Fight Dirty (21 page)

CHAPTER 39

A
ndre listened to the two transmitters Morgan had placed, while Jenna drove them back to the city and not so silently fumed at the sudden upheaval of their plans.

“This is exactly what I predicted,” Jenna finally said. “Morgan rushing off, doing things on her own, screwing us.”

“Doesn’t sound like Greene gave her much choice.” He surprised himself, defending Morgan.

“No way in hell Greene forced Morgan to do anything she didn’t want to do. A phone call? Would that be too much to ask? Save us from being embarrassed by our own client.”

“She got the job done, planted the bugs.” Andre played Morga
n’s
initial conversations from her intake at ReNew for her.

Jenna I
D’d
the voices. “That first one is Chapman, the director. The other is Benjamin.”

“The guy Greene thinks killed BreeAnna.” What a mess. Yet, Jenna didn’t seem at all worried.

“Yeah, but I met Benjamin. I don’t think h
e’d
kill anyone. More likely h
e’d
convince someone else to do his dirty work for him.” She inhaled, her grip tightening on the steering wheel. “Le
t’s
go through this once more. Maybe we missed something.”

“It all started with that party.”

“Right. BreeAnna started acting out after that. We already knew that.”

“Not so much acting out. Most of that Caren made up. More likely a reactive depressive episode, according to Nick. He said it would be common after a trauma like what happened to her at the party, especially if she didn’t get any counseling afterward.”

“Plus going to school and seeing the people wh
o’d
abused her every day, knowing the
y’d
never be brought to justice.”

From her tone, it sounded like she might have some personal experience there. Andre filed that away for future exploration—times like this, he realized just how little he knew about Jenna or her life before they met. She never spoke of her family or growing up or really much of anything that happened in her past, other than cases sh
e’d
worked.

“Yeah, I’m sure that didn’t help. Then she found the pregnancy test and realized her mom was having an affair—”

“It was Caren who had the pregnancy scare, not BreeAnna?”

“Right. Caren lied about that as well. Anyway, tha
t’s
why she shipped BreeAnna off to ReNew. To give her time to calm down before she did something the
y’d
both regret and ruined Care
n’s
marriage.”

“Prenup.”

“Yep. Caren said it was her idea to bring Bree home early—that she missed her, especially since sh
e’d
ended the affair.”

“Funny. I got the feeling it was Green
e’s
idea.”

“Think tha
t’s
important?”

“Not sure. I guess not—not if someone outside the family is responsible for BreeAnn
a’s
death.”

“Our mysterious midnight visitor.”

“Which brings us right back where we started.” She thought for a moment and jerked her chin up as a thought occurred to her. “How sure is Nick that BreeAnna didn’t actually kill herself? I mean, sh
e’d
been locked up for two months with unstable kids, that alone might have been enough to push her over the edge after being raped and having to keep silent about it.”

“Plus keeping her mothe
r’s
secret—she didn’t know that Greene knew about her mothe
r’s
affair,” he reminded her.

“So sh
e’s
fresh out of ReNew, all screwed up by these secrets sh
e’s
got locked away, her folks leave her alone, and someone comes and they make things worse—” She broke off, leaned forward over the steering wheel. “What if whoever rang the doorbell was one of the people from the party? Maybe one of the guys heard she was home, figured she was easy prey—you know how word gets around at a school like hers. They would know all about ReNew. Kids like that, entitled, privileged, the
y’d
see her as the perfect victim. Defenseless.”

Actually, Andre had no clue how rich kids going to an exclusive prep school acted, but it was clear Jenna did.

“
I’d
buy that, except how did they know she was home alone?” he argued. “No one except Caren knew she was picking Bree up that day, and they came straight home after getting Robert at the airport. Ther
e’s
no record of Bree calling anyone. And i
t’s
not like Caren and Robert advertised that Robert dragged her out for the night so he could beat the shit out of her lover.”

“Yeah, okay. But damn, that would be a good reason to keep suicide in the mix.” She thought for a moment. “How did whoever came know she was home alone? Or home at all? And why would BreeAnna open the door to them?”

“They must have been watching the house. Which meant they knew Bree was home from ReNew.”

