Page 110 of Trip Me Up

The tape cartridge closer to Jackson clattered to the floor. “I win!” He raised his fists in the air.

I shoved the tote bag at him. “Watch out. There’s a mushy apple in the bottom.”

“Ew.” He set the spongy fruit on the desk and then stuffed the wad of tape into the bag.

No, we didn’t look suspicious at all, walking out of the server room with our bulging bags. I scurried up to the main floor and located the mail room and its industrial shredder.

When Jackson shoved the wads of tape into the opening, the machine chugged to life and started grinding. I breathed out a sigh. The shredding went much faster than the unspooling.

When Jackson finished his tape, I started mine. I kept one hand over my racing heart, pressing it back into my chest, while I used the other to feed the tape into the shredder. We’d be done in a couple of minutes, and then we’d peel off in Jackson’s Lamborghini in a yellow blur.

“Samantha. What are you doing?” Martell’s voice made me jump.

I turned the bag upside down over the mouth of the shredder to send the last of the tape through.

“That’s not—that’s not CASE.” He held the wrinkled apple in one hand. His other hand covered his belly, which probably felt as queasy as mine.

I sympathized with him. Really, I did. He’d been kind to me, almost fatherly, since I’d come to the department. I’d done everything he’d asked, and it was probably a shock to find his meek little grad student destroying three years’ worth of work and funding. Plus the seed money, the accolades, the papers he could have published.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Martell. I learned a lot on that tour, and now I know CASE isn’t a good thing for books. Not the way I designed it.”

“CASE didn’t belong to you. It belonged to the university.” He flung the apple into the trash as an exclamation point.

I sucked in a breath. He’d never raised his voice with me before.

Jackson stepped away from the wall, his palms held out in front of him. “Look, Dr. Martell. We’ll pay whatever restitution is necessary to make you whole—”

“Jackson.” I moved between him and my adviser. “This is my fight.”

He nodded and stepped back, folding his arms and glaring at Martell.

“Dr. Martell, I can’t keep going with CASE. It’s a bad thing for too many people. It’ll damage human creativity. And that’s important.”

“So is science. And business!”

“They’re all important. But none is more important than the others.”

His face went red, then purple. “I’m calling campus security. This is theft. Destruction of university property. Your mother will be so disappointed.” He picked up the handset hanging on the wall.

Talking back to her was one thing. Being arrested? “Disappointed” was only the beginning.

“Better to go along for now,” Jackson muttered. “I have experience in these, ah, situations.”

“How many times were you arrested by campus police?”

His gaze arrowed to the ceiling. “Actually arrested or just…the subject of discussion?”

“Really?”

“Nine,” he said.

“Was that arrests or discussions?”

He opened his mouth to respond, but Martell slammed the handset back onto its cradle. “They’ll be here shortly.”

Jackson let out a fake sigh. “This would’ve gone so much better for you if you hadn’t done that. You’d never have had to apply for funding again.”

Martell stilled.

“But now that Samantha’s little error in judgment is going to be made public, I’m afraid the Joneses are going to have to flex some muscle.”

Jackson’s evil smile said he’d enjoy flexing his muscles.

But as I sat beside him in the back seat of the university police car that looked almost exactly like an actual police car with its flashing red and blue lights, and with the officer on his phone with someone who sounded suspiciously like the San Francisco police department, Jackson didn’t look like he was enjoying the fallout of our adventure.

I’d been trying to destroy only my own future, but somehow I’d also managed to ruin Martell’s dreams and make my brother an accomplice to my first-ever criminal activity.

Fantastic.

---