Kitabı oku: «Beneath the Surface»

From: Delphi@oracle.org

To: C_Evans@athena.edu

Re: news reporter, Shannon Connor

Christine,

You know we’ve had our troubles with Shannon Connor. From the moment she was expelled from Athena Academy she’s been nothing but a thorn in the sides of the students and grads of our beloved school. I’ve been following her closely for years, and this time she’s gone too far.

Turns out, the news reports that made her a superstar were based on leads she received from an anonymous source. That source, I’ve discovered, was Arachne. Could Shannon have been so devious as to partner with our enemy? I’m not sure, but I intend to find out.

Arachne’s death two months ago stopped the flow of information, but it seems it didn’t stop her evil. She has at least one protégé who has reestablished contact with Shannon. I have a man shadowing our wily reporter. Whether Shannon knows it or not, she’s going to help us finish this thing, once and for all.

D.

Dear Reader,

Every family has its black sheep and outlaws—even those wonderful women of Athena Academy. It’s my pleasure to tell Shannon Connor’s story, and to finally get all the details straight about everything that happened to her and how she came to attempt framing Josie all those years ago!

As you’ve seen throughout this series, Shannon is nobody’s fool and isn’t a pushover. She’s been tracking Allison and the Athena women in the field, working the kidnappings and trying to find Marion Gracelyn’s archenemy, Arachne. She’s closing in on the truth, and this book deals with the price Shannon is prepared to pay to find out what’s really going on. Even though she’s not usually on Athena’s side, Shannon has remained powerful and unwavering in the face of danger—just like all the Athena women she went to school with. Shannon hasn’t strayed far from her roots, though she has at times used her powers for not-good!

In Beneath the Surface, Shannon meets hunky Rafe Santorini, a former CIA agent and friend to Allison Gracelyn, who’s recovering from a year’s incarceration behind enemy lines in North Korea. After being betrayed, Rafe isn’t ready to give his heart away—but there’s nothing as attractive as an Athena woman who has her eyes on the prize! He’s never going to know what hit him.

Enjoy,

Meredith Fletcher

Beneath the Surface

Meredith Fletcher

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MEREDITH FLETCHER

maintains a healthy interest in travel and history. She’s been to the top of Pikes Peak and to the bottom of Carlsbad Caverns. She’s seen the Reversing Falls in St. John, New Brunswick (and eaten purple seaweed) and snorkeled plane crashes in Cozumel.

She comes from a large family and loves sitting at the table while everyone shares their stories. She’s also an avid reader and movie enthusiast, enjoying every love story from Casablanca to Spider-Man 3 (which she firmly maintains is a love story in spite of all the trappings of superheroes).

This book is dedicated to Alice Clary

and Katie McNeil, who have reached for

and captured dreams of their own.

And to Natashya Wilson and Stacy Boyd,

who made it all happen.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue

Prologue

Athena Academy

Outside Glendale/Phoenix, Arizona

Fifteen years ago

“Shannon, you need to get up.”

“Inaminute,” Shannon mumbled automatically. There was something disturbing about the voice. It had a mom quality to it, but it definitely wasn’t her mom. Now isn’t that interesting.

Not that she was getting up. Nope, that wasn’t going to happen. This was Saturday. At least she was pretty sure it was Saturday. She always slept late on Saturdays unless the academy had a field day or exercise scheduled.

“Shannon.”

Instead of responding, Shannon curled up more tightly into her bed. She reached up and pulled her blanket over her head. The light was on in her room. That bothered her even more than the voice.

Who would turn on the light? Or had she left it on? She wasn’t sure. She’d been too excited after her “special mission” last night to go to sleep immediately. Instead she’d stayed on the Internet, shopping for new clothes and a new way to do her hair. Her hair she could deal with, but new clothes were going to be impossible until—

Someone yanked the blanket off Shannon. And that was the last straw. Back home, when she’d been living with her older sister and younger brother, people had learned to give her space.

Usually finding space at home wasn’t a problem because she was largely ignored. She wasn’t as helpful around the house or as precious—whatever that meant, though Shannon had come to believe it meant passive—as her older sister and she wasn’t Daddy’s only son. They’d gotten all the attention, and Shannon had gotten all the space she’d cared for. In fact, sending her to the Athena Academy after she qualified had seemed an easy way for her parents to get her out from underfoot.

Thoroughly irritated now, Shannon cracked open her eyes. She glanced at the room’s only window above her computer desk and saw that it was still dark outside. She might be awake in the middle of the night, but she didn’t get up then.

“Hey,” she protested. “What gives? This isn’t one of those stupid fire drills, is it?”

“No. It’s not a fire drill.” The voice was losing some of its patient quality. The momness was coming through even stronger.

If Shannon had still been at home, the yelling would have started by now, and her mother would be telling her father how impossible Shannon was to deal with. And she would have been blamed by everyone in the family for whatever went wrong for the rest of the day.