“Who would BreeAnna let inside at ten o’clock at night?”

“Had to be someone she knew. Someone she trusted.” He rolled his window down, sucked in the cold night air hoping to clear the clutter from his brain.

“Or someone she was used to obeying.”

“Which brings us back to ReNew.”

They hit the Fort Pitt Tunnel, the yellow glow of lights hitting the tile walls reflecting against the windshield like incandescent ghosts. As they sped out the other side of the mountain and over the bridge, Andre didn’t even notice his favorite nighttime view of the cit
y’s
skyline. “Jenna, we need to get Morgan out of there. Now.”

“Why would I want to do that?” she asked, sounding truly puzzled. “You can’t still be worried about those kids? If Morgan didn’t fight the goons who grabbed her”—and from the recording it was clear she hadn’t—“then she’ll be fine.”

Andre turned to glare at her. Why was he the only person who saw the danger? “We’ve just discovered that BreeAnna was killed. Most likely by someone at ReNew.”

“Exactly. And Morgan is right there where we need her.”

“Locked up. With a killer.”

She glanced at him. “Can’t have it both ways, Andre. Either you trust her or you don’t. Personally, if our guy is the kind of coward who waits for a girl to be alone and wheedles his way inside her house, kills her, makes it look like suicide, then my mone
y’s
on Morgan.”

“What about the other kids?” He wished he had the words that would make her see reason. He couldn’t even explain it himself, this itch jangling his nerves. Exactly what it felt like to have a snipe
r’s
sights land on his back.

“Who better to protect them than Morgan?”

“I don’t like it. What if the killer figures out she isn’t who she says she is?”

She blew her breath out. More exasperated and tired of arguing than agreeing with him. “W
e’d
only blow her cover if we went tonight anyway. But,” she continued when he started to interrupt, “we’ll go first thing in the morning and get her out. Happy?”

No. But it was the best he could do for now.

“Wha
t’s
Iso?” Morgan whispered to Micah as Nelson and a second Red Shirt led them down a corridor of empty classrooms. Several of the rooms were strewn with gym mats and blankets—the so-called dorms?

“Isolation,” Micah whispered back. “Observation is more like it. Lights on twenty-four-seven, someone sitting in the door watching you every second, but no talking. You’re not allowed to do anything except meditate on your sins.”

Last thing Morgan needed was someone watching her that closely. She needed privacy to break out of the locked wing and reach the computer files. Sh
e’d
considered skipping getting the files, except she was curious about what Bree said that had Greene so worried. And it would be nice to get enough hard evidence to bring Reverend Benjamin, that cheesy administrator Sean Chapman, Deidre, and her Red Shirts down.

“So Iso, i
t’s
the worst punishment?” she asked a little louder, hoping Nelson would hear and follow Deidr
e’s
instructions. But he was too far ahead of them.

Micah shook his head. “Worst is the Hole. Locked up, no contact, total darkness.” His face grew pale. “Don’t worry, Iso isn’t so bad. Just find someplace in your mind and go there. I paint. Bree composed music—began humming it so loud that Deidre heard and let her out that first night.” A wistful smile crossed his face. “Things weren’t so bad when Bree was here with her music.”

They came to a row of rooms, smaller than classrooms or offices, smaller even than a jail cell—maybe storage closets? They had no doors, no furniture except for a single gym mat on the floor, no pillow, no blanket, bare walls—not even a ReNew logo. Across from each doorway there were comfortable-looking office chairs. Where the guards sat to watch their prisoners.

Nelson shoved Micah inside the first tiny room. “Stand in the corner until you’re given permission to move.”

Micah gave Morgan an encouraging smile, then did as he was told, settling into a position with his hands above his head, elbows out wide, touching the wall, as if this was a familiar routine. The second Red Shirt positioned one of the office chairs opposite Mica
h’s
doorway and slung his weight into it, acting as if he was already bored with his guard duty.

Nelson shoved Morgan forward to the next room. She resisted at first, digging her heels in. He chuckled as if amused that a girl half his size would even try to disobey. He pushed harder. Morgan used her momentum against him, letting him push her far enough away that she had room to spin around and punch him in the groin so hard that he doubled over. She darted past him and ran back down the hall.

