’s face to tell if he’s buying this. “I’ve never been here before today. I didn’t know she was here. I just thought … I don’t know, we needed a place to hide.”
My tears aren’t part of the act. They’re 100 percent real.
Please believe me.
“There,” he says. “That wasn’t difficult.” He retrieves a phone from his pocket, and presses a few quick numbers, then lifts it to his ear. “Yes,” he says. “Please see Ms. Hilder home safely. No, that won’t be necessary. Thank you, Frank.”
I want to throw up.
“What happens now?” I whisper.
“Now you go back to school,” he says. “And my sister and I have a little talk.”
Is he serious? I’m supposed to put on my seat belt and let Belk drive me back to Vale Hall? What happens to Susan? What happens to my friends?
“What about the others?” I whisper. Have they begun to worry about how long I’ve been gone? Has anyone come looking for me?
“It grieves me to say they have become problematic. I thought they’d be more careful. Charlotte, at least, with a baby on the way. And Caleb, now that his father’s rallied.”
His words hang between us like knives ready to drop.
He knows Charlotte’s pregnant. Does he know where Caleb’s family is hidden?
“They’re not a problem,” I say. “They got the point at the train yards. They won’t be any trouble for you anymore.”
“I believed Margot Patel wouldn’t cause me trouble, and look what happened.”
“I gave you what you wanted!” Desperation takes control of my voice. “I’ll talk to them, okay? They listen to me. I’m convincing. You taught me to be convincing, remember?”
He rubs his forehead absently with two fingers, as if he sees no choice but eliminating his students.
An idea takes hold, charred and flaking with defeat. I grasp it with both hands.
“I’ll bring them back to Vale Hall,” I say, before I’ve fully considered what this means. “You’ll be able to watch them there. No one has to get hurt. It looks bad for you if all of your senior class goes missing right before you’re sworn in, right?”
His fingers drum on his knees. I’ll take that as agreement.
“You can have us all there for the ceremony, cheering for you.” I’ll beg if that’s what it takes.
“How will you convince them?”
“I’ll tell them they don’t have a choice. If they don’t get in line, they’re dead.”
“Just the kind of sentiment that breeds more resistance.” His fingers still. “You need to find their pressure point, Brynn. That’s the way things like this are done.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, only that this is the first real conversation we’ve ever had, and I regret every second of it.
I search for anything I can say to make him come around, but I can only think of Susan in that cabin, and what will happen when Dr. O sees her, and Henry’s last words before I left. If Brynn says it’s going to be fine, it’s going to be fine.
I realize then what I have to do. I don’t have to find their pressure point, like Dr. O says, because I already know what it is.
It’s me.
I need to convince my friends our fight is over. I can’t shout for them to run; Belk will hurt someone. If I warn them Dr. O has threatened us, they could rally and take Dr. O and Belk out—there are enough of us to do it. But Geri’s dad has already made contact with my mom, and Dr. O told me only he can stop her from getting hurt.
Which means I can’t let him get hurt.
We have to go back to Vale Hall, and to get them to do that, I need to sever their hope. I need to break their trust. There are no other ways to keep everyone safe.
“They’ll come,” I say as confidently as I can. “I’ll tell you everything I know once everyone is safe. Susan and my mom included.”
A faint smirk tilts his mouth. “You’re not in a position to make that deal.”
“You’re not in a position to kill your sister twice and get away with it,” I shoot back. “She’s not stupid. You think she doesn’t have a plan? That people won’t come look for her if she doesn’t check in? They’re going to leak the truth if she goes missing.”
Grayson was the only one checking in on her that I know of, but I’m not telling Dr. O that.
“Is that what she said? My sister is a liar, Brynn. She always has been.”
“You want to test her?” I ask. “Because if she’s not, this will go south for you, fast.”
His eyes narrow—he’s trying to tell if I’m bluffing. But this game I know well, and even if my insides are quaking, I hold his gaze.
“Are you so eager to take responsibility for the lives of your friends?”
“Yes,” I answer without delay.
Because they’re not just friends. They’re family.
“Then it’s a deal. Their futures depend on you.”
He holds out a hand for me to shake. I want to spit into his palm. I want to break his wrist.
“I’ll go talk to them,” I say. “You wait here.”
But he smiles. His hand lowers to his lap. “I don’t think so. We’ll go together. I look forward to hearing you rally the troops.”
He pats my knee, and it’s in that moment that the disgust and terror give way to despair, and I know we’ve finally lost.
CHAPTER 23
I enter the house first. This is Dr. O’s idea, just like it was his idea to leave the car around the bend of the drive, just out of sight, so no one sees or hears it and tries to run. As I push through the door, a part of me hopes my friends have already scattered, but I am not so lucky.
Caleb is standing just inside the door, and I nearly collide with him as I step through the threshold. He’s in the process of zipping up his coat, and his face is drawn in worry.
“There you are,” he says, leaning down to kiss my cheek. “I was just about to come looking…”
His gaze lifts to the two men behind me, standing on the deck, and like a shot, he’s grabbed my arm and whipped me around his side, away from them.
My stomach twists so hard I can barely stand upright.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
There is a split second of frozen confusion, then everyone is moving at once. Susan is yelling at us to get back. Sam is shouting for Charlotte to get behind a couch. Geri’s hand is in mine, and she’s pulling me away as Caleb tries to slam Dr. O and his henchman outside.
Grayson goes for the rifle beneath the window.
Belk stops the door from slamming with his shoulder, and he roars as Caleb throws his weight against the wood. Belk’s arm swings wildly, knocking down a standing coatrack with a clatter.
“Stop!” I shout, but no one listens. “Stop. They’re not going to hurt us!”
I don’t know how Henry got in front of me, but he’s beside Caleb, blocking me from the door. My protectors, until the end.
They grow still as my words sink in.
Grayson’s stare slides to mine, pinched with doubt.
“I…” My gaze darts around the room, glancing off the people I trust—who trust me.
They will die if I don’t do what Dr. O wants.
They will never do what he wants if I don’t convince them it’s the only way.
I can’t convince them without crushing them. Otherwise they will fight—maybe not right now, but as soon as they land back on their feet. They will fight, or they will run, and Dr. O will chase them to the very end.
“I called Dr. O and Belk,” I tell my friends. I look at Caleb, and it takes everything I have to hold his gaze. “They’re with me.”
Caleb’s chin pulls inward. He blinks in confusion, and then his eyes grow guarded, and I’m reminded of how he can turn on the con at the snap of his fingers.
You know I wouldn’t do this, I think, just as I will him to follow my lead.
Even if none of them believe me, even if they know I’d never betray them, they have to make Dr. O believe that I’ve broken their trust. Otherwise we’re never going to get out of this alive.
“You what?” Geri is the first to speak.
There can be no room for doubt. Their lives are depending on me. My mom is depending on me.
