21. A Casual Heist

21

A ll day Monday I was on edge, knowing what I planned to do with Chance that night.

"What's up with you?" Jolene threw a crouton at me while we ate lunch at her desk.

Having passed Halloween over the weekend, she was transitioning into more Thanksgiving-inspired sweaters. That day she wore one in a deep russet, with brightly colored leaves in different mediums and textures adorning the front.

"Nothing…" I replied absently.

"I'm still waiting to hear the full story about what happened on Friday night. Is that it? Are you still mad at me?" Jolene pouted.

"I'm not mad at you." I looked up, making sure she felt the truth in my words.

"Then what is going on? What happened after you broke in?"

"I didn't find anything before he stormed in." I recalled the feeling of dread when I had seen dozens of eyes, all my own, staring back at me, through the photographs he'd taken, in his makeshift darkroom.

I was glad he'd given me the photos, and while I initially would have been upset if he hadn't, after more carefully inspecting them in the privacy of my apartment, I started to feel guilty about having the negatives as well.

While I was the primary subject matter, the photos were his art. He was clearly a skilled photographer, even if he considered himself a novice. The way he framed the shots, the angles, and the diffusion of light…they were beautiful. I hadn't seen other photos he'd shot, but I believed him when he admitted that he was proud of them.

If I hadn't been the subject, or they hadn't been taken without my permission, and I had stumbled upon them at a gallery, I would have thought them something special. I was considering returning the negatives to Chance, under the agreement that he not shoot any more photos of me without my permission.

"Did you ask about his name?" Jolene extracted me from my reverie.

"He said he didn't want special treatment." Just like Chance had coached me, it wasn't the whole truth, but it wasn't an outright lie.

"Oh." She set her fork down, disappointed in such a banal reason. "Then what?"

"Then I apologized for breaking into his room like a crazy person and asked him not to report me." That was a little bit of an exaggeration.

"And he let it go? Just like that?"

Jolene wasn't convinced.

"I'm not sure." I sighed. "He'll probably hold it over my head until he wants something."

Why was it getting easier to stretch the truth?

"What a jerk," she sneered.

I nodded, picking at my salad mindlessly. All I could think about was how awful it would be if Jolene got hurt because I couldn't let Daniel's disappearance go, and put her in the crosshairs. I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

"You're sure you're okay?"

"Just stressed over fitting everything in for class before Thanksgiving break," I replied honestly. But then the thought occurred to me that I could use the opportunity to spend more time with Chance—for the investigation— obviously . And in the process, slightly distance myself from Jolene, so if someone was observing us, they would be less likely to target her to get to me.

"Actually," I began, "I don't know if I'll have time to do dinner for a while, just lunch."

"No worries." Jolene smiled sweetly, making me feel awful for lying and using her understanding nature to my advantage.

"I'm sorry."

"Violet, you're just doing your job." She laughed. "Speaking of your job, you better get up to your class—the next period starts in five minutes."

"Shit."

Whereas the morning crawled by at an excruciatingly slow pace, the afternoon passed in a blur.

All too soon, I found myself knocking on Chance's door, dressed in all black. Black sweater. Black yoga pants. And, thankfully, my only pair of sneakers were also black.

"Your ass looks great in those pants," was the first thing Chance said when he got a good look at me. He snapped his mouth closed—dare I say, mortified—as if he hadn't intended to voice his thoughts aloud.

As for me, my body was suddenly on fire, blushing from head to toe.

Not knowing how to respond to his comment without embarrassing myself, I turned on my heel and walked toward the stairwell. A moment later, Chance's footsteps were close behind.

As we had hoped, at ten o'clock at night, the school was deserted, so we were able to make it down to the administrative offices undetected.

I'd instructed Chance to bring flashlights, as I didn't want to worry about getting caught, knowing that without some form of light, the basement would be pitch-black and impenetrable. The lights he had procured were barely adequate, but we'd make do.

"I hate it down here. It's definitely haunted, right?" he joked, keeping close enough that I could feel his body heat through the thin leggings.

"I'll protect you," I replied sarcastically.

"Oh yeah?" he challenged. "Who's going to protect you?"

"Shut up, Chance," I hissed. "I said no talking other than what's necessary when we walked through this harebrained plan last night."

"I didn't think you were being serious. I thought you loved the sound of my voice."

I scoffed, feeling around under Jolene's desk for the hook hidden in the back corner, where she stashed the master key set she got tired of taking home every evening. "Gotcha!" I whispered victoriously.

Chance moved the beam of his flashlight to the lock on the records room door to help me see what I was doing. I sighed in relief when the door clicked open at the behest of the key. Careful not to allow us to be locked in, I instructed Chance to move the stone block against the door to hold it open.

"What is that smell?" Chance half-gagged when he entered the room.

"You'll get used to it."

"God, I hope not." He placed a gentle hand at the small of my back. "What exactly should we be looking for, do you think?"

"I don't know? A big red folder that says ‘Montgomery Prep Secrets'?" We hadn't really thought much further than the idea that there had to be some record on campus about the missing girls.

"Hey look! Old trophies." Chance grabbed one, but the gold-coated star must not have been securely fastened to the rest of it because the base landed on the stone floor with a loud crack .

"Chance!" I barked. "Stop messing around! We have to make this quick so no one walks in on us breaking and entering."

