“Because insanely hot transfer students don’t ask girls like me to tutor them in chemistry . . . much less ride me to school, buy me dinner, fight my battles, pick my clothes, or hold my hand in public.” I shook my head, giving in to a sad smile.
The one he returned was lopsided, and maybe a little selfconscious. “I think a few people might disagree with you. We’ve convinced the whole school we’re dating. Maybe it’s believable to everyone but you.”
“Don’t. Not now.”
He nudged me gently with his elbow. “Tell me how you really figured it out.”
The leather under my legs was heavy and warm and I wanted to crawl inside it and tell him everything. Instead, I hugged my knees to my chest and told him only what he wanted to know. “It was an accident. I went to the police station to tell them what I knew, and I overheard a conversation I shouldn’t have.”
“What did you know?” he asked quietly.
“The same stuff I already told Nicholson.”
“How’d you know all the stuff you told Nicholson?”
I bristled, and just like that, the urge to confide in him was gone. Like someone turned on a light, and I could see him for who he was. A narc getting paid to snitch on me.
“Does it matter?” I snapped. “Two people are dead! And someone’s making it look like I killed them. It’s only a matter of time before—”
“Three,” he whispered.
Everything stilled.
“Three people are dead.” He looked in my eyes, worry lines digging deep. “Posie. She’s gone, Leigh.”
“No!” I shouted. “That’s impossible! I saw her yesterday. She was fine. Her chart said she was—” My mouth hung open, breath held. The words were out, and I couldn’t take them back. But it didn’t matter. My name was on the visitor’s log at the hospital anyway. The police would know I’d been there. “How?”
“Poisoned. Through her IV bag.”
“When?” I already knew the answer. Posie had been murdered right after Mary Jones left her room. Right after I fled down the stairwell, and a nurse had come to change her bag.
“It was a slow-working toxin.” Reece reached into his pocket and withdrew a folded paper. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, hesitating before he gave it to me. “She was pronounced dead this morning.”
I peeled open a long list of handwritten names. On it were Mary Jones and Nearly Boswell. It was the visitor’s log from the hospital. My stomach rolled. I stared at the flashing runway lights, half listening for sirens in the distance. “How much time do I have?”
Reece’s cell phone rang in his pocket.
“I never gave that to you. It doesn’t exist.” He walked away, putting a few feet between us before taking the call.
“What?” he snapped into his phone.
Pause.
“None of your business . . . No, she wasn’t there either . . . I know because she was with me all day, same as yesterday. So we ditched class? Big freaking deal . . . They told me to get close. I’m just holding up my end of the bargain . . . I already told you, I’m not in the city . . .” A jet blared overhead, swooping in low with its landing gear down. Reece plugged the microphone with his thumb and swore, waiting until the plane touched down to release it. “. . . No, I’m not at the airport . . . No, I’m not leaving the state . . . I’m hanging up unless you have something to say . . .” Reece listened, his eyes flicking to mine. His voice lowered. “. . . The planetarium? Seriously? Was the kid okay?” He massaged one temple while he listened, presumably to the details of the crime scene we’d just fled. “Yeah, about that, Lonny called. It goes down next Friday . . .” Reece turned his back, pitching his voice low. “. . . A warehouse downtown . . . I need you to hold up your end of the deal. . . . Friday night. You promised . . .”
Pause.
Reece’s head snapped up, eyes fanning over the parking lot as an older model Mercedes with diplomatic tags—Oleksa’s Mercedes—eased out of the lot. We were being watched, and not just by the cops. How could Oleksa have known where we were?
“I can’t talk now. I’ll call you later.” Reece pocketed his phone and exhaled a string of curses. He dropped down beside me and stared out at the water. “We can’t stay. They know where we are.”
I folded the paper, a critical piece of evidence I wasn’t supposed to have. “How did you get this?”
He hesitated before answering. “Today wasn’t the first time I broke into your locker,” he confessed, glancing at me sideways as if gauging my reaction. I remembered our conversation back at the diner the first time I’d tutored him. How he’d pulled the crumpled first chapter of his textbook from his pocket and made up some story about finding it on the floor.