Changing the Rules (Richter Book 1)(42)

Sasha shook her head. “You’ve found nothing incriminating. We have a rich man entertaining his nephew, who is showing off for his friends.” She lifted the plastic evidence bags. “If these come back tainted, then we have a little more, but not much. In Seattle, I chased a lead. The girl is now nineteen. Marie Nickerson, she ran cross-country for Auburn. She wasn’t good. We know she dropped out of school her junior year. Warren’s investigation revealed this girl as having met an older man she never introduced to her friends or family. She started to attend parties, skip school, and within a month of finding trouble, she disappeared. The first hit in the system signaled Warren. Until now, there was no way to know if she was simply a runaway or a victim.”

“Sounds exactly like the profile we’re looking for. What happened in Seattle?” Claire asked.

Sasha lifted a finger in the air. “One prostitution bust. One. Then nothing. Disappeared again.”

“They’re moving the girls around.” Cooper glanced at Claire.

“Keeping it underground. I take it we don’t know who the guy was she was dating,” Claire said.

Sasha shook her head. “All we have is a car description, no plates. And that is a three-year-old lead.”

Manuel cleared his throat. “What about the john? The man Marie was caught with?”

“Booked and released. Pleaded not guilty. Said he was answering an ad for a professional massage.”

Cooper shook his head. “Yeah, right.”

“But now we have a name and a positive ID of a student at Auburn.” Sasha turned to Claire. “Remember where we met? And what I was doing?”

Claire smiled. “In the library at Richter and you were going over old yearbooks.”

“Guess where you’re going to be on Monday. It’s only been three years that she’s been missing. Many of her teachers will likely still be at Auburn.”

“Why not go to the administration and pull an old schedule?” Cooper asked.

Claire and Sasha exchanged looks. “Because we don’t know if we can trust them.”

“The less people that know what we’re learning the better,” Sasha said.

“Even Warren?” Cooper asked.

“Leave Warren to me.” Neil’s voice came from a single speaker in the van.

Claire jumped.

Cooper placed his hand over hers. “Damn, Boss. We forgot you were even there.”

“Neil is always listening,” Sasha reminded them.

And when Sasha’s eyes didn’t leave Cooper’s, an uneasy pitch in his stomach had him wondering just how much Neil listened to.



Claire went into the next week with a completely new agenda. She arrived to school early and went straight to the library. Unlike Richter, the library at Auburn seemed to house more computers than books, and a quick search uncovered that the library didn’t have a stash of old yearbooks. Those could be found with Mrs. Appleton, the yearbook committee director.

No way Claire Porter would want to be on that kind of thing. That left Claire only a couple of ways to get the books. She could break into the classroom and steal them, or break into the classroom and hack Mrs. Appleton’s computer and hope the old files were in there.

Much as Claire loved a good computer hack, she doubted she’d have enough time to find what she needed and get out unnoticed.

When Mrs. Appleton wasn’t dealing with the yearbook, she was teaching English in the room that adjoined Mrs. Wallace’s, which was a lot less conspicuous to break into from than a hallway filled with students walking by.

A plan formulated as Claire walked into Shakespeare and took her usual seat.

Instead of her normal attitude, she paid attention to the lesson and wrote a few notes.

When the bell rang, Claire held back.

“Mrs. Wallace?”

The older woman looked over the rim of her reading glasses, her expression unamused.

“About my book report . . .”

Mrs. Wallace removed her glasses and pointed them at Claire. “We can’t call that a book report.”

“Oh, so you read it already.”

“Let me see if I remember it clearly. ‘Everybody dies. The End.’”

Claire lowered her eyes. “Yeah—”

“I especially liked the postscript. ‘Five acts for any play is three acts too many.’ Bravo, Claire. Your best work to date.”

Claire huffed out a breath. “I just don’t get it. And last week I had a ton of work and I didn’t actually read anything but CliffsNotes until this weekend. And I’m still not . . .”

Mrs. Wallace kept watching her as if she didn’t believe a word Claire was saying. The woman was smart like that.

“When I try to write down the meaning of the play, I just get all tied up.”

“Then ask for help.” Mrs. Wallace started to soften.

“That’s what I’m doing.” Claire laid on the sad face, the one that used to get her a hall pass from Checkpoint Charlie at Richter.

Students for the next period started to enter the room.

“Okay, come in at your lunch.”

“I can’t. Coach Bennett has me at lunch for algebra.”

For the first time, Mrs. Wallace cracked a smile. “I’m surprised he doesn’t own your nights and weekends.”