CHAPTER 12

It’s dark out by the time Harper and I leave the care of the chef/teacher, after our Sunday night cooking class at the Jewish Community Center. We—by we I mean me—managed to avoid setting anything on fire or explosions in general, which I consider a huge success. Harper is pretty much on top of the world while we walk home, our stomachs full of kosher meat.

“I’m not saying I want to have kids anytime soon. Just someday…” Harper argues.

I’ve been accusing her of all kinds of things relating to kids and family this evening, trying to get to the bottom of her learning-to-cook obsession. While our food cooked, she had gushed over pictures of the toddler twins she nannies and, after being forced to look at a hundred drool-filled pictures, I’d accused her of wanting babies.

“Think about it,” I say, playing devil’s advocate. “You bring a kid into this world and he or she will have a mother who uses a fake name, can’t legally work—”

“And has a father with a very dangerous job,” Harp says. “I know all of this, Ellie. I’m not stupid.” She levels me with a look. “I’m also not willing to give up my chance at a real life just because of things our parents did. I’m too young and too optimistic to throw in the towel already.”

Yeah, we don’t share the optimist gene. I’m about to put up a better, bigger argument, but my senses become alert to something behind me, the hair on the back of my neck standing up. Footsteps. The sound of clothes brushing against skin. It’s dark on the street, but the well-manicured lawns around us reduce the possibility of a threat. Or they should, at least.

I glance sideways at Harper. Even in the dark, she catches my eye and moves close. She felt it, too.

“Who?” I whisper. She shakes her head.

“Ellie!” someone shouts from behind.

Harper lets out a short scream. My heart jumps up to my throat.

The shadowed figure shouting my name moves close enough to identify. I clutch my chest with one hand and slap his shoulder with the other. “What the hell, Bret?”

He lifts up his hands in surrender, like he did in the equipment closet the other day. I’m beginning to think it’s his signature move. The I-didn’t-do-it face is well crafted. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to—”

“Well, you did!” Harper snaps. She gives my arm a protective squeeze. “Jesus.”

“I went by your place,” Bret says. “And the big guy who answered the door told me where you were… I figured I’d catch up to you—” He looks between the two of us, his forehead wrinkled. “Are you two always this jumpy?”

“Do you always creep up behind people in the dark?” I ask.

He laughs. “You guys were seriously freaked out? In this neighborhood? Nothing happens here.”

Harper and I take a few seconds to come down from our adrenaline rush, and then we continue to walk home. Bret decides he’s forgiven enough to walk beside us, though Harper continues to glare at him.

“What do you need, Bret?” I finally ask as we’re approaching the apartment complex. “And what’s wrong with texting? I hear all the kids are doing it these days.”

He looks a little embarrassed—very out of character for him—when he turns to me, one hand gripping the back of his neck. “I was hoping maybe you could help me with the English assignment. I’m barely pulling a C and Lance worships you…”

I’m actually impressed that he’s got a C in the class. Especially since he’s busy helping to coach field hockey and planting drugs on fellow classmates. Hard to keep up with The Great Gatsby with all that going on.

But as the saying goes, keep your friends close and make your enemies fall for you.

Harper’s looking at me like, Who the hell is this guy and do you need me to get rid of him?

“It’s fine,” I tell her. Then I say to Bret, “I don’t do other people’s homework.”

“I don’t want you to,” he insists. “Just help me. That’s all.”

Then tell me what your car was doing in this exact spot last June.

If only it were that easy. The key to undercover operations is to gain trust. Even if doing this makes you want to vomit up kosher meat.

“Okay, I’ll help you,” I say finally.

We walk between two of the buildings to the courtyard and pool. Even though it’s dark out, the lights around the pool and in the water make it easy to see a guy swimming laps. I’ve become familiar with Miles’s butterfly stroke. It’s smooth and perfect—the tempo, the ease with which his arms continuously rise out of the water like they’ll never tire.

An older man I don’t recognize is seated in a lawn chair, a cigar in his mouth, the newspaper spread out in front of him. “Hey, kid, give it a rest,” he shouts at Miles.

“Is that Beckett?” Bret says. “Look at him, training for our next race. That shithead. He acts like he’s never swam before in his life and then he’s kicking everyone’s ass.”

Smoke from the cigar wafts this way, and my stomach turns. I hate that smell.

“Hey, kid!” the guy shouts louder. “Enough.”

Miles stops, and his feet hit the bottom of the pool. He tosses his goggles off to the side and glares at the guy. “If I keep my head underwater, maybe I’ll avoid damage from your secondhand smoke.”

The man snorts, but he does put out the cigar. Is that Miles’s uncle? The one who leaves envelopes full of cash labeled “food money”?

“You’re gonna wear yourself down to nothing,” the man says to Miles. “You’ve done at least a hundred laps. What are you training for? Olympics are over.”

