Without Mercy

  There had been discussions of how to curtail the problem but no permanent solutions.

  If Trent were to bet on the source of the black market, he’d probably pick some of the TAs. They seemed to get far more privileges than just a year or two of good behavior should warrant. Roberto Ortega and Tim Takasumi spent a lot of time in the clinic and computer lab, areas restricted to the regular students.

  And they knew a lot about the kids who were enrolled here—not only by hanging out with them and working in the classroom, but also through other means, or so Trent concluded. Assistants such as Missy Albright, Kaci Donahue, and Ethan Slade worked in the counseling offices, too, close to sensitive files. Zach Bernsen and Eric Rolfe had access to the stables, water craft, and weapons used in survival skills. Yeah, the rules were decidedly loose for the group of kids who’d elected to stay on after graduation. Privileges granted.

  Andrew Prescott was being considered, after his graduation, to become one of the youngest teaching assistants, a new recruit. Reverend Lynch had mentioned it in the last staff meeting and had indicated that Andrew’s parents were interested in him being a part of the program. What Andrew had thought of it, Trent didn’t know and wondered if he, or anyone else, ever would.

  Because Andrew was now fighting for his life.

  What the hell had happened in the hayloft? Trent asked himself for the millionth time as the tires crunched through new snow and slipped into icy ruts. From all appearances, it seemed that Nona Vickers had met Drew Prescott for the express purpose of sex. Their clothes were piled together. The unzipped sleeping bag in the loft had been mussed, the flannel lining probably stained with blood and semen.

  So if it started as a romp in the hay, something had gone wrong.

  Something had happened.

  He’d considered and discounted various theories involving rape, a gang bang, or a suicide pact. But he kept getting back to the fact that these kids had been found in a love den, and they were both naked.

  Were they having sex when a third person had discovered them in the hayloft?

  But who?

  And why?

  What other person had been skulking around the stable deep in the night?

  Trent remembered Nona’s body. There were no contusions other than the bruising around her neck, no cuts or scrapes or broken fingernails. If the hanging didn’t kill her, she had died by a means that didn’t leave other visible damage. And it had been no quick snap of the neck, as evidenced by the petechial hemorrhaging. He’d made sure that the detectives on the scene, Baines and Jalinsky, had noted the tiny broken blood vessels in Nona’s eyes. It pointed to a slow suffocation.

  As for Drew Prescott, he, too, had been naked, so it seemed unlikely he was leaving the scene. Even if he’d been scared away, his natural instinct would have been to grab his pants. Right?

  No matter how you sliced it, the evidence pointed to a third party in that loft.

  He thought of Shaylee Stillman’s hat. The only clue connecting her. He discarded the cap as a plant, left to point the guilt her way. If Shaylee had gone to all the trouble of stringing Nona from the rafters and getting rid of Drew, she would have snagged her yellow cap rather than leave it as a beacon shining the blame right on her.

  Unless she’d been too freaked out and made a mistake.

  She could have gotten careless.

  Hell. He flipped the wipers onto a higher tempo as the snowfall increased.

  And what was Shaylee’s motive for killing Nona?

  Privacy? A room to herself? Was her roommate an easy target? Then what about Drew? And how could she pull it off?

  No, it just didn’t make sense.

  But nothing did.

  There were so many threads dangling and no way to tie them together.

  Scowling as he stared through the windshield, he remembered seeing the flash of yellow-blond hair or a light-colored cap the night the filly had been left out. Shaylee’s University of Oregon hat? Missy Albright’s platinum hair? Something else? The woman he’d overheard had worried that something would happen to her.

  Who knows who could be next? she’d worried aloud.

  Had she been talking about Lauren? That would be Trent’s guess. Had the speaker been Nona Vickers, predicting her own demise?

  I thought it would be fun. A thrill. I believed in him, the girl had also said.

  Believed in who?

  Lynch? Or someone else?

  What would be fun?

  Something dangerous, some kind of web where, once they were caught in it, the willing participants couldn’t break free.

