Chapter 12 - A Friend Under Suspicion
Willa accused no one.
But suspicion changed the way she looked at everyone.
Noah had been beside her during the escape.
Lena had driven them away.
Caleb had disappeared for nearly an hour after the shooting.
When he returned, mud covered his shoes.
“I searched the drainage channel,” he said. “I thought the shooter might have escaped there.”
“Did you find anything?” Willa asked.
“No.”
Noah examined the camera footage.
The recording showed Willa holding the flash drive after Mercer fell.
As they reached the fence, the image became chaotic.
A hand entered the frame.
The flash drive vanished.
The person wore a dark glove.
No face appeared.
“There was someone else near us,” Noah said.
Lena paused the video.
“Look at the ground.”
A shadow stretched across the track.
It belonged to a person standing behind the broken fence.
The shadow held something long and narrow.
An umbrella.
The same kind Vice Principal Sloan carried every morning.
Willa confronted Sloan in her office.
The vice principal did not appear surprised.
“I was not at the stadium.”
“Then where were you?”
“At a board dinner.”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
“Thirty people.”
“Did you start the fire?”
Sloan’s calm expression finally cracked.
She stood and closed the office blinds.
“I disabled the alarm system.”
Willa stared at her.
“Why?”
“Because I received a message claiming Caleb was trapped in Room 214. I disabled the system to unlock the emergency doors remotely.”
“But the doors locked.”
“Someone reversed my command.”
“Who?”
“I do not know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. I expect you to survive long enough to learn that certainty is dangerous.”
Sloan opened a locked drawer and removed a photograph.
It showed Samuel Hart standing beside Richard and Eleanor Vale sixteen years earlier.
Coach Mercer stood behind them.
And beside Mercer was a young Claire Hart.
On the back, someone had written:
FOUNDERS’ MEETING
Willa felt cold.
“My mother said she only processed payments.”
“Your mother was the program’s first data analyst.”
“She copied records to expose them.”
“Perhaps.”
Sloan gave her another photograph.
It showed Claire speaking with Coach Mercer outside the stadium three weeks before the championship.
“Why were they meeting?”
“You should ask her.”
Willa returned home carrying the photographs.
Claire was not there.
Her phone had been left on the table.
A cup of tea was still warm.
The apartment door had not been forced.
On the kitchen wall, written in black marker, was a message.
BRING THE SECOND FILE TO ROOM 214.
COME ALONE OR YOUR MOTHER DISAPPEARS AGAIN.
May you like
Beneath the message was a photograph of Claire tied to a chair.
Standing behind her was someone wearing an orange wool coat identical to Willa’s.
