Page 7 of Duplicity

Cat said another prayer. For the teens who came and went from this building. Prayer was a full-time job. She’d have to figure out when to get to the bottom of this Vanguard thing. And the investigation she kept hidden on her computer.

She definitely didn’t have time to be distracted by a good-looking guy.

It would only spell trouble.

FOUR

Simon stepped outside to watch the students leave in cars, on the bus, or get picked up by parents. One kid rode past on a bicycle, his helmet unbuckled. The kind of upbringing Simon had never experienced.

“You’re looking at them like you’ve never seen anything like this.”

He pretended not to be startled and shifted the laptop closer to his front. He needed proximity to keep the connection going until his program could worm its way into Justice Spears’s GPS. Officer Alvarez stood beside him.

He tried to act nonchalant about it. “I never went to school. I was a missionary kid.” He swallowed down the lump in his throat. “My mom homeschooled us.”

“So you have siblings?” she asked. “I have a brother. He’s a cop. My dad was a cop, before he retired. My uncles were all cops.”

“The family business?”

“Except if you’re female.” She winced. “They’re not sexist, just overprotective. How about you?”

Simon smiled as much as he could. “My mom passed away, and my dad—” He couldn’t even finish that sentence. “I have an older sister and a twin brother.”

“Wow.” She smiled back. “People used to ask if Romeo and I were twins since we were in the same grade. He’s older, almost a year. Do you and your brother look alike?”

“Some people can’t tell us apart.” Simon ran a hand through his hair. “He cut his short for work, so I let my hair grow. It’s easier for now.”

And yet, part of him resented accommodating others in this way. The resemblance was his connection with Peter. It was something they shared that was theirs alone and no one else’s.

Peter having a fiancée didn’t change that. But it seemed like it changed everything else. Nothing had really been the same since Lena two-timed them. Peter had changed departments and then met Selena. Simon’s life hadn’t altered all that much. So why did things seem…off?

“That’s cool.” She seemed like she was genuinely interested. “And you work for Vanguard?”

Simon nearly choked. “Principal Cruise told you.”

“I am the School Resource Officer. I need to know these things.”

“So now you know.” He checked the screen of his laptop and saw Justice had left and was headed north toward a residential area—or the freeway onramp.

The rumble of an engine reached the edge of his awareness.

Simon spun to see a black SUV with tinted windows roll past, slowing as it hit the school zone. But there seemed to be something far more ominous about it than simply the driver wanting to obey the flashing signs to slow down.

“Everything okay?”

He barely registered her question. Simon tracked the SUV past the school until it turned the corner at the end of the street.

“Silas?”

Okay, he didn’t like being called the wrong name. “Sie is fine.”

“Cat.” An interested, curious look crept into her expression.

As much as Simon wanted to talk to her more, he had to do his job, or he would never end this. “I should go.”

“Hot date?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she flushed.

Did she think he was some kind of ladies’ man? Everyone he knew thought he was a super nerd. Math teachers weren’t known for being athletic, but that was a stereotype. Kind of like what people thought of homeschoolers.

---