{6}
Viktor Greene was the definition of bad news. With a record as long as his, I was surprised that Crimson Heights High even let him into the school without having two guards at his side the entire time.
And the guards wouldn’t even be for him but for us- the other students that attended school with him.
From the age of eight up until he was sixteen, he committed petty crimes. It wasn’t until he was seventeen years old that he was arrested for nearly beating a guy to death. He spent eighteen months in country prison. He was released on probation three months ago, the end of our junior year and was enrolled into the school for his final year.
He was currently living with his Aunt, Conrad’s mother. His file didn’t list the history of what happened to his parents but my guess was that part was in the ‘Confidential’ section that was listed and directing to another location where that file could be found.
Sitting behind my father’s desk, I exited out of Viktor’s file and shut down his computer. After the whole thing with him down in the basement, I got curious; he freaked me out. I needed to know just who exactly he was.
What he said hadn’t sat well with me, which was why as soon as the last bell of the school day rang, I took off home and locked myself in my father’s study. He usually kept the police data base as his home page and his password had always been my mother’s name- even after she left.
Getting in and finding Viktor’s file hadn’t been a problem. The problem turned out to be knowing what I now knew about him. He almost beat a guy to death. He had been addicted to hardcore drugs, and for the longest time he had jumped from foster home to foster home.
Viktor Greene was a dangerous person.
And something told me he wasn’t the only dangerous person in that crowd.
++
I shut off my engine and pulled out my key before I grabbed my bag and threw open my car door. I was hungry, tired, and cranky, all in that order. I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep last night due to my mind going haywire. I couldn’t stop thinking about the information that I had learned. One minute it was five o’clock in the afternoon and the next it was five o’clock in the morning.
“Malia,” David called as I slammed shut my car door and hitched my back over my head. “Hey, Malia.” He called again as I rounded the back of Range Rover and began towards the school entrance.
As his hand gripped my elbow, I was pulled to a stop just before the stairs. From the corner of my eye I could see Stephanie’s red head looking our way, along with her minions, as they stood by the entrance.
“What?” I snapped, tearing my elbow out of his grip.
“Are you okay?” he asked as he looked down at me. “You look…” he stopped before he finished his sentence.
“Like shit?” I finished for him. “Yeah, I know. Is that all you needed to say?”
“No, I just… I just wanted to check up on you.”
“I’m fine, David.”
“You don’t look fine. Did something happen?”
I was about to respond and ask what he meant when an arm fell around my shoulders. Glancing up, Mark smiled down at me. His dark eyes covered by a pair of black Ray Bans.
“Everything alright here?” he asked.
Glancing back at David, I didn’t fail to notice the couple of steps he took back.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Everything is fine.”
Mark squeezed my shoulder as he nodded towards David, “You cool, man?”
With a fixed jaw, David nodded and replied, “Yeah.”
As Mark led me away towards Bay and Carrie, I glanced over my shoulder at David. With no expression on his face, the look in his eyes told me he wasn’t okay even though he claimed to be.
++
Things were no longer making sense. As the day progressed, Bay and Mark exchanged odd looks whenever David was caught looking at me. The question he had asked me in the morning, threw me for a loop as well. What had he meant when he asked if something had happened? Was something supposed to happen?
Questions kept turning in my head the entire day. I noticed the questioning looks passed between the Hemingway twins. Carrie hadn’t shown up to school and neither had Viktor. During lunch I sat in the basement with Bay, Mark and Conrad. They played a game of Poker while I sat back and watched.
Things seemed normal, but they weren’t. Maybe I was just noticing how odd Bay and her friends were. Maybe it had taken reading Viktor’s file to open up my eyes and notice that something was wrong about these people.
How come I had never seen or heard of them in the years prior? Were they that off the radar that no one knew of them or was it just that no one spoke of them?
Whatever the reason, whatever was going on, I had a feeling sooner or later I would find out. After all, I was the daughter of the Chief of Police. Investigating was in my blood.
