11
A
cting normal when the world was disintegrating before me was something I was an expert at. Or, to be accurate, acting normally in my disguise, which was not acting normally at all, but just acting. After running away from the Bitchtective back to my dorm, I cooled my jets, returned to my room, grabbed my books, and headed to my marine biology class. Like normal. Like the Larsson Police Department didn’t threaten me to snoop on murderous criminals, and like I wasn’t stalked by Gunner Kaiser, the one I was supposed to stalk back. Acting normal.
My head hurts.
Cheetos sat opposite me in the Science Library after class. Her extreme fear of crowds or classrooms prevented her from attending, and so she copied off my notes. I was so proud of how normal I acted, being the good little student by day and a devious spy by night, forced to risk my life to gather a piece of information for Bitchtective to hang Mikael Kaiser.
The sooner I was out of Gothenburg, the better.
A notification flashed on my phone, and I tensed, considering that only a handful of people had my number and Bitchtective stashed a bug on it. Cheetos, Katerine, watched me closely as I checked my messages to find, to my surprise, that it was a group email from Betty: Savile Gentleman’s Club.
“Everything okay?” Cheetos asked, reading my perplexed expression.
“It looks like I won’t be working tonight,” I announced, uneasy. “The club is closed for the night.”
“Why?” she pressed, biting the corner of a tuna sandwich.
“It doesn’t say,” I told her, but she quickly dropped the subject and returned to copying my notes.
But I couldn’t stop my head from spinning, thinking of a hundred and one reasons why they had closed the club for the night. A fire? An accident? Oh, I wonder if someone died and it’s become a crime scene. It’s a two-bus transfer to the club, so I won’t bother going down there to spy on them. Instead, I’ll spend the night studying.
I returned to my work, but could not concentrate, and my fingers twitched toward my phone.
“Are you okay?” Cheetos asked as my restlessness was probably annoying her.
“Yes,” I sighed, seizing my phone and swiping for the latest news to see if any headlines were damming Savile. I found nothing, so I swiped through my contacts, deciding who to contact, Ronan or Gunner, Gunner or Ronan. Both boys had been acting strangely lately, so I wondered if something had happened at the club.
Me: I received an email that the club is closed. What happened?
It was Ronan that I decided to contact, since he was my boss, but naturally, I scanned the bookshelves to see if I could spot Gunner peering at me between the books. Weirdo. I ignored the disappointment when I couldn’t see him, but he had classes to attend and assignments to work on as well, so he couldn’t be on my back 24/7.
Cheetos looked up, noticing I was distant, and managed a tight smile, which might be the second I’d ever seen her smile since I met her. Even a smile that seemed forced.
“I guess the ID worked well, then,” she stated, and I chuckled at the irony.
“Well…not really. I think Betty knew it was fake, but hired me anyway,” I told her.
“Oh,” she seemed disappointed, her eyebrows dropping low over her amber eyes behind the glasses. I wondered if her glasses were fake as well.
“They worked it out and allowed me to work there anyway,” I stated, honestly.
“They might get in trouble for that,” she said smugly, and something about her tone made me uneasy. “They’re not exactly nice people, are they, the Kaisers?”
“No, they’re not,” I agreed, “but they treat me fine as long as I work hard, work smart, and scrub the sinks and benches clean.”
“Huh?” She made a strange, grunting sound, as if she thought I was out of touch. No, I wasn’t out of touch. I was completely in touch, but would rather be on another planet.
“How much do you know about the Kaisers?” I asked out of interest, since she had an expression of disgust on her face every time I mentioned that family.
She took a deep breath before exhaling, as if considering how to word her answer. “Only what I read. And my family had a long history of conflicts with them.”
“Really? Your family?” I wondered if she was exaggerating or confused.
“But…The Kaisers have only been here for a few years, apparently.” I was careful with how I worded my statement as I didn’t want to come across as a know-it-all or worse, suspicious of her claim.
“Yeah, they have territory everywhere,” her answer was flippant, as if she were avoiding details. “Or should I say, they steal territory?”
“Did they steal territory from your family?” I questioned myself, trying to remember her surname. Her first name was Katerina, although she’d rather I kept calling her Cheetos; however, I’d forgotten entirely her surname.
“It’s a long story, but they take from everyone. The Kaisers don’t care about people. They care about growing their wealth and walking all over people to get it,” she boldly stated, still avoiding details.
“What is your family name again?” I pressed, so I could Google her family to see if the Kaisers screwed them over and were they criminals too?
She opened her mouth to answer just as Ronan replied to my message, and my focus changed.
Ronan: Not a significant problem. Reopening tomorrow.
His reply left me cold. Usually, he liked to flirt with sweet nothings, yet he and Gunner kept their distance. Maybe something serious happened with the club, but he couldn’t tell me.
“Um, hey, Cheetos,” I started, wondering how to word what I was about to ask her.
“Huh?” She glanced up and ran her eyes over my phone and my expression.
“What other things can you access?” My question was vague, so I tried to reword it. “I mean, you organized a fake ID that allowed me to get a good job, but what other things can you get for money?”
Her frown deepened. “What do you mean?”
“Ah, okay, so can you say…get me a,” someone coughed on the other side of the shelves, and I clammed up. “Don’t worry.”
Her eyes flicked to the students nearby, then leaned forward to whisper, “Do you want me to get something that’s not legal?”
I placed a finger over my lips to hush her, then ripped a corner off my lined writing pad and wrote, handgun? I held it up, and once she read it, I stuffed it into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
“For protection,” I whispered, and she nodded.
“I can organize something,” she mouthed.