  He slowed for a sharp corner, downshifting, and tried to put it all together. The Jeep’s gears strained on the winding road, the four-wheel drive fully engaged. At an altitude of nearly fifty-two hundred feet, the campus was nearly a thousand feet higher than the gatehouse, this access road steep in even the best of conditions.

  How did the grisly scene in the stable tie into Lauren Conway’s disappearance?

  Don’t you mean her death?

  Face it, Trent, you don’t believe she’s alive.

  He told himself that he wasn’t certain what had happened to her, but he knew in his soul that her parents wouldn’t see her alive again. He had a gut feeling that Lauren was dead, as was Nona Vickers.

  And now you have to worry about Jules.

  “Damn it all to hell,” he muttered, angry at the world. The last thing he needed was Jules damned Delaney messing up things. He didn’t need to be worrying about her on top of everything else.

  But, then, he would bet a year’s salary she wouldn’t be any happier to see him than he was to see her.

  He couldn’t imagine being near her again, didn’t want to think about the last time they’d been together.

  Hell, had it been five years?

  He felt a moment’s regret, then shoved it aside, irritated as hell that his years of not seeing Jules Delaney—no, make that Julia Farentino—were about to end.

  * * *

  As she turned up the fan on the defroster, Jules worked to find the narrow road beneath the mask of white that covered the earth. Talk about wishing the miles away.

  She urged her car up the slippery hills, slowing as the road turned treacherously, her fingers gripping the steering wheel. As the car climbed, the thermometer for the outside temperature showed thirty degrees and the defroster struggled to keep the windows clear and the inside temperature comfortable.

  Dusk hung heavy in the snowy landscape when the beams of her headlights splashed over a sign with BLUE ROCK ACADEMY in bold letters. An arrow indicated she should turn onto a private lane guarded by tall fencing that was partially masked by snowy stands of heavy-boughed fir, pine, and madrona trees.

  “Here we go,” she whispered, just as the phone jangled in the empty cup holder. Expecting to hear Rhonda Hammersley’s voice again, she picked up without checking the number. “Hello?”

  “Jules!” Shay’s panic whispered over the faulty connection. “You have to get me out of here! This place is a frickin’ horror movie!”

  Jules felt immediate relief. “Shay!” Her sister was alive and well, not fighting for her life in a hospital. “Thank God you’re okay!” Tears of relief burned behind her eyelids. “I was worried. I thought … I mean, Dr. Hammersley called. I know there’s been an accident.”

  “Accident? Are you out of your mind? It wasn’t an accident. No way!” Shay was talking fast, her voice anxious. “If she told you it was an accident, then she lied!”

  “Lied about what? What are you talking—”

  “Oh, I get it. They’re whitewashing it for the families. Right. Claiming some sort of accident so that the parents don’t go nuts. Crap! Edie probably believes it, too.”

  “Wait a minute. Slow down,” Jules said, trying to concentrate on driving and the conversation. “What’s going on?”

  Shay’s voice was small. “Oh, God, Jules, the cops have been here all day, and did you know it was my roommate? My roommat
e, Nona, was killed in the stable.”

  “Killed?” Jules nearly drove off the road. Her heart was pounding, a million questions screaming through her mind. “Wait a minute. No one said anything about anyone dying. And it was a boy. I thought he was going to pull through—”

  “That’s Nona’s boyfriend. Drew. He’s in the hospital, but Nona’s dead! And, yeah, she was killed! Friggin’ hanged! Either she killed herself or her boyfriend Drew did it, and he’s in the hospital on life support or something, and it’s … it’s friggin’ scary!” Shay was talking so rapidly that her voice had elevated an octave, her words tumbling out. “You have to get me out of here, Jules. This place … this place is worse than jail. I swear to God, everyone here is psycho!”

  “Just calm down.” Jules was frantic, Shay’s anxiety infectious. But she had to take charge and somehow staunch Shaylee’s runaway fears.

  “I can’t. People are dying!”

  “Okay, okay, just listen,” Jules said, slowing for another curve as the defroster fought the condensation on the windows. “Try to pull it together, okay?” She wasn’t going to buy into Shaylee’s paranoia, her melodrama.

