Chapter 6 #3
I miss Mark. I always will. But I have to think about my life and Daisy’s life.
John can provide a different world. One I thought I’d never live in again.
I didn’t think I wanted it, but the reality is that Daisy could have everything she needs to be a regular kid if I marry John.
She’ll have two siblings. She’ll have a future that isn’t in the inner city, and she’ll have access to all the programs I can’t afford now.
Fin isn’t going to like it, but he doesn’t know how bad everything has been. I think I’m going to say yes.
Iput the diary away, tucking it under my pillow as I stare up at my ceiling.
How did my mom know John from before? I thought he grew up in Richmond and went to Birchmore Academy.
My mom didn’t live anywhere near here, but in her diary, it’s like they were all friends with each other.
It’s like she was one of them, part of the Richmond elite.
But she couldn’t have been. She wasn’t even from this area.
Frowning, I turn off the light and close my eyes. I fall asleep quickly, dreaming of the city, of the school I hated, and then it changes to a padded cell in Joe’s house where they watch me on camera as they zap me over and over and over.
BLAKE
Ican’t believe that with everything going on, I have to go to wrestling.
What a waste of my motherfucking time. I slam the other guy down and wrap my legs around his torso, locking him into a body bind before I transition into my next move, letting my mind wander to Daisy while I wait for him to tap out.
It only takes a few seconds, and I let him go, rolling up to my feet and catching the coach’s eye.
I exit the meet via a side door, glad at least that we didn’t have to go anywhere for this. I light up a cigarette and take a long drag.
Still consumed by thoughts of our girl, I bring up our main chat and stare at the final message she sent last night.
Almost another twenty-four hours have passed, and she hasn’t been in contact again.
The message itself was brief and to the point.
Shade thinks that it’s a combination of depression because of where she has to live now, loneliness that we’re not all together, and sadness that Stephens is in the hospital.
I’m not sure that’s all that’s going on.
Lu Garrett tried to get in there again today and was turned away at the door.
They told her that Daisy isn’t receiving visitors.
But even if she was sick, she’d want to see her BFF.
I don’t think it makes any sense. Something is very wrong and we can’t get in there to find out what.
Even Shade was told this evening to wait until his father returned from his current business trip before coming to the house.
When he told them he was coming in anyway, three security guards he’d never seen before came out of nowhere and escorted him to his car. He was freaking out when he got back to the KIP house. Mav and I weren’t far behind.
They must be Joe’s guys, but what’s with all the muscle? What is he afraid of?
I message her privately.
Hey, gorgeous. Miss you. Hope you come to campus tomorrow. xx
It stays unread. I finish my cigarette and go back inside.
We win the meet, and the guys go to one of the other Frat houses to celebrate, but I’m not really in the mood to try to have a good time when I’m worrying about Daisy.
So, I go back to KIP and try to get more info on who the Winters were and why they were mentioned in her file from when she was a kid.
I haven’t gotten anything new on the stalker front either.
There haven’t been any more notes, as far as I know, and there haven’t been any incidents since the bomb and the fire except for the Novelle butler being put in the hospital.
Why bother with Stephens? My gut tells me that wasn’t the stalker at all.
Maybe it was Banderville for some reason, or it might have been just a coincidental accident.
Sauvage hasn’t been forthcoming about his own investigation into the stalker. Not that I thought he’d be sending us casual updates about his progress, but I wonder if his contacts are as stumped as we are. If it was that easy to find this guy, I would have.
There’s frustratingly little on April before she married John Novelle, too.
I can’t find anything about her early years or where she went to school.
There’s nothing, not anywhere that I can find.
I’ve asked one of the KIP guys whose parents are around the same age as John, if I can borrow the Birchmore Academy yearbooks from those years.
He says he’ll grab it next weekend when he goes home, so maybe I’ll be able to find more on Mark, John, and Fin Applegate.
I could talk to the latter face to face, but I’m not sure I trust the good professor where Daisy is concerned.
Also, since the fire in the lab, he’s been on leave for stress, or something.
As far as I know, he’s holed up at home and not answering his phone.
I see Mav walk past my door.
‘Hey.’
He peers in, giving me a nod.
‘You been at the lab? It back open yet?’
Mav nods. ‘Yeah, they’ve pretty much got it back to normal. A couple things aren’t working, but it’s good enough to continue my work with the non-opiate.’
‘What about Envy?’ I ask.
He winces. ‘I can’t get it right. I must have tried twenty times.
