Payback, page 29
I charge toward the door, but hesitate when Moore doesn’t follow. He’s still standing there, staring at Susan as if his boots have taken root in the floor.
“Go,” she says. “The students need you.”
Still, he hesitates.
“Kiss her and come on already,” I say, feeling more than a little like Christopher.
Susan grins. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile, and in that moment sparks light between them. The chemistry so bright and urgent I take a step back.
Moore leans in, his back to me as he takes Susan in his arms.
It’s the kind of kiss that stops traffic.
The kind I really didn’t ever want to witness Moore taking part in.
When they’re done, Susan touches his cheek. “See you soon, baby.”
I toss a wow look at Caleb, who’s already sending one back my way. Then we jet down the stairs, out the back, and straight through the woods. We need to get the car back to Caleb’s family and talk to the others. We need to plan the details of the greatest con I will ever pursue.
Tomorrow, we begin our take-back of Vale Hall.
CHAPTER 28
Because Dr. O expects it of me, I return to my mom’s for Christmas. She’s delighted, of course, and we repeat the breakfast-for-dinner thing for actual breakfast the next day. Three pancakes and four pieces of bacon later, I’ve hugged her goodbye and am taking the bus outside the city, in the opposite direction from Vale Hall.
There’s one stop I need to make before I go back.
Mimir State Penitentiary is on the edge of White Bank. Everything about it, from the rolled wire atop the high chain-link fences to the cement-block buildings, screams prison, and as I exit the bus my stomach grows queasy.
This is not a place I ever imagined going, but one of the many things I learned from Vale Hall’s Vocational Development class was the importance of research. There’s someone here who knows more about conning than I do.
It’s time to get in and get out.
The bus was overflowing with families today, and the waiting room is already packed when I go in. Kids are crying. Moms are giving them quarters for the snack machines to keep them busy. Guards in beige uniforms wait behind bulletproof glass with less-than-amused looks on their faces.
An hour after I check in, I’m called to the visitation room.
It’s a long hall, lined with black phones and partitioned walls that give the illusion of privacy. Three guards stand behind the line of visitors as we find the number on the booth corresponding to the plastic card we’ve been given.
I lift my chin and keep my shoulders back as I sit on a cracked vinyl stool and pick up the phone.
“Merry Christmas, Brynn,” says Pete.
My mom’s ex looks like he’s adjusted to prison well. His blue eyes are sharp as tacks. His face is clean-shaven. If he’s leaner through the jaw and neck, it only adds to his ferocity. It’s not the first time he’s had a stay at this lovely place, but this will certainly be the longest—he’s got a twenty-year sentence for selling pills to the Wolves of Hellsgate, thanks to me.
“Not the Hilder I expected to see,” he goes on, flicking something off his bright orange shirt. “But not altogether disappointing.”
“Mom’s over you,” I say. “I doubt she remembers your name.”
His thin lips curl in amusement.
“So it’s just my sweet daughter who’s come to spread some holiday cheer. Isn’t that nice?”
“Not your daughter,” I say, conscious of the rising pitch in my voice. “I need a favor.”
I glance over my shoulder, to a guard who’s pacing toward a man who’s started yelling at the opposite end of the room.
“A favor?” He chuckles. “Well, if it isn’t a Christmas miracle! The girl who knows everything needs my help!” He stands, one hand to his heart, looking like he might burst into tears.
“Shut up!” I wince. This is an act, just like everything else with him.
“Sit down or you’re done!” shouts a guard on the other side of the glass.
Pete sits, grinning again. “What do you want, Brynn? Some cigarettes? A cup of noodles? Commissary just got in some chocolate bars. Allie always loved—”
“I need to get into Wednesday,” I say, interrupting any sentiment about my mom. “The way you used to do it. To do what you used to do.” Sell stolen pills. I’m not sure if someone’s listening in on these phones, or if a guard nearby can hear, and I don’t want to take any chances.
