Page 35 of Duplicity

Ahandful of the kids had chosen to eat their lunch in Simon’s classroom. A couple of girls and Justice Spears, plus his buddies. Simon occupied himself with his laptop until Justice got up to toss his sub sandwich wrapper into the trash by Simon’s desk. Something he shouldn’t do, since it was only for paper. Technically, the kid needed to head all the way down to the cafeteria and dispose of the food wrapper in the big trash cans designated for that.

The teacher who used this classroom during the school year wasn’t going to want ants.

For the sake of the case, Simon wouldn’t mention it this first time it happened. He glanced over, leaned slightly toward the kid, and asked, “How did you do earlier on the quiz?”

There wasn’t much about the kid that came across as childish. He was a high school junior and probably passed for someone in his early twenties. Simon would put money down on the fact this kid had a fake ID. He probably used it to buy whatever he wanted, along with his father’s credit card.

Justice sniffed, shrugged. “I guess I did okay.”

“Anything you want to go over? I’m thinking you’ll pass the class at least, but I can fill in any gaps if you want.”

Everyone knew that gaps in math learning could cause a lack of understanding later, at a higher level. Although maybe everyone didn’t know that, and Simon simply assumed they did.

His experience of interacting with regular people was limited. What was normal supposed to be like? He had always stuck out to an extent. It was definitely easier to blend in as an adult. But even at Vanguard, he seemed to be an anomaly. To be fair, they hadn’t ever given him the impression that was a bad thing.

The kid shrugged again.

“When something is hard, it makes a difference whether you believe you can do it or not.” Simon tried to sound teacherly. “The mind is powerful, and we can block our own progress just because we don’t think we can do something.”

Peter’s suggestion that they should begin with this one person and flip the teenager to roll over on his family wasn’t a bad idea. But targeting a young man didn’t sit right with him. Not when it was unclear which of Justice’s family members were involved.

Justice might be in the middle of everything and as guilty as all of them. Or he might be trapped with no choice. The way the family had trapped Simon.

Justice said, “Football’s the same way. Coach said if you don’t believe you can catch the ball, then you’ll drop it.”

“Principles that apply to all kinds of things. Not just football.” Of course, football was a mystery to Simon. He’d read a book one time that had explained the game and the rules and how it all worked, but the book didn’t tell him why anyone would want to get all banged up like that.

Justice wandered back to his seat, where one of his friends spoke quietly to him. Justice shook his head.

Simon was entirely too focused on the case to worry about whether they liked him as a teacher. He could see the appeal ofimparting learning into young minds and the rush of solving a case Peter got from success in a mission. Just like when Simon hacked a secure system and gained access.

But with his job, there were no lives at risk. When he messed with computers, no young minds would be forever altered by the things he said and did.

Even though this mission could fix what was broken inside him, it could, at the same time, cause harm to Justice. But what other choice was there? Justice was the gateway to his father or some other relative—maybe an uncle.

When Simon had run from the estate the night he escaped, he’d been chased by dogs and men with guns. It was only luck, or providence, that a delivery driver was on the street the moment he ran out into the middle of the road.

Maybe the driver knew exactly what happened on that estate because he’d said nothing about the crazed way Simon looked.

Simon had never been able to track the guy down. Or the road.

The bell rang, and the kids filed out. A minute or so later, an older man strolled in wearing jeans and a faded denim shirt with a visitor’s badge clipped to his shirt pocket. Bob Davis ran the Cold Case department at Vanguard. Peter’s boss, technically. They were close, and Simon occasionally got caught in that net, though not so much lately when Peter spent most of his time with Selena.

As much as he tried to get used to his life and the way it had been for a while, things were constantly changing.

Simon asked, “Are you going to tell me I’ll lose my job if I don’t let Vanguard help me?”

Bob set his phone on the desk. “I don’t need you to let me help you. I’m already here.”

“Under what pretense?”

Bob grinned. “I’m just the IT guy. Doing a spot check on the network.”

“Funny, because I recall you needing help just to print a PDF.” Simon snorted.

Bob chuckled. “Guess you should keep an eye on me, then you can make sure you fix whatever I break.” The old man frowned slightly. “Did you get anything from the kid just a second ago?”

So he had seen Simon talking to Justice Spears. “Trying to establish a rapport, mostly.”

---