Free The Third Lie's the Charm by Lisa Roecker Page B

couldn’t do much more damage. I flipped through an old, dog-eared yearbook, marveling at how different kids from the ’60s looked compared to our school pictures.
    â€œKate…” Bradley’s voice had an edge to it that immediately grabbed my attention.
    I waded through the piles of paper and walked over to where he was standing with a thin sheet of paper trembling in his hand.
    â€œLook at this.”
    It was nothing really. Or it could have been nothing. Just a class list for third-years. Rows and rows of black names printed on cheap printer paper.
    But it was the slash of yellow that caught my eye. And the name it highlighted.
    Alistair Reynolds.
    â€œWhat the hell is he doing with a class list with Alistair’s name highlighted?” I asked.
    The list was at the top of a pile of zoological records in regards to our school mascot, a wolf whose habitat was maintained on campus as a part of a new Parent Teacher Association grant. His name was Bondi, and it apparently took thousands of dollars a month to support his reserve. Fascinating if you cared. I didn’t. The only thing I cared about was piecing together all of these seemingly random pieces of information to understand what had happened to Alistair and why, but it was like someone had mixed the pieces of five different puzzles together into one box. None of them seemed to fit.
    â€œWe have five minutes to get back to Main,” I said, checking the time on my phone. “But I’ll meet you by the arches after school.”
    Bradley tucked the files into his blazer and raised an eyebrow. “What? Oh yeah…the arches.”
    His golden eyes were dull and blank again. It was almost like he didn’t see me, and I couldn’t blame him. In fact, I knew the feeling. I imagined all he could see was his best friend’s name, reduced to nothing but highlighted black letters on a piece of paper.

Chapter 15
    I had to admit that there was a vague sense of disappointment when Bradley didn’t grab my hand after school. So much for the romance of the arches. I did, however, manage to get some type of bug stuck in my eye. I tried to tell myself that it had nothing at all to do with my furiously batting eyelashes. Surely that was just a natural, feminine response to the hotness that is Bradley Farrow.
    â€œYou have the address?”
    â€œ5067 Longacre Lane,” I said, trying to fish the bug out without smudging my mascara or causing permanent damage to my cornea.
    Longacre Lane ran parallel to the main drive leading to PB and was still officially considered campus, so we walked through the gardens toward the road. Neat houses were tucked on the street, many inhabited by the families of teachers and administrators who worked at Pemberly Brown.
    I didn’t want to think about what we’d actually do when we found the house. Sinclair was dangerous. He’d had a hand in covering up Grace’s death, snuffing out every piece of evidence to protect the school at all costs. And now that Ms. D. had demoted him to head of campus security, he’d stopped shaving and started wearing sweat suits to school. He looked like Forrest Gump after he ran across America, only with crazy eyes.
    â€œI’ll ring the doorbell and distract Sinclair at the door, tell him I have to interview him for a project or something.” Bradley rubbed his eyes. “Go around back and see if you can enter through a back door or window. Take anything that looks interesting.”
    Clearly, Bradley didn’t have any qualms about putting my personal safety at risk to further our little investigation. Liam would have flipped his shit if he was there to see me sneak around the back of the house to do Bradley’s dirty work. I tried really hard to convince myself that it was empowering, that Bradley and I were on the same page, both of us willing to sacrifice anything for justice. But mostly I just felt disposable. And a little scared.