Snatching the top of the trophy from him and placing it on the ground, I gave him a gentle punch on the arm.

"Such a violent little muse." He chuckled, rubbing his bicep, as if I could have actually hurt him.

"Stop calling me that."

Chance hooked his arm around my waist from behind, pulling my back flush against his front.

"What? Little or muse?" he whispered, his lips right next to my ear.

"Both." I shoved him away. "Do you want my help or not? I can't think when you're so close to me."

A smile curved along Chance's face, pleased at my admission.

"The school should keep incident logs—try to find those." I ignored his continued advances and moved to the opposite side of the room, away from him and his infuriating magnetism.

"What are you going to do?"

"See if I can find any thicker-than-normal student files from the year the girls went missing." I paused, having a sudden thought. "We should grab the 1992 yearbook too. That was the year you said you thought they went missing, and the yearbooks in the lounge stop at 1988."

He gave me a thumbs-up in agreement, and we got to work.

For the next hour, we searched through the records room with absolutely no luck, except for the yearbook.

"Chance—there's nothing here." I set my flashlight down, completely exhausted, my eyes bleary from squinting in the dark at the tiny typewritten font.

"There has to be a record somewhere." He leaned against the wall, just as tired as I was. "Two girls went missing—it was a big fucking deal."

"Well if there's information about what happened, it's not here."

Chance snapped his fingers. "Violet, you're a genius."

"What?"

"Those keys open any door on campus?" He looked through the door to Jolene's desk, where I had left the ring of keys.

"Yeah…"

Chance raced through the door, grabbing my hand as he went.

"Wait—the yearbook!" I stopped him to go back and get it, closing the records door behind me. "Where are we going?"

"Headmaster Winston's office." Chance grinned, keys in hand.

"Chance…" I pulled on his hand, hesitant to go with him. If he got fired, he still had money and a family he could go back to, in theory. But I didn't, not really.

"I won't let anything happen to you." He seemed to sense the reason for my concern. "I promise."

"If we get caught, I'll tell them you drugged me or something." I tried to make light of the heavy situation.

"Stockholm syndrome would be more believable. What with all the shameless flirting."

I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

"We should have worn gloves." I wrung my hands nervously as he used Jolene's keys to open up the headmaster's office.

We'd only just entered the room when we heard someone coming down the stairs. Our panicked, wide eyes met in the near dark.

Chance silently closed the door, flipping the lock back into place, then grabbed my arm and hauled me into the large wardrobe situated behind the door. We clicked off our flashlights in tandem, waiting to be discovered.

Chance's warm body was pressed flush against mine, as well as something long and hard, which was digging into my thigh.

"Please tell me that's the yearbook," I whispered pitifully.

Chance shifted his arm and lifted the book, which at some point had ended up in his custody, shoving it against my chest and relieving the spot on my leg.

"Is that gorgeous mind always in the gutter?" he snickered.

I was happy to be in the dark then, as my full-body blush returned. "Do you ever turn off?"

"You make it extremely difficult when everything you do turns me on," he whispered. I could feel his lips at the crook of my neck, and I thought for certain he might try to kiss me.

The door handle clicked open, and we both stilled, holding our breaths as the light switched on.

"I told you Janice—I left it in my office—I'm sorry." The headmaster was speaking to his wife over the phone.

We listened with literal bated breath as he rummaged around his desk for what was probably only a minute, but felt like it stretched on for hours, as Chance and I waited to see if we'd be discovered.

"Found it," he proclaimed suddenly. While a very thin stream of light came through the door of the wardrobe, we couldn't see what he was doing or what he had come back to retrieve. "I'll be home in half an hour." He hung up the phone, switched off the light, and locked the door. His footsteps slowly faded down the hall.

We waited another couple of minutes to be sure he was actually gone before tumbling out of the wardrobe with no grace whatsoever. I tried to forget about having almost kissed Chance.

"Too bad we didn't find Narnia," Chance quipped.

"I can't do this," I said, my voice shaky. "That was too close of a call. It's bad enough we're putting our lives in danger, but I can't lose this job."

"Hey." Chance rounded on me, placing his hands on my shoulders. "It's going to be okay. Just give me five minutes, Violet."

I started shaking my head.

"Five minutes and we'll leave, with or without the records."

"Five minutes?"

"Five minutes." He nodded.

"Okay."

But he didn't need that long.

In the top drawer of the headmaster's ancient filing cabinet, which mercifully sported a broken lock, Chance found a dark brown accordion file with everything we'd been looking for: the student records, school records, newspaper clippings, faculty and student accounts of the incident, and even a copy of the police report.

I wasn't sure how the headmaster had managed to get his hands on the report, but I was beginning to think he was capable of much more than I had initially thought possible. And maybe Chance was right that he could be behind everything.

Initially Chance wanted to just grab the folder and leave, but I was concerned the headmaster might notice its absence, so we used our phones to go through document by document and take photos that we could review without as much worry over being caught.

While we both wanted to start going through everything right away, it had taken a while to document everything, so we agreed to retire for the night. Chance left me only after ensuring I was safely tucked away in my room.

Finding it impossible to sleep as my thoughts ping-ponged between the mystery we were unraveling and trying to forget the way Chance's body had felt against mine, I gave in, letting my hand snake down my stomach and under the hem of my underwear. Only after I was sated did I finally fall into a restless slumber.