House of Korba: The Ghost Bird Series: #7 (The Academy) (3 page)

There was more to this. He was protecting himself somehow in his request. Maybe the bomb threat would lead to a deeper investigation, one that could expose him.

It was tempting to let it happen, if it really was just a threat and wouldn’t hurt anyone. Like before, where they were empty boxes and a voice on the phone, it seemed it was a small price to pay to finally figure out what Mr. Hendricks was up to.

“I’ll try to talk to him,” I said, when no one else was saying anything. “But I don’t know what will happen.”

Mr. Hendricks nodded. “I want to hear back from you Monday with an answer.”

Mr. Hendricks left the house, walking to a town car parked out front. We all watched him from the front windows.

He completely ignored the car across the street; one of his people watching the house.

“He knows my parents are gone,” I said as I lost sight of him.

“He’s way out of line,” Kota said. “And he’s getting nervous.”

“That’s good,” Victor said. “He’s likely to screw up somewhere now, isn’t he?”

“Fucking shit,” Gabriel said. “He’s showing up everywhere. Isn’t it bad enough we’ve got people following us? Why can’t we just expose him now?”

“Because if the police investigate, it’ll freeze those accounts,” Kota said. He scanned the street once more and released the blinds. He turned to the rest of us, and then looked up and called out. “All clear!”

There were footsteps on the stairs and then Mr. Blackbourne and Dr. Green appeared. Mr. Blackbourne frowned. “We heard,” he said. I imagined he meant he was listening in on one of our cell phones to hear the conversation.

“He acted like he didn’t know you were here,” Kota said. “I’m going to assume his people don’t know. But how do you want to handle this?”

“We’ll have to talk,” Mr. Blackbourne said, then looked at me. “We need you unavailable at this residence from now on. Next time we get a chance, we need to inform your sister. You aren’t home is always the answer.”

“What about at night?” I asked. “I mean I can’t always be gone.”

“Kota’s right,” he said. “He’s getting too familiar. This interaction between him and your father has to end. He may figure out he’s never home soon enough, and it might even lead to looking into you and your family situation.”

“We need to get her out of her family for good,” Dr. Green said.

“One thing at a time,” Mr. Blackbourne said.

For good.
Several times, the boys mentioned me leaving, and for some reason, I always pictured I’d live here with my family forever. My mother, even while she was gone at the hospital, always seemed to be right behind me, watching, waiting for me to do something she thought was wrong. At night, I listened for her, and every creak of the house had me wondering if she was coming for me.

Since I started sleeping at Nathan’s house, I had new sounds to learn. It didn’t seem to matter where I was, the nightmares still followed.

But I had to put my own fears aside. “He’s after you,” I said quietly. I looked at Mr. Blackbourne, meeting his gray eyes. “This is a trap. If you show up, and there’s a bomb threat, it’s your fault. If you’re not there, and do what he says, he’s either setting a trap for you, or there’s something else.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” he said quietly. “We have a week to figure it out.”

“So this might be our last week?” Gabriel asked. “Is it wrong to hope so?”

“We’ve still got a job to do,” Dr. Green said. He smiled, the amusement flickering in his eyes. “And I think we’re smarter than he is. Or do I give you boys too much credit?”

The only answer was to figure out what Mr. Hendricks was up to before it happened. Otherwise, I might be trapped in a school without the boys.

I wasn’t sure I’d survive without them.

––––––––

I
left the boys to finish up their Academy discussions. I was tempted to linger, but I knew better than to listen in. Sometimes half listening was more dangerous.

But as I left the house, I wondered what else they needed to talk about that they couldn’t in front of me. Not only that, but Silas was out on a job and I hadn’t realized that was where he’d gone. I’d been with the other boys or at the diner, busy. It was hard to keep tabs on all nine of them. Now that I knew some of the secrets of the Academy, that jobs could be dangerous, it made me realize if they weren’t in front of me, they could actually be out there doing something which could lead to one of them being in the hospital, or worse.

While they often promised me that it was actually out of the ordinary for them to do things which were dangerous, I didn’t feel like I could fully believe it. Not when so much of what they did in front of me often resulted in one of us getting hurt.

