“Maybe you should pay more attention to your students. And not just the ones you think you can exploit.”
“He’s not here.” Gia bounds back down the stairs, the same mixture of relief and despair I feel plain on her face.
“As I said. Now, if you would please remove yourselves from my home—”
“You never answered my question,” I interrupt. “Have you talked to Gale tonight?”
Gia is at my side now, blazing in her righteous frustration. When Celeste starts to shake her head, she leans in.
“If you lie to me right now—If you tell me you don’t know where he is, and I find out you talked to him? I will use every resource at my family’s disposal to have you fired. It might not work. You have connections of your own. But I’m pretty sure I could make things very awkward for you for a long time.”
The self-satisfied boredom drops from Celeste’s face, replaced by a flicker of real fear. Hope surges in my chest, and I have to fight to keep from reaching out and shaking her answers loose. Gia has no such reservations. With another step, she is right up in Celeste’s face, full of power and baleful threat.
“Tell me where he is,” she demands.
“He’s gone,” Celeste blurts out, taking a step back.
“Gone where?” I ask.
“He came here asking for a plane ticket back to California.”
“And you bought it for him?”
“He said he needed it. Told me if I did this one last thing for him, he’d leave and I wouldn’t have to—”
“Have to watch him be free?” Gia laughs without humor. “Be successful without you? With us?”
“Jesus.” I shake my head. “You really are a selfish bitch.”
“Be careful, Mr. Chace.” She gives me a sharp look. “You are still students at my school.”
“You better hope we find Gale,Ms. Sullivan,” Gia warns. “Because if we don’t, or if he refuses to come back because ofyou? I won’t be coming back either. You will no longer have a Laurent among your students at ACCA. And I will tell everyone exactly why.”
“I’m with her.” I shrug. “For what it’s worth.”
Gia throws me a fierce smile.
“So this plane ticket,” she says. “Where exactly was it to? Oakland?”
“The earliest flight he could find was into San Jose. I believe he’ll be landing in another hour or so.”
“Okay.” Gia’s already pulling her phone out and heading for the door. “Oh yeah.” She glances back at Celeste standing fragile and defeated in the midst of her luxury. “My mom said to say ‘hi.’”
Outside on the curb, she shows me her phone.
“It’s a little over eight hours to San Jose. If we leave right now, we can get there by the time he wakes up.”
I don’t tell her we still have no idea where he is, or that San Jose is a big city, even if he didn’t go straight to Oakland from the airport. I don’t remind her he hasn’t answered any of our texts or calls. Maybe we can blame that on the flight.
Instead, I kiss her and take the keys.
“My turn to drive.”
42
Gale
The lawyer meets me in the parking lot. She’s pushing fifty, with short gray hair and a navy pantsuit that looks like she bought it at Ross. She told me the dress code over the phone, so instead of my usual ripped jeans, I’m in a pair of dark slacks and a gray button-down. Clothes Celeste bought me, but the way the shirt’s silky fabric turns purple in the folds reminds me of Lyot’s eyes.
