Prep School Confidential (A Prep School Confidential Novel) (32 page)

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“No offense, Anne, but…” He nods to my hand in his. “Everyone feels like they have to take care of me. My mother, sisters, Remy. It’s too much sometimes, especially when Remy babies me in front of people who don’t know.”

He traces the area between my thumb and index finger. I think of the way Remy is always asking Brent if he’s okay. The way she pushed a bowl of strawberries at him when he was late to dinner that night. “You could have told me,” I say.

“I almost did, once.” Brent pauses. “I didn’t have an SGA meeting when I bailed on you the day you broke into Andreev’s office. I forgot I had to see the doctor.”

“Are you going to be okay?” I ask.

“Mm-hmm. In the excitement of the evening it seems I forgot my insulin injection.” Brent winces. “You seem to have that effect on me. It’s kind of why I tried so hard to keep this from you.… I was afraid you’d stop being so …
you
around me.”

“I’m like this with everyone. Don’t consider yourself special.” I give him a smile. A real one, because even though we won’t get to watch that movie after all, I wouldn’t trade this moment for anything. I’m finally seeing the real Brent Conroy, and although it kind of sucks he’s in a hospital bed, I feel like I belong to an exclusive club or something.

The nurse-doctor-infirmary-person pops her head around the curtain again. “Brent needs to get rest now. You can come see him in the morning.”

Disappointment floods me. I can’t stay here. Brent squeezes my hand as I get up. “It’s probably dark by now. Have Kyle walk you to Amherst, okay?”

“Um. About that. He left,” I say. “I’ll be fine though. It’s a five-minute walk.”

Brent’s face is skeptical. I give him a swift kiss on the forehead. “Really. Don’t worry.”

“Text me when you get back,” he says. And this time Kelsey’s not here, so he has to give me his phone number.

I’m still beaming when I get outside. There’s something kind of liberating about smiling in a moment where the thought of smiling seems completely inappropriate. I’m grinning so hard I barely notice the shadow that passes over mine on the ground.

I whip around, the street lamp beside me illuminating a tall figure running around the side of the infirmary. My heart slams against my lungs as I set off toward Amherst. Goddard’s voice fills my head:
Let me deal with Ms. Dowling.

I want to call out to whomever is following me.
Come try to kill me. Do it right here, in the middle of campus so someone can see you.
But instead, I pick up my pace and cut through the woodsy path leading from the infirmary to the quad.

The sound of leaves crunching behind me confirms that the person is still following me. I can feel him closing in on me. I scream as loud as I can, then I turn around and hit him square in the face.

I gasp as Lee Andersen stumbles backward, pressing a hand to his nose. I look down and see blood smeared across my knuckles.

“Why are you following me?”

Lee takes a step toward me and I hold my purse in front of me like a shield. “Come any closer and I’ll kick you in the balls.”

“I just wanted to talk to you.” It comes out of him like a whimper. It’s the longest sentence I’ve heard from him, so it nearly knocks me backward.

“What?”

“You think I killed Isabella,” Lee says, his tongue poking out and licking blood off his upper lip. “I wanted to tell you it’s not true. I loved Isabella.”

“You had a great way of showing it,” I snarl at him. “Creepy letters, drawing her without her knowing.”

“I never hurt her,” he says.

“You hurt her every time you gave her attention she didn’t want,” I spit at him. “You scared her. She felt like she had to change her schedule to get away from you, and you still found a way to scare her!”

Lee takes off his glasses and makes a horrible choking sound. For a moment, I think he’s going to throw up, until I see the tears spilling from his eyes and mixing with the blood leaking from his nose. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know I was scaring her.”

“You did know. You just didn’t care.” I stare Lee squarely in the eye for the first time. I refuse to feel any pity for this pathetic guy who made Isabella’s life hell because he wasn’t used to hearing
no.

“Please.” Lee steps toward me, and I raise my hand, making it clear I have no problem hitting him again. “Please believe me.”

I watch fear take over his face. I look at my hand, poised and ready to strike. I’m shocked at how badly I want to hurt Lee, to hit him over and over even though it’ll never match the pain he caused Isabella by making her live in fear.

