The Other Side of Envy: The Ghost Bird Series: #8 (The Academy) (27 page)

“No,” he said, as he clamped down tighter on my hand to still it. “It tickled.”

Somehow North and tickle didn’t work together. I relaxed my hand, letting him hold onto it. “North?”

“Hm?”

I hesitated, not sure where to start at first. “Thanks,” I said. “For helping me with Gabriel’s car thing.”

“No problem.”

SANG THE TARGET

North eventually followed directions to the café we were supposed to meet Mr. Morris at. He circled the block a few times before he pulled in. “There’s probably people nearby. He won’t come alone. I need to know the neighborhood in case we need to make an escape from him.”

“He should be looking over his own shoulder,” I said, thinking of Mr. Hendricks and Mr. McCoy. “He’s in more trouble than he probably realizes.”

North smirked. “You should tell him that.”

The café was small and served only a few baked sweets and a variety of coffee. Mr. Morris sat outside at a patio table amid other people. Plenty of chances for us to be observed by the public. Plenty of places for anyone to blend in among them and watch us.

“Can’t really blame him,” North said. “We’re the enemy making contact.”

It was hard to imagine us being an enemy of Mr. Morris. If it wasn’t for Mr. Hendricks, we’d all be at home right now, doing homework, taking time off with family. I tried to envision Mr. Morris, and what his home life was like. He probably didn’t enjoy having to take time out to talk with us.

North and I got out of the Jeep. North pointed out Kota inside the cafe door.

“Stay close,” North said. “Kota will approach him first.”

I stood by with North, out of sight of Mr. Morris. Kota left the inside of the cafe, and walked over to Mr. Morris. Mr. Morris lifted his head, said a few things. His eyebrows shifted, and he scanned the area. He didn’t appear happy to see Kota without me.

Kota motioned to us. We stepped out from around the Jeep. North walked beside me.

At the table, I met Kota and sat with him. North sat at a table behind us, nearby but alone. He acted as a lookout. When a waitress arrived, he ordered a single coffee.

Mr. Morris looked cross as I sat down. “I expected you to bring one of them, not the whole team.”

“They’re just protective,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic.

“What for?” he asked, eyeballing Kota and then his gaze settled behind me to where North was sitting.

Kota waved a hand at him. “Listen, we’re not here to hurt anyone.”

“I’m not even supposed to talk to you all,” he said. “Mr. Hendricks said to keep an eye on your people, but all this running around... It’s stupid. A waste of time.” Mr. Morris shook his head and bent over his coffee, glaring at it. “I can’t even transfer to another school. He’s got me by the balls now.”

“How?” I asked, sensing this was more than just money problems.

Mr. Morris’s jaw clenched. “I can’t talk about it.”

I shared a glance with Kota. Mr. Morris was in trouble. Mr. Hendricks might be blackmailing him. I had to wonder what Mr. Morris had done to deserve it.

Kota peeled his eyes away from me to study Mr. Morris. “I don’t know what he’s up to, but you really should consider backing out as much as possible.”

“I can’t,” Mr. Morris said.

“The only reason he’s threatening you is because he’s got something worse going on that he doesn’t want discovered,” Kota said.

Mr. Morris stilled at this and then lifted his head up. “I didn’t think about that.”

“The question is, what would you rather go down for?” Kota asked. “Whatever it is, his is probably much worse.”

Mr. Morris shook his head and then gazed out to the parking lot. “He’s not even clear on what he wants. One minute, he’s saying to follow you. The next, he wants Sang followed every minute. It’s a wild goose chase.”

“Why does he want her followed?” Kota asked.

“It was after Mr. McCoy showed back up.” He turned his head and squinted his dark eyes at me. “Did you really attack him in the girls’ locker room?”

My eyes opened wide. “He...I mean...” I fumbled, shaking.

“He said he confronted you with questions about someone stealing from students and the next thing he knows, you’re trying to get around him to run off. Then he tries to stop you, and you attack him.” He looked over at Kota. “Says he woke up with someone dragging him off and he bolted.”

A lightning strike couldn’t have rattled me harder. I was stuck to the chair, trying to recall that day, my memory fuzzy. So much had happened since. I couldn’t help but feel perhaps I did strike first. Maybe technically I had. He came after me, and I crash into him to defend myself. The situation...Mr. McCoy...From his perspective, maybe he was trying to pull me to the principal’s office and I was fighting him off like a wild animal?