  “Didn’t you hear me? Nona’s dead!”

  “Shhh.” The connection was going bad again, and the snow that started as a white powder had turned into icy flakes. “Look, I’m working on getting you out. Trust me.”

  “Well work faster!”

  “Slow down. Take a deep breath. I’m just glad you’re okay,” Jules said, hoping the connection hadn’t been broken.

  “I am definitely not okay!” Shay insisted. “Get me out. Call Edie, tell her this is a big mistake. If she won’t do anything, phone Dad. Tell Max I need the lawyer to make a deal—”

  “It’s probably too late for that,” Jules said as her right tire hit a rock in the rutted road and the sedan bounced, jarring her already-pounding head. She gripped the wheel harder.

  “Even when some whack job is killing kids?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll sort it out soon. Look, I’m almost there.”

  “What?” Shay whispered. “Almost where?” After a pause, she said, “Here? As in …” The rest of what she said was garbled.

  “I’m on my way to the school.”

  “You are? This school? But I don’t …”

  The connection was horrid. The snow came down in heavy, thick flakes, dancing in the beams of her headlights. She couldn’t see the sky, could no longer make out the ridges high over this ever-narrowing canyon.

  “Listen to me, Shay. Can you hear me?”

  “What?” Shay snapped, the connection clear again. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to be at the school soon, so do not blow my cover, understand?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? What cover?”

  Her tires slid a bit, breaking through the new layer of snow, finding packed snow and ice below. She clutched the steering wheel with one hand and told herself, despite the tense conversation, to not overcorrect.

  “Blue Rock hired me as a teacher. So I’ll be at the school within the hour, I think, maybe less.”

  “What? Here?”

  Nothing again, just fading, sputtering noise. “Damn it!” She wanted to throw her cell phone out the window for all the good it was doing.

  “You are joking, right? You did not take a job here! Come on, Jules, tell me this is your idea of a really, really bad joke.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  The wireless connection was clear again, and Shaylee wasn’t having any of Jules’s scheme. “No! No way! Listen. You just need to get me out of here and fast! Detectives have been questioning me, because I was the last one to see Nona alive or something…. I don’t know what that means. Am I a suspect?”

  “Why would you be a suspect?”

  “I don’t know. Just because she was my roommate. I’m telling you things are fu-friggin’ weird down here.”

  “So how did you get to a phone? I thought they were restricted.” She fiddled with the heater and realized that she hadn’t seen another vehicle on this road for miles. Just how isolated was this place?

  “It’s Nona’s cell. I don’t know how she got it, maybe from some black market thing that goes on here. It’s not all that great … one of those prepaid things and … I swiped it last night.”

  “You did what?” Jules’s mind was racing. Things were getting worse and worse by the second. The cell phone connection was disintegrating again as the canyon walls rose higher, the private road following the course of a frozen river far below.

  “I saw her stash it in her jacket pocket. When she wasn’t looking, I took it so I could call.”

  “Oh, God, Shay, you have to give it back. Give it to the police so they can check the records and find out who she talked to.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to blow your cover. Your number will come up on the screen, you know, since I called you. And then where will you be? Not exactly up for Teacher of the Month.”

  “No reason to be sarcastic.”

  “I don’t have time to worry about the damned phone,” Shay reminded her. “Look, I gotta go!” Her voice was fading, the connection worsening. “I can’t hear you anyway. The detectives are talking with some of the other teachers and kids, but they’ll be back. You just have to get me outta here.” Shay sounded beyond desperate, more than scared out of her mind.

  Shay was freaked. Of course. Her roommate had been killed.

  “Just hear me out. You know my ultimate goal is to get you out of there, but I need a little time, and you need to be a model student, got it?”

  “Like I ever was.”

  “If I can find out what’s happening, prove this school is negligent or criminal or whatever, you have a better shot of leaving there for good and not going to jail. So don’t make any trouble while I figure out what’s going on down here.”

