The Widow: Federal Hellions Book 1 Read online

  “It’s all right,” he calmly said, noting the defiance behind her apology. He stood up straight and walked around to the police officer. He was just thankful he’d made it in time to intercept Jane. Trouble was attracted to her like a magnet, but he knew she was a good kid. “Look, Officer Jones, this isn’t one of my best students. She is my best student. Now I don’t know who you’ve got over there in your cruiser, but I can tell you that Jane had nothing to do with it. If she says she was retrieving something from her car, I believe her, and I’ll stand behind her.”

  George frowned as her face was smashed into the car and wondered how in the hell he could have known about this. Did he patrol the grounds every night and just happen upon her? What was going on?

  “All right,” Officer Jones finally agreed, taking his hand off of George’s back. “Get her inside, though. It’s not safe out here.”

  “Will do,” Dr. Thomas said, grabbing her sweatshirt with both of his hands and pulling her with him through the parking lot. He’d tipped off the cops earlier in the day after reading Jane’s and Christian’s lips through his binoculars on Monday. He knew Christian had just been arrested, but he was convinced Jane knew better. She had to have known better. She was a good kid, he could spot that a mile away. He wanted answers, though.

  What was a girl like her doing hanging around dark places with boys like Whitman and Clancy? Why was she so sneaky? What was her full story? And why did he care so much?

  “Dr. Thomas,” she began, totally pissed off. She knew that he had something to do with this and she had just lost her best lead to finding the school’s supplier. He couldn’t have been that lucky. No one was.

  “This is not the time to defend yourself,” he said, sounding angry.

  Regardless of anything she could say, she knew she could have gotten hurt out there. “Well then what the hell should I say?” she replied, sounding angry.

  He paused at the end of the parking lot and peered down at her. She just stared defiantly back up at him. Neither said anything for a few seconds as a light above their heads flickered in the parking lot.

  She turned and took a few steps down the sidewalk, not wanting to let her temper get the best of her and say something she’d regret. She couldn’t body check him either, though that was looking awfully attractive at the moment.

  “What were you doing out here at this hour?” he asked firmly, as the gas lamps dimly lit the walkway around them.

  “Getting my iPod!”

  “I put my ass on the line with those cops, Jane. Cut it out with that attitude! Now tell me the truth!”

  “Why do you even care?” she hollered, throwing her arms into the air.

  “Because I don’t think you want to find yourself in jail for possession, using so you can forget your past, no matter how sad you feel!” he replied, shrugging his shoulders and looking at her doubtfully. “And I know you’re really sad. I can see it in your eyes, but this—this is not the way to deal with it.”

  She frowned and stepped back.

  How in the world did he know how sad she felt? She shook her head as involuntary tears formed in her eyes. She was just so angry with him for wrecking her investigation, and now he was just trampling over everything in her life. He didn’t know anything about how sad she’d been. He was just some nosey teacher trying to reduce liability at the school. That was it. That was all. She had to turn off her emotions and get back to work.

  “Jane,” he softly said, as a tear rolled down her cheek. He hadn’t meant to yell, and he really hadn’t meant to make her cry. This was definitely not what he wanted.

  “Can I go now?” she asked, hastily wiping her face with the back of her hand. He didn’t know about her feelings. He didn’t see sadness in her eyes. It was just a lucky guess. He didn’t know shit about her real life.

  “I didn’t mean to yell at you,” he said, stepping forward. “You just really scared me. Do you understand that?”

  She nodded just to agree so that she could get the hell out of there. He hadn’t even seen scary yet.

  “Can I do anything for you?”

  “May I please go back to my room now?” she asked, stepping backwards as he reached for her.

  His hand stopped just short of her shoulder, then he pulled it back. She looked really upset. He hadn’t meant to hit a nerve, he just wanted her to take him seriously. More pointedly, he wanted to help her. He’d figured out pretty easily that she was just using to make herself stop feeling the loss of her family.

  “Okay, go on back to your room.”

  She turned and left, briskly walking through the darkness and bursting into her dorm. She cried for an hour in the darkness of her room, then finally picked herself back up and grabbed a beer from her mini-fridge. As she slowly sipped it in the dark, she tried not to think of the night as a total failure.

  With Christian Whitman out of the picture, James Clancy would take over as the sole dealer on campus. She just really wished she could have pressed Whitman for information. A name, a place, something useful. She couldn’t change that, though. It was up to Nelson now to get cooperation from the local authorities.

  * * *

  “Whatever he knows, he’s not talking,” Nelson said the next morning.

  “Figured,” George sighed, exhaling a long stream of smoke as the sun warmed her face. “Can I have a few minutes with him?”

  “No, George, I’ve got it handled. You’re supposed to be taking a liberty this weekend, anyway. Get some rest, remember what you’re fighting for, you know. All that.”

  “Yeah, I know, but it’s only Thursday and I’m the best agent you have when it comes to extracting information.”

  “Cramer is on it.”

  “Cramer?” George mocked, sitting up and stamping out her cigarette. “That pansy from tactics?”

  “He’ll break him,” Nelson sighed, sounding annoyed. “He’s been interrogating him for twelve straight hours. What are you doing, anyway?”