I clamped a hand over my heart, looking over at Kota. Suddenly I was questioning that day, my own terrified thoughts of Mr. McCoy in that shower room. Had I somehow overreacted? Maybe after what my stepmother had done to me in the shower, and the fact that we’d been in the shower area changed my perspective of what Mr. McCoy had intended.

Still, he had been trying to drag me off somewhere. I had been uncomfortable and tried to leave and he wouldn’t let me. He knocked me down. I didn’t think I’d done the wrong thing. I was trying to survive. It would have been different if someone else was there, another teacher maybe.

“He came after her,” Kota said calmly, focusing on Mr. Morris. He spoke clearly, his voice powerful and even. My wild thoughts stilled until all I heard was his voice. “He cornered her in the shower room after everyone else had left. He made sure to isolate her and then when she felt uncomfortable and asked to leave, he stopped her.” He motioned to me. “She hadn’t stolen anything, and even if she needed to be interviewed about it, he purposefully made sure everyone else had gone, that the coaches had left and had forgotten about her. It was no wonder she reacted.”

“How do you know?” Mr. Morris said, an eyebrow raised. “How do you know what happened?”

“Interviews after,” he said. “I asked the coaches, who said they didn’t remember Sang joining them and then were left wondering where she went after they’d interviewed everyone else. McCoy had the list of students. He rattled off the names, purposefully skipping her. At the end, he said that was everyone and dismissed them.” Kota stabbed a forefinger at the table. “He was making sure she was alone in that locker room. I don’t know about you, but if he wanted to confront a thief like that, he could have done the routine with everyone else present. That wasn’t what he was doing.”

My heart lifted, reassured now that Kota had said something. I wanted to reach out, to hold his arm or something. I was rattled now, though, unsure of what to say or think. Suddenly, I was exhausted, like I’d just relieved that experience again. I shivered, willing this to be over.

Mr. Morris pursed his lips, nodding. He picked up his cup and spoke instead of drinking. “It sounded fishy,” he said. “Still, he has most people believing she attacked him and that she’s really crazy.”

“The point is,” Kota said, “he’s got you chasing her around while Mr. Hendricks is doing something worse. You look like you’re involved working with him.”

“How do you know what he’s doing?” Mr. Morris asked.

“He’s working this hard for nothing?” Kota asked. “He’s got teachers spying on ordinary students. He’s gone so far as to have people chase us around to make sure we’re not watching him. That means he’s got something worth paying attention to.”

Mr. Morris nodded slowly. “He’s waiting for me to tell him things. Like where this Academy is. He keeps saying if I find it, he’ll back off.”

Kota looked back at North and then at Mr. Morris. “We could give you a location, but he won’t find much. It’ll be a lot like chasing us around.”

My eyes widened. A location? For the Academy? Where?

Mr. Morris sat up at this, looking excited. “Maybe he’ll let me off the hook.”

“More than likely, he’ll ask you to go scout it out. He’ll probably have the others checking it out, too.” Kota again pointed at the table. “That’s fine, but you need to watch your back.”

“No kidding,” Mr. Morris said. He put his coffee cup down. He picked up a napkin and slid it over. “Write down the address. I’ll check it out first.”

“It’s just a school,” Kota said plainly. He took out a pen from the bag next to him and wrote down an address.

I peeked over his shoulder, noting the address was in Charleston. I glanced at Kota. Was he serious? I thought...

The longer I looked at Kota, the more I realized this had to be a trick. For so long, we had Mr. Hendricks scouting around, asking me and others for a school location. They gave him nothing. Now he was just passing it over to Mr. Morris?

I spoke up. “Don’t give it to him too soon. Makes sure he lets you off the hook. And be careful how you tell him.”

Kota smiled. “She’s right. He’ll wonder why we so easily gave it to you. The truth is, we didn’t really want him hanging around at school, putting his people there. Now we’re wondering if we gave him something else to chase, if he’d stop following us everywhere. Maybe we were being overprotective. We didn’t want to involve other students.”

