Page 28 of Selling Innocence

Worse? None of it gave me any idea as to how she might know Lorien or why he might want her.

“I still don’t have a clue,” Hayden admitted. “She seems like a normal college student. I didn’t find any evidence of her knowing Lorien, of her knowing anything about his world, any reason he’d find an interest in her. It just doesn’t make sense.”

I peered around the room, wondering what we might have missed.

The safe.

I’d assumed more jewelry sat in it, given its location, but what if that wasn’t the case?

I gestured toward the closet before heading back into it, Hayden’s heavy steps telling me he followed.

How he could walk so loudly, I would never understand. Then again, his point was to be present, and others knowing he was there only helped him.He could walk softly, but he never did unless he had a reason.

I tapped the top of the safe, then raised my eyebrow.

“It could just be jewelry,” Hayden said, a hesitation in his tone that implied he didn’t fully believe that. “But, given how expensive the stuff in the glass case is, it’s hard to believe she’d have anything nicer to put in a safe.” He peered at me. “Can you open the safe?”

I nodded, a quick jerk of my head. While I wasn’t a thief, I did have to track my targets, find out information about their whereabouts, and at times bring back proof my clients wanted. That required accessing sensitive information, which was the sort of things people liked to keep inside locked safes.

That made it a useful skill to be able to get into said safes.

The process took longer than it should have, all things considered. It went to show just how nice this particular safe was, how serious the person who installed it was about keeping their secrets private. The better the lock, the better the prize, after all.

When the lights on the front flashed green—the sign that I’d managed to bypass the programming and reset it—I twisted the front handle, the lock clicking open, before I pulled open the door.

A light inside flickered to life, illuminating the contents.

And just like that, I knew there was more to this girl than we had realized.

* * * *

Kenz

I am in so much trouble.

I knew the feeling well, had experienced it plenty of times to identify it the moment I walked into the house with Char by my side.

As if the day wasn’t bad enough already.

I had a massive headache from the constant switching of Char’s personality. I couldn’t keep up with him going from sweet and charming and funny to downright hostile. The only time he seemed happy in the least was when we were surrounded by others. The second he got me alone—he reverted right back to his bad mood.

Is it me?

Probably not, but I couldn’t help taking it personally.Even still, something inside me wanted to figure it out, to work out why he acted that way and how to get closer to him, no matter how foolish the desire was.

And now, after that, I felt the crushing tension that came just before a lecture.

How many times had the Quad done that over the years? Sat me down because they’d known something and wanted me to come clean?

Then again, if I’d never broken beneath the Quad’s interrogations, I doubted these four stood a chance.

At least, I told myself that. In reality, my knees trembled, and my heart raced. What if I messed up? What if I said something wrong and ended up outing myself?

What if I put Nem in danger because I was weak?

I swallowed hard and faked a smile just as I entered the living room to find Tor, Vance and Hayden already there like parents whose kid had come home two hours past curfew.

Steady, girl. You’ve been through worse.

---