Overture (North Security 1)

“No doubt she was going to buy drugs,” Principal Keller adds.

“Leave,” Liam says, his voice low.

My stomach sinks. It’s only my worst fear for the past six years, that I would have no place to go, that the one person in the world who cared about me would have enough. Every muscle in my body knots hard enough to make me throw up. I’m clenched on the edge of the hard chair, panic thick in my throat.

Liam looks toward the principal. “We need a minute.”

“This is my office, sir.” Principal Keller’s mouth opens and closes like a fish. “Well, I can see that this is a very serious matter. Probably you want to… one minute, only.”

Then we’re alone.

I can’t relax. He wasn’t speaking to me then, but that doesn’t mean I’m off the hook. It was only a matter of time until he got tired of you. I should be grateful that he kept me around this long. At least I’ll have graduated high school, assuming St. Agnes gives me a diploma. I won’t have a violin if he kicks me out, but I know how to play.

“Stop that,” he mutters.

I swallow hard. “Stop what?”

“Whatever it is you’re thinking. It makes me feel like I’m kicking a damn puppy. Don’t give me those eyes; you’re going to explain yourself. Where did you get this money?”

“It’s my violin money.” There have been some performances in the space between school—a few concerts over the summer and a trip to Italy last winter break. They pay pretty well. It would have been within Liam’s rights to keep the money. After all, he’s the one who pays for my school and my clothes. He paid for the violin I used to play.

But he’s always kept the money in a bank account under my name only.

“You were going to spend your violin money on drugs,” he says, his voice flat.

“I wasn’t going to buy drugs,” I say, affronted. Bad enough that he knows I lied to him, that I kept a secret. The thought of disappointing him makes my stomach turn inside out. He doesn’t need to think I’m trying to get high on top of that.

“Then what the hell is the money for?”

I press my lips together. Cody and Laney are two of my best friends in the world. I promised them I wouldn’t share this secret, but that was before Liam looked at me like I’d disappointed him. “It was for a good cause,” I say. “We were going to speak truth to power.”

“We?” he asks, his eyebrow rising.

Shit. I’m sure he can guess who my partners in crime are, even if I did manage to keep Laney out of trouble. “Look, the truth is… I can’t tell you everything. It’s about loyalty and doing the right thing, even when it’s hard.”

“Christ,” he says.

I take a deep breath, tears stinging my eyes. “And if you want me to move out, I’ll understand that. I’m almost eighteen, almost graduated high school, and then the tour—”

He makes a slashing motion with his hand. “Move out? You’re clearly upset and caught in the middle of something, so I’m going to pretend like that’s not a goddamn insult. Did you think that when I took custody of you, it was just for when things were easy? That I would only want you around if you made the goddamn dean’s list?”

The way he says it means the answer is no, but I lived too long without any approval to really believe otherwise. My whole life has been about pleasing other people—about making my fingers move fast enough so that someone would clap at the end of the song.

“We’re going home,” he says, almost growling the words. “Where you will go to your room and think about what you’ve done. Because you are officially grounded.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When violinist Fritz Kreisler served in WWII, his aural sensitivity helped him determine the location of large artillery by listening to the changing pitch of incoming shells across the battlefield.

SAMANTHA

Liam gets called away for work on the drive home, which is a relief. It gives me time to rebuild my defenses. Grounded? I’ve never been grounded in my life. He has no right to do that. And I still don’t trust him to do the right thing where Coach Price is concerned.

He might decide to do nothing and to block me from helping. That’s what he said about the guy at the club, after all. That he would look the other way for local criminals, as long as they left him alone.

That hasn’t changed, but we’ve run out of options. The tapes that we were going to use to blackmail Coach Price disappeared along with the club owner. Liam has the money that I was going to use to buy them, anyway. My violin money—gone.

There’s nothing left to do but trust Liam, and the knowledge rises like acid in my throat. I’ll have to tell him that Coach Price was doing bad things. That Cody needed us to do this. Maybe he’ll consider it his civic responsibility to help. Like me.