Chapter 9
“ Y ou’re sure?” Briggs asked to whatever Monroe had just said, and I focused on Monroe as she nodded.
“I didn’t even have to mention the suspect,” she went on. “Nearly everyone working in the school is constantly talking about Owen Vance. They all love him—I didn’t hear one bad thing about him. Most of the women want to be with him. And when he showed up yesterday?—”
“What?” Gray and I snapped at the same time.
“You’re just now reporting this?” Briggs demanded, the question lashing from him.
“It wasn’t—” Monroe began, but Briggs cut her off.
“No, if we’re doing a Donut, and the suspect shows up somewhere, the people covering the suspect need to know.” He waited a few seconds before grounding out, “You know this, Monroe.”
“I would’ve called it in if I thought it was necessary, but it was fine. I had it handled.”
“Not your call,” Briggs reminded her.
“You made me lead,” she argued.
“And you broke protocol,” he shot back.
She stared him down for tense seconds before muttering, “Sorry.”
Briggs pinched the bridge of his nose before releasing a heavy breath. “What happened when he showed?”
At that, a slightly dazed look and soft smile slowly crossed Monroe’s face that had Gray bolting upright in his chair. “Well, he...he just came to check the school. Honestly, I get why the staff talks about him so much. He was...I don’t know. Something else.”
“Meaning?” Gray asked between clenched teeth.
Monroe’s stare snapped to him before rolling. “Meaning he seemed pretty wonderful. I think Briggs was right last weekend—I think this isn’t anything we need to be concerned about. From what I could tell, people seemed happy that I was there in place of our complainant. I wouldn’t be surprised if she developed feelings for Owen and got upset when he turned her down.”
Bitterness and long-repressed jealousy flared from Gray. “So, he’s Owen now?”
“The suspect,” Monroe amended.
“It’s unsettling,” I said before Gray could say anything else, then glanced at Briggs. “The way people are so obsessed with this guy is unnatural. Like he’s a celebrity instead of a superintendent. There are Reddit forums and Facebook groups for him—all filled with what Monroe was just describing.”
“And everything else on him is clean?” Briggs asked, going back to what Gray and I had covered the past couple of meetings.
“Not even a parking citation,” I confirmed. At Briggs’ silence, I meaningfully added, “Things can be altered. Faked.”
His dark stare shot to me and held for long seconds before he jerked his chin toward the door. “Go.”
Knowing from the worry in his tone that he was releasing me to question Chloe, I scooped up my untouched tablet and started for the door.
Just as I grasped the handle, Briggs added, “Don’t make my fiancée hate me, Thatch.”
“Understood,” I muttered as I opened the door.
Gray’s, “Where’s he going?” was the last thing I heard before the door shut behind me, and then I was slipping through the office and rounding the corner to the front.
To all that coconut and vanilla and joy, even though Chloe’s head was bent over a book.
“Bubbles—”
The way she jumped, a startled sound leaving her as she scrambled to keep her hold on the book all while pushing her hair out of her face with her free hand and straightening her spine, had me stepping back and lifting my hand and tablet in the air to let her know I hadn’t been trying to scare her.
“Sorry,” I muttered as her free hand fell to her chest with a heaving breath. “Scary book?”
A stunned laugh tumbled from her as she placed the book on the desk. “No. No, you just...appeared. Soundlessly.”
My head dipped in understanding. “Unintentional,” I assured her. “But I think most of us do that.” When her expression scrunched in confusion in a way that was too endearing for my good, I clarified, “Special Forces training. We had to learn to be ghosts.”
“Oh.” Surprise lit in her eyes before all that excitement and bubbliness were back. “What do you need, Superman?”
Irritation left me on a breath at the name she’d given me, but I just gestured back the way I’d come. “Come with me.”
The fact that she didn’t even hesitate as she got out of her chair twisted something in my chest. Because I’d been awful to her, yet I’d hesitated when she’d come asking me for help less than an hour before. And I was sure, given another chance, I’d hesitate again.
Because she’s a threat.
I forced myself to remember that. I repeated it to myself as I led her back to Briggs’ office.
“Um...” she muttered when I shut the door behind her once we were inside the office, then quickly glanced around. “This is Asher’s office.”
“I’m aware,” I replied as I went to sit in his chair.
Her head was bouncing in slow bobs by the time I focused on her again. A line of worry was between her eyebrows as she stared at the desk now separating us. “Does my working here really bother you that much?”
Yes.
Forcing the word back, I asked instead, “What do you mean?”
Sad eyes flashed to me before she managed a smile that was a fraction of her typical one. “Aren’t you making me quit?”
I hated that she could evoke these emotions in me. I hated that I wanted to comfort her and that I felt like a terrible person for putting this worry in her thoughts and sorrow in her chest. I hated that I cared about her at all.
“Not what this is about,” I finally said once I managed to clear my mind and gather myself. “If you quit, that’s on you. I’ll never make you do anything, but I’d prefer it if you were sitting for this.”
Genuine surprise flared as she shifted to sink into one of the chairs opposite me.
Just as I started remembering the way she’d panicked at the sight of the document earlier, and just as I started losing my nerve because I didn’t want to push this girl into anything that might make her uncomfortable, I reminded myself of those deceitful eyes and began.
“You worked as a teacher up until last spring, right?”
As if the memory of the document was fresh in her mind, a look of horror passed over her face before she could hide it. “That’s right,” she agreed, her voice not betraying a thing.
“Why’d you leave?”
One of her shoulders lifted. “I realized it wasn’t for me.”
“You sure about that?”
Surprise crept through her features as a slow smile tugged at her mouth. “Pretty sure, Superman. Why? Are you thinking about becoming a teacher?”
