“I can’t let you do that,” argued Lauren. “I can’t let you just hand over the only chance we might have of burying Catherine Flynn.”
“Oh, I didn’t say I’d actually hand the locket over,” I clarified. “I said I would offer Flynn the key.”
A devious glint sparkled in Lauren’s eyes. “I like the way you think, Costello.”
I grinned. “Let’s get started.”
It was easier than expected to get into my recently vacated on-campus apartment. Night had fallen completely, and the streetlights near my apartment building were rarely maintenanced. Their lights were dim, some burned out completely. Under the cloak of night, with my face tucked into the collar of a borrowed, black trench coat of Lauren’s, I was barely recognizable. Even still, creeping around the Waverly campus made me nervous. Catherine Flynn was sure to have her Raptors keeping an eye out for me.
At the building next to mine, I paused to glance around the corner. Sure enough, a slick black SUV idled in the parking lot across from my apartment. The Raptors didn’t bother with subtlety. The headlights were more or less trained on my front door. I slipped around the back side of the building and surveyed the landscape. All was still and dark. It looked like no one from the society had bothered to stand watch over the back door to the apartment. Lucky me.
I yanked the trench coat up to cover as much of my face as possible then quietly dashed up the stairs to my apartment. I pressed an ear to the door, listening to make sure no one else was inside. Silence. I turned the key in the lock and warily went inside.
The familiar scents of Franklin’s subtle doggie smell and Wes’s cologne hit me like a ton of bricks. I took a deep breath, holding back tears. This was not the time to fall apart because I missed my own bed. I had to get the locket and get back to Lauren if we were going to set our plan in motion on time.
The apartment was still trashed from the Raptors’ last visit. I stepped over the dried bloodstain on the carpet in the living room, mourning the fact that I would never get my deposit back, and made my way down the hallway and into the bedroom. It had been wrecked as well. The Raptors had been searching for something before I arrived. I thought it had been all of the research on BRS that O’Connor had left for me, as the Raptors had made a point of confiscating every little thing that might have shed any light on their secret society. Now, as I pondered the overturned jewelry box on the vanity, I realized that they had been looking for my mother’s locket as well.
I wandered into the bathroom, which had remained mostly untouched. The drawers had been rifled through, but the Raptors hadn’t discovered anything beyond a bag of makeup and a box of tampons. I opened the medicine cabinet, which looked as though it had been ignored completely. It was a mistake on their part. If the Raptors had been just a bit more thorough, they would’ve noticed the elegant, gold chain dangling over the lip of an unused medicine cup on the second shelf of the cabinet. It was where I used to keep the necklace when I showered, and now I picked it up with delicate fingers, drawing the gold locket into my hands.
Inside, I had placed a picture of my face on one side and a picture of Wes on the other. Behind those photographs, I knew the locket also held matching pictures of my parents. I peeled back my photograph to inspect my mother’s face. It was true what O’Connor had said. I did bear a remarkable resemblance to her. We had the same facial structure and the same strange quirk that pulled one side of our mouths up more than the other when we smiled. My father’s image, on the other hand, didn’t make sense to me. I had seen very few photos of him, but never had he looked the part of a Raptor. Even in this picture in the locket, he laughed widely. His hair wasn’t neat and tidy, and he wore a rugged flannel rather than donning a more expensive collared shirt like the rest of the society. Not to mention, if my father had been a member of the Black Raptor Society, how was it that I’d never discovered his membership before? I had been to the clubhouse. I had seen their charter. To my knowledge, Anthony Costello had never signed it.
I snapped the locket shut, slipped the necklace over my head, and tucked it beneath my sweater, ignoring the anxiety that brewed in the pit of my stomach. There was no time to doubt the information I’d been given. Both O’Connor and my mother had confirmed my father’s involvement with BRS. The discrepancies made me nervous, but if I was going to get Wes back, trusting the past was the only way I would succeed.
I made a mistake in not checking if the coast was clear before slipping out of the apartment. With my back to the landing, I locked the door, only to turn around and find myself face to face with a young guy about my height. He looked familiar—maybe I’d seen him around campus before—but I couldn’t remember his name off the top of my head. He grinned lopsidedly, leering at me from two blackened eyes and a bruised nose.
“Nice face,” I commented, and then I drew a can of mace from where it waited in my coat pocket and sprayed it directly in his face.
Clearly, Davenport and Flynn hadn’t expected me to employ enough audacity to return
