Page 98 of Disobedient Pawn

Nash

I wiped the latest round of snowflakes off my face. It was steadily coming down, but I didn’t feel the cold. Not anymore. It was hard for me to feel anything other than focused determination. The last of the other students inside the study hall wandered out, and I watched them from my hidden perch behind the bushes.

I quickly texted the guys to meet me and got a bunch of question marks back, but I knew they would come. Every stalker movie I’d ever watched came to mind as I stared through the tall window at the warm glow of the study hall that doubled as our library. I couldn’t see Ren, but I knew she was in there. Her books were still strewn all over the table like she was trying to recreate a scene from Harry Potter. All she needed was a black cat to sit on the desk and a moving staircase in the background to complete the picture.

Who chose to willing study this late on a Friday night? A mocking voice in my mind asked if I was much better standing in a leafless bush while I watched Ren work. That little voice could fuck off. What I was doing had a purpose. What she was doing was just insanity. Live a little for fucksake.

She wandered out of one of the aisles, her nose dutifully buried in the book, her face intense as she read. I’d never met someone like her, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. She was practically unflappable and pushed back at me as hard as I did her. The bigger issue was that I hadn’t found any information that led me to believe we could bribe or intimidate her. I mean I could always threaten to kill her, but I preferred not to go that route, at least not yet.

Worse, I still hadn’t found anything on her or her last name. Every search ended up at a dead end. She was a ghost, a no one, just a person that poofed out of thin air and plopped into the center of my school like magic. That screamed one thing to me—witness protection.

No matter. I would find out Ren’s secret, even if it meant prying it out of her the hard way.

“Nash?” Liam was the first to arrive.

“Here.”

I stepped out from behind the bush and made my way down the path to greet Liam.

“What the hell are we doing?”

“We’ll wait until the others have arrived,” I said, my breath rising like a steady stream of smoke. “Did you set our little moles scurrying and entice them with the cheese I promised them?”

“I’m not sure moles eat cheese, but yes,” Liam said, shaking his head. “I’m hanging around Theo too fucking much.”

“Stop fucking him, and that will happen pretty quickly.” I shrugged.

“You wouldn’t say that if you had gotten a blow job from him, the things he can do with his tongue….”

“Okay, enough. You’re my bros, but I don’t need to know the deets on what you do behind closed doors,” I said.

“Who said the doors are closed?” Liam smiled as I stared at him.

“I have nothing to say to that. Here they come.” I nodded toward the pathway from the front entrance of the dorms.

Blake and Myles wandered up, looking cold as they shivered with their hands buried inside their hoodie pockets.

“Where’s Theo,” Myles asked as we converged.

“He had something else to attend to tonight, but we don’t need him for this.” I pulled out the handful of black ski masks from inside my jacket.

“What exactly are we doing,” Blake asked as I handed out the masks.

“Ren is the only one left in there, and we’re going to pay her a visit,” I said.

“Oh, hell no, count me out.” Myles threw his mask at me, and I glared at him. “And don’t be giving me yer evil eye. I just got Ren to start talking to me again.”

“I’m not sure you can count, ‘Leave me alone, Myles,’ as speaking,” Blake said, earning himself a dark glare from Myles.

I tossed the mask at him again, “I don’t care if you got her to get down on all fours and bray like a donkey as you fucked her. You’re doing this. It’s an order.”

“Are ya purposely trying to fuck up my chances with her forever,” Myles asked, his hands in fists as he stepped into my personal space.

“Get out of my face Myles or are you challenging my authority as your King?”

Right on cue, the lights I’d paid to have shut off clicked, and the normally bright pathway leading from the study hall switched off. In five minutes, so would the ones inside. I stood my ground with Myles, our noses almost touching as we stared at one another.

“No good will come of doing this, Nash,” he said. “She is not like us. She doesn’t know shit about shit.”