I lower my hand. This isn’t me. I didn’t decide to find Isabella’s killer so I could hurt him or her. And worst of all, something in Lee’s expression almost makes me believe him that he didn’t murder Isabella.

I take off running and don’t stop until I get back to Amherst. I lock myself in my room and stumble over to the window overlooking the quad.

There’s no sign of Lee.

CHAPTER

FORTY-FIVE

Things Brent and I do over the weekend: Go ice-skating in the Boston Common, visit the Museum of Science, have a competition to see who can yell inappropriate words on the T louder without getting embarrassed.

Things I don’t do: Get into trouble or gather any more information related to Isabella’s murder.

It was a difficult decision, deciding to lay low for the rest of the weekend, but my confrontation with Lee seriously rattled me. I mean, he could have easily killed me. If he wanted to. The fact that he didn’t makes me believe he may not have had anything to do with Isabella’s death after all.

All of the signs are leading back to Alexis, Senator Westbrook, Dr. Harrow, and the video. The senator is clearly paying Harrow off … probably to keep quiet about Alexis’s involvement with Isabella. Maybe they even know that Alexis killed Isabella and want to cover it up. But before I make any sort of drastic move with the video, I still have to consider the possibility Andreev had Isabella killed, too. So when the long weekend ends and Tuesday afternoon rolls around, I put on my sunglasses, tuck my hair into a knit cap, and wait across the street from the science building.

Andreev leaves through the side entrance at exactly 3:16. My phone chimes from within my bag, and it doesn’t stop. I scramble to turn it off after seeing Remy is calling me.

Andreev crosses the street while the light is still red. A taxi driver leans on his horn, and Andreev shouts something at him in Russian. I stay on the opposite side of the street, following him and keeping my eyes glued to the back of Andreev’s wool coat.

Something hard smacks into my shoulder. An older man in jeans and a ski jacket apologizes to me. “You should watch where you’re going, honey.”

I ignore him and start moving. Andreev is turning the corner onto Massachusetts Avenue. When the light turns green, I cross the street. The guy who bumped into me is behind me, yapping away on his cell phone. And he said
I
should watch where I’m going.

Andreev stops outside a post office and looks over his shoulder. I’m about fifty feet behind him, but I still turn so he can’t see my face. I pretend to read the menu hanging in the window of the café I’m standing outside of.

That’s when I notice the guy who bumped into me is doing the same thing.

I search his face for some sign I know him. He gives me an odd look and breaks eye contact.

Andreev starts walking again. I follow him, forgetting about the weird guy. The wind picks up, and I wrap my scarf so it’s protecting the lower part of my face. Andreev stops again, this time outside a deli. We’re in Harvard Square.

Andreev paces outside of the deli. He checks his watch and pulls something out of his jacket. A manila envelope. My breath catches in my throat as a voice behind me says, “Waiting for someone?”

I spin around to face the weird guy who bumped into me. “That’s none of your business,” I say.

The guy slips his phone into his pocket and buys a newspaper from the same guy I bought mine from. I really want to get away from this creep, but I can’t risk losing Andreev. I walk around to the opposite side of the newsstand, where I can still see Andreev.

The next thirty seconds happen as if in slow motion. A car backfires at the curb. Andreev looks up to see the source of the noise.

His eyes land on me and they squint. Recognition floods his face. My heart leaps into my throat as he takes off around the corner as if he never saw me.

I have about .025 seconds to decide whether to give up and act like seeing him was a coincidence or to take off after him. I run across the street just as Andreev disappears into the crowd gathered outside a store.

“Hey,” a male voice behind me yells. I look over my shoulder to see the creepy guy pursuing me. I run faster.

“
Stop,
” he commands, and something about his tone of voice tells me I should. I turn to face him, and when he flashes a badge at me that says FBI, I’m left with one thought.

It’s all over.

CHAPTER

FORTY-SIX

The FBI agent and Dr. Harrow are talking outside the administrator’s conference room, and all I catch of their conversation is
following the suspect of a federal investigation.
I sit across from Dean Tierney at an empty table inside the room. She gives me a small smile. It’s not a friendly smile. It’s more of a
You’re absolutely fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it
smile.