“How much?” I rubbed my fingers together to indicate cash.
“I’m not sure. “ I’ll get back to you,” she said quietly, glancing again at the students behind the shelves. “Protection from who?”
“Everyone,” I stated as I pushed my chair back and stood. She looked at me as if I were about to pack my things and leave. Instead, I stepped to the end of the bookshelf and peered down the aisle to see who was lingering.
As I suspected, it wasn’t anyone to worry about, but it annoyed me that they were nearby.
When I sat back down, “After work, when it’s dark at the bus stop.” She nodded in understanding, but remained quiet, so I added, “It can take a while to show sometimes, and weird people hang about in the shadows.”
She nodded slowly as she grew distant, which made me a little nervous, so I kept talking.
“Sometimes I walk through the college gardens at night for a shortcut back to my dorm,” I added.
Finally, she spoke, “Do you have a locker to hide it in at work?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
Silence fell as she flipped the page in her book and started perusing the text and diagrams, and I assumed the conversation had ended. Someone laughed nearby as a student walked by, scanning the book titles before pausing and sliding out a book.
As soon as they walked away, Cheetos pointed out, “You’d need protections from the,” her face creased into disgust, “Kaisers.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, sighing heavily, wondering if I looked that way when I wrinkled my nose, cringing. “Maybe.”
When I first met Cheetos, I thought she superficially resembled me, and it gave me insight into what other people saw when they observed me in disguise. But the more I got to know her, the less of me I saw in her.
She was a genuine, socially awkward geek girl with a touch of enochlophobia and an odd little tic . Probably spent her spare time alone reading books or spying on people from a distance, wishing she were normal.
She was a genuine geek girl, whereas geeking out was my costume. We weren’t the same people, but she was the perfect person to draw ideas on how Riley should behave.
“Are your grades good?” I asked her. “You don’t go to class, so you’d miss out on some things.”
“I go to some classes. Not many. And my grades are good,” she replied again. There’s a lack of detail. “Straight A’s.”
“Oh, great,” I replied awkwardly. I liked Cheetos, but I still struggled to relax in her company. However, that’s because it took me a while to trust people.
“Is that your natural hair color?” she posed, out of nowhere.
“Um, yes,” I said, my cheeks burning. I was good at keeping my hair appointments and touching up the sliver of blond that came through at the roots. I’d been to the hair salon recently, so I knew it was fine, but it still concerned me.
“Huh,” she sighed strangely.
What did she mean by “huh”? Did the hairstylist miss some blond hair? She seemed thorough, but sometimes it was hard to tell. Or perhaps some of the hair color had faded. Shit. I hadn’t noticed brown hair dye in the shower water. “Why?”
“Oh, just wondering,” she stated, freaking me out.
I couldn’t take it anymore. “I need to use the bathroom,” I told her, and I quickly left the table, practically running to the nearest bathroom.
Once inside and alone in front of the large mirror, I tilted my head forward, searching for blond streaks at my roots as my heart pounded. It didn’t take much to give the game away – a slip of the tongue, forgetting that I was shortsighted and needed glasses to read, remembering my name and where I came from, and scheduling my hair appointments every four weeks to cover the blond.
There was no blonde I could find, so I breathed a sigh of relief and headed back to my table.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, gazing at me as if I had grown horns out of my head.
“I’m feeling a little under the weather,” I lied. “I’m going back to my dorm and lie down.”
“Oh, okay,” she said in her flat, detached way.
I was relieved to be alone and walked back to my dorm, glancing around every so often for the Mustang or tattooed spy. When I didn’t see him, my heart sank. It’s been several hours since he followed me in Bitchtective’s unmarked vehicle, and he hadn’t approached or contacted me to find out why I was in that vehicle, or who they were. It seemed out of character for him, considering that he sent me Shaun’s bloody tooth.
Once back in my dorm room, I rechecked my hair before landing in a heap on my bed. It’s okay. My hair is brunette, and no blonde was coming through, but I should start wearing a cap.
I dragged my tired body off the bed and opened the top drawer, knowing I had a dark blue baseball cap stuffed inside one of them. But the first thing I saw was the small white box containing the tiny cameras that Bitchtective wanted me to plant in the Kaisers’ offices.
Shrugging off the heaviness boring down on my shoulders, I opened the lid and peered inside, taking out one small silver disc. Where had I seen one of these before? I scratched my head for a few moments, trying to remember seeing one of these somewhere without realizing what it was.
Well, I know one thing: I won’t be sticking these anywhere tonight, since the club is closed. I shut the lid and shoved it back into the drawer, then pulled the next drawer down and found my cap, which I dragged out and slapped on my head.
Staring at me in the mirror, I looked okay, maybe a try-hard jock girl or baseball groupie with glasses. This could be my new look. The Geek Girl Sports look, I laughed as I ripped it off my head and left it on top of my chest of drawers to remind me to wear it out tomorrow and get used to it.
I grabbed a fresh towel to shower as I tried to remember Cheetos' surname. She only said it once, and I didn’t make a mental note, but she seemed to resent the Kaisers. But how realistic was she? Talking tough to the faces of the Kaisers was asking for trouble, but I doubted she’d do that. All talk, no action.
Grabbing my key and robe, soap as a blast of screeching laughter came from the street below, and I swung back to look at the window when my eyes landed on a small silver disc stuck to the wall next to the curtain rail.
My heart slammed against my ribcage, but I kept my cool. Act normal. Act normal. It might not be what it seems.
I left the room and stepped into the bathroom down the hall, my head spinning as I wondered if it was a hidden camera, and if so, who had put it there?
Two people came to mind.
Bitchtective and Gunner.