Chapter 53

Larissa

"Good evening, Diana," I said with my best smile to my friend's mother, whose jaw dropped.

She seemed upset, which certainly wasn't my fault. The last person who could make Diana emotional was me .

When it came to the feelings I triggered in her, the list was still very long. It ranged from anger to worry to mistrust . And it had been like that ever since the day I had turned up on her doorstep without Bay, even though I had gone to the playground with her. I didn't know if she still hadn't forgiven me for that, but hey, I'd been eight years old and shit happened.

"Larissa," she said, a little taken aback. "What are you doing here?"

"Picking up Bayla. We wanted to meet up."

That was such a lie.

And then Bay appeared in the doorway.

"You look like hell," I said as I eyed my best friend, who was standing there in a Vanderwood hoodie and gray sweatpants. Her hair looked thinner, and her face was ashen. "You should get out in the sun again, sweetheart."

I grinned, and she looked at me with a sideways glance that said something like: Very funny. Do you see any sun here?

"Why are you here?" Bay and her mother asked at the same time, both meaning something different.

"I was longing for your daughter and decided without a second thought to study here too."

I knew I was being spontaneous. Diana knew it too. And only one of us liked it.

"And you put on something proper before we leave," I continued, pointing at Bay's outfit. "I'm not taking you with me like this."

"Leaving?" Bay looked confusedly at me, Ms. Adams at my black Kawasaki H2R in her front yard.

"Come on, it'll be dark soon," I warned, even though that had been my plan.

Bay wanted to say something else, but thankfully changed her mind and disappeared back into the house. Her mother stayed behind, still not seeming to have regained her composure.

"How did you get here?" she asked me, and I pointed to the motorcycle behind me, which she had just been eyeing with suspicion.

"Didn't you have a scholarship for..."

"Yes, but it wasn't that important," I lied again.

Of course, I thought day and night about the photography scholarship from the university that Bay and I had actually wanted to go to. But mourning something that was no longer there anyway didn't get me anywhere.

Diana just nodded as if she was an overworked robot.

At this point, she had to know me. After all, she had seen me grow up, even if not entirely by choice.

Bayla and I had met for the first time on the playground, and I had quickly realized that I could have a lot of fun with her. She wasn't such an annoying bigwig kid, like those upscale rich kids from the neighborhood where my former housemother had always sent us girls to the luxury playground. The place Olivia had lived with her father.

And even though Diana Adams earned a pretty penny, she knew how to raise children into decent young adults and didn't spoil her daughter with too many things.

"Finally, there you are," I said to Bayla, who had reappeared in the doorway. This time in warmer clothes. The jeans she was wearing clung to her legs, and it looked as if she had become thinner.

"Where are you going?" Diana asked, addressing me, because Bay didn't usually know where I was taking her, especially when it was spontaneous.

I threw a helmet to Bayla, which she barely managed to catch. Already last night she had seemed so exhausted.

"To a coffee shop," I chirped, and it wasn't a lie, at least if you assumed that keeping parts of the truth a secret wasn't lying either.

If Diana knew what I was up to, she'd rip my head off and chain her daughter to her room with a steel lock.

Bay looked at me for a moment as if I'd lost my mind, because I'd never been in a coffee shop with her for as long as I could remember, but luckily Diana was looking at my bike and not at her daughter.

"Please drive carefully, Larissa!" Diana warned me, concerned.

What was she thinking? I'd never had an accident before. Funny enough, she still didn't like the motorcycle with me and her daughter on the back.

"And please bring my daughter back to me in one piece before curfew."

"Of course," I laughed and inwardly hoped that I'd get back safely myself.

"You want to do what ?" Bayla sat in front of me, a look of concern on her face. "Have you forgotten that we got busted last time?" she hissed, barely audible.

We were in Lola's Diner , and Lola must be the nice old lady in her sixties who had hired all the students to satisfy the hustle and bustle.

I didn't expect the place to be so busy at this time of day, otherwise I would definitely have gone somewhere else, but we were in Blairville and I only knew this diner , which Grace had recommended to me.

Grace just happened to be working a substitute shift here along with Mady's way too hot brother and shy Penny Bexley among other people, none of whom I knew. She came to our table with two full milkshakes.

"Strawberry for one lady and blueberry for the other," she joked, placing the milkshakes in front of us.

Of course, Bayla had ordered something with blueberries. What else? And of course, Grace had to come and sit with us now. Not that I minded. But Bay and I had no time to waste.

