Life After Theft
Page 55

“I just don’t have time,” she said, pushing past me toward her next class.
I grabbed her hand and pulled her to a stop. “Did I do something wrong?” I asked quietly.
Her eyes softened. “No, not at all.” She pulled my face down to hers and kissed me. “You’re wonderful. I just . . . I have a special project I’m working on this weekend and I have to do it alone. Okay? Next weekend we’ll get back to normal, I promise.”
“Okay,” I said, defeated for the moment. “I’ll see you on Monday, then.” I watched her hips sway as she walked, blinking only when the door closed behind her.
“I don’t like it,” Kimberlee said over my left shoulder.
I jumped and knocked into some freshmen, who looked at me funny but didn’t say anything. I had to be getting a rep for being totally spastic. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I hissed as quietly as possible. I headed toward calculus and Kimberlee caught up with me.
Kimberlee glanced back at the door Sera had disappeared through. “She’s acting weird. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
“It’s midterms. Everyone’s stressed.”
“How long has she been acting this way?”
“I don’t know,” I shot back. “Since midterms started?”
“How about since she got called into Hennigan’s office?”
I turned to look at Kimberlee, glad the halls were mostly empty—even if it was because I was late for class. “I admit, the timing is weird, and whatever Hennigan said obviously upset her a lot. But she seems to know that you were the person who stole all this stuff that’s making a sudden reappearance. Can you think of any reason why she might be so upset at the thought of you?”
For a few seconds Kimberlee looked everywhere but at me. Finally she met my eyes. “She could be spying for Hennigan.”
I snorted in disbelief, a second before the direness of the possibility hit me. “No way. She wouldn’t do that.”
“You’d be surprised what people will do under the right kind of pressure.”
“You’re biased, and—”
“I know,” Kimberlee said with a sigh. “I’m just saying—I’m not even accusing. I want you to be careful. You’re almost done—everything will be over by Monday.” Her cocky demeanor clicked back on as quickly as it had vanished. “Just try not to get your ass caught in the meantime, okay?”
Saturday morning I met Khail down at the cave to load everything up. As we worked, we went over our plan for Monday.
True to his promise to be extra careful, he’d borrowed a truck from a friend in Santa Barbara to load all the bags into. He’d stow it in his parents’ guesthouse garage before they got home and retrieve it after they left for work Monday morning.
“So at eight ten I’ll be all ready to go,” he said, dragging out the last box. As in, the last box in the whole godforsaken cave.
I’d been trying to build up the courage to say it for an hour, and this was my last chance. “Watch out for Sera,” I blurted.
Khail paused and I could see the muscles in his arms flex. “Why?” he said with a forced nonchalance.
“I think there might be . . . a possibility—a small possibility,” I revised, “that she’s trying to find out who we are.”
Khail’s head lifted and he glared at me. “What are you talking about? Like spying?”
“Forget it,” I said. “It was a stupid thing to say.”
Khail jumped down from the truck and walked around to face me. “No, explain,” he said, crossing his massive forearms over his chest. “I want to know what makes you think she’d spy on us.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I repeated.
“No, you wouldn’t bring it up if you didn’t have a good reason; I want to hear what it is.”
I sighed. “She got called into Hennigan’s office right after the break-in and she’s been acting really weird ever since.”
“So?”
“She was looking in your pockets while you were in the shower when I came over—going through your cell phone.”
Khail laughed openly now. “This is how I can tell you’re an only child, Jeff. That’s totally normal. I snoop on her all the time, too.” He grinned. “Oh man, the things I could tell you.”
I hesitated for a few seconds before playing my final card. It was the only way I was going to find out for sure. “I bet you could. I’ve heard some things about Sera . . . um, freshman year . . . ?” I left the question open.
Khail’s smile immediately melted away. “You can’t hold that against her, Jeff. She didn’t know what was happening. You of all people know she would never deliberately let someone die.”
Holy shit! “What?”
Khail’s jaw clamped shut. “Damn it,” he whispered, running his fingers through his hair. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I just assumed Kimberlee would have told you. She’s not exact a good secret-keeper,” he almost growled.
Oh boy, this is awkward. I figured my best course of action was to just keep my mouth shut.
Khail pursed his lips, then something changed in his eyes. “I’m only telling you this so you hear the truth, understand?” He glanced around like someone might be listening. “It was a rough time. My dad got fired; he said we might lose the house and everything. . . . He and my mom were talking divorce—yelling divorce, really. They fought constantly. Like the bad fighting you see on TV, except that it was real and it was our life. Sera was only fourteen, and she took it really hard. I . . . I got involved with someone, so I wasn’t around. I’ve always wondered if things would have turned out differently if I’d been there for her.” He shrugged. “But I wasn’t and I can’t change that now.