Deadly Little Sins (12 page)

I gasp when I look inside the room where the student records are kept. The door is unlocked; the filing cabinets are on their sides. Folders are strewn everywhere—torn records.

Someone turned this place inside out. Did they find what they were looking for?

And more importantly—what the hell was it?

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

When I get back to my room, I can’t shake the image of the mess in the tunnels. Someone was down there, looking for something.

I put all of my energy into finding Natalie Barnes’s brother. Renee gave me an important clue—I google every male’s name that starts with
L
plus the last name
Barnes
in the greater Massachusetts area.

I get a hit: Lucas Barnes, from Warwick, Rhode Island. Went to Pomona College in California and is now living in Boston, where he runs his own social media company called Net Space.

Warwick isn’t that far from Boston. And kids from all over go to the Wheatley School—Phil is from California, I’m from New York. I think one of the dude bros—either Bingham or Oliver—is even from Rhode Island.

There’s an address for Net Space.

After class, I head for the Back Bay area of Boston. I study the note from the tunnels on the train. After studying it for most of the ride, I can make out part of another sentence.

Want to run away but (something something) get beat like (something).

I can also discern a name: Charlie. I feel uneasy; is this a journal entry from someone who went to Wheatley years ago? If so, why is whoever wrote it talking about broken arms and beatings?

The conductor announces that we’re at Fenway. I pocket the journal entry, doubtful that it’s connected to Ms. C or Dr. Muller, but disturbed nonetheless.

Lucas Barnes’s address is about a five-minute walk from the Fenway T stop. I follow the sign upstairs to a sleek, ultramodern office space. It’s clear whoever designed this place was going for “Zuckerberg.”

A receptionist looks up at me as if I must be lost. “Can I help you?”

“Does Lucas Barnes work here?” I ask.

She smiles, as if I’m adorably stupid. “Of course he does. He founded NetSpace.”

I don’t care enough to pretend I know what NetSpace is. “Would I be able to speak to him?”

The receptionist glances at the enormous screen of her MacBook Pro and frowns. “He’s booked until the end of the day. Maybe if you told me what this is about?”

“His sister.”

She cocks her head at me. I can tell this is the first this woman has heard about Lucas Barnes having a sister.

“He’ll be taking lunch in about fifteen minutes,” she says. “You could wait for him, and see if he’s free to chat.”

I look up when I hear murmuring; the receptionist is looking at me while she says something in the ear of a tall, lanky man in square-framed glasses. He’s wearing skinny jeans and a plaid shirt. He’s kind of hipster-cute. But not in an ironic way. More like he probably had this look all of his life and one day it became cool.

He takes me in, polite confusion registering on his face.

“Hi,” I say. “You don’t know me, but I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions. I go to the Wheatley School.”

Recognition flits across his face. I’m sure he’s going to tell me to get the hell out, until he smiles and hooks his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans. “Sure. I’m pretty hungry though, so would you mind if we do it over lunch?”

“Not at all. Thanks, Mr. Barnes.”

He laughs. “Call me Luke. Mr. Barnes reminds me of my dad.”

Luke holds the door for me as we leave the office. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name,” he says.

“It’s Anne.” I follow him into a pizza place next door. He tells the cashier his name and takes out his wallet to pay for the spinach calzone they had waiting for him.

“Want anything?” he asks.

I shake my head. I’m thrown slightly off balance by how familiar this feels. Ms. C was the same way—always checking to see if there was anything she could do for you.

Not was. Is. I can’t start thinking of her in the past tense.

We find a table as Luke prattles on about how this place makes the best pizza in Boston. I don’t say that that’s like being the cleanest pig in the pen. He takes a bite of his calzone and makes an apologetic gesture while he chews. “You look a little young to want a job at Net Space.”

“I don’t want a job. Actually, I don’t know what Net Space is.”