He tilts his head.
“Why don’t you ask your boss? Doesn’t he own it?”
Mr. Wednesday—that’s what Pete once called Dr. O. The only reason the director knew about me at all was because Pete had been stealing pills from his pharmaceuticals warehouse. That’s why I’m here.
“He’s a little busy,” I say.
Pete chuckles, then full on laughs. “So the good life isn’t all it was cracked up to be, huh? What, did you get tired of all that money? I’m glad to see you’re embracing your true calling, Brynn.”
I motion to his orange jumpsuit. “You too.”
“You’re more like me than you’ll ever admit,” he says, then sighs. “The answer’s no, by the way, but thanks for the laugh. I needed it.”
“Please,” I say between my teeth.
“Least you’ve learned some manners since you left.” He chuckles again. “Why would I tell you that? You’re the reason I’m locked up, in case you forgot.” His eyes narrow as he leans closer to the glass, and I can’t help the shiver that traces down my spine. “Yeah, I know you called the cops to bust me that day. Got jealous that I was taking over your deal with the Wolves, and brought the house down over my head. Poor Brynn has a fit when things don’t go her way, doesn’t she?”
He still doesn’t realize that the whole thing was set up. I was never trying to sell drugs, I was trying to get Pete to think I was, so he’d step in and get arrested.
I force my eyes to meet his. “Guess I am a little like you in that way.”
His smug grin fades, and his gaze drops. After a moment, he leans back in his chair, rubbing his palms over his thighs. His ego seems to deflate, like air hissing out of a balloon. He doesn’t even look angry, but given what he believes I did, he should be.
“I guess you are,” he says.
I don’t like this acceptance. I don’t trust it.
“You’re wrong, you know,” I say. “I did it because I had orders. Mr. Wednesday is the reason you’re in here, not me, and if you tell me how to get into the warehouse, I’ll make sure he’s put here with you so you can thank him personally.”
Pete holds one hand out to the side, a disbelieving smirk on his face. “So this is his doing.”
“He knew you’d been stealing from him. He wasn’t exactly a big fan of yours.”
Pete’s hand drops to his side. He taps his bottom teeth against his top lip, sizing me up with his cold gaze.
This is part of the act as well. We both know he wants revenge, and I’ve just served it up on a plate before him.
“You know when I met you, you couldn’t even spot a pigeon.”
I swallow, remembering how he taught me to read a crowd, and figure out who would make a good mark. A woman with an open purse. A man who’d had too much to drink. Anyone who looked lonely, in need of a friend. They weren’t hard to see once you were looking.
“You thought a shell game was something you did with turtles.”
I look away, not wanting this stroll down memory lane.
He chuckles quietly. “The first time I set you up to do a color grab, you remember what you asked me?”
“‘Won’t they be sad?’” I say quietly, thinking of how he taught me to snatch items off unsuspecting tourists by the lake.
“Won’t they be sad,” he repeats. “You never had a doubt in your mind you could get the job done. Even at eight years old, you had quick hands.”
His voice is light with something that sounds close to pride.
“Yeah,” I say. “Well. You learn fast when you need to.”
“Yes, you do,” he says. “And now, look how far you’ve come.”
A long moment of silence stretches between us. I don’t want his fatherly sentiment. I don’t want to share the same space with him longer than I have to. But I think of what Mom said about home, and how it made me, and even if I hate Pete, I wouldn’t be here now without him.
“You really think you can pull this off behind Mr. Wednesday’s back?” he asks quietly.
I nod, and his lips turn up in a smile.
“If I help you, that doesn’t make us even.”
“I have no interest in being even with you,” I tell him.
He laughs, and for once, it isn’t filled with spite or manipulation or hate.
Twenty minutes later, I have the location of Wednesday Pharmaceuticals warehouse’s security cameras, what the boxes I’m searching for look like, and the security code to the loading dock where the trucks make their deliveries.
