Page 68 of That's Not My Name

“Oh shut up. I was clearly freaking out. You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

Yeah. Probably didn’t.

I shrug. “Fine. But you can’t bail after we leave. You have to be one hundred percent in, or stay here. If we have any chance of figuring out where Lola is, we don’t have time to freak out or backtrack. Deal?”

I hold out my hand.

Autumn grips my hand, hard, and shakes it. “Deal. Let’s go find Lola.”

Max leans over from the driver’s seat. “Get in, losers, we’re going sleuthing.”

I roll my eyes.

“No, for real,” he says, gesturing toward the school. “Get in. The security guard’s coming.”

We whip around and sure enough, the school’s security guard is walking toward the parking lot, shaking his head.

I shut my door, Autumn piles into the back, buckling herself into the middle seat again, and Max backs out of his parking spot. I look out the back window and see the guard disappear back into the school. Maybe he doesn’t care enough to report our ditching to the office staff, but considering my track record lately…that’s unlikely.

“Our phones are going to start blowing up if he tells the front office we left campus,” I mumble, turning mine to silent so I can more easily ignore it.

Autumn props her foot up on the center console to tie her shoelace. “Who cares. We have more important things to worry about. Like what the heck we’re supposed to do now.”

Max turns onto Main Street, and we all eye the police station as we pass it on our way to the highway. “What do you mean?”

She drops her foot and leans into the space between the two front seats. “What do we do once we get to Waybrooke? Do we go to the diner and ask around? What if nobody remembers Lola? What then?”

I don’t have an answer to any of these questions, and Max’s focus on the road tells me he doesn’t have a clue either.

“What’s the plan, specifically?” she continues. “Because if we march into town and we don’t have a clue what we’re doing—”

Frustration curls my hand into a fist. “I don’t know! Okay? I’ve been formulating this scheme for a half hour. I just want to get to where she was last seen. I don’t know what to do beyond that. Maybe the person who waited on them will be working today and we can go from there.”

Autumn snorts from the backseat. “That’s not a plan.”

“I don’t see you coming up with anything better.”

Her hand flashes open between the two seats. “Fine, give me your phone.”

I side-eye her. “Why?”

“You want a better plan? Give me your damn phone.”

I roll my eyes, but hand it over.

Autumn balances it on one knee and presses play on the tip-line recording as she rummages through the mess in Max’s backseat. She sits up with a scrap piece of paper and a marker, and smooths it out on her other knee. Looks like a discarded Spanish test. Autumn scribbles down Meredith Hoyt’s contact information from the end of the recording, and she hands my phone back.

“What are you doing back there?” Max asks, peeking at her in the rearview mirror.

“Shhh,” she says, holding up a finger. She grabs her phone, blocks her number with star six-seven, and then dials the woman. “Calls from the police department always come through as No Caller ID.”

Holy shit. She’s calling Tip Line Meredith? Pretending to be a cop?

This is a very bad idea.

“Can she do that?” Max whispers.

“We’re going to get arrested for impersonating a police officer,” I mumble, covering my face.

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