Page 22 of Secrets and Lies
“What did you go to the security room for?” I ask, circling back to what he said when he first got to my room.
He stretches his arms above his head for a few beats. “I was checking to see if we have access to any of the building blueprints the school has on file.” He drops his arms and leans back against the wall. “I couldn’t find anything in the office, so I went to Liam’s room to see what he thinks about the video you took of Hawthorne breaking into that room at Baxter last night.”
“Did you learn anything interesting?” I ask when he doesn’t continue.
Hazen and Connor’s minds both run at about a million miles a second and ping-pong around just as fast, but after a lifetime of friendship, I can usually sort through the info dumps and pick out what’s important in the moment, which is the only reason I can follow all the twists and turns this conversation has already taken.
“Depends what your definition of interesting is. He’s already hacked into the school’s primary system and downloaded the blueprints to Baxter House, and according to the plans he found, the room Xave broke into doesn’t exist.”
“How old are the plans?” I ask. “Like, how current are they?”
Most of the houses on campus go through some sort of renovation during the summer, so it’s possible this could just be a matter of the school having outdated blueprints on file.
“The stamp on them says they were filed in September.”
“Did the Baxter blueprints have anything to do with you wanting to look up our house blueprints?” I ask, trying to link those two pieces of conversation together.
“Sort of. I was thinking about the house lore and how they’ve never made a full map of all the shit behind the walls and how many ways there are to get around the place. That made me curious about what records the school has on file and if that might be where the creeper in our walls got his info. But thinking about that guy made me wonder what the fuck Hawthorne was up to last night, so I went to Liam to see if he could look up the Baxter plans to get us some answers, and of course, he was already all over that.”
“Did he say if he was going to look into this mysterious room?” I ask, not at all surprised by how many side quests Hazen’s thought process took.
He nods. “He’ll text you about it later. He has a few things he wants to look into first. But no matter what he finds, this whole thing is already sus as hell.”
“It is,” I agree.
“Thank fuck we’ll be on vacation in a week. This shit is way above our pay grade.” He stifles a yawn. “I need to get away from this place before I lose my shit and make it everyone’s problem.”
“Yeah, thank fuck,” I echo. “Do you think you can keep your shit together the next five days?”
He grins. “I mean, I can try, but I make no promises.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“It’s pronouncedawesome.” He flips me a peace sign and pulls open my door. “Imma go talk to Rath then pass out until I become a human again. Later.”
I wave as he leaves my room, my mind spinning as I process everything we just talked about.
We got some answers on the Xave thing, but those answers also brought up more questions.
We also just made house history by being the only group of leaders who don’t have to go through an election, we’re still dealing with our mystery trespasser, and now we have to worryabout the leadership being shady and potentially sabotaging us and our shot at taking over next year.
Hazen is right, this shit really is above our pay grade.
Leaning closer to my computer, I switch camera feeds and watch the grainy black-and-white video on my screen. Almost a minute passes with no activity, and I switch to the next camera feed and scan for any signs of our intruder.
I’ve spent the last six days going through our security videos, and after hours of work and a few sleepless nights, I finally have a better picture of how our uninvited visitor has been getting inside and moving around the house.
And a way better picture of just how extensive the secrets behind the walls of this place actually are.
The hardest part of all of this has been trying to figure out how he’s getting into the building, and after days of running programs and watching hours and hours of footage, I finally learned that he’s been exploiting a series of blind spots in our outside security network to get from the back parking lot to a small shed about fifty yards from the house, then he disappears from view.
I assumed he was using some sort of entrance or passage that connects the shed and the house, but after examining the whole structure with Rath, we couldn’t find anything even remotely resembling a door or hatch.
Not knowing how he’s getting inside the house is driving me crazy, but at least now I can use my newfound knowledge of the blind spots in our system to track him.
It doesn’t take long to realize that he’s both a creature of habit while also being relatively unpredictable.
He doesn’t come to the house every night, but when he does, he always shows up between ten and eleven. He stays until between four and five in the morning, and he always wears all black with either a hood or a hat to hide his identity.
