Without Mercy (7 page)

“Bastard,” she hissed as she hung up. The cat was looking up at her expectantly. “Not you, okay?” She slid out of her coat and hung it on a peg near the door, allowing the water to drip onto the tile of the entryway. “Let’s get you some dinner, eh?” she said, heading into the kitchen.

What was it about Blue Rock Academy that made everyone so jumpy? For all their praises of the institution, Analise and Eli were scared. But of what? They were both well out of it.

“It gets stranger and stranger,” she said to the cat as she found a half-full can of cat food and forked some into his dish. Diablo ignored the bowl and trotted after her to the living area, where she switched on the gas fire and flopped onto the couch. She needed time to think. To figure out what to do.

Everyone was telling her to let Shay be, to leave her alone. The consensus was that her half sister was getting what she deserved and would come out of the experience all the better. But Jules, ever protective of Shay, just didn’t see it that way. Others, those who weren’t close to her, and even Edie, didn’t see the inner child within Shay. Sure, she was acting out, but she was scared of going to the academy. What seventeen-year-old wouldn’t be?

But then the world hadn’t had the glimpses into Shaylee’s life that Jules had. She remembered Edie returning from the hospital with the fussy, wide-eyed bundle. From the minute Shay had entered Jules’s life, she’d been fascinated by the cooing baby, then the curious toddler who had puppy-dogged after her. She and Shay had been together throughout the rocky marriages, rough divorces, and awkward reconciliations of their parents.

Jules had been close to her father. Rip had adored her.
Not so with Max Stillman. Deep down, Jules had felt a little guilty that her dad had treated her like a princess and, really, done a poor job of taking Shaylee under his paternal wing as well. Not that Shay would allow him to.

While Jules had been in grade school, Shaylee had waited by the window, looking for her older sister to return home; then, chubby toddler legs flying, she’d run out the door when the bus’s squealing brakes had heralded Jules’s arrival.

“Sissy!” she’d cry happily, her little face aglow.

“Shh!” Jules had been embarrassed as she’d taken Shay’s little hand in hers. “Call me Jules.”

“Sissy!” Shay always had the last word, and she had happily run away, giggling so that Jules would give chase.

Later, when Shaylee had entered school, they’d taken the bus together, even sitting across the aisle from each other, as Jules knew it wasn’t cool to share a seat with a kid seven years younger, especially her sister.

In junior high, they’d grown farther apart, and then in high school Jules didn’t have much time to spend with her kid sister; she had better things to do. Especially when she discovered boys and ultimately Cooper Trent.

Whoa! She put on the mental brakes.

She didn’t want to dredge up memories of the one man who’d gotten a good hard look at her soul.

Diablo curled into a ball on her lap and began to purr. Jules stroked his smooth fur and stared at the flickering flames. Her headache had receded a bit, thank God, and after a few minutes and no answers, she ended up in the kitchen again, where she made herself her favorite budget dinner: ramen noodles with frozen vegetables heated in the microwave.

“Yummy,” she told Diablo. “Just like in college. Consider yourself lucky to have Tasty Tuna Treats.”

The cat didn’t seem impressed and followed Jules, carrying
her bowl, upstairs to her desk and computer. She wasn’t much of an investigator, but there had to be a way to learn more. Analise and Eli hadn’t been much help, but she had faith in the Internet. If there was dirt on the academy, she’d find it.

And then what?

“One step at a time,” she reminded herself as she set her bowl on her desk and ignored the steaming broth. “One step at a time.”

So this was the room. Shay’s new “home.”

Twin beds separated by a wide aisle, two minuscule closets, two L-shaped desks that met in the middle of the room beneath the single window. Neat. Clean. Sleek. And with all the personality of a jail cell.

Home sweet home,
Shay thought sarcastically, but really her room was just about what she’d expected. So far, Blue Rock Academy, or BRA as she’d begun to think of it, wasn’t disappointing.

