Page 108 of Lesson Learned

I’m halfway to the car before I realise I’m still on the phone with my brother. My driver is nowhere in sight again. I grab the spare keys from the board near the door and climb into the driver’s seat, trying to remember how it’s done.

A small babble comes from my phone, and I pick it up, sticking it in the holder on the dash and putting it on speaker with one hand while starting the vehicle and scrabbling for the garage door release with the other.

“What’s happening?”

“There’s an incident at the school. They’re in lockdown. I’ll call you back.”

“Fuck that. Tell me what’s going on.”

There’s a long pause while I pull up to my front gate at the wrong angle and have to hang halfway out the window to punch in the code.

“I don’t know, yet. I’m heading there now. Call you back in five.”

“Leave me on speaker, you idiot. I can listen in.”

“No. I want to call Paisley. I need to check she’s all right.”

“If the school’s in lockdown, you won’t be able to call or get inside. That’s the whole point.”

My brother’s right. An annoying trait.

I’m fearful everything will be locked, but my swipe card works on the outer gate, and I pull into the school carpark. One ambulance sits near the lobby of the student housing block. The EMTs stand near the entry doors which are barricaded with steel shutters. If they’re not getting in, neither am I.

Another is parked by the side of the building, right where I left the body. A modesty screen blocks my view of the actual site.

Patrick cuts into my thoughts. “Well?”

“I’ll call you back once I find something out,” I say, disconnecting before he can object again and trying Paisley’s number. It goes to voicemail as expected.

My gaze moves to the school gate as a black sedan rolls through. It looks familiar in the way that deeply anonymous vehicles do.

The phone rings and I grab it. “Paisley?”

“If that stops you hanging up on me,” Patrick says with a laugh. He’s got the call on speaker, which means he’s driving. For once, I wouldn’t mind having him by my side. “By the way, you might want to look alive. Your boss is on his way.”

And my eyes return to the nondescript vehicle just in time to see Creighton emerge, the blackest thundercloud on a stormy day.

“You called him?”

“Didn’t need to. Apparently, he got some alert about a murdered boy. What are the chances?”

I click disconnect and get out, nodding to my uncle when he turns my way.

Fuck.

He gets back into his vehicle, leaving the door open for me. Knowing him, it’ll be armoured, offering protection against any attack. I jog across the carpark, climbing inside and shutting the door before I greet him.

“What’s this about James Malloch?”

And I hoped there’d be a way out without having to throw myself on this man’s non-existent mercy, but there isn’t. I take a breath. Whatever else happens, I need to make sure Paisley is free and clear.

“He’s dead. I killed him last night.”

Creighton’s eyes don’t glare so much as absorb all light in the vicinity and spit back what he doesn’t use. Even when Patrick and I were children, he never softened looking at us. Every time we left his house, I felt a numb gratitude that I wasn’t his son and that was before he killed our father.

“He’s dead,” he repeats, and I nod. “And you… what? Left him out on display? Threw him in a dumpster?”

Just the facts, I remind myself. My uncle isn’t fond of embellishment.

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