  “I’m taking a personal day,” she replied, lying back on the roof of her dorm as birds chirped around her. A day away from the one person she did not want to see but who always seemed to find her. Damn him.

  * * *

  Dr. Thomas was concerned when he didn’t see Jane in the refectory at breakfast or lunch, but when she didn’t show for his class or for dinner he decided he’d better go and check on her. He’d had troubled students before, but none with both parents dead. It must have been very hard on her. He sympathized.

  He would have given her until his Friday class to get herself together, but he was going to have to be in the city all weekend for meetings with his publisher and he was leaving first thing Friday morning.

  “Dr. Thomas!” the sophomore girls greeted him enthusiastically as he entered Woodbaker on Thursday evening. He smiled and spoke to all of them, listening to their stories and questions and hoping to see the one face he wished would come up and speak to him.

  “I thought your tennis game was great,” he nodded at the Mario twins, who also happened to be the most implacable doubles partners on the east coast. They were unbeatable and vicious. He’d actually witnessed them make a line judge cry. Every kid at the school was very driven in one way or another. Jane George especially.

  “I’m looking forward to soccer this year!” Liza blurted.

  He nodded as the rest of the girls squealed in agreement. “That’s good to hear, ladies. I am, too.” He smiled. “Have, uh, any of you see Jane George today?”

  “She’s sick,” a blonde girl said, stepping closer to him. “I wouldn’t go anywhere near her.”

  “Is she in her room?” he asked, pointing to the wood paneled hallway that led to the rooms.

  “She’s either in there or the bathroom. No one’s seen her all day.”

  Dr. Thomas nodded and walked down the narrow hallway. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but when he reached the door and no one answered after incessant knocking, he just rambled an apology until he couldn�
�t think of anything else. The muffled sounds of The Rolling Stones seeped through the door, but nothing else. After a long pause, he turned and left, saying a quick goodbye to all of the girls and heading back home so that he could pack and get away from this place for a few days.

  He had to get away. He had to get Jane out of his head. No student had ever captured his attention like she had. He needed clarity and DC was where he could get it.

  * * *

  George’s day had been relaxing. She spent most of it in her room, playing music and reading the new Phillipa Gregory book in between phone transcripts, drinking a beer or two and eating Goldfish. She’d just finished swapping emails with her friends when someone knocked on her door. She sat silently as she waited for whoever it was to go away.

  Then Dr. Thomas spoke. She was surprised at first, but then as he gave her a sincere apology for the night before, she realized that all he really wanted was for his students to feel safe and understood. She knew what that felt like. It was a feeling that was evident to her every time she busted a supplier who got over ninety percent of his revenues from the local schools. The kids who were inevitably at the supplier’s lab were always scared they were going to arrest them, too. For some reason, she always made the tactical team let them go. Not that it wasn’t her job to bust the buyers, but she always felt like it was her very own ‘scared straight’ program.

  Especially when the supplier pulled a weapon on her when the tactical team wasn’t around and she got to shoot him in front of the kids. They always went straight after that.

  She wanted to tell Dr. Thomas that she appreciated his kindness, but she thought it was better if she just let him leave. She’d smile and tell him everything was okay in class the next day. He was a good guy.

  And she’d probably never get to tell him that. How could he read her so well when she was undercover? No one ever busted her.

  It was just that kind of week.

  An Interesting Twist

  The senior editor in charge of realistic fiction and about a half dozen junior editors met with Conrad Thomas several times over the course of Friday and Saturday. They sat and threw ideas around, tweaked old concepts, and charted out several directions that he could take his second book. His agent, Eric, sat next to him and nodded his head at things he liked. When something seemed off beam he would sigh heavily and rest his chin in his hand. He would occasionally glance over to his client, giving a wink or a quick frown.

  Dr. Thomas’s mind seemed to be elsewhere, though.

  “You seem unsure, Conrad,” Sue, the senior editor frowned.

  He looked around the conference table and then at the two dry erase boards they had scribbled all over. Then he stood and circled one of the central characters with a black marker.

  “The story seems a little forced,” he admitted, wishing that he could have produced some better proposals for this meeting. He did have something to prove, after all, with his sophomore book. He really was ready to put everything into it, like he’d done with his first novel. He had been a little preoccupied, unfortunately, with an altogether different kind of sophomore.

  “Of course.” Sue nodded, replacing the cap on the marker she was holding and nodding at her colleagues. “We were just brainstorming a few things.”

  “No, it’s not you,” he muttered, shaking his head and glaring at the boards. “I just can’t seem to find one main idea to follow.”

  “The kid dying on an elite boarding school campus because of a drug overdose seems like a pretty unique and central concept.” Sue grinned, as her staff quickly agreed.

  “Yeah,” he sighed, “but what about afterward? What will the kids learn? What will they take from it?”

  “What of your own experience?” Sue asked, finishing her bottle of water and shaking it at her assistant.