"I've only got a few minutes, so tell me, what are you doing here?" Grace looked at us both with expectation, and Bay glanced at me looking for help.

"We're planning our costumes for the Halloween party next weekend."

Bay's eyes widened.

I had to stifle a grin.

"So, you're both going?"

There wasn't as much concern in Grace's voice as there had been a few days ago.

"So..."

Bay tried to talk her way out of it, but it was too late for that. She would come and she would have fun. I would personally ensure that. Sometimes, you just had to force her to be happy.

" Of course , Bay's coming with me. You wouldn't leave me alone, would you?"

I winked at her.

The idea that she'd tear me apart as soon as Grace left made me grin.

"I thought about going too, but I don't know." Grace played with her dark painted nails. She had her cocoa-colored corkscrew curls tied back with an orange ribbon to match the waiters' diner uniform.

I grinned broadly at her.

"I think you all need to have a bit more fun." Because what was student life without parties? "I couldn't spend all my time studying and working only to get up the next day and do the same thing."

"I know what you mean..." Grace sighed, as if she really wanted to think about it again. "Julie always doesn't want to."

Julie was even quieter than Bay, which made it harder to judge her. On the one hand, she was not really talkative and super shy, but then she had this mysterious internet boyfriend she didn't even know in person and who was walking around campus somewhere without even knowing she was there.

If I'd been Julie, I'd have grabbed the guy long ago, because judging by what I had read on her cell phone, they got on really well .

I didn't see myself as capable of having a relationship. Not just because I had failed seven times, but because I was simply attracting the wrong kind of men. Over and over again. Drug dealers, wannabe machos who preferred to cheat, and men who treated women like objects. Over time, I had realized that maybe I wasn't the type for long-term relationships.

I needed excitement and adrenaline.

"Attention! Dear Blairville residents. Due to the worsening weather conditions, we ask that you please drive home carefully and lock all doors and windows," Joe Bexley's voice rang out and as I looked up at the TV, I recognized the man who actually shared similarities with Jenny and Penny. "We also recommend you to park your cars in the garages and bring loose items from the gardens into the house." He smiled with pity. "Stay safe." Then he disappeared and the Vancouver football game faded back in.

I looked out the window, outside the diner, where only one table was occupied.

A raven, its feathers fluffed up by the wind, nabbed a bag of fries from one of the unoccupied tables and flew off triumphantly. Three more ravens followed, apparently not liking that their friend wasn't sharing with them.

Somewhere in the distance, an empty trash can flew across the sidewalk and took another one with it, narrowly missing a grandma with her rollator.

I looked back at Grace, who was looking at the clock on the wall, exhausted.

I tried to remember the conversation we'd just had.

"You can come with us..." I offered.

She looked at me as if she was actually thinking about it.

"Grace! I need your help at table seven," Ezra called out, and Grace stood up in a flash.

"I'll think about it," she said before turning away from us and disappearing across the freshly mopped diner floor.

"What the hell?! Larissa!" I looked at Bay, who was gesticulating wildly with her hands in the air. "I said no . Why are you putting me in a situation like this?"

"Because you're going to that damn Halloween party with your best friend and have some fun."

I looked at her with encouragement.

She glanced annoyed out the window into the parking lot, where a couple of guys were smoking with a girl who looked a lot like Mia. They all looked very young, maybe just fifteen.

Bayla watched them for a while, then turned back to me.

"Larissa, I think your idea is absolutely insane . Especially in this weather. Didn't you hear what Joe said? And besides, there's a killer out there!"

"You haven't even listened to my idea yet."

"It's enough for me to know that it has something to do with the DeLoughreys and their mansion."

Bayla sounded annoyed.

Had I overdone it with the party?

"Why are you suddenly so obsessed with this family? Ever since that guy had spoken to you, something's been different."

I remained silent.

If she only knew it was about Adrian DeLoughrey… At least that had been the case until I'd googled them on the internet and my breath had been taken away.

"Let me show you something," I said, pulling the slim laptop out of my backpack without wrecking my camera.

"This family basically owns half the city ..."

Bayla listened and looked at my screen as I turned the laptop toward her and slid to her side.

"There's the DeLoughrey Science Center, both towers; the bank, and office building too." I showed her the two skyscrapers that jutted out of Blairville as if they didn't belong, and then the two other smaller buildings. "But also, the entire mall . Or here..." I pointed to a big part of the island, Fogs Forest , which stretched out far and wide on the map. "There are supposed to be old nineteenth-century mansions there that they want to renovate and restore."

