Fool Me Once

She checked the rest of the roster. Joe, a post-grad that year, had been on the team too. No surprise-he was a co-captain. But, man, that was a lot of death for one high school soccer team.

She clicked another link and found a photograph of the team. Half the team was standing, half kneeling in front of them. They all looked proud and young and healthy. Maya’s eyes quickly found Joe standing-again no surprise-in the dead center. The rakish smile had been there, even then. She looked at him for a moment, so damn handsome and confident, so ready to take on the world and knowing that he would always whip it, and she couldn’t help but think about his ultimate fate.

In the team picture, Andrew stood next to his brother, almost literally in Joe’s shadow. Theo Mora was in the front row on one knee, second from the right. He still had the awkward, forced smile. Maya scanned the other faces, hoping one might be familiar. None were. Three of these other boys had been on the yacht that night. Had she ever met any of them before? She didn’t think so.

She moved back to the roster and printed out the names. In the morning, she could look them up and…

And what?

Call or email them, she guessed. Ask if they’d been on that yacht. See if they knew anything about what happened to Andrew or, perhaps more relevantly, how Theo Mora had died.

She kept searching online, but nothing new came up. Maya couldn’t help but wonder whether Claire had done something similar. Unlikely. Odds were that she had learned something from Tom Douglass, something about this damn school, and with Claire’s go-right-to-the-top philosophy, she had driven down to Franklin Biddle Academy and started asking questions.

Had that been what got her killed?

One way to find out. The next day Maya would take a road trip to Philadelphia.

Chapter 24

Another horrible, flashback-filled night.

Even in the midst of it, even while the sounds ricocheted through her skull like hot shrapnel, Maya tried to slow it down and see whether Wu was right, whether she was just having flashbacks or if she was hearing things that she had never heard before. Hallucinations. But every time she got close, as in any sort of nocturnal voyage, the answer became smoke, elusive. The pain from the sounds grew, and so, in the end, Maya just held on until morning.

She woke up exhausted. She realized it was Sunday. No one would be at the Franklin Biddle Academy to answer her questions on a Sunday. Growin’ Up Day Care was closed on Sundays. Maybe that was for the best. A soldier takes advantage of downtime. If you have a chance to rest, you do so. You let the body and mind heal whenever you can.

All of this horror could wait a day, couldn’t it?

Maya would take the day off from death and destruction, thank you very much, and just spend a normal day with her daughter.

Bliss, right?

But Shane showed up at 8:00 A.M. with two guys who gave her a quick nod and got to work sweeping for possible listening devices or cameras. As they started up the stairs, Shane picked up the nanny cam in the den and checked the back of it.

“Wi-Fi is switched off,” Shane said.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there’s no way anyone could spy on you with this, even if the technology somehow exists.”

“Okay.”

“Unless, of course, there’s some kind of back way in. Which I doubt. Or someone came in and switched it off because they knew we’d be checking.”

“That sounds unlikely,” Maya said.

Shane shrugged. “You’re the one having your house swept for bugs. So let’s be thorough, shall we?”

“Okay.”

“First question: Besides you, who has a key to this house?”

“You do.”

“Right. But I’ve questioned me and I’m innocent.”

“Funny.”

“Thanks. So who else?”

“No one.” Then she remembered. “Damn.”

“What?”

She looked up at him. “Isabella has one.”

“And we don’t trust her anymore, do we?”

“Not even a little.”

“Do you think she’d really show up again and play around with that picture frame?” Shane asked.

“I would say it’s unlikely.”

“Maybe you should get some cameras and security,” he said. “At the very least, change the locks.”

“Okay.”

“So you have a key, I have a key, Isabella has a key.” Shane put his hands on his hips and let loose a long sigh. “Don’t bite my head off,” he said.

“But?”

“But what happened to Joe’s?”

“Joe’s key?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he have it with him when, he, uh-”

“Was murdered?” Maya finished for him. “Yes, he had his key on him. At least I assume he did. He usually carried a house key. Like everyone else in the free world.”

“Did you get back his belongings?”

“No. The police must still have them.”

Shane nodded. “Okay then.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay whatever. I don’t know what else to say, Maya. It’s so goddamn bizarre. I don’t get any of this, so I’m asking questions until maybe something becomes clear. You trust me, right?”

“With my life.”

“Yet,” Shane said, “you won’t tell me what’s going on.”

“I am telling you what’s going on.”

Shane turned, looked at himself in the mirror, and narrowed his eyes.

“What are you doing?” she asked.