* * *
I’M BACK AT school before dusk on Christmas Day. A few of the underclassmen who have families they still speak to are out on a pass. Geri’s with her father. Sam’s on a pass to see his mother at Bennington Max. They weren’t supposed to leave, but Dr. O thought it might raise more suspicion if they didn’t.
The rest of the seniors are all unofficially grounded, and abiding by their sentences now that the director’s back in his office at Vale Hall. As I make my way across the kitchen, I can hear the sounds of a Road Rules tournament stretching up from the pit. With a pang, I remember my seventeenth birthday party there. How, for the first time, I felt at home in this strange, enormous house.
Now the walls have ears, and suspicion has me walking on eggshells.
I’m not heading to the pit now, but to the dining room table, where a girl sits alone with a book. Her eyes are down, but I don’t get the impression she’s reading. Since I walked into the kitchen, she hasn’t turned a single page.
“Hi, Margot,” I say, sliding around the table beside her.
She doesn’t look up.
“How are you feeling?”
No answer. I grip the back of one of the dining room chairs, bracing it before me like a shield. I’d be lying if I said she didn’t make me more nervous than she ever has before.
I knew she was a top-level liar. I knew she wanted to bring Dr. O down more than anything.
But I didn’t expect her to walk into City Hall and grab a gun.
Even now, being near her feels like standing beside a loaded grenade. Her face has been on the news since the day of the attack—security footage got a grainy, black-and-white image of her profile, but being the ghost that she was meant there were no pictures online to match it. Still, it’s enough that Dr. O is keeping her housebound until further notice.
Despite it all, I can’t help feeling sorry for her—this girl who’s lost everything.
In fresh clothes, and without the soot stains on her skin, she looks better. I heard the MRI Belk took her in for came back normal, and a doctor stitched up the back of her head. Still, she looks tired and disconnected.
From the basement, I hear the pad of footsteps, and Ms. Maddox appears. She’s wearing a new shade of lipstick—dark enough to match her soul—and her red plaid dress is festive. Once, that would have comforted me, but now her efforts to make herself and everything here homey grind my patience.
Her watchful gaze glances off mine before she grabs a plate of decorated sugar cookies off the kitchen island and carries them down the stairs.
“Do you need anything?” I ask Margot. “I could get you something to eat. I know Ms. Maddox made a pie for last night.” My voice tightens over her name, and my mind flashes to Raf, and how he might be alive now if not for her reading Moore’s messages.
Margot says nothing.
The basement stairs groan again, though no one comes up the shadowed steps.
“You can’t ignore me forever,” I say.
“I can try,” she whispers.
I pull back the chair and sit down, the gap between us large enough to fit two more people.
My throat is tight, the words thick on my tongue. “I did what I had to do.”
“You ratted us out,” she says, still staring out the window. “You gave your friends up to a monster.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Sure you did,” she says. “You chose wrong.”
I lean closer. “So I should have stolen a gun and tried to shoot him in City Hall?”
Her lips tilt in a grim smile. “Who says I tried to shoot him?”
Cheers erupt from the pit, and from the front of the house, I hear the garage door open with a steady hum. The stairs creak as someone descends, but no one enters the kitchen.
There is no privacy in this house. Not today. Not anymore.
My gaze narrows on hers, trying to decipher what this means. Dr. O said she attacked him—not that I can take his word. But she’s not denying that she stole Belk’s gun, just what she did with it.
I got her.
Got who?
Even if it was safe to ask right now, which it’s not, I don’t have time to, because she’s leaning closer, holding my stare with her cold, brown eyes. “Does it feel good? Selling out the people who counted on you?”
I flinch. “At least you’re all still alive.”
A sour expression curls back her lips. “You call this alive? Living in this house, without being able to go outside? You know, I did what he wanted too once, and look at me. I’m a prisoner, and Jimmy … Jimmy’s gone.”
