“No you won’t,” he says.
We stare at each other for a couple of beats. He’s right, obviously, but he doesn’t have to know that. I grab hold of the front of his shirt and spring off him, hauling him to his feet so that I can start dragging him toward the pond.
“What are you doing?” he screams, spittle flying into my face as he bends and twists, trying to escape my grasp. “Help! Somebody help me!”
Good luck with that; Stefan’s party is way too loud for anyone to hear, even if they cared about two guys fighting. Gabe keeps flailing, though, landing a couple of glancing blows that I don’t feel. When we reach the water’s edge, I half throw him in, then follow right behind him. Cold water seeps into my sneakers and soaks my jeans, and Gabe sputters when some of it goes up his nose. He tries to stand up, and I shove him back down.
“I don’t want you going near Autumn ever again,” I say through gritted teeth. “So I’m going to make sure you can’t.”
“You’re bluffing,” Gabe says, but any trace of smugness is gone from his eyes. He looks terrified, and that’s almost enough to stop me. Almost.
I push his head underwater and hold it there. When Ma made Autumn and me take a lifeguarding class two years ago, one of the first things we learned is that most people can hold their breath for two minutes—but in a drowning situation, they’ll often start to panic less than ten seconds in. I count to twenty, an agonizingly long time with Gabe thrashing for his life beneath me, before I let him up.
He gasps huge lungfuls of air, coughing and sputtering all the while. I let him breathe for a few seconds, and then I shove his head back toward the water until it covers one ear. “Last chance, Gabe,” I say as his wheezing turns panicked. “Next time I won’t let you up. Who do you give information to?”
He pants for a few seconds without saying a word. I’m about to admit defeat and let him up, because I can’t make myself do that again, when he moans, “Okay. Okay.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out in a strangled half sob before finishing, “It’s Coach Kendall. I give information to Coach Kendall.”
CAL
I stare at Lara, immobile with confusion, until she shakes her head in mock exasperation. “You seriously have no idea, huh? Well, I’ll say this for him—he has all of you fooled. He’s always been good at putting up a front.”
Lara grabs hold of her suitcase handle and spins it. I unfreeze and sprint forward until I’m between her and the door. She tries to dart past me, but I move with her, my arms spread wide. “You can’t leave until you tell me, Lara. I won’t let you. People are in real trouble.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lara groans, but her eyes cut toward the clock on the mantel. She has to know I won’t physically restrain her, but I’ll dance like this for hours if I have to. “It’s Tom, you idiot.” The name means nothing to me, and it must show on my face, because she adds, “Tom Kendall. Coach Kendall. My fiancé, remember?”
That startles me into silence, and Lara tries again for the door. “No, wait!” I say, blocking it once more. “Coach Kendall is a drug dealer? How? Since when?”
“Tom only told me about it six months ago, but it’s been a couple of years,” Lara says. “He was small-time at first, using stolen prescription pads. Then demand got high enough that he started involving more people, and bringing drugs in from other states. Now there’s a whole network of suppliers and dealers.”
That’s a lot to take in, especially since I’m having a hard time moving past the first sentence. “He told you six months ago?” I repeat, feeling as though I’m suddenly looking at a total stranger. “And you didn’t turn him in?”
“He’s my fiancé,” Lara says, like that’s all the explanation I should require.
“So you—what? Just decided to go along with it?”
She makes an impatient noise in her throat. “I don’t have time for this, Cal. Tom is framing me, don’t you see that?”
My jaw drops, because I absolutely do not. “He is? Why?”
Despite the total lack of accountability she’s shown so far, I’m hoping she’ll tell me that she was about to go to the police. But she purses her lips and says, “If I had to hazard a guess, it’s probably because my indiscretions caught up with me.”
“Your indiscretions?” I repeat. “Do you mean…”
I’m about to finish that sentence with “me,” but Lara cuts me off with a sigh. “I’ve been involved on and off with someone else, and it’s possible Tom saw some texts he shouldn’t have.”
I stare at her suitcase. “So are you running away with—that guy?” I ask. I almost say D, but I’d rather not explain how I know the initial.
She wrinkles her nose. “God, no. It’s not like I was serious about him. Ultimately, he was just another distraction.”