Sauvage assumes I’m just fucking around, I think, or messing with him.
He has his guys watching me in the lab nonstop.
He hasn’t called for me, but I think he probably will tomorrow unless a miracle happens and the current batch makes it through. ’
‘We need Daisy,’ I mutter. ‘We shouldn’t have tried to do this without her anyway.’
‘It’s too dangerous. Sauvage—’
I snort. ‘That girl attracts danger whether we like it or not. She saved my life by killing a guy. She’s no shrinking violet. At least ask her for her advice.’
He looks down. ‘I already did. She…didn’t answer. You don’t think…’
‘What?’ I ask with a frown.
‘You don’t think she’s so mad at us for taking over Envy that she’s…done with us, do you?’
‘No way,’ I say immediately. ‘There’s just no way. She cares about us the same as we do about her. We’re together. We’re a family.’
I realize my fists are clenched, and I’ve taken several aggressive steps toward my friend.
‘Okay,’ he says, putting up his hands. ‘Okay. We don’t have to talk about this anymore.’
I nod jerkily. ‘I’m gonna shower and then get back into my research. Have you or Shade heard anything on the stalker? Has Sauvage said anything?’
‘Nope. Nothing. I’m guessing Daisy would have told us if she’d gotten any more notes—’
‘Yeah, right.’ I interrupt with a roll of my eyes. ‘I love that girl but she’s not Trudy Truths-a-lot.’
He gives me a look.
‘You know what I mean,’ I say. ‘She keeps secrets. She doesn’t tell us everything. I’m sure she has her reasons, but we never seem to have the full picture where she’s concerned.’
‘Yeah, that is true,’ he concedes.
He sighs, rubbing his eyes. ‘Okay, I’m gonna hit the gym for a while. Maybe then I’ll be able to sleep. Later.’
He leaves the room and I take off my wrestling suit. As I wrap my towel around my waist, I hear a timid knock on the half-closed door.
‘Come in.’
A KIP guy enters the room slowly, carrying a stack of thick hardbacks. ‘Uh, I had to grab my kid sister from school, Captain. When I dropped her off, I went ahead and grabbed the yearbooks you wanted while I was at my folks’ house.’
‘Thanks, Ryan. That’s great. Put them on the bed there.’
He does what I ask and then does a kind of bow as he backs out into the hallway and disappears.
I glance at the four books and hurry to the shower, impatient to take a look through them.
I’m back in my room within five minutes, and I throw on some clothes quickly, sitting on my bed and opening the book in the pile from the earliest date.
I quickly discard it. They were too young to really even be included that year.
I grab the next, and they don’t appear at all, except for in the background of one grainy photo.
I think it’s them. Except there’s four of them, not three.
I squint at it, but it’s too fuzzy to make out any of the details.
The third year, when they would have been juniors, has nothing in it either.
I start on the final book, the one from when Mark, John, and Applegate were seniors. I find their mugshots right away, all dressed up for their senior pictures. And then I see a girl who looks familiar, and I do a doubletake. She’s the spitting image of Daisy. I look at the name. Evelyn Carmichael.
With a frown to myself, I snap a pic with my phone, and I keep going through the rest of the book. I find a few photos of the three boys and this girl, Evelyn. In most of them, she’s cozied up to a very young John Novelle. If I look closely, I can see that it’s him from his cold, arrogant face.
I need to know more than these pictures tell me, so I message Ryan, the guy who brought me the yearbooks, and ask him if he could find out more about Evelyn for me from his folks.
He responds so quickly that I’m sure he was waiting by the phone for me to message him, but he tells me that he’ll forward the pic to his mom and ask her for me.
I stare at the girl, wondering if it could be a member of Daisy’s family.
A cousin of April’s maybe. If April had family in Richmond, maybe that’s how she met John and the others.
I look at my phone again to see if Daisy has messaged me back. Nothing. So, I message the guys quickly to tell them what I found and then I hang out my open window to smoke a cigarette.
I’d almost quit before the last stressful couple of months.
I should probably get some patches or something.
Daisy has wrinkled her nose at the smell of me after one a couple of times, and I’d rather she nuzzle and smell my neck the way I’ve seen her do with Mav and Shade, like she loves the scents of them. She hasn’t really done that with me.
I frown at my cigarette. Silently blaming it, I fling it, half smoked, from the window. I follow that with the rest of the pack. I’m done. I want my girl to love the smell of me, the same as she does the others.