Games Boys Play: A Dark High School Romance (Troubled Playthings 2)

I raised my hands to smack my keyboard… and then I thought of one place, at least, where Tamara’s personal details were likely to be stored insecurely.

I was up and out of my room before I could think about whether it was a good idea. It wasn’t going to stand up well to that sort of challenge.

Charging too fast through the lounge, I put my hands up to avoid making hard body contact with my mother, who staggered back even faster when she saw me reaching towards her.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just going out.”

“Not staying for dinner?” She sounded so fucking hopeful.

I wasn’t going to be able to make her night this time. “I’ll be back, I might be late though.”

“Steven.” She stopped me as I was on my way out the door. “Are you getting yourself in any trouble again?”

She had to slip that again in. “I’m fine, I just have something I need to go and do.”

“Because if you get mixed up in something new there’s nothing we can—”

“I said I’ll be late!” I shouted, and slammed the door behind me. She always had to fucking push it.

I drove carefully back to school. If you were going to do something suss then the last thing you wanted was to start out looking like you were possibly running away from something suss.

By the time I arrived, it was almost six, and the air around my car seemed to echo as I pulled into a parking space down a side street. There were still a couple of guys kicking a ball around one of the ovals, and I could hear the odd sound in Ms. Miller’s building that told me some staff were back late working. Poor bastards.

Ms. Miller wasn’t working late, of course. That fucking bitch probably couldn’t wait to get out of the building once her minimum hours were up. You got a feeling about people who really didn’t give a fuck. It didn’t matter how good they were at going through the motions, and Ms. Miller was as fucking weak at that as she was at basic security.

I got her office with its wobbly door handle open in seconds, and then it only took me a few more to break into her filing cabinet. Tamara’s folder was near the front of the top drawer. I’d always wondered if she had some special sorting for people she considered to be ‘active’ cases—all I’d known before then was that my folder never seemed to be hard for her to locate. I made a note of the address on the first page in the folder, and then put it back where I’d found it and shut the cabinet. There would be all sorts of insight to be gotten out of those pages, but I wasn’t the sort of person who took advantage of information that wasn’t meant to be mine. Not without giving my target an opportunity to defend themselves, at least… and Tamara was going to know before too long that I’d gotten hold of her location.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Tamara

Mum glared after Ryan as he slipped away from the table without asking, but she didn’t follow him to his room.

I sort of wished I’d tried it first, but at the same time I didn’t want to have Mum on my back so much she suspected what I was planning the next day. So I kept my eyes down and pretended, like Mike was, that everything was completely normal.

Then Mike started shifting like he wanted to make a run for it, but from the way he kept glancing at me I thought he was staying to provide some sort of buffer.

Something about Mum’s movements warned me she was going to start talking soon. I braced for desperately wanting a distraction.

A bang on the door made us all jump.

Mum scowled. “Who would show up at someone’s house at this time?”

Whoever it was didn’t intend to be ignored. When the knocking increased in volume, Mum muttered something as she threw down her fork, and stalked to the door.

“Tamara,” Mike spoke up as soon as she was gone, “are you okay?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

Mum’s raised voice filtered in… and then I realised I recognised the male voice speaking to her. I stumbled over Ryan’s pulled-out chair as I hurried to join her at the door.

Steven was leaning against the protruding outside wall of our house like he had nothing more on his mind than the average boyfriend showing up to say hi to a girlfriend at a bad time… except I’d been around him enough to tell there was something very off. He was edgy, his eyes tracking all over the place and his crooked elbow jittering against the doorframe. Even when he was angry, Steven was usually much more deliberate, more given up to graceful instinct. I never got the impression there was a lot going on under the surface. Now, I saw a lot in his eyes and it all scared me.

“Is he from your school, Tamara?” Mum asked. She made it sound innocent, but I could tell she was on edge about this sudden arrival. I put my eyes down to the ground. She knew the answer already, didn’t she?

I could still feel Steven staring at me. “Tamara, I need to talk to you now.”

“No, I’d like you to leave,” I mumbled. The longer he was here at my door, the more likely Mum would hear or figure out something she didn’t like.

Mum stiffened. “If you’ve come here to bother my daughter, I—”