Latent Danger (On the Line #2)(30)

He could see the weight leave her shoulders. There were still tears tipping slowly over the edges of her eyes, as she blinked up at him, but she nodded.

“Is there anything else you can tell us, Kate?” Shauna asked.

“I don’t know,” Kate said, sitting up straighter. “What kind of stuff would help?”

They had to be careful now. If they fed her any lines, she’d just give them back, and as much as Zach wanted a lead, he wanted it to be genuine, not something they planted in her head.

“Can you tell us who else hung out at Sawyer’s clubhouse?” Zach saw Liz stiffen then, but she seemed to force herself to relax right away. He remembered she’d said she didn’t hang out there, and he wondered if that was by choice or because she wasn’t welcome.

Sawyer and Kate were in the in crowd. Liz was not.

They listened as Kate rattled off the names of nearly the entire hockey team and a number of other boys at the school. There wasn’t anyone they hadn’t already looked at yet.

“What other girls go to the clubhouse?” Shauna asked.

Again, Liz tensed.

Kate listed a number of girls, all of whom had shown up at one time or another in the Facebook group. No one they hadn’t already known about.

“Do any adults come to the clubhouse?” Zach asked.

Kate looked confused. “Adults?”

It occurred to Zach that it shouldn’t be a foreign concept that an adult might come to check on the kids or supervise the party. Then again, that’s not the kind of thing he was talking about.

“Sure, adults,” he said. “Maybe Sawyer’s grandfather or father?”

Kate shook her head, no.

“Any of the coaches?”

Another no.

“How about any older kids? Maybe kids who’ve already graduated from school?” Zach didn’t point out that that would make them adults as Kate already seemed so thrown by the idea.

She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Mm hmm. In the summertime some of the kids come back if they’re home from college for the summer.”

“Have any of them been around yet this year?” Shauna asked.

Elmhurst was getting ready to wrap up for the semester, but Zach didn’t think colleges were out yet.

“No, not yet.” Kate looked defeated. She looked up at them with large owl eyes. “Can’t you prove he’s lying? That they’re all lying? The hockey team covers for him, you know.”

Kate looked to Liz who nodded her agreement and then Kate went on, swiping at tears on her face, as though she’d realized what the problem was. “You have to get the hockey team to tell the truth. If you could get them to talk...” she pled, like they hadn’t already thought about that.

Shauna pulled a stack of cards from her pocket and handed one to each of the girls. “If either of you think of anything or hear anything on campus you think we should know about, you can reach out to either of us directly.” She looked over her shoulder as though she knew Zach would be pulling his own cards out, which he was. He handed one to each of the girls.

“My cell phone is on there,” Shauna said, and Zach confirmed that his was, as well.

“Call anytime,” he said. It never hurt to have eyes and ears on the campus reporting back to them. They needed every scrap of help they could get at this point.

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Chapter Twenty





Zach and Ronan pulled in the drive of the Elmhurst Academy early the following day. They needed to talk to the head of the school. Shauna was up north in her office for the morning, catching up on what her team had been doing and getting them caught up on the New Haven side of the investigation.

Zach wished she were down here. He was getting far too used to seeing her each day.

“So,” Ronan said as Zach navigated up the long drive. “You gonna tell me what’s with you and Shauna? Is there history there or future?”

Zach didn’t answer. He looked out over the campus, thinking it looked different than their first visit. The kids weren’t as relaxed. They still walked in groups to and from the various buildings, but there was a tension vibrating in the air that hadn’t been there earlier.

“Cuz even an idiot can see there’s something there.”

Zach looked to Ronan as he pulled into one of the empty spots in front of the building that housed the head of school’s office. “We have history. Before I was a cop.”

If Ronan was bothered by the fact Zach hadn’t told him, or that he didn’t seem inclined to share more now, he didn’t say so. They walked up the stairs and into the office, asking Carville’s receptionist if he was in. After a brief conversation on the phone, she showed them into the office.

The man didn’t look good. He seemed to have aged in the days since they’d last seen him.

“Gentlemen? Do you have news?” Carville gestured at the small conference table and sat when they did.

“I’m afraid it’s questions that brought us here, not news,” Ronan answered.

Zach jumped right in. “Why didn’t you tell us you were new to the school, Mr. Carville?”

The man’s brows went up. “Well, I’m not that new. It’s been almost nine months.”