Mr. Morris glanced at the street address and nodded. “True. I’ll tell him I eventually followed one of you to this location. I’ll check it out for a couple of weeks and then confirm that this is the place.”

“He’ll probably ask you to continue, at least until we’re out of his hair,” Kota said. “But even if we left, you wouldn’t be out of the woods.”

“What can I do?” Mr. Morris asked.

“Contingency plan,” Kota said. “Find another job. Tell him after you tell him about where the school is. Or hold it over his head until he lets you go.”

Mr. Morris shook his head. “I can’t. No one is hiring teachers right now.”

“Do you really want to be a teacher?” Kota asked. “At a high school?”

Mr. Morris’s lips tightened. His dark eyes fixed on his now empty cup. He fiddled with the cup, turning it on the table slowly. “It’s not what I thought it would be.”

“There’s more places to teach things than in a high school,” Kota said. “Your teaching certificates qualify you to other jobs.”

Mr. Morris snorted. “What?”

“Did you know the local CPR instructor in Charleston earns more per year than you do?” Kota asked. “I’m assuming, as I asked a couple other teachers what they were making, and the number was lower.”

Mr. Morris’s eyebrows shot up. “A CPR instructor?”

“And the first aid instructor is a bit more,” he said. “They get paid per class, but there’s a lot of classes going on with the fire departments, the colleges, the hospitals. Everyone has to do renewals every few years. Even our school has an instructor come in once in a while for refresher classes. And who would make a better CPR instructor than a person who not only has the skillset and the certification, but is also a certified teacher?”

Mr. Morris pressed his lips together again. He didn’t say anything, but he was clearly considering these options.

The corner of Kota’s mouth lifted. Were we really winning this one? “It may not be your thing, but it’s an out. I’m sure there’s many more options. Take the training course that’s a few weeks, but after that, there’s a weekly paycheck as long as people need to take the class.”

Mr. Morris nodded, but said nothing.

It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. I glanced at Kota, wondering about his motives.

Kota sighed. “I just need to know one thing. Why does Mr. McCoy want her followed?”

“He’s doing it on his own,” Mr. Morris said. “He thinks you’re all dangerous. Even her.
Especially
her. He rants about her. I think he suspects she’ll attack someone else, so he’s waiting to witness it. Doesn’t make much sense to me.” He jerked his head in my direction and then looked at me. “I’d watch out for him.”

“He’s been able to find her,” Kota said. “We thought he was tracking her cell phone.”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I get told to follow you,” he pointed at Kota, “and he’s got other people after Blackbourne and Green. Occasionally he has us follow anyone who looks like they’re up to something. Only you all just stay at home all day. The only time you do anything interesting is at school, and usually it’s skipping classes because he’s asked for you, or there’s a fight you’re managing.”

“Our job,” Kota said. “We were asked to monitor teachers stopping fights and make security suggestions.”

Mr. Morris rolled his eyes. “That’s stupid.”

“The teachers aren’t doing it,” Kota said. He put his pen back in his pocket. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” he said. He pointed at me. “Hendricks has been asking us to report back who is where. He likes for us to keep track of where everyone goes every day. Since you all like to stay together often, it’s easy. I’m thinking he tells McCoy who you are with and where they take you.”

I perked up at that. “So he is being told where I might be, but then he’s got to find me somehow. You all don’t have a visual on me at all times.”

“Sometimes we know where you aren’t,” he said. “If you aren’t with him,” he pointed to Kota, “or him,” he pointed to North behind me. “Then you are probably with one of the other ones. It doesn’t take rocket science to follow you. There’s only what, eight people you’ll likely be around?”

“Nine,” Kota said quietly.

“Right,” Mr. Morris said. “Still, all one has to do is find out where you’re not. Then they just follow the other ones until they figure out who you’re with.” He stood up, dropping a five-dollar bill on the table. “Thanks for the tip, but you really should consider just going off on your own once in a while. You’ll be harder to trace.”

I bit my lip, nodding and keeping my eyes down as he moved around the table and left.

Kota and I sat quietly together. North moved to our table, sitting across from me. We were quiet, sitting together, absorbing the new information.

McCoy was after me. He might simply be using the process of elimination. While the phone GPS might still be an issue, it wouldn’t take long with him looking out for me before he could figure out where I was.