“Get up, Shannon. We need to talk.”

That voice—the one so carefully measured it sounded like a military cadence—finally woke Shannon. That voice said she was in trouble.

Shannon hated being in trouble. Well, mostly she hated being in trouble. Sometimes trouble meant that she was getting the only attention she was going to get.

She twisted, shaded her eyes against the light and looked up at Christine Evans, the principal of Athena Academy. Principal Evans was almost fifty years old—at least that’s what the rumors around the school claimed—and an ex-Army officer.

She’d lost her left eye in some kind of accident—everyone in school insisted it had happened in a military engagement and Principal Evans had killed a whole platoon of bad guys—and been appointed as principal of the academy by Senator Marion Gracelyn, the founding mother behind the special finishing school for girls. The principal and the senator had been friends for a long time.

Principal Evans was stocky from a lifetime of military work and a dedication to staying in shape rather than staying thin. Her short-cut gray hair offered more testimony to the fact that she didn’t try to hide things.

Principal Evans wasn’t hiding anything now. She was irritated. Big-time.

Okay. Chill. Buy some time. Shannon levered her legs over the side of the bed to show that she was willing to comply with the request but was too tired to do so immediately. She yawned. She stretched. She rubbed her eyes.

Then she noticed that Tory Patton was standing in the back of the room, near the door. Tory was naturally beautiful. She’d never had to work at it. Gifted with black hair, an olive complexion and green eyes, she turned the heads of boys everywhere she went. And she didn’t even seem to care. It was enough to make Shannon gag.

Great. Tory Patton, one of my rivals. In my room. And I have probably the worst case of bed-head since bed-head was invented.

“What’s she doing here?” Shannon demanded.

Principal Evans ignored the question. “Get dressed,” she ordered. “You’ve got five minutes. Otherwise you’re going in your robe.”

“My robe?”

“Five minutes,” Principal Evans repeated.

“Going where?”

“Start dressing or we can go now.”

Witch, Shannon thought. But that was more a knee-jerk reflex to being awakened in the middle of the night. Normally Shannon got along with Principal Evans all right. Except for a few incidents involving hazing students new to the academy.

She bolted up from bed and dived at her chest of drawers. She wasn’t going to be caught walking around the academy halls in a robe. As usual, she’d worn only a football jersey to bed. She’d told everyone her boyfriend had given her the jersey, but she’d actually stolen it from her little brother.

Tory wore boys’ pajama pants, an academy T-shirt and was barefooted. Somehow on her it looked like an ensemble and a statement. Even underdressed, Tory still looked beautiful.

It’s just not fair, Shannon thought again. Tory hardly had to do anything to look great in the television broadcasting class they were taking together. Shannon, while she was beautiful, still had to work to make it happen.

Arms filled with clothing, Shannon sprinted for the bathroom. Her roommate slept through the whole thing.

Minutes later, dressed in capris, good shoes and a crop top, Shannon walked at Principal Evans’s side. Shannon had her arms crossed to show her displeasure but also because it was cold this time of year up in the White Tank Mountains, where the school was located.

Years ago the campus had been a mental-health and rehabilitation facility for movie stars who’d fallen off the wagon or gotten involved in drugs. Wealthy families had stashed their black sheep there.

The girls at the academy even told stories about serial killers and murderers that had been held in the older sections of the school. That made for some exciting walks late at night. Especially for the younger girls who were brought there for the first time. Shannon had enjoyed hazing the newbies with the stories of murderers loose on the grounds.

Many of the first-timers came there at age ten or eleven. The academy recognized potential prospects and sent letters early. The school was so prestigious that hardly anyone ever turned them down. The fact that the tuition was waived made the academy even more enticing.

On Friday and Saturday nights, after the fall semester started, the newbies usually got the full treatment from some of the other girls. Frightened squeals echoed throughout those older sections. Shannon had particularly enjoyed those times. She loved role-play and she was one of the best because she could always tell what would scare a new girl the most. It was almost as though she had a psychic ability to get inside an audience’s head.

Principal Evans and her staff turned out to be real buzz-kills. They penalized everyone involved in hazing of that nature. Shannon didn’t mind. The trade-off—a few days of detention for delicious moments of seeing a newbie totally wigging out—was worth it. The event was all theater, getting the complete, rapt attention of her victims, then being in the eye of the storm that swept out of administration.

“You still haven’t told me what’s going on,” Shannon accused.

“You’ll know soon enough,” Principal Evans said.

Okay, Shannon thought as they crossed the grounds to the school’s administration building, so you’ve got me beat when it comes to scary-quiet attitude. That’s fine. I’ll let you have that one. There were other ways to deal with adults.

Shannon called tears to her eyes. She could cry on cue. It was one of her best skills, and that little trick had earned her a lot of attention at home until her parents had either figured it out or just stopped caring. She still wasn’t sure which it had been.

