Ava shook her head. “I’ll be right behind you. I have to do one more thing first.”
The girls hurried out the door. Mackenzie stopped at the doorway, looking like she was going to argue, but after a moment she turned and followed the others. Ava hurried into his office, grabbed the flash drive, and then ran through the kitchen and out onto the patio.
He was up at six AM digging in the backyard, Alex had said.
The yard was dark, but the moon was pushing its way through the clouds. It only took her a moment to find the fresh dirt overturned in the corner.
Ava knelt down and started scooping dirt out with her hands. It was moist and rich, and it stuck to her skin as she dug, but she didn’t slow down. Just a few feet down, her hands found something hard and rectangular. She brushed off the last bit of dirt and pulled it out.
It was a plain metal box with a latch. Hands trembling, she fumbled at the latch until it sprang open.
Another flash drive.
She stared down at it, her mouth hanging open. Then she realized—it was quiet. Too quiet.
The shower was off.
Ava slipped both flash drives into her pocket and turned to run down Mr. Granger’s lawn in her half-buttoned dress. Her bra peeked out with every stride. The hem of the dress flipped up to reveal her underwear. Her bare feet sank in the dewy grass. Caitlin’s headlights blazed to life in front of her, and the back door swung open for her to leap in.
“Drive!” Ava screamed as she slammed the door.
It wasn’t until the girls were speeding down the street that Ava looked back out the window and saw someone in the street, staring after her. At first she thought it was Granger—that he’d figured it out. But then her throat caught. It wasn’t Granger at all.
It was Alex.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CAITLIN DROVE FAST AND BLIND, running up on the curb as she took a quick right. No one seemed to be following them. She could just make out Ava’s face, ashen and streaked with mud, in the rearview mirror. She looked as if she was going to throw up.
She peeled out onto a main road and stepped on the gas. “Slow down,” Julie said in a strangled voice. “The last thing you need right now is to get a ticket.”
Caitlin relaxed her foot on the pedal a little, but her knuckles were still white on the steering wheel. They’d just broken into someone’s house. They’d just watched their teacher practically have sex with Ava. And the way she’d felt, hiding in the kitchen—well, she never wanted to feel that terrified again.
Once they’d gone through two stoplights, Ava looked around cautiously and held up something between her fingers. It glinted under a streetlight as the car passed it. “I found this buried in his backyard.”
“What is it?” Mackenzie asked, squinting.
“A second flash drive,” Ava answered.
“Give it here.” Julie grabbed it. Then she rummaged around in the backpack she’d brought and pulled out a laptop. It chimed as she turned it on and waited for it to boot up.
“Did you say he’d buried it?” Caitlin asked.
“That’s right,” Ava said. “Alex saw him bury something.” Her face fell when she said Alex’s name. “I found a metal box, and this was the only thing in there.”
“What do you think he has on here?” Caitlin wondered. “More pictures of girls?”
“It’s got to be something bad enough to bury,” Ava posited. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m sure he realizes I just screwed him over. Maybe he even knows the drive is missing. If we can’t bust him soon, he’ll come after us.”
“You guys.”
They all looked at Julie. Her face shone blue in the light from her computer. “This isn’t Granger’s flash drive.” She looked up, her eyes full of terror. “It’s Nolan’s.”
Everyone gasped. Caitlin clamped her mouth shut, her skin prickling. She pulled into an empty parking lot. A dingy brick building housing a plumbing supply store loomed in the distance. Across the street, the bright lights of a 7-Eleven cast an eerie pallor on the pavement.
“But that’s good, right?” Caitlin broke the silence, twisting around and looking at Julie. “I mean, why would Granger have it buried in his yard? The fact that he had it will be incriminating.”
“It would have been, if we’d left it in his yard.” Julie started opening files, staring down at the screen. “Now, as far as anyone knows, we have it.” She moved her finger on the trackpad. “His email is on here. The messages are current up to the day he died.”
She turned the screen so that Caitlin and Mackenzie in the front seat could get a good look. Caitlin watched as she opened the Sent folder. Caitlin leaned over to see better, her eyes widening. There were dozens of emails to Lucas Granger.
Julie opened the first. The subject line read only Extra Credit.
Hey Mr. G—I think that you may have made a mistake when you graded my paper on Jean Cocteau. I’m pretty sure it should have been an A.