“Of course I have!”
“Then your best friend—good God, am I glad I never had a best friend like you—you know full well the unique way his mind works, and you completely manipulated him—”
“How did I?”
“This is me you’re talking to. You encouraged him to hack into Gibson’s network. You got him to create the scenario that would allow you to run away. It was a lucky break that Gibson asked your parents about it, but the break-in, the car following you, none of that happened.” He was guessing, but she stared down at her coffee and was silent. “So you used Jonas, too, and all of that so you could hoodwink some guy into being your boyfriend, with not a thought of the consequences. Anders told me you wanted to come here before Christmas, when you were still fourteen, a small difference that could have landed him with a few years in prison.”
She looked up, her face red, but in what appeared to be anger rather than embarrassment, and said, “Why do you think I didn’t come? I checked. I’m not stupid.”
“Oh, I’m not accusing you of being stupid, Hailey. I have to admit, I even had some admiration for the way you planned it all, for how devious you’ve been. No, I’m not accusing you of being stupid, I’m accusing you of being cold and selfish and manipulative.”
She pushed her chair away from the table and stood in one fluid movement. For a moment, it looked as if she might pick something up and throw it at him, but she sounded quite calm as she said, “I have to go to the bathroom.” She approached one of the waitresses and asked her directions, then left the room.
Finn waited a moment, then followed, telling the waitress he’d be back. He walked only as far as the lobby, knowing she couldn’t leave the hotel without him seeing her.
She was only five minutes or so, and when she came back her eyes were newly reddened. He’d gone too far, perhaps, forgetting she was still only fifteen, and that she would have to face worse from her parents. He felt a little hypocritical, too, in just about everything he’d said, and yet he simply hadn’t been able to sit there and listen to her running Jonas down like that.
It was true, he hardly knew the kid, but he knew he deserved better than that. Maybe one day she’d see that, too, even if it was years after she and Jonas had gone their separate ways and lost touch with each other.
Hailey didn’t look at him as she approached, offering no reaction to the fact that he still didn’t trust her not to run. She walked past him and resumed her place at the table. He followed her in, and got himself another cup of coffee before sitting down again.
She sipped at her own coffee, but then pushed it aside and got up, coming back a moment later with a fresh cup. Once she’d sat down, she looked him straight in the face and said, “I’m not a bad person.”
“If you were, I wouldn’t have bothered saying those things.”
She nodded a little, as if accepting that as a truce marker, then said, “How did he know where to look?”
“He knew you’d gone by train—the InterRail page you had up on your computer.” She nodded again, like a master criminal looking back on the small mistakes she’d known about all along. “You also gave away one day that you were on Facebook—you told him you’d played a game on there, then tried to say you were just browsing, but—”
“You can’t browse on Facebook.”
“That’s right. It says something for his loyalty to you that Jonas had never looked at your page until I asked him to. Naturally, he knew your email address, and he knew your password. From there it was easy. I was at the restaurant last night—I followed you back, found out where Anders lived.”
She looked briefly transported back to Domtrappk?llaren, and said quietly, “It was such a great night.” Her voice was full of regret—that it was over rather than remorse for what she’d done. “It’s been a great few days.”
“I’m sure it has.” She looked defensive, as if sensing another attack, but he smiled. “I doubt you’ll ever look back and regret this. You might regret aspects of it, as you should, but it’ll be one for the memory bank.” She became glum, the bigger picture not something she wanted to contemplate right now. “Hailey, let me ask you, how did you imagine this panning out? How long did you think it could last?”
She gave a little twitch of her mouth—a gesture he’d seen before, her version of a shrug—and said, “Longer than this. If you hadn’t gotten involved, or Jonas.” Again, Jonas’s name was said with a certain bitterness.
“You really have it in for Jonas, don’t you?”