The door to the conference room opens, and Harrow steps inside, trailed by the FBI agent. “Well, Anne,” he says, “you can’t seem to get enough of me lately, can you?”

My mouth twitches with the ghost of a laugh, but the death glare Tierney shoots in my direction shuts me up. The FBI agent sits across from me and pulls out a notepad. “So tell me, exactly, how you knew we were investigating Eugene Andreev.”

“I didn’t,” I say. Tierney twitches a little in a way that lets me know this is news to her and Dr. Harrow as well.

Harrow and the FBI agent watch me expectantly. I have to tell the truth, I realize. Or at least parts of it. I settle on a modified version of the real story: I tell the FBI agent that Isabella told me what Andreev was doing.

“I thought maybe he had something to do with her death,” I say. “I know it was really stupid of me, but I decided to follow him.”

Harrow’s eyes dig into me as if he can tell I’m lying and Isabella never told me anything about Andreev. I grip the table in front of me and focus on the FBI agent.

“Eugene Andreev has been on our radar since he left the national research lab four years ago,” he says. “We believe he stole weapons intelligence that’s heavily encrypted. You’re saying Andreev used
students
to try to access it?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

The FBI agent rubs the stubble on his chin. Tierney’s eyes are practically crossing. Probably thinking what a PR nightmare this is all going to be.

“Andreev didn’t murder Isabella Fernandez,” the FBI agent says finally. “We looked into him when we discovered she was working for him. One of our operatives was watching Andreev the night Isabella was killed.”

“Oh,” is all I manage to say. Andreev didn’t kill Isabella. I repeat that in my head, dissecting each word until I decide it makes sense. I should probably feel relieved. One of the puzzle pieces has been removed; it should be easier for me to put the rest together now. But I feel nothing.

The FBI agent says something to Tierney and Harrow that I don’t catch. Then he’s gone, and suddenly I feel everything all at once. Fear. Paranoia. Some other nameless, unique brand of emotion that comes along with being in a room alone with these two.

“I’ll have to call Benedict,” Snaggletooth announces, before exiting without looking at me.

“The headmaster’s coming?” I turn to Harrow.

He cracks his knuckles. “Dr. Goddard is away. Fortunately for you.”

I’m not sure what, exactly, is fortunate about this situation. I’m about to ask, when Harrow slides into the chair across from me. “I think it’s time you and I had a heart-to-heart, Anne.”

I flinch. The Old Anne would smile at Dr. Harrow and ask where the scones and tea are if we’re going to have a heart-to-heart. But there is absolutely nothing I can do, short of curing cancer, to get my parents to forgive me if I get kicked out of two prep schools in two months, so I meet his eyes and say, “Okay.”

“We have quite a mess here, as you can imagine.” Dr. Harrow leans back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other.

“What’s going to happen to Professor Andreev?” I ask.

“Obviously we can’t have a suspected criminal teaching our students,” Harrow says. “But letting him go now may tip him off and compromise the investigation even further.”

Even further.
Meaning, I compromised it when I followed Andreev this afternoon. “I didn’t mean to screw everything up.”

Harrow nods, his eyes on a point on the wall behind me. “Anne, I need to know the truth. Did Isabella really tell you what she suspected Andreev was doing?”

I swallow. “Yes.”

Harrow keeps on nodding. He traces an invisible line on the table in front of him. “That just seems like something she would have told me, that’s all.”

I know he doesn’t believe me. But there’s something else in his voice that disturbs me: the way he said
She would have told me.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

I need to get out of here.

“Anne, if you know something about Isabella’s death you’re not telling me—”

“How would I?” I force myself to smile. Play the rich little airhead he probably thinks I am. “I only knew Isabella, like, a week.”

Harrow stands up, leans across the table until his nose is inches from mine. My heart catches in my throat; he smells like coffee and aftershave. It looks like he’s going to yell in my face, but a small laugh escapes his nose instead. “Can I trust that we won’t be seeing each other again this week, Anne?”

I grip the sides of my chair, my heart crashing against the walls of my chest. That’s a promise I can’t keep. Not now when I’m certain of one thing: Harrow knows who killed Isabella. But I nod, and smile again.