Golden Trail (The 'Burg #3)(66)

“Raquel,” he warned.

Her eyes shot to him. “Okay, well, do you know Sharon Reynolds?”

“Do I need to know her for this story to go faster?”

Her eyes narrowed but she kept talking. “She works in the office here.”

“And?” he asked when she didn’t go on.

“And, she also works in the office at the school. She’s part-time for both.”

“Ah,” Layne said, his head tipping back and his gaze hitting the ceiling.

“Anyway,” Rocky said sharply and Layne’s eyes went back to her.“I remembered her complaining once that the pastor is a security freak and changes the alarm codes so often she never remembers them. She comes in every once in awhile when no one is around and has to punch them in and she’s gotten them wrong so many times and set off the alarm, now she writes them down and keeps them in her wallet.”

“Reason one for the pastor to be a security freak and reason one to lose his office lady,” Layne noted.

“Layne!” she snapped.

“So, you got the code how?”

“I, um…” She stopped and bit her lip.

“Baby –”

She interrupted him quickly. “When everyone in the office was at lunch, I went to her desk and got into her purse.”

“Fuck me,” Layne whispered.

“No one saw!” she cried.

“Okay, how’d you get the door open?”

“Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, taking pictures of the personnel file or something?” she asked.

He dropped his arms and took a step toward her.

She took a step back, putting her hand up and saying quickly, “Okay!” She dropped her hand and explained, “Sharon’s always losing her keys. She’s famous for it. She leaves them everywhere. It’s crazy. So, um… while I was in her purse, I uh… kinda nabbed them.”

Layne closed his eyes.

“It’s okay,” she assured him and he opened his eyes. “She was going on and on this afternoon about how she,” Rocky tucked the file under her arm, lifted her hands and did air quotation marks, “lost her keys and tomorrow I’ll just,” she did air quotation marks again, “find them.”

All right, it was safe to say he was done.

“Rocky, what’d I tell you about this shit?” he asked.

“Layne –”

“Put the file back and get your ass to your car.”

“Layne –”

He leaned into her. “Do it or I carry your ass to your car.”

“I think he’s doing something to the girls,” she whispered and Layne leaned back.

“Come again?”

She shook her head and stepped forward. “I heard it today, in the bathroom, two freshmen talking through the stalls. One of them is Alexis McGraw. She’s a pretty little thing but about twenty years older than she actually is. She comes to Youth Group here and I heard her bragging about sharing her gum with the Youth Minister.”

“So?”

“It had been chewed.”

Oh f**k.

“And they didn’t use their fingers when they handed it off,” Rocky finished.

Damn.

“Could she be lying?” Layne tried but not holding much hope in the attempt.

Rocky took in a breath. “She’s older than her years and she’s dying to grow up and she’s obvious about being impatient for that to happen. So, yes, she could be telling tales but with that, and the rest of the stuff I’m hearing, I can’t sit on this but I also can’t start a witch hunt either if it’s just a bunch of overenthusiastic kids who really, really like Jesus.”

Layne studied Rocky while his mind went over what he knew.

That ‘burg was in the bible belt and religion was vital to that community but that didn’t translate to the roster of the Youth Group at the Christian Church that had been skidding by with around ten or fifteen members for the last thirty years adding over fifty new recruits in the last six months, most of them girls.

Fuck.

Layne made a decision, turned to the copier just inside the door and switched it on.

“What are you doing?” Rocky asked.

He turned back to her and held his hand out for the file. “We could take pictures, sweetcheeks, but it’d take forever, the copies would suck and we got a copier right here. Hand me the file and see if they keep attendance records for Youth Group.”

She stared at him a second, eyes wide. Then she gave him the dimple. Then she handed him the file and whirled around, her ponytail flying, and opened a filing cabinet drawer.

* * * * *

“I don’t see anything here,” Rocky noted and Layne looked at the back of her head.

He was sitting on her couch sifting through Youth Group rosters and making note of names and how attendance wasn’t inching up, it was shooting up, the vast majority of new recruits female.

Raquel was cross-legged on the floor beside his leg, head bent, the back of her neck exposed, an opened bottle of fancy-ass beer in front of her and she was reading through the personnel file on TJ Gaines, the Youth Minister.

“You’re not gonna see anything, Roc, especially if it’s bogus, not until I run his shit through my systems at the office tomorrow,” he told her.