I flinch at Jimmy’s name, her grief a cold knife in my side.
She swipes her forearm over her eyes to clear away the tears, then closes her book and stands.
“He’ll get rid of all of us. It’s just a matter of time. And if you trust Dr. O when he says you’re safe, you’re stupider than I thought.” She’s louder than before. Angrier.
My back straightens. “Who said anything about trusting him?”
She was turning away, but pauses.
The floor outside the kitchen groans quietly. I need to hurry. I don’t want the wrong people hearing this.
“I’ve got a plan, Margot.” I grasp her cold hand, willing her to remember that beneath all of the lies, we were friends once. “I’m going to get him back. For you. For Jimmy. For all of them. Dr. O’s got accounts overseas, did you know that? Places he dumps his money into…”
The creak in the basement stairs makes me pause, but when I look, no one is there.
“You don’t need to worry,” I finish quietly.
A glimmer of surprise rises and fades in her eyes.
“Better be careful talking like that,” she says. “You never can be sure who’s listening.”
She rounds the other side of the table, taking care not to come anywhere near me. As she passes the stairway to the pit, I think I catch a flash of red plaid, but it’s gone before I can say for sure.
As the garage door closes, I stride through the kitchen, passing Paz and June as they make their way toward the pit. They don’t look at me as they pass—they’re too busy staring at Margot as she rushes by on her way toward the stairs.
I meet Sam just as he comes through the garage door.
“Everything all right?” he asks.
“Fine,” I tell him. “How was the visit with your mom?”
His slow grin says it all.
CHAPTER 29
New Year’s Eve
By noon, the foyer of Vale Hall is filled with boxes. “Congratulations Dr. O” signs and banners lean against the walls. Bags of uninflated silver and black balloons sit beside a rented helium tank, and white New Year’s paper horns and cardboard bowler hats have pushed aside the Christmas decorations on the entryway tables.
The doorbell’s been ringing all week with deliveries Geri has purchased on the Vale Hall account for tonight’s congratulations party. The house has been a frenzy of activity. News reporters have been in the house interviewing Dr. O and the students in preparation for his swearing-in ceremony today at three o’clock. Security has been at an all-time high.
Every word spoken to the press is a beautiful lie, accented with a hustler’s smile.
“Dresses are here!” screams Paz as another beige-uniformed deliveryman sets the third of four enormous boxes on the front steps. In an instant, half the girls at school have flocked toward the door. Charlotte hurries by as I make a slow descent down the stairs, the weight of today’s tasks looming over my shoulders.
Today Dr. O becomes a senator.
Today, we cut him down.
Covertly, I slide my hand over Caleb’s burner phone, concealed in my back jeans pocket, beneath the bottom of my baggy sweater. I’ve been carrying it all week, but it has yet to ring.
“Oh, no.” Bea’s voice rises above the rest. “This is all wrong. Pink? I don’t do pink!”
“You’ll do pink, and you’ll do it with a smile.” Geri strides in from the kitchen, a tie fastened around the collar of her crisp white shirt. She’s all business today—has been all week. This party tonight is her doing.
“It’s not all pink,” says Paz. “It’s got some black. Wait … Is this a jumpsuit? The names must have gotten mixed up. These calves don’t hide behind wide-leg pants.”
“It’s a travesty,” says Bea.
“You think?” asks Paz, a little shyly.
“You both are incredibly subtle,” says June, who grins at the simple black frock she’s been assigned.
The boxes have been dragged into the foyer and half shredded in the attempt to pull the dresses free. Each one is wrapped in white paper and sealed with a sticker and the name of the recipient.
Geri picked them all, like a bride choosing the attire of the world’s most dangerous wedding party. She informed us at a party planning meeting earlier this week that we would be wearing shades of black, with accents of fuchsia and silver to go with the decor. Apparently Bea didn’t think her dress, a knee-length sheath of black lace over a pink slip, would be quite so accented.