“I’m thinking about how good of a liar you are,” I countered and watched for the next flash of panic she attempted to hide. Before she could respond, I said, “You and I both know there wasn’t a spider, Bubbles, so why don’t you tell me what about that document made you have that reaction?”
An incredibly convincing huff punched from her lungs as she stared at me with open bemusement. “I don’t know what?—”
“How about you tell me what you think of Owen Vance?” I asked instead, talking over her to trip her up, and was rewarded with the absence of all those lies.
Then again, she was absent of everything . Her joy, her bubbliness, her feigned confusion... everything .
Chloe looked straight ahead, but I had a feeling she wasn’t actually seeing me with how vacant her stare was.
When her eyes finally cleared, her eyelashes rapidly blinking as if coming back to the present, I already knew she was about to lie to me before she ever said, “I don’t have an opinion on him. I barely know him.”
I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the desk as I studied her. “We’ve already looked into the complainant. She isn’t originally from the area, and she’s worked at the same school for twelve years, which means I doubt your reaction earlier was because of her. So, why don’t you tell me what you think of Owen Vance?”
I only caught the smallest glimpse of shame before it was gone as she briefly glanced toward the door, and then her head whipped back in that direction as an irritated huff punched from her.
“I dunno why I feel like I have to sit here, answering your questions like I’m being questioned in an investigation,” she began as she stood, her words clipped but fueled with the beginnings of that overwhelming happiness. “You’re not a cop, and I’m not being held for questioning, so I’m gonna go back to my desk now.”
“Chloe,” I practically begged when she turned for the door and watched as her stunned eyes shifted to me. “We have a woman claiming this guy’s sexually assaulting and harassing teachers—that he’s blackmailing them. But we can’t find anything on him, and the person we sent in to do undercover work practically fell in love with him the one time she saw him. Yet you recoiled from a document about him like he was about to jump through the screen to get you. So, please...tell me why.”
She stared at me for so long, I was sure she wasn’t going to say anything—sure she was going to leave. But then her chest pitched with a muted sob and the words, “I can’t,” left her, sounding strangled and so unlike the joyful liar I’d been plagued by the past week.
I studied the glassiness of her eyes before pointedly looking at the chair, my voice soft when I pled, “Sit.”
“Adam, I?—”
“Bubbles, please.” I held a hand over my tablet, leaving it stretched out there as I tried to get her to understand the importance of this. “This guy looks like a saint from everything we can find. If this is really happening? There aren’t any traces of it. How are we supposed to help the women he’s doing this to if we don’t have a real lead?”
“You have a lead,” she choked out, then turned away as she quickly swiped at her cheeks.
The fact that I stood, that my body tensed in preparation to go to her, terrified me. But I just forced myself back into the chair and watched as she took the same deep, rhythmic breaths I’d watched her take Monday morning before she faced me again.
And even though a part of me had been expecting it, it still shocked me to see the calm, composed smile on her face as if she was truly unbothered by our conversation. As if she hadn’t just been pushed to the point of tears in such a short time.
“You have a lead,” she repeated. “You wouldn’t have documents if you didn’t.”
“She isn’t...we need more,” I finally said, unsure of what all to say about the unreliable complainant. “Please.” When it looked like she was going to object, I added, “What if what you know is what helps us break this case.”
“It won’t be,” she answered.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” she claimed, the slightest hint of a tremor in her words. “I do, because I don’t know what you’re looking for. What I do know only makes me look like an awful person.” She tossed her hand in my direction. “And you already think so highly of me.”
An apology was on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it as I nodded toward the chair she’d vacated. “Let me be the judge of that.”
Her head shook for nearly a minute before she finally took a step toward the chair just as the door was thrown open, smacking into Chloe.
Briggs’ head had been down, his focus on his tablet as he’d been stalking in, but at the impact, he looked up. Eyes wide with surprise and confusion until he saw me.
As if just remembering what he’d sent me out of the meeting to do, he reached for the handle to leave before remembering the door had hit something, and then he looked around it. A muffled curse left him when he saw Chloe. “Sorry. You?—”
His head whipped toward me so quickly, his eyes narrowed in a look so cold and reproving, I had no doubt he’d seen the glassiness in Chloe’s eyes and the emotion she was struggling to conceal.
“You can go back to your desk, Chloe,” Briggs murmured.
I knew better than to argue, so I just waited as Chloe eased around him and out of the office. As soon as she was gone and the door was shut behind her, Briggs tossed his tablet onto the desk and set his full frustration on me.
“I asked one thing,” he ground out.
“And I heard you,” I said, trying to appease him, but he just huffed out a bitter sound as he gestured to the door.
“Making the happiest person on the planet cry is listening to me?”
“I told you, it’s an act,” I said, defending myself, then stood from his chair. “And I didn’t make her cry. She started crying because she was afraid to talk about our suspect. I was being nice.”
Disbelief poured from him as he studied me.
“She was about to talk,” I told him. “She was about to tell me what she knew—and I’m positive we need what she knows—but she was scared because it’s gonna make her look bad.”
“You don’t know that.”
“That’s what she told me ,” I countered, surprising Briggs.
His gaze snapped to the closed door for long seconds before he mumbled, “Wait for her to come to you.” At the scoff that bled from me, he added, “She knows you wanna know. She’ll come to you when she’s ready.”
Even if I hadn’t been so cold to her this week, I would’ve doubted that, given her reaction just then. But I just nodded as I left his office and headed for my desk.
For the rest of the day, I dove back into the case, trying dozens of new angles to find something on the superintendent. All throughout, my attention pulled toward the front as the ridiculous part of me that kept falling for Chloe’s lies worried about her and begged me to go check on her.
So instead, I stayed where I was until long after she’d already left for the weekend.