  He shook his head. The administration wouldn’t speak about it and the faculty knew and said nothing. No wonder students like Jane were falling prey to kids like Christian. Kids like Jane needed nurturing and guidance, things she obviously wasn’t getting at home. Boarding school was tough enough when you came from a nuclear family. When things were screwed up at home, sometimes the only answer was to indulge in substances that made you forget how bad your life was.

  He suddenly perked up a little and turned back to the boards.

  “What if,” he began, scribbling in blue marker, “a new student comes to the school. She’s alone, an orphan who stands to inherit millions, vulnerable because no one is there to help her. And she has an inner struggle, deciding whether or not to become friends with these mysterious kids who hung out with the boy who just died, and numb her pain with whatever they offer her, or to simply just exist, feel everything she’s supposed to feel, and just graduate high school so that she can get on with her life.”

  “So we start with the deadly drug overdose and end with a triumph, a hopeful young girl.” Sue smiled, suddenly turning her glance towards Conrad. “That is, of course, assuming you want her to live. A tragic death could be an interesting twist.”

  “I want her to live,” he said forcefully, clearing his throat and setting the marker down as everyone stared. He hadn’t meant to yell.

  “I like it,” Eric agreed, standing up and buttoning his suit jacket. He eyed his client. “Uh, break for lunch?”

  Everyone shuffled around as Eric led Dr. Thomas out of the office and towards a café on the busy street in front of the building.

  “Good ideas today, Conrad,” he said, cutting into a tomato on his salad as they sat by a window. “But is everything okay?”

  “Just feeling a little overwhelmed lately.” Conrad sighed, running his fingers through his shaggy hair as he tried to focus. That was one thing he couldn’t do lately. Focus. Whenever he tried, Jane George randomly popped into his head. He was so worried about her.

  “I totally get it. The second book is even more draining than the first. You have expectations now. Fans. Just relax and everything will come to you, like today.”

  He nodded and bit into his sandwich, not really tasting it, as he wondered what in the world Jane George was doing with her Saturday.

  * * *

  The buzz around the campus intensified as the weekend progressed. Christian Whitman had been arrested for something. He was friends with Ross Quinton. Was it connected? Did Christian kill Ross? Did Ross give Christian his drugs? His connection? The rumors swirled around the dorms.

  George didn’t care. The other kids could say whatever they wanted. She was leaving on her liberty and meeting her friends. Director Nelson had informed the St. Patrick’s administration office that George was to leave campus at eleven am and help tend to her sick Grandma until Sunday afternoon. She happily complied when they called her dorm mother and arranged for her to leave campus.

  She rolled the windows down in her black Tahoe and listened to the Led Zeppelin channel on her satellite radio as loudly as she wanted. She zipped her jacket up a little higher since the wind was freezing, but she liked the feeling of the emancipated air anyway. No more stuffy classes within the walls of the campus. She felt relaxed and in control, a small victory but a win nonetheless.

  Then she found her mind wandering towards Dr. Thomas. How could someone who was stereotypically supposed to be entirely self-absorbed be so kind? Why did he smile at her? And for the love of God, why did she think he smelled so good?

  She cursed herself as she lit a cigarette and pulled into the small apartment where she lived when she was in town. It was on North Street near the Georgetown campus, and although the old hardwood floor creaked and the crown molding was stained from the last leak from the apartment above, she found it charming. She was near restaurants, bars, shopping, and most importantly, her friends.

  She dressed in cute jeans and a green silk top that hung loosely down to her hips, then threw on her black Northface and hopped out of the apartment as she put on her black heels.

  “I hate bookstores,” Darby groaned, sipping her expensive cof
fee as Burton and George perused the new titles in the late afternoon.

  “I just wanted to get a couple of things before we get too crazy,” George said, running her finger along the book spines. And they would get crazy. When they got together they always had a fun time.

  “I heard this was good,” Burton said, pulling out a bright blue book with an umbrella and two cartoon-ish women on the cover.

  George nodded as she looked over. “My director actually recommended that. She tries to get all girl-pal-ish when she thinks I’m stressed. Where’s the literature section?”

  “Jane!” Burton said, shoving the book into her hands. “Don’t be so serious all the time! Forget reality and just get a fun book!”

  George looked down at the book in her hands and sighed. She wasn’t that serious all the time, was she? Those kind of books really were fun to her. She shook her head and looked at her friend. Sarcasm was the only way she could deal with these two girls sometimes. “Should I forget Tolstoy, too?”

  Burton grinned and waved the book in her own hand around. “Never forget Tolstoy.”

  “Fucking Rusky,” George smirked, as they turned to check out.

  Burton turned her nose up and mockingly looked down at her friend. She was American, but of Russian descent. Not to mention the fact that her grandfather ranked in the top ten most famous and destructive Russians of all time.

  “Good God, let’s get out of here,” Darby sighed, throwing her coffee away and swaying from side to side as she stood behind them. “I want to get a drink and hear about Jane’s new crush.”

  “What?” Burton and George asked at the same time, turning around and squinting at their friend.

  “Oh, come on!” Darby grinned, giving a nod in George’s direction. “She’s been talking non-stop about this professor who keeps ‘foiling her evil plans’ and she even blushed when she talked about him kissing this other woman!”