“I love you, too.”
He hugged Ava again, and she leaned forward into him, feeling a burst of gratitude. Maybe, if Alex kept watching Granger, he would find proof of what he was doing. And if the cops arrested him for being a sleazebag, they would look into everything else in his life, too. Including Nolan.
Her pulse began to race again as she realized she hadn’t been one hundred percent honest with Alex. What she’d told him was almost the truth . . . but there was so much more she’d left out. All of it about Nolan.
Hopefully he’d never need to know.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE NEXT DAY, MACKENZIE AND Julie huddled below Julie’s car window in the Beacon Heights parking lot. It was after school, and an unusually hot sun was beating down on them through the moonroof. Mac was impressed by Julie’s spotless car—there wasn’t a gum wrapper or empty soda can anywhere, just a spare hoodie on the backseat. And though they were surrounded by Mercedes, BMWs, and Audis bought by parents who had more money than they knew what to do with, Julie’s car was an old, manual-transmission Subaru.
“What do your parents do, anyway?” Mac asked idly. She just realized she didn’t know very much about Julie’s home life. The other girls moaned about their situations—Ava complained about her father and stepmother, Caitlin muttered about her good-cop, bad-cop moms, and she certainly did her fair share of grousing about her überstrict parents and her whiny sister, Sierra.
Julie looked away. “Um, my dad isn’t really around. And my mom . . .” Then she stiffened. “Get down. There he is.”
Mac ducked just as Mr. Granger walked out one of the doors under the breezeway and toward the gym, his duffel bag hanging from one hand. In moments, he disappeared through the gym’s double doors.
Julie looked at her. “I guess he’s working out?”
“Looks like it,” Mac said. Beacon Heights High’s workout facilities were top-notch; a lot of teachers used them, too.
“Should we go in?” Julie murmured.
Mac shrugged. They’d been following Granger for an hour and a half. The others had taken shifts yesterday and today, all in the hopes that something he did would lead them to the truth about what had happened to Nolan. But so far, their stakeouts had been a bust. Yesterday, they’d followed him to the grocery store, the public library, and to a sports bar packed with Seahawks fans . . . and he hadn’t done so much as hit on the bartender. Today, they’d tailed him from the school to Starbucks and now back to the gym.
Mac leaned her head back in the seat and sighed. “He’s the most boring murderer in history.”
Julie shook her head. “Sooner or later he’ll slip up. We just have to be there when it happens.”
Mackenzie twisted her lips to one side skeptically. She wanted to believe Julie, but she wasn’t so sure. Granger seemed to be going about his business without a care in the world. He didn’t do anything suspicious. “I just wish Ava’s boyfriend had a record of the girls coming in and out of his place,” she muttered. Ava had filled them in on her boyfriend’s revelation yesterday about Granger’s extracurricular affairs.
“Even so, that might not tie him to Nolan,” Julie said. Then she looked at Mac. “You can go, you know. You probably have to practice, right? No point in screwing up both of our futures.”
Mac shut her eyes. Of course she had to practice, but practicing was far from the forefront of her mind. Her phone rang softly from the depths of her backpack. She rummaged for it, and when she saw the name on the screen, her heart sped up. Blake.
They hadn’t seen each other for a week. Actually, Mac hadn’t really seen Claire for a couple of days, either—they hadn’t talked over the weekend, and she wasn’t in school yesterday or today. Mac had considered texting her to see if she was sick and needed her assignments—that was what they’d done in the past—but somehow she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it. All she could think about was how Claire had lied to her that day at Disneyland.
The phone kept ringing. Mac knew she shouldn’t take Blake’s call, but she felt her fingers reaching for the answer button on the screen anyway.
“Hey, Macks.” Blake’s soft voice came through the receiver. “What’re you doing?”
“Uh, nothing,” she lied, glancing guiltily at Julie. “What’s up?”
“Come meet me at the ferry,” he said.
“What, in Seattle?” She snorted. “I can’t do that.”
Julie raised an eyebrow at her, but she turned toward the window.
“Why not?” Blake sounded disappointed.
“Because . . . because I have stuff to do.” And because you’re not mine, she wanted to add.