“My father and your father were close friends,” he offers up finally, looking back at me. “Your dad gave my dad the money he needed to start his company.”
“Fort Humboldt Security,” I offer up, and Chasm’s brows go up.
“Uh, that’s part of it. How do you know about that?”
“Because Fort Humboldt Security installed both the security system as well as the cameras at the Vanguard house,” I offer up, palms flat on the table. I hate that I’m even making the accusation, but there it is.
“Yeah,” Chas offers up, looking down at the surface of the table. “I already thought about that actually.” He lifts his gaze again. “It wouldn’t be impossible, I guess, for my father’s company to have fucked around with it.” He sits up straight again, his mouth in a grim line. “I didn’t want to mention this, but maybe we should check the lake house? My dad has a ‘friend’ staying there, and he doesn’t want me over there. Doesn’t that seem like a weird coincidence?”
“It really does,” I reply, thinking of everything else we know. “It just feels sort of obvious. I’m wary of anything that seems too obvious. I did … well, that day I saw you with that drunk girl …”
Chasm gives me a sharp look, but he doesn’t stop me from talking.
“I felt like I recognized the woods near your house, like maybe that’s where I was when I woke up that night and started walking. Is there a skatepark nearby?”
“I guess there could be? I don’t know.” Chasm pulls out his phone and sets it on the table, opening up a map and then typing in the address of the house. He zooms out and looks around the edges of the property, his body going still as he spots a nearby park. Emerald City Skate is what it’s called. “Jesus.”
We exchange a look across the surface of the table.
“We have two field trips we need to take then,” I continue, cradling my left hand with the broken fingers in my lap. “Mr. Volli’s house, and the lake house.”
“We could maybe swing one on the way home today and one tomorrow, without Tess realizing it. That is, if you can get Maxx to grab Kimber for me.” He glances her way, toward the table where she’s sitting with her friends. She looks our way, but her expression doesn’t give anything away.
Does she know that I was jumped this morning or why? Does she care? What does she think of me sitting here with Chasm?
“It might have to be vice versa,” I amend, looking back at him. “You’ll have to take Kimber, and I’ll go with Maxx.”
Chasm frowns heavily at that, but he doesn’t argue. He knows as well as I do that this is a better solution to the problem. The very last thing I need is another enemy under my own roof. Keeping Kimber calm is paramount.
“Maybe it’d be better if I just went with Maxx myself, after we dropped you off?”
I give him a look that he returns with an unrelenting stare of his own. That’s not happening, but we don’t have to argue about it just this second. I need to know about Justin.
“Tell me everything you know about my father,” I demand, and Chasm sighs.
“It’s not a lot. All I know is that he had some unicorn techie startup thing going on.”
“Unicorn?” I ask, and Chasm shrugs.
“Venture capitalist slang for ‘worth a billion dollars’. Your dad was creating a series of apps that he was going to sell to the military for a buttload of money. All I know is that some sort of scandal went down, and he was stripped of his title in the company, his assets were seized, and he was run out of town.”
My stomach drops and I feel a little dizzy.
Not only is my father the Seattle Slayer, but he’s a thief? A disgrace?
“A lot of people in this town hate him. But nobody’s seen or heard from him in like … fourteen years?” Chasm offers, tacking a question mark onto the end of that sentence.
Fourteen years.
Since I was stolen from a daycare center.
Fourteen years … fourteen days that the Slayer holds his victims. And Parrish is on day eleven.
We’re running out of time, and I don’t feel any closer to an answer today than I was nearly two weeks ago.
Where are you, Parrish? I wonder as the bell rings and Chasm rises to his feet. Where the hell are you?
“Let’s go through a drive-thru or something and get a coffee,” Chasm suggests as he meets Kimber in the hallway after class. “Dakota can catch a ride with Maxx, so we can have some peace.” He lets a warm, inviting smile slide across his lips, and I feel myself shifting uncomfortably.
“I’d like that Chas,” she offers up, returning his smile with one of her own. Hers is about as false as his, tinted with melancholy and pain, but neither of them acknowledges the other’s performance. Instead, Chasm walks me outside where X is already waiting outside of his orange Jeep Gladiator, arms crossed over his chest, his mouth turned down in a deep frown. Not unsurprising, considering the way the two of us spent our morning.