“This is your bed,” Dr. Williams said, pointing to the empty twin. Nona’s bed was neatly made, a navy blue quilt stretched with military precision over her thin mattress. A cross was mounted over her bed, a well-worn stuffed pink koala propped on the pillow. Otherwise there was no wall decor. “You can put your things in your closet, and Nona can answer most of the questions you have, but if there’s anything else you need, I’m available day and night.” She offered her fake-o brilliant smile before giving a few last instructions about wake-up calls, prayer meetings, and class schedules. Then with a wave she said, “I’ll see you at morning service,” and left the two girls alone.

Once the door closed, Shay tossed her backpack onto the bed. “Is she a workout or what?”

“Actually, she’s great,” Nona said, sticking to the company line. “Talented and smart.”

“If you say so.”

“All of the professors are dedicated. Really into helping kids.”

Shay just stared at her. Was this girl for real?

Nona walked to her desk chair and offered her sickly smile, then glanced to the top of the door. Shay followed her gaze to what appeared to be a sprinkler set into the ceiling. Or was it? She glanced at Nona, who casually lifted one eyebrow. “I’ve been here since last May, and I can tell you that I was really messed up. Drugs. A boyfriend who, now I see, was abusive. I hated it here for the first few weeks. But after a while …” She shrugged. “I lost my bad attitude and saw this academy for what it really is.”

“And what’s that?”

“Salvation. I was on the wrong path. I would have been dead before I was twenty-five if I hadn’t come here.”

Shay wasn’t buying it. She glanced up at the cross.

“You come here with Christ or is he a new friend?”

Nona winced. “I took Jesus into my heart once I realized how much I needed him, how he was there for me, how through his love, I was brought here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t expect you to believe me. Not now.”

Not ever!

“But you will. Don’t you believe in God?”

“Of course I do,” Shay said without a trace of sarcasm. “But in my world, God isn’t judgmental. Isn’t the old fire-and-brimstone, vengeful and wrathful God you know.”

She expected Nona to shake her head, but it seemed she’d hit a nerve. “I know. Reverend Lynch is …”

“Old school.”

“Traditional. But Reverend McAllister, who everybody calls ‘Father Jake,’ he’s a lot more today. More relevant, I
think. Spent time working in the inner city. You’ll like him. Everyone does.”

“Father
Jake? Is he a priest?” Shay asked, thinking about the freckled, sandy-haired clergyman with the dimple in his chin and a smile in his eyes.

“No,” she said, smiling again, “but he did try it for a while, went to seminary school, I think, and discovered that he liked girls, so he switched.”

“Just like that?” Shay said.

“Who knows.” Nona shrugged. “Ask him. I’m sure he’d tell you.”

Shay said, “Anything here you don’t like? Anything not”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“perfect?”

“Sure. I hate Mrs. Pruitt’s tomato casserole. It’s gross.”

“Mrs. Pruitt?”

“She’s the head cook; everyone has to work with her, just like the other jobs around the school. We spend a week in the kitchen, a week in the barn, a week cleaning the dorms, and a week working outside around the grounds every month.”

“Free labor,” Shay said.

“It teaches us respect and responsibility and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard the drill already. The brainwashing starts from day one.”

Again Nona glanced to the sprinkler head. A warning? Or just a nervous habit? “So everything here is awesome?” Shay asked, and walked over to the desk. “Every little thing? I don’t think so.” She pushed herself onto the desktop and sat, her legs dangling as she looked at Nona. “I mean, other than the cook’s casserole?”

Nona shook her head, but there was hesitation in her gaze, a tiny bit of fear. As she glanced out the window, she shielded her hand with her body, blocking it from the doorway, then opened her fist where a short message was inked onto her palm:
Camera & mic recording.

“Most of the food is okay,” Nona said, cutting Shay off before she could say a word, “but some of the chores are disgusting, like cleaning out the horse barn.” She exaggerated a shiver, but once more she glanced back to the doorway, then rolled her chair to the closet where she found a jar of hand cream on a shelf. With the aid of a tissue, she quickly erased the warning from her hand. When she glanced at her roommate again, her gaze said it all:
Be careful. This place is dangerous.
“Even mucking out the stalls is okay once you get used to it.”

“Don’t think I ever will.”

“It just takes time.” She tossed the smudged tissue into a trash can tucked under her desk. “Look, I’d better get to my homework. We’ve got a paper due in English tomorrow, and I need to study for a chemistry test.”