“No!” she screamed. “I’m not going in there. Don’t make me go in there!”

“Get her!” Nelson yelled to the guard at Mica
h’s
doorway. The Red Shirt leapt to his feet and lunged for Morgan as she tried to zigzag past him.

She could have escaped, but that wasn’t her plan. Micah almost ruined things by emerging from his cell just as the Red Shirt caught her in a crushing bear hug.

“Don’t hurt her,” Micah cried out, raising a fist.

Nelson tackled Micah from behind and sent him sprawling against the wall. “You get back inside there, or we’ll do more than hurt her.”

Micah whirled, ready to fight. Morgan caught his eye and shook her head. Nelson was facing away from her, so she risked a wink. Micah looked confused but lowered his fists. That didn’t stop Nelson from punching him in the gut.

Morgan kept up her act, kicking and screaming and clawing the air as the second Red Shirt lifted her off her feet.

“Take her to the Hole,” Nelson ordered. “Let her see what happens to troublemakers.”

CHAPTER 40

T
he Hole was a janito
r’s
closet around the corner from the Iso rooms. The door was solid wood, no window, making it ideal for Morga
n’s
needs—just the fact that it was one of the few rooms left with a door in this damn place made it worth any potential discomfort she suffered for the short time sh
e’d
be imprisoned there.

The door was secured by a simple hasp with a long padlock dangling from it, hanging open. Morgan wondered who had the key—was glad she didn’t need to worry as she had an alternate exit strategy.

Nelson opened the door. The room was small, about six by six, naked walls and floors, no comfy gym mat here, and the only things inside were a large janito
r’s
sink and a fluorescent light fixture suspended from the ceiling. Morgan focused on the sink; it was too low to the ground for her to be able to stand on it and reach the ceiling, but there was a thick pipe secured to the wall leading from the sink to the ceiling. Perfect.

She made a show of resisting Nelson. “Please, I’m afraid of the dark. Please, no, don’t turn the lights off,” she cried after he pried her fingers from the door and threw her inside. He closed the door, and she pounded on it as he flicked the lights on and off from outside, laughing.

The lights went off, and she shrieked, an unnerving sound despite the solid door between them. “Shut up!” he yelled, but the lights came back on and stayed on.

Morgan leaned against the door and smiled. Time to get out of this place.

She climbed onto the janito
r’s
sink. A quick shimmy up the pipe and she was at the ceiling. She pushed one of the tiles aside and raised her head up to assess the crawl space.

Typical suspended ceiling on a flimsy metal grid held by wire ties. Useless except for access. What she was looking for were the stronger elements that could bear her weight: the interior metal two-by-fours that framed each room she could balance on, the heavy-duty sprinkler pipe she could hang from, the overhead trusses she could use as guides.

Finding her way to the intake roo
m’s
fire doors would mean a zigzag route following the exterior room elements with at least one monkey crawl along the pipes to cross a corridor, but as long as she didn’t get lost, she could make it. Only problem was the lack of light.

She pulled herself the rest of the way out through the ceiling and perched on one of the two-by-fours that framed the wall that held the pipe. Hanging on to the pipe with one hand, she reached out, pushing as many ceiling tiles as she could reach out of their supports, dropping them to the floor below. They made some noise, but no one came to investigate. Most importantly, they released a swath of light into the crawl space, enough to get her across the corridor where she could hopefully find another empty room and repeat the process.

The roof trusses in this part of the building ran parallel to her path, so it was fairly easy to use them to brace herself with as she toed across the two-by-fours like a gymnast crossing a balance beam. Stray nail heads and bits of metal scratched at her bare feet, but she ignored the pain.

She made it to the corridor wall. Leaving the security of the truss behind, she slowly edged along the top of the wall until she could reach the sprinkler pipe that crossed the corridor. The light was almost nonexistent, but she knew it had to be the corridor and not another room by the row of light fixtures dropping down through the suspended ceiling.

