Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [41]
“They wouldn’t,” Jules said automatically, not really believing that the school would cover up something so horrid. Not the school, but someone in the school. It just takes one person with a secret agenda or an owner who could lose millions in a scandal and a lawsuit. Jules thought of the huge mansion on Lake Washington. Worth millions. Someone was living the high life and wouldn’t want to risk it.
Suddenly Jules felt as cold as death.
“Who knows what ‘they’ would do?” Cheryl said. “All I know is my daughter is missing, and the last time I talked with her, she confided that the school wasn’t what people thought it was, and she was going to prove it. She isn’t a teenager, you know. She was recruited, yes, but not to be a student; it was to be a part of some counseling program, a teacher’s aide of sorts. She’d get her college paid for while helping troubled kids, and she jumped at the chance.
“I tried to talk her out of it, to stay here at the university, but Lauren was always looking for an adventure, a challenge, pushing herself to the edge. That’s why she was recruited and I think…I mean, it’s possible that the very reasons she was chosen are the reasons she’s missing.” There was desperation in the woman’s voice. “Reverend Lynch insists that she left by choice, of course, but I know my daughter. She wouldn’t let us worry like this.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“We’re going to find her.” There was a renewed conviction in her tone. “No matter what it takes, we’re going to find her. I’m not trusting the sheriff’s department or that Reverend Lynch to do what it’s going to take. Just because Lynch is supposed to be a man of God means nothing these days.”
Didn’t Edie say the house on the lake was owned by a preacher? No, that wasn’t right. The school owned the property and a preacher lived there part-time. She’d mentioned Lynch by name.
“I’m serious,” Cheryl continued. “If you value your sister’s life, then get her out of Blue Rock Academy. But do not call my house again. My husband is very upset.”
For the first time since she’d heard of the school, someone was confirming Jules’s worst fears.
“I have to go,” Cheryl said.
“Wait! If I need to get in contact with you—”
“I have a cell phone.” Cheryl rattled off the number, then hung up. Repeating the number over and over again, Jules found a pen and wrote the ten digits on a gas receipt she’d tossed into her empty cup holder. After she parked her car on the street three blocks from the restaurant, she would punch the number into the contact list of her cell phone.
She thought about everything Cheryl Conway had told her, and her blood ran cold. Shay was at the academy, alone. Remembering Shay’s last phone call, her desperate plea, Jules knew she had to do something; she couldn’t just let her sister meet with the same fate as Lauren Conway.
Jules glanced at her watch. Late again! As Jules fed the meter for the next few hours and hurried into the restaurant, Cheryl Conway’s warning chased after her: If you value your sister’s life, then get her the hell out of Blue Rock Academy.
Jules would.
And she knew just how she would go about it.
“And you left your last teaching job because the school was cutting positions?” Dr. Rhonda Hammersley asked over the soft sound of classical music wafting through the room.
“I was one of the last teachers hired, the first to be let go,” Jules said, and she felt her palms begin to sweat. She sat across from the dean and kept her trembling hands under the polished wood table to hide her nervousness.
After taking Cheryl Conway’s advice