Page 78 of Make No Mistake

Aubrey nodded. “Where will we stay?” She turned to me. “Do you want to get a hotel room?”

I nodded at the same time Jay shook his head. “You’ll come stay at my house.”

Carter nodded. “You could stay with me, but the commute in the morning would be killer.”

“You don’t need to babysit us, Jay.”

He shot me a look, not unlike the one Aubrey had been giving me all night. “I have a security system and I would feel better knowing you both are close.”

I would feel better knowing he was just down the hall, but that didn’t mean I wanted to admit he was right. I looked back at Aubrey and she nodded.

“Fine.” I stood and walked to my room. “I’ll pack my bags.”

I could hear them talking, but I closed my door and went to my bed. Nothing in my room had been damaged, luckily. I wondered if he ran out of time, or if he wanted us to find the note quickly. Probably the latter.

Without knowing exactly how long we would be away, I packed the essentials and planned on coming back as needed.

I met Jay in the living room, carrying a duffle and my backpack. He narrowed his eyes then turned toward Aubrey’s room where three suitcases were waiting. A moment later, Aubrey stepped out with her dance bag on one shoulder and backpack on the other.

“Ready?” She looked at me with a puzzled expression.

“Yeah. It’s only for a few days, Aubrey. We’re not moving out.”

Her lips formed a frown. “Mac, there’s only a few weeks of school left. By the time the repairs are made, we’ll be graduating.”

My eyes darted from her to Jay then to Carter. They wore matching expressions, as if none of them wanted to be the one to break the news to me.

I wanted to argue. Fight them. But I knew she was right. I looked around the battered living room and resigned. I didn’t know why I thought we’d be staying here in the first place. Detective Larson told us we should find a place to stay, but he didn’t say it was mandatory. Our cute, little home was destroyed. More importantly, we weren’t safe here.

“Do you want some help?” Jay stepped forward until his hands reached mine.

I nodded and he followed me back into my room. Together we packed the two suitcases and second duffel I had with as much as we could stuff into the bags.

“We can get the rest later.”

I stared at my bed, my desk, then toward my closet. “I’m not coming back here, am I?”

His arms wrapped around my waist and he held me against his chest. “We’ll come back later to pack the rest of your stuff, but no. You’re not going to live here again.”

I nodded against him and took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

We didour best to find a new normal. Aubrey was still gone most of the time, putting the final touches on her performance. Jay was still running the newspaper, and I was pretending not to freak out every time I stepped into the lab, knowing it was likely someone in the room.

I hated that my friends were the prime suspects. Detective Larson told me his team was working on any leads and would be conducting interviews of the people I knew. It would be in response to my break in, so it wouldn’t look suspicious.

It had been a week and we weren’t any closer to finding out who was behind this. There were only three weeks left of school, and I didn’t want this guy to get away with it. If he wasn’t caught now, there was a huge possibility he would never be.

Jay leaned over and caught my attention.

“You okay?” He mouthed the words and I shrugged.

How could I be okay? There was too much up in the air. Too much out of my control to be okay.

He raised an eyebrow in question. I looked around the room then back at him. “It could be anyone here,” I whispered in his ear then leaned away.

His eyes darkened. I knew he hated the thought of it being someone we knew just as much as I did.

We trusted the people in this room. We were friends. We spent countless hours with each other, and now it was going to end in tragedy.