Shay nodded and tried not to stare at the phony sprinkler head. Wasn’t it against the law to have a camera and listening device set up without a resident’s consent?

She considered the myriad of papers she’d signed in the past few days, some of which she hadn’t bothered, in her agitated state, to read. Then there was everything Edie had put her John Hancock on while being so damned hell-bent on sending Shay down here. Dear old Mom … Edie would have signed anything to get her out of Seattle so she could be with that worm of a fiancé. It was all just sick.

Suddenly claustrophobic, Shay felt as if the walls were closing in on her. She could barely breathe. When she looked over her shoulder to the sprinkler head, her blood turned to ice. Who was on the other side of the small camera? Who was watching her every move? Listening to anything she had to say? She wasn’t one to scare easily, but there was something off about this place, something evil.

Stop it! That’s paranoid!

But as she glanced out the window to the darkening
night, the towering hills seemed dark and forbidding, barriers to the rest of the world. She felt small and helpless.

Don’t go there! That kind of thinking is just what they want to break you down.

As Nona snapped on her desk lamp and opened a thick chemistry textbook, Shay continued to stare out the window. She saw her own pale image shimmering in the reflection and Nona’s as she looked up and met Shay’s gaze in the glass.

Her eyes were a warning.

A warning that underlined Shay’s desperation. She had to find a way out of here and fast.

CHAPTER 7

“W
hat do you mean, you haven’t heard from her?” Jules demanded as she sat at her desk, cell phone jammed to her ear.

“That’s the way it works, Julia. You know that,” Edie explained, her voice tight. “There’s to be no contact for two weeks. Then just a short phone call. If she wants.”

“But she’s your daughter. Underage. You should get a report.”

“I can talk to the counselors at any time, just not your sister.”

“That’s nuts.”

“It’s their policy.”

“Well, it’s crap. Shay’s just a kid.” But it was basically the same thing Analise had told her.

“We’ve been through this. Blue Rock Academy knows what it’s doing. I trust them.”

“But I want to talk to her.”

“You can write a letter in care of the school.”

“A letter? What is this, the Dark Ages?” Jules shoved back her chair and paced from one end of her small office
to the other. “What about cell phones or e-mail or Facebook?”

“Not allowed.”

“Of course. The place is starting to sound Draconian, Mom.”

“And you’re starting to sound like a drama queen! The very thing you accuse me of. Just slow down, give the school a chance. And, please, don’t go bothering Analise anymore.”

“What?”

“Eli called me, you know,” Edie said.

Jules’s heart sank.

“Of course he did.” What a pansy, running to Aunt Edie and tattling. Like a three-year-old.

“You’re stirring up trouble,” Edie charged.

“I’m looking for answers.”

“Maybe you should worry more about your life and where it’s not going rather than obsess about your sister.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You tell me, Julia. You’re the one who’s divorced and not working. Right?”

“Maybe I learned from the best,” she said quickly, and heard her mother gasp. Edie’s track record in marriage was always a forbidden subject.

“Look, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, but you’ve got to quit attacking me, Mom. I just care about Shay.”

“Well, believe it or not, that makes two of us. Oh … I’ve got another call. It’s Grant. Gotta run. Bye.” She clicked off.

Jules let out a sound of frustration. Shay had been in southern Oregon for three days, and Jules was even more convinced that Blue Rock Academy wasn’t the right place for her sister. Sure, Shay had a bad attitude and needed something to shock her out of her sullen, rebellious ways.
But a boarding school where one girl had gone missing a few months back and a teacher had been let go because of sexual misconduct with a minor or something akin to it?

Having read every article she could find on the Internet about Blue Rock, Jules had learned that it was founded in 1975 and was not associated with any other school. Blue Rock had been named for the color of some of the rocks in the caves nearby. It was an independent institution, was fully accredited, and—if the quotes from satisfied teens and parents printed all over its Web site were true—was “a godsend.” The testimonials were effusive. If Jules were to believe Blue Rock’s own advertising, then Shaylee had been sent to her utter salvation somewhere deep in the Siskiyou Mountains.

Jules still wasn’t buying it. Everything seemed too slick, too perfect.