  “Make trouble? I’m already in trouble. And now I’m locked up with a psycho killer on the loose.”

  “Shay, I’m doing everything I can. Just hold tight, okay?”

  “Hold tight. My roommate is dead, and I’m supposed to hang out and wait for you to do something? Thanks but no thanks. I’ll be waiting till I’m ninety.”

  “Right now, Shay, I don’t think we have any choice. So, when you see me, be cool, okay? Pretend that we never met.”

  “Like that’s going to help anything. Oh, crap! I think … someone’s coming!”

  The faulty connection was instantly severed.

  With a groan of frustration, Jules dropped the phone into her purse, gripped the steering wheel, and pressed on into the blowing storm.

  God only knew what she’d find when she finally made it to the academy.

  CHAPTER 17

  Jules was coming here? To Blue Rock? As a teacher? What good was that? Shaylee stashed Nona’s phone in her book bag and sauntered into the rec area. The deputies had taken most of the students’ statements, and kids were collecting in groups throughout the large hall. All were talking excitedly, all speculating on what had happened to Nona.

  “I think she killed herself,” Maeve Mancuso said smugly. With eyes as wide as pathetic dolls, Lucy and Nell listened intently, as if Maeve actually knew what had happened. The three girls stood in a circle away from the conversation pit, in a more private corner filled with overstuffed chairs and end tables with lamps. One wall was windows, the other lined with bookcases.

  “And I think Drew tried to kill himself, too.” Maeve stared off dreamily as she snapped the bracelet on her wrist. Always snapping at the band there, that one. What a freak. “It was a double suicide,” Maeve went on. “Kind of like Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Really?” Nell was eating this up, like it was some great romantic tragedy. She flipped her dark hair over her shoulder and leaned closer to Maeve. “That’s just sooo—”

  “Awful!” Shay cut in; she couldn’t help it. These ninnies were getting it all wrong. “It’s not romantic, or cool, or anyt
hing but sick!”

  Maeve’s little face crumpled, and she glared at Shay as if she were Satan incarnate. “Of course it’s really, really, really sad about Nona. She was my friend. But I know for a fact that she and Drew were in love.”

  “You mean really, really, really in love?” Shay mocked. Maeve was acting like an idiot!

  “Who knows how it went down?” Eric Rolfe, a major tool in Shay’s estimation, sauntered over. Zach and Ethan were hanging with him. “Or who went down on whom?” he added with a nasty grin, thinking he was clever. “Could be that Nona fucked him, then tried to off him. Then, once she realized what she’d done, she took a flying leap.” Eric crooked his neck at a weird angle and stuck out his tongue with an ugly expression as he held his fist over his head as if he were hanging from an imaginary rope.

  “Gross!” Maeve recoiled, waving her hands spastically. “She’s dead, Eric! God!”

  “Show some respect,” Nell agreed, repulsed.

  Shay’s anger simmered. Rolfe was such a dirtbag.

  “Just trying to lighten things up.” Eric let his “noose hand” drop as he made another goofy face. “Everyone’s so emo and down about it. BFD. She was a psycho, anyway, a real nutcase, always sneaking out. And now everyone acts like it’s the damned end of the world.”

  “Because a friend of ours died, dick-wad!” Lucy Yang stood and got into Eric’s grill. “Get a life!”

  “I bet that’s what Nona’s saying!” Eric laughed in a grating, high-pitched cackle, a wheezing laugh, so at odds with his football-player physique.

  Lucy slugged him. Hard. In the belly.

  “Ooof!” He doubled over, and she rounded as if she planned on bringing her knee up into his crotch. “You bitch!” One of his fists balled.

  “He’s not worth it.” Shay took hold of Lucy’s arm and kept her from taking a second strike.

  Lucy rounded on Shay, her face a mask of disgust, her short black hair flying. “Did you hear what he said about Nona?”

  “Shows how dumb he really is,” Shay said, deliberately goading Eric. Instinctively, she rolled onto the balls of her feet just as she’d learned years before from Mr. Kim, her martial-arts instructor.