With Mr. Hendricks after Mr. Blackbourne, I realized how close I was to possibly being the reason for the failure of their mission. Mr. Hendricks was using me to manipulate them. The only one he thought he had to get rid of was Mr. Blackbourne; he saw him as the most dangerous. Maybe he thought if Mr. Blackbourne left, the others would, too. I wasn’t sure how true that was.

Nathan’s house was a few doors down from mine on Sunnyvale Court. The single story brick house had a freshly cut front lawn and in the driveway was North’s black truck. The tailgate was down, and Nathan’s bathtub was sitting in the bed, tied into place for hauling.

The front door of the house was unlocked, and I walked in to the thundering crack of sledgehammers against drywall. I was surprised I recognized the sound for what it was. Not for the first time, I realized how much I’d changed, not just in attitude, but in how much I’d learned in the couple of months I’d been around the guys.

I found Nathan and North in the bathroom, taking out the wall of the closet. Both had their shirts off, their hair sprinkled with dust. I stood back, out of range of their swings. Nathan was a half a head shorter than North, but every bit of his body was defined detail of muscle, and his shoulders were wider. With his reddish-brown hair and blue eyes, I thought the term
ruggedly handsome
fit him best.

North wasn’t as defined as Nathan, but his torso was very impressive. A thick mess of coarse hair trailed from the waist of his black jeans up to meet with his belly button. With his wild eyes and the dark hair, he was fierce, even when doing ordinary things.

As North moved, something caught my eye. There was a spot on his chest that looked like a deep bruise. I stared at it, because the shape was strangely familiar. I couldn’t recall...had I hit him at some point and leave a mark? Did someone else hit him?

North swung once more at the wall, bringing down the last of the wall, it crashing at his feet. He dropped the sledgehammer onto the tile, wiping at his brow with the back of his hand. He turned, his fierce brown eyes catching me staring. “What?” he asked, his voice deep and gruff.

Still, I couldn’t help looking at the dark mark. Now that he’d turned, it was black, but there was a thin line... of pink? And it was almost shaped like a heart. But it was messed up, too. The outline was irregular, and the center was only partially filled in with the black fading toward the center. “Did you drop the hammer on yourself or...” I started to ask, unable to finish because I couldn’t come up with another theory.

His eyebrows lifted in confusion. I drifted a hand out toward him, my fingertips brushing at the spot close to the mark.

He looked down, but quickly patted my hand away. “Stop.”

“I thought it was a bruise.”

“It’s not a bruise.”

“What is it?”

He grunted, and looked back at Nathan, who had stopped and was leaning with his back against the wall, watching us curiously. North turned back, lifted his sledgehammer over his shoulder and headed for the hallway. “I’ll tell you later,” he said as he passed and cut through the kitchen, heading to the door out to the garage.

I watched as he left, confused.

Nathan cocked his head. “What was that about?”

I shrugged. “It’s a secret, I guess.”

He smirked, and shoved his fingers through his hair, his deep blue eyes lighting up. He leaned over the open door, looking around. “He’s out in the garage?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He grabbed my hand, dragging me into the bathroom and shoved the door closed. The room was missing the counter, the toilet, and now the closet. The tub was gone. It was simply a blank space with exposed two by four beams, and ready for sheetrock.

Nathan pushed me until my back was against the door. He planted a palm on either side of my neck. He leaned in, his lips finding mine and he kissed me. It was a shallow kiss, simply pressing his lips to mine, but lingered long, like he didn’t want to stop. A spark lit up from it, sinking down into my heart, and dipping further, giving my stomach butterflies. His bare chest grazed against my breasts as he leaned in, sending another wave of warmth through me. The scent of cypress and leather mixed with some sweat and sheetrock dust filled my nose.

I tried to respond, though I felt my kiss was sloppy. I was still kind of new to this kissing thing.

He backed up, smiling so wide that I couldn’t help my own lips from grinning, he was that infectious. “Hi Peanut.”

“Hi Honey. What are you doing to your bathroom?”

