“Just tell me one thing, Grace,” he said. “Is the idea of you and me being together that terrible to you?”
“I can’t do this.” I pulled my hand away, my fingers slipping out of his. “You’re my mentor.…”
“Not anymore. Training’s over. We can be together now.”
“Please try to understand. We’re friends, Tal. And that’s all we’ll ever be.”
He half closed his eyes and sighed. “Don’t call me Tal, then,” he said. “It sounds too good coming from your lips.”
“I’m sorry.”
Talbot gave himself a little shake. “Let’s forget this ever happened.” He found his baseball cap between our seats. He plopped it on his head and gave me a dimpled smile from under its bill. “Friends. That’s all.”
“Okay,” I said, and smiled weakly back at him.
“Hey, don’t let this ruin the day for you. You should be proud of what you did back there. Your training’s over. You’ve made it. I’d take you out to celebrate if you’d let me—in a strictly just-friends sort of way, of course.”
I gave a slight laugh.
“That’s more like it,” he said. “You’d better be ready for crackin’ some heads tomorrow. We’re going to find us a new lead—even if it kills him.”
I knew he meant that last part to be a joke—but at the same time I knew it wasn’t.
I laughed uneasily and got out of the van. I said good-bye to Talbot and crossed the back parking lot. I went through the building and figured I’d linger at the front entrance of the rec center until it was time to meet the bus, but what I saw out the glass doors in the front parking lot made me stop cold in my tracks.
The bus was there already, and so were all seven of the other Rock Canyon vans—accompanied by a cop car with flashing lights. Students from my religion class sat huddled on the steps to the front entrance, surrounded by people in Good Samaritan polo shirts. A man in a business suit talked to a girl who looked like she was crying. And that girl was April.
I pushed open a glass door and jogged out into the parking lot. As I approached the huddle of students, Claire stood up and pointed at me. “She’s here! Grace is here!” she shouted. The rest of the students shot up on the stairs, all staring at me. April came running.
She threw her arms around me. “Oh, my gosh! You’re okay. I was so scared.” She squeezed me so hard I could barely breathe.
“Whoa! Of course I’m okay.” I pried myself out of April’s death grip. Her face was splotched with red, and her eyes shone like she was about to burst into tears again. “What’s happened to you?”
“What happened to me?” she asked incredulously. “What happened to you? Everyone’s been looking for you! First Pete, and then you not showing up at that karate studio, and then neither you nor Talbot answering your phones. And then I remembered Jude’s text, and started thinking you’d been kidnapped. Or worse. Your dad is on his way, and Pastor Saint Moon is totally freaking.”
“What are you talking about? I was out on my service project just like everyone else … and what about Pete and the karate studio?” Is she talking about the same dojo where Talbot and I trained?
“All the groups were supposed to go to this karate studio down the street. Like Gabriel said on the bus. We were supposed to start fixing it up for some youth program. But when we got there, the front windows were all busted out, and inside … they found Pete.”
“Pete Bradshaw? What do you mean they found him?” I’d heard people talked about in that way before—last year when they’d found Maryanne Duke and then Jessica Day. Then the other night when the cops told us they’d found that Tyler kid. “Is Pete dead?” I could barely say the words.
April shook her head. “But somebody beat the crap out of him. They probably thought he was dead when they left him behind.”