Luke smiles. “We’re a social media platform. Kind of like Foursquare. You can check into places on your phone and interact with people who are checked in.”

“Like, to meet people?”

“You’d be surprised how hard that is to do in the city,” he says. “So, you don’t want to work at Net Space.”

“I wanted to ask you about Natalie.”

Luke takes a pull from his soda. “Natalie. My sister.”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Luke contemplates this. “I haven’t seen Natalie in ten years.” There’s no trace of emotion in his voice.

“She was my teacher,” I say, slowly. “At the Wheatley School. For a few months.”

“That’s impossible. She didn’t go to college. Last we heard, she’d been arrested. Plus, she was expelled from Wheatley in the ninth grade.”

“Tenth,” I correct him. He sets his calzone down.

“Why are you looking for her?”

“We were sort of close.” I shrug. “She just up and left, and then I found out that she was using a fake identity. Have you heard the name Jessica Cross before?”

Luke shakes his head. “You’re sure it was Natalie?”

“I’m positive. She left in May, and no one’s seen or heard from her.”

“Well, that does sound like Natalie.”

“What do you mean?”

Luke leans back in his chair and sighs. “Look, the thing you have to understand about my sister is that she was really screwed up. Ever since she was a baby. Always freaking out if my parents were a minute late getting home. Super clingy, always crying about something.”

“You said ‘my’ parents.”

“Natalie was adopted. An overseas thing, when I was little. It was all really sketchy … the lawyer said she was from the Ukraine, but they could never come up with a birth certificate. The psychiatrists said lots of kids in those situations have social problems. But Nat’s issues got worse when she went away to school.”

“You didn’t go to Wheatley?” I ask.

“Nope. I went to Catholic school. Nat’s social worker said the structure of boarding school would be good for her. She was a smart kid, always reading above her age group and stuff like that.”

“So what happened?” I ask. “Why did they expel her?”

“She snuck out and got caught off campus with some older guy,” Luke says.

“Do you remember his name?”

Luke shakes his head. “I’d know if I heard it—the guy was a big druggie. Parents were loaded, obviously. He actually got onto the Olympic snowboard team a few years ago. Got kicked off when he failed a drug test.”

“What happened to her after that?”

“I … well,” Luke says. “Being expelled from Wheatley is a huge deal, apparently, and she had to go back to public school. It was brutal there for her. When she stared cutting herself … my parents sent her to this program for teens. Then she ran away from it.”

Luke polishes off the rest of his calzone as if he’d just told me a story about a great-uncle who smoked three packs a day, and not his own sister’s downward spiral. Luke notices me watching him and wipes his mouth.

“I know I sound a little … harsh when I talk about Nat,” he says. “But she put us through a lot of crap. We all tried to help her, but she just didn’t care. My parents spent all this money on rehab, and tutors to get her through high school. Then she’d turn around and steal whatever she could pawn for more pills and ran away. My parents finally cut all ties with her when we heard she was living with a dealer.”

Luke looks up and frowns when he sees my expression. “I know it seems harsh. I loved my sister, but she’s a train wreck. There was nothing we could do to help her. I haven’t even seen her in years.”

I don’t know what to say; not because I don’t believe Luke, but because I’m having trouble reconciling the version of Ms. C I have in my head with the version of Natalie he’s given me.

He’s her
brother
. You were her student for a few months.

Is the answer as simple as Natalie trying to escape her past? Did she feel like becoming Jessica Cross was the only way to leave behind the person she was?

I think of Dr. Muller, bound and gagged on the floor of his apartment.

The simple explanation doesn’t cut it for me. Not when the only other person who knows Ms. Cross’s secret is dead.

“When did you last hear from her?” I ask Luke.

“Probably nine, ten years ago. She called my mom from Georgia when she was released from jail. Said they were turning her over to some halfway house for women. My dad had just died, and my mom wanted to go get her, bring her home. But Natalie said she couldn’t come back.”

“Why?”