“I didn’t like it anymore, and after my dad broke the toilet and some other stuff, I’d been thinking of doing something new to it. That and North wanted a new project to work on.”

“So you’re redoing the whole thing?”

“Yup,” he said. He turned around, pointing. “I was going to put the sink there, this time, and there was a walk in shower I saw at the hardware store. I think I want to get Silas to put in one of those shower fixtures that goes into the ceiling. You know, like the one at Victor’s house.”

Alarm seized through me. “No tub?” I asked, trying to sound excited because he sounded like he was.

“Naw,” he said. “I never use the damn thing. And this will be great. It’ll make the rest of the bathroom smaller, but I think all of the other guys will like it, too. Especially Silas. He’s always griping about the shower fixtures being too short here and at Kota’s.”

I wanted to keep listening to him, but my head was swimming with the thought of just a shower at Nathan’s. Since Nathan’s dad was now working a half a world away, and there wasn’t the risk of him coming by, at least surprising us like last time, I had hoped to spend more time here, but now I worried about being discovered for something I wasn’t sure I was ready to reveal.

Nathan didn’t know I was terrified of showers. I swallowed the urge to tell him, feeling awkward and unsure. It was Nathan’s house, after all. He really wanted this new shower. I guessed that Victor didn’t tell him, or didn’t know they were replacing the tub, because I thought he might have mentioned it. He must be keeping his promise to me still to keep it between us for now. I didn’t want the others to try to fix me or worry about me when they did so much for me already. It sounded like Silas had already approved of this shower, or would like it, too. Certainly North did, which was why he was here.

The longer I didn’t say anything, the more complicated this was getting. Every time I even thought to shower or tried, I panicked, once I even fainted. What would happen when I needed to wash, and all Nathan had was a shower?

Nathan turned back to me, the same crazy smile still stuck on his face. “But it’ll take time. Knocking everything out was the easy part. The hard part is putting the pieces in. We’re going to be stuck using my dad’s bathroom for a few days at least.”

We’d been using that one since the toilet broke until they could find the time to fix the bathroom. I worried now they might replace the tub in his dad’s bathroom, too. I could only hope that would stay. I could find reasons to use that one instead of the shower for the most part. Maybe that would work.

He took my wrist, tugging it up until it was around his neck. My other arm followed, completing the embrace. He wrapped his arms around my body. “What do you say? You want to go with Gabriel and pick out tile colors and new towels?”

I smothered the lump in my throat. “Today?”

He laughed again, and dipped his head. He kissed me on the nose. “When you and him have a moment, I guess.” He hugged me close.

I stared at the wall, at the mess they had made. A new shower. Silas running for homecoming king. Secret Academy meetings.

Is this what my life would be like from now on?

♥♥♥

N
orth returned to help clean up the mess in the bathroom. With the close quarters and two big guys trying to work in there, I was in the way, so they shooed me out.

I ended up in Nathan’s bedroom for a while. I took the pencils out of my hair and sprawled out on the bed, messing up the maroon blanket I’d put into place that morning.

The room smelled like Nathan, of cypress and leather. It felt like him. There were little touches of me now mixed in as well. A bookshelf had been added, with the books from my bedroom, plus a few extra ones thanks to Kota. There were hair clips on the nightstand, and on the dresser was a bathroom kit with the few things I’d taken from the house. I left a lot for Marie.

There wasn’t much, but then there wasn’t much that was mine at the house, either. I also needed to leave some things there, so if I had to return, my father would think I’d been there the whole time, so the stereo, old clothes and other things I didn’t really need had remained just to make it look like I still lived there.

I sucked in a breath, and held it, for no reason other than it was a moment when nothing was happening. Surreal. I started to doze. I didn’t want to sleep, but just relax and try to figure out what Mr. Hendricks was up to, among other things.

I’m not sure how much time passed before there was a knock at the door. It felt like only minutes, but the hoarseness in my throat told me it was longer than that. I scrubbed my face with a palm. “Huh?” I called to the person behind the door. I started tugging at the hem of my shorts that had ridden up my thighs.

The door opened, and Mr. Blackbourne looked in. His gray eyes scanned the room and settled on me.