Bay took a closer look at the map.

"Okay, they're rich and have a lot of influence over the city..." she confirmed, nodding.

"I did some more research and came across lots of articles about businesses in Blairville ."

I opened the internet. The benefit of getting free Wi-Fi in a diner.

"The DeLoughreys seem to have a huge wine empire."

"Wine..." Bayla said, unimpressed.

I opened another tab.

"But what's much more interesting is this."

Bayla looked intently at the screen.

"The DeLoughreys are said to be in a nearly twenty-year business dispute with the Copelands and the Blairs, not really over individual buildings, but over the territories of the whole island ." I lowered my voice as Grace cleared the table two tables away. "Maybe that's why Julie and Grace have something against the Copelands and why they don't like the DeLoughreys."

I looked at Bay, who was focusing on my laptop.

She seemed much more interested than a few minutes ago.

"I have a feeling there's more to it than just a business dispute ," Bay whispered conspiratorially, looking at me.

"I feel the same way. Because this dispute has been going on for quite a long time. And also, that they've divided the whole island into three territories ..."

I took the laptop and opened a map of the city that I had created myself and edited with markers.

"Look, here. According to what I found; these are the territories. Here we have the entire center of the city up to the abandoned amusement park, the harbor and a small part of the forest near the sea. This area belongs to the Blairs."

I circled the orange outline without touching my laptop.

"When did you do all this?" Bay interrupted me.

"Wednesday night. I was interested, okay? " I continued. "Look, here... All these woods around the university, this housing project by this lake, and the whole coastline here are Copeland territory."

I had marked the area in green.

"What's left is this huge forest with the smaller lake. Just a forest. That's the funny thing. No settlement, no industry, just a forest."

Bayla zoomed in and did the same thing I'd been trying to do, which was to find a house, but there wasn't one. At least not on the satellite map.

"You can look for ages. But I had the same thought. If they own an area and go to university here, then they must live somewhere in town."

Bayla kept looking anyway.

"I don't think the drug thing is true either, but it could also be that Grace is right. So, the DeLoughreys would make their money from investments and wine, and the Copelands from illegal things."

"The only question is how the Blairs finance their territory..." Bay finished my thought. She seemed puzzled, but I had reacted the same way when I had found all this out.

"And besides, look , the DeLoughreys have been buying up all this woodland from the Blairs for the last ten months. Just forest. There's something weird going on."

"Maybe they're running a timber mill?"

Bay grinned.

I sighed in frustration because the DeLoughreys didn't look like they were into the logging business. Plus, there was this weird gut feeling.

"I don't know if this business dispute is any of our business, Larissa."

Bay pushed the laptop back toward me.

"We both know the answer to that. But it's not about that. I have a feeling there's something going on."

She had to feel the same way. Bay had always been the first to notice such strange things.

"I don't have a good feeling about this at all. We shouldn't do this because I think it's out of our league."

I didn't know her like that at all. It felt like something had changed in her, but there was no reason for it. Was she really scared of the Blairville Killer ?

"And I don't think it's a good idea for us to go into DeLoughrey territory and look for a house that might not even exist."

God, had she eaten a sloth for breakfast?

"Come on, Bay, we're not even doing anything forbidden."

"You want to spy around, and especially on people who I think are way too big for you."

Her expression was serious and full of concern. Just like when I'd told her about the break-ins at the jewelry stores of the McConnells, one of Sacramento's richest families. Olivia's family.

"We're just driving there and if there's nothing to find, we'll drive right back." I looked at her pleadingly. " Come on , Bay. You can't tell me you're not interested in something like this all of a sudden , can you?"

She seemed to be thinking.

This was my chance.

" The forest , Larissa. A body was found there. Besides, it's fucking storming. Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

I took a deep breath.

"Listen to me. You're safe with me. My bike is very fast and, in an emergency, you have a best friend with self-defense experience."

Bayla still didn't look convinced.

" Please , Bay... Don't leave me hanging." I made a pouty face. "We'll go there, see if there's a house and if we don't find anything, I'll take you straight back home, no arguments."

Bay seemed to consider whether this was really a wise idea.

"No risky break-in maneuvers," she demanded.

"Okay, whatever you want. Just, please , let's do it before it gets too dark."

" Damn , Larissa..."

The corners of my mouth moved upward, and I jumped up, nearly knocking over a waitress with pink hair next to me.

"I'll take that as a yes !"