When Harper heads up the stairs to our apartment, Miles finally looks around and notices Bret and me. He morphs back into the cool kid he was at the yacht party. He hops out of the pool, shakes off the excess water—which is quite a sight—and grins at Bret. “Hey, man, what’s up?”

I’m so busy admiring my shirtless neighbor I barely hear Bret when he says, “What do you think, Ellie? Are you up for a threesome?”

I snap around to face him. “What?”

Bret laughs, but Miles stiffens and heads over to grab his towel from a table nearby. “He means to study.”

Clearly I missed that part. “You’re not in our class.”

“But he’s reading the same book,” Bret says. “And he’s in honors.”

“That’s right, Miles the honors student,” I sing.

He turns around to face me, the towel now around his neck. “And Ellie the…” He scratches his head. “What exactly are you, Ellie? Party girl? Field hockey star? Saver of wet clothing?”

We stare at each other, something flowing between us, something that says the trust I built the other night might be gone. But it can’t be that. Not completely. He would have told Harper about the drugs.

“Teacher’s pet,” Bret says. “That’s what Ellie is, and I’m using it to my benefit.”

I force a smile. “Come on upstairs.”

In the apartment, I leave Bret at the kitchen table with Harper, who is all too willing to continue to glare at the guy who freaked us out on our walk home. I find Aidan waiting for me in the doorway to his and Harper’s room.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I say before he gets a word in. I lower my voice to a whisper. “Just let me do this, okay? You want to know what he was doing in the parking lot the night Simon died, and I can find out.”

Aidan tenses, cracks his knuckles. “Or I can have a little chat with him one-on-one and find out right now.”

“Yeah, and lose your job.” I press a hand to Aidan’s chest, holding him back. “Plus, he’s been questioned by the FBI already, remember?”

“Ellie,” Aidan whispers. “As your legal guardian, I can’t let you hang out with a kid who carts around bags of drugs.”

“They were Dominic’s drugs,” I lie. “And I’m not doing drugs. I’m not doing anything illegal with him. Right now, we’re studying.”

“Okay,” he concedes. “But I’m keeping a close eye on that kid.”

I grab my books from my room and head back to the table to join Bret. Seconds later, someone knocks on the door, and Aidan lets in Miles along with the cigar-smoking guy. Aidan shakes hands with the older man. “How was the traveling, Clyde?”

So it is Uncle Clyde.

“You know, same old.”

Aidan offers him a beer, and the two of them head out to the balcony. With Aidan not so secretly watching us, I slide my chair an equal distance between Miles and Bret and open my copy of Gatsby.

“So, Mr. Lance assigned us—”

“Dude,” Bret says to Miles. “Justice is going nuts ’cause you haven’t called her. You going somewhere with that?”

I lift an eyebrow at Miles. He refuses to look me in the eye. “Not sure. Just trying to get by right now, you know? New place, new school…”

“Yeah, I get it. But seriously, she’s freaking. And Justice freaking is likely to make you the one to—” Bret’s eyes widen. “Okay, I see what you’re doing now. Well-played, man.”

I lift up the hardcover book and drop it onto the table, allowing the loud thud to echo through the room. “Hello? I thought we were studying, not conducting a meeting for Asshole Kings of the Universe.”

“Sorry,” Bret says, and then he makes an effort to lean over and look at the chapter in the book I’ve just opened.

Miles, on the other hand, ignores me. “Can you let Dominic know I’m gonna do the boat rental thing sometime this week if he’s still up for waterskiing.”

Dominic. Miles is hanging out with Dominic. I glance down at the book, thinking of something. “Hey, why don’t you ask Dominic to study with us? He’s in the class.”

“Good idea.” Bret picks up his phone and appears to text someone. He turns to Miles again. “Dominic’s got a bad rep with the boat rental places. He’s banned from all the ones around here. He got wasted, had a bad wreck over the summer. His dad got him off with barely a scratch. He knew a judge,” Bret says like this is normal. “He was kind of messed up for a couple of months, but he’s cool now. Just don’t let him drink and drive.”

Both Bret and Miles laugh like we weren’t just conversing about breaking some pretty big, important laws. I look at Bret, seeing his presence in my life as an even bigger opportunity. He’s a gossip. Or at least he is with Miles.

“Oh, I heard about that,” I say as casually as possible.

Bret lifts an eyebrow. “Really? From who?”

Uh… “Justice, I think…or maybe it was Chantel.” I shake my head. “I can’t remember.”

“Justice, probably.” Bret rolls his eyes. “She’s always hot and cold with Dominic. And when they’re cold, she’s all about telling his secrets.”

Good to know. Maybe there’s a way to induce the cold phase so she can fill me in on some of his secrets. Like the envelope of Simon Gilbert articles.

I smile at both guys. “I think this group study thing is gonna work out great.”