17. Max
Chapter seventeen
“ W hat city are we in now?” Atlas reads her question from the tablet. Is she serious? She can remember all these other cities but doesn’t know where she is? My eyes dart to hers, trying to catch something—anything—but hoping I don’t. Is she playing us? Could she actually be the killer we’ve been chasing for months? Is this all some sort of act to avoid getting caught?
Fuck, I hope not. None of us would take that well. How could she fool all of us? We’re too good at our jobs to misread her like this badly. No, she’s not the killer. But she is connected to all of this—there’s no doubt about that. Not all of these cities are exact matches for the murders, but they’re close. She’s hiding something, that much is clear. Maybe it’s her mother, and Mina is trying to protect her? There’s no mention of her dad, though. We have to dig deeper.
While I’m caught up in my thoughts, Ben leans over the map and points as he tells her, “Blue River, Montana.” I watch her eyebrows shoot up in surprise as she mouths the word Montana .
“Do you live with both parents?” Dom asks. She shakes her head. He waits, like she’s going to say more, but she just smiles and turns to Atlas. Smart girl—she’s not giving away two answers to one question.
“Just your mom?” Atlas asks, and she nods .
“What happened to your dad?” I ask next. She types her answer and shows it to me to read aloud. “Left when I was little.” Hmm, no dad in the picture, could there be a step-dad?
“Why are you pretending you can’t read at school?” Jasper asks, surprising me with his directness. Watching Mina’s face, I can see the shock and fear there. There is definitely something she doesn’t want us to know, but she is so expressive, I doubt she has anything to do with the murders, it would be written all over her face. Or else she’s the world’s best actress.
I shake my head and try to determine if I’m thinking clearly. It’s hard to say when it comes to Mina. Since the first day I saw her, being tackled to the ground by that asshat, Brad, I’ve felt the need to protect her. Not just that, but she feels… special. Like I need to care for her, to put a smile on her face whenever possible.
It killed me earlier this week when she stopped communicating with us. I love seeing her beautiful green eyes look at me, especially when she smiles and blushes. She seems so innocent. She is innocent. With her being only seventeen, I know I need to tread carefully with her.
It was hard being in high school again and pretending to be only eighteen. Especially since Jasper and I are twenty-two year old private investigators. We finished university two years ago and met the rest of our team within a month of graduation. They needed a couple younger guys to help infiltrate a high school, to find out who was behind the recent drug pushing. It only took us two weeks to find the main supplier of the drugs being sold to high school students, which had resulted in three deaths before our arrival. The local police force had hired our team for that case. It’s not always cops who hire us, though. Sometimes it’s concerned family members or parents of the victims, which is how this job started.
Now, we were on our hardest case yet. We are pretty confident that this town has a serial killer. All signs point to McAdam’s High. With Jasper and I being the only ones who could still, barely, pass for high school students, we enrolled three months ago. Two of our brothers, not by blood but by our closeness as a team, managed to get jobs as staff. The rest of our team, Atlas, Ben and Dom, were doing other means of investigating this case. I have been envying them for the past three months. While they get to investigate leads, I find myself trying to find gossip in the locker room for any rumors that could help us. That was… until Mina arrived. Now I can’t wait to get to school each day. I want to know more about this girl. No, I want to know everything about her.
There is something captivating about her, the more I’m with her, the more I want to be with her. I know Jasper feels the same way, and by the looks of it, so do the rest of my brothers.
I watch her mouth twist for a moment before she finally types out three words. I don’t know. Jasper and I exchange a look. She didn’t know? Or she couldn’t tell us? Was someone making her act this way? Or is she lying?
Before Ben can ask his next question, she seems to decide it’s her turn again, typing her next question for Atlas to read out loud. “Who lives here besides you five?”
Dom answers for us. “Gideon Hargrove and Tucker Stone.” It takes her a second, but then her eyebrows shoot up in surprise as recognition sinks in.