Half truth

“Do you think Max told the police about these?” I looked up at Hailey, who was still chewing on her finger.

“I don’t know. Should I tell them? I should, right?” she asked, knee bouncing, replacing one nervous twitch with another. Had she always done this or was she mimicking the things I did when I was nervous? Seeing her made my own knee start bouncing.

“I think we should take it to them.”

“Do you think it’ll incriminate my mom?” she whispered. “I mean, you see the emails. What if she had something to do with it?”

I thought of Ella. Of all of those pictures and paintings of her and my father that adorned the locked study of The Lab. This seemed like the exact thing that would drive a jealous woman to the brink of insanity. But then again, dad was married. He’d been married. I didn’t know how long their affair had lasted, but he’d been married for the majority of it. He left her for my mother when they were in college, and at some point, they’d started hooking up again, but then they’d stopped. Was it because of Lana? Because of the other girls that were part of the rumored sugar daddy ring? The next page held names of girls. Lana Ly was the only one that stood out to me amongst the eight names on it. I knew without a doubt that this was that list. Maybe it was the mentorship list, but either way, it didn’t change the reality of what went on there. It wasn’t a coincidence that there were exactly eight names on here. It wasn’t a coincidence that Lana’s was one of them. Suddenly, I didn’t know what to do. Reporting this to the police meant possibly exposing The Eight and I couldn’t do that. Not when I loved everyone involved. They were my family. I’d pledged loyalty. My palm itched. I thought of Lincoln. He said he’d made her jump. At least that was the memory he’d held. I thought of what he said about the cloaked person injecting him with the drugs. Could it have been my father? No. He wouldn’t. My father was a lot of things, but a murderer wasn’t one. Poor Lana. I couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through.

“You should take this to the police,” I said finally. “Turn it in anonymously. Your mom won’t know it was you.”

“But I will.” Her brown eyes widened. “Are you willing to throw your dad under the bus? This will incriminate him for sure. My mom could probably get away with saying she was accumulating proof, which could very well be what’s happening, but your dad? His name would be tarnished. He may even go to jail. You’d be okay with that?”

I thought of mom and what she must have suffered in silence because of his indiscretions. I thought of Lincoln, who had a long road to recovery and in my opinion, had only gotten into this mess because he was trying his best to stop my father. He’d pledged his loyalty to The Eight, and hadn’t been afraid to act out when it came to doing the right thing. I wasn’t sure who had tried to kill my brother, but I couldn’t deny the co

“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “But all of this could lead to Lana. She could still be out there.”

I thought of the texts I’d been getting since moving here. This was bigger than I could imagine. I felt that in my bones. Whoever was behind those texts knew truths I couldn’t fathom. I wasn’t sure I was willing to find out what that entailed, but I owed it to Lincoln and to Lana to turn these into the authorities. That much I knew. I’d do it anonymously. In their wildest dreams, the police couldn’t possibly find The Eight. If they did a thorough investigation, these girls would be linked to The Labyrinth Initiative through the mentorship program, but even that wasn’t co

“You’re really going to go to the police?” She asked, wide-eyed. “You’re willing to throw your father under the bus?”

“I can’t think of any other solutions.” I put the papers back in the manila envelope and started walking back toward the entrance.

“Let’s go this way. It’s faster,” she said, walking in the opposite direction, typing on her phone as I followed. “I just don’t know about my mom, you know?”

“What don’t you know? You saw the exchange between her and Lana.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s guilty of anything.” She glanced at me, opening the side door that led to one of the tu

“So you think she’s i

“I think she was probably jealous, but I can’t imagine just handing this over and letting her take the fall for that.”

“But it could be what saves Lana,” I argued. “If she’s still alive.”

The halls were dark, a sign of no people walking through them, which wasn’t uncommon on a Sunday afternoon. The overhead lights flickered when they sensed our approach, buzzing as they illuminated over us. Unlike in the past, when I’d been nervous about walking these halls, I felt no fear. The adrenaline overrode my sense of everything else, even direction. I was following Hailey, hoping she knew where the hell we were going as we spoke. We took a right turn at the end of the tu

Once outside, two things happened simultaneously: I tried to assess where we were and realized we were nowhere near the streets and that the exit had led us to the entrance of the woods. The other thing I registered was that Deacon was there, smile on his face as he looked at me right before he whacked me on the side of the head with a shovel.