“She probably realized she used up most of her chances.”

I hesitate. “She’s different. I saw her every day, for two months. She wasn’t on drugs. She was happy. She had a boyfriend.”

Luke smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll believe it when I see it.” He wraps up the rest of his sandwich and leans forward in his chair. “I’ve got to get back to work. Here’s my card, in case you hear from her.”

I drop Luke Barnes’s card into my bag. “Thanks. Should I give you my email address, in case she contacts you?”

Luke gives me a wry smile. “If it I know my sister, that’s not going to happen. Trust me.”

“Thanks again for your time.”

I leave the office. I’m ready to cross the street when a car speeds by, startling me back onto the sidewalk.

“Asshole,” I mutter.

That’s when I notice the restaurant across the street. C
URRY
H
OUSE
is lit up in red neon. Something pings in my brain.

Dr. Muller had said he and Ms. C ate at an Indian restaurant on their date.

I pull up a map on my phone and search how far the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum is from here.

It’s three blocks away.

They were
here.

Luke may be telling the truth about not seeing Natalie, but I’m almost certain that Natalie saw him.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

Ms. C—Natalie—was here with Dr. Muller, about five months ago. It may as well have been an entire lifetime ago.

The fact that she got nervous about running into her estranged brother tells me nothing new. After all, if Luke walked up to her and said her name, she would have had a ton of explaining to do to Dr. Muller, her new boyfriend who knew her as Jessica.

Natalie not wanting to see Luke doesn’t tell me anything about who, or what, she was running from, and even more important, why she came back—but I’m here.

They were here.

And that fact alone gives me hope that she’s still out there. Possibly even alive.

I send Alexis a text when I’m on the train.

Need a name … Wheatley guy Caroline’s age. Olympic snowboarder?

She replies almost immediately.

Spencer Vandenberg. Caroline DEFINITELY wouldn’t have been friends w/ him.

I respond:

He was with Natalie the night that got her expelled. Need to talk to him.

I watch the little ellipsis at the bottom of the screen that says Alexis is typing. It goes away. After about a minute, she responds.

I can make that happen. Brookline Country Club. Sunday at noon.

When I get back to the dorms, I google “halfway houses in Acworth, Georgia.” I call the closest one to the women’s penitentiary where I assume Natalie would have been sent after her arrest.

“Acworth Home for Women.”

“Hi. Um. I’m looking for my sister. I think she may have stayed with you guys before.”

“We don’t give out information about former patients,” the woman snips.

“Please. I’m really worried about her. She might be in trouble, and you were the last ones to have seen her.”

“Try the National Center for Missing Adults,” she says.

“Look, I just need to know when she was last with you guys. Her name is Natalie Barnes.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.” The woman hangs up on me. I almost throw my phone across the room. No one can help me, from the looks of it.

There are a couple of hours until dinnertime, and Remy has been texting me nonstop to meet her, April, and Kelsey on the quad. The quad is where everyone hangs out when the weather is nice. Today is picturesque—the rare type of warm fall afternoon you’d sooner see on a CW show set at a college.

I swap my blazer for a cardigan and grab my bag. As I’m reaching for my phone, I get another text.

But it’s not from Remy; I don’t recognize the number. Or the area code, for that matter.

ADMIN BUILDING BASEMENT. ROOM 105.

The only rooms in the Administration Building basement are in the tunnels.

Who are you?
I text back.

Maybe there’s someone who can help me after all.

There’s still no response from the number when I reach the library steps. Cole and Murali emerge from the front doors, waving when they see me.

“You’re not going to the quad?” Murali asks.

“Just have to print something for class quick,” I say. “I’ll see you guys there.”

They don’t question why I need to do this on a Friday afternoon. I slip inside the library, doing a lap around the stacks instead of heading straight for the poetry room. I don’t know who could be watching me—including the person who texted me.

I hide behind a bookshelf and text the number again.

Really … who are you?