Too risky to knock out tiles above a well-traveled corridor. Sh
e’d
have to wait until she reached the other side and hope she found an unoccupied room that she could pull ceiling tiles from and steal more light. Then she could proceed to a room far enough away from where the guards sat keeping watch over Micah that she could drop down through and make her final escape. Which meant, she closed her eyes, building a map inside her mind, going to the left along the two-by-four studs, then turning right, heading to the empty rooms across from the commons room.

Hanging on to the pipe like a monkey, her ankles crossed above it, she pulled herself across the corridor. She could barely make out the gleam of the steel studs that marked the top of the opposite wall. She lowered her feet to balance on the framing element, hung on to the pipe with one hand, and leaned forward as far as she could to raise the corner of a ceiling tile. The room below had its lights on, but she heard no noise.

She pulled the ceiling tile up higher and lowered her head to scout below it. The movement released a stray piece of metal bracing that had rested on the tile. Before she could catch it, it fell through the opening, landing with a clatter on the linoleum floor.

Shit. Morgan eased the ceiling tile back into place and froze, listening. Her toes cramped with the effort of curling around the narrow metal stud, but she held her position.

Footsteps came down the hall. The door below her opened. More footsteps inside the room.

“What was it?” someone called from the hallway.

“Nothing. Probably a bird flew into the window.”

The lights clicked off, and the door slammed shut. The footsteps headed back down the hall and faded away.

Morgan remained still, making sure no one was returning. Sh
e’d
planned to use the concealment of the crawl space to get her all the way past the Red Shirts over to the commons room, but without any light it was too risky. And since the
y’d
just cleared the room below her, odds were, they wouldn’t be back.

She hoped.

She pried the ceiling tile loose once more, slid it up to lie across the suspension grid, gingerly lowered her weight onto the door frame, then dropped down onto the floor below. The only sound was a soft thud.

Her shoulders and feet ached with pain, but she immediately rolled onto her feet and waited behind the door, listening once more. No one came.

She cracked the door open. The corridor was empty. All the rooms were dark. Moving as silently as possible, knowing that Mica
h’s
guards were just behind her and around the corner, she crept toward the commons room. She looked back once, chagrined to see smears of blood from a cut on the bottom of her foot. They were small and in the shadows where the wall met the floor, bu
t . . .
she pulled her top over her head and used it to mop up the blood and apply pressure to her foot until the bleeding was stopped, then pulled her shirt back on and retraced her path.

One more turn and a short length of corridor. Unfortunately it was the corridor with the rooms where the kids slept—rooms with no doorways.

She came to the turn and snuck a peek around the corner. Two Red Shirts coming down the hall. Hide? Or take them out?

No weapons but also nowhere to hide—sh
e’d
never make it back to the last room sh
e’d
passed in time. Okay, if they didn’t pass, sh
e’d
try to bluff her way through.

Flattening herself against the wall, she waited. But then the lights overhead began to flicker. “Lights out!” the Red Shirts cried. “Lights out!”

Kids streamed from the rooms where the
y’d
been congregated, all segregated by their levels, toward the sleeping rooms—exactly the direction Morgan needed to go. She smoothed her top down and joined a group, passing the boys’ room, then the girls’, following two Red Shirts as if she had been ordered to go with them—only they never spotted her dogging their footsteps.

The Red Shirts turned down a hall, away from the commons room, and she moved into the doorway, glancing through the window to make sure the room was empty. No strange prayer circles or mop handle tortures tonight, she was pleased to see. She ran through the first door, sprinted across the room to the doors leading into the intake room, and was home free.

Except for the locked door across from her. Hoping that no one was monitoring the camera in the clock, she crossed the room and crouched down below the clock, where she and Micah had talked earlier. It was only nine o’clock—but if Deidre had kept them up all last night, she guessed the ReNewers deserved an early bedtime. Better for her that they were out of the way as well.

She peeled back one edge of the theatrical putty that created her fake appendectomy scar and slid out the thin wire and flat sliver of metal that were her lock picks.

Easy-peasy
, she thought as she worked the lock. Sh
e’d
get what she wanted from the files and be home sleeping in her comfy bed before Deidre and her Red Shirts even knew she was gone.

She thought of Micah suffering a sleepless night in Iso because of her, but promised herself he wouldn’t mind. Not when she was able to
close this place down for good.