She swallowed hard, made her voice tremulous and looked at Principal Evans. “It’s my parents, isn’t it? Something’s happened to my parents?”

Shannon was so good that she almost scared herself. Even though she was convinced that her parents didn’t much care for her, she still loved them. She didn’t want anything to happen to them.

Principal Evans was quiet longer than she would have normally been. Shannon wondered if she’d played the tear card once too often. But Principal Evans went for it anyway.

“No,” the woman said. “Nothing’s happened to your parents. As far as I know, they’re both fine.”

Shannon almost grinned in triumph. Not only had she created some sympathy in Principal Evans, but she’d also learned that her parents hadn’t been called. Whatever trouble she was in—and she honestly couldn’t think of what that trouble might be—it couldn’t be that bad.

However, the trouble was bad. It had to be bad if Marion Gracelyn was there.

The senator had been waiting in Principal Evans’s office. Marion Gracelyn was often at the school, but she’d never been there in the middle of the night, not that Shannon knew.

Marion Gracelyn was a beautiful woman. Her brown hair was shoulder-length and carefully coiffed, and her business suit was immaculate. Her brown eyes were intense, much more scary, actually, than Principal Evans’s. Whatever was going on, the senator was taking it way too personally.

In that moment Shannon was pretty sure what the trouble was going to be about. Somehow Principal Evans had found out what Shannon was doing to Josie Lockworth.

Without a word, Principal Evans waved Shannon and Tory into chairs in front of the desk. Then she sat in the big chair on the other side and tapped her computer keyboard.

Senator Marion Gracelyn remained standing.

Seated there in Principal Evans’s way-too-neat office and surrounded by proof that the woman had no life outside of what happened at the school, Shannon knew she was in more trouble than she’d ever been in. For the first time in a long time, she was scared.

The three of them—Shannon, Principal Evans, and Tory—watched the computer monitor on the desk. On-screen, Shannon broke into Josie Lockworth’s gym locker. Lock-picking, not usually found on a high school curricula, was only one of the specialized skills taught at the academy. Shannon had turned out to be quite good at it.

The personal DVD player was plainly visible in Shannon’s hand as she shoved it into Josie’s locker. Then Shannon closed the locker and hurried off.

“As you know, Josie has been accused of stealing things around campus,” Principal Evans said in her no-nonsense voice.

Shannon did know that. Everything Josie had been accused of stealing, Shannon had actually stolen and put in Josie’s locker or room. Those things had been found during subsequent investigations.

Josie Lockworth had been intentionally targeted by Shannon’s team the Graces. Upon arrival at the school, each new student was put with a team. Those teams weren’t designed to be cliques. They were intended to be a small support system within the school.

The Cassandras—Josie’s team—were led by Lorraine Miller. Everyone called her Rainy. She was Allison Gracelyn’s strongest competition at the school, and everyone took the competition seriously. Way too seriously, in Shannon’s view. But Shannon had gotten attention within Allison’s group, the Graces.

“How could you do something so reprehensible?” Marion Gracelyn demanded.

Shannon tried to speak and couldn’t at first. She’d never imagined getting caught. Josie had been chosen because she’d been the weakest link among the Cassandras. Her mother had been some kind of engineer for the Air Force. A spy plane she’d designed had failed during a test and killed several men.

Josie lived under that cloud and carried her mother’s guilt around with her. Shannon figured that Josie would have cracked under the social stigma of being thought of as a thief. The last week that the “thefts”—Shannon didn’t think of her borrowing other people’s property as theft because everyone had gotten their things back once it was discovered Josie had them—had taken place, Josie had shown obvious signs of distress. She’d gotten more withdrawn than normal and couldn’t seem to concentrate on her work. Not even math and physics, which were two of her most enjoyed subjects.

If you could take away the sheer love of math from Josie Lockworth, Shannon knew she was doing something. Still, part of her had felt bad for Josie. The other girl had never done anything to her. Under different circumstances, if she hadn’t been part of Rainy’s group and Allison hadn’t been so jealous of Rainy, they might even have been friends.

“Who put the video cameras in?” Shannon asked.

“I did,” Tory said. Her voice held a note of imperiousness and outrage. She could do a lot with a look and her tone of voice. That was why she got even better scores in the broadcasting classes than Shannon did.

“That was good,” Shannon said. “I didn’t think about that.”

“Josie’s my friend,” Tory said in a hard voice. “She would have been your friend if you’d given her a chance.”

That was probably true, Shannon admitted. But that wasn’t how things were. Lines had been drawn and she’d had to choose her allegiances.

“Have you nothing to say in your own defense?” Marion Gracelyn asked.

Shannon remembered then that the senator had once worked in the district attorney’s office in Phoenix. She’d had an impressive conviction rate. The pre-law classes at the academy talked about some of her cases.

“It wasn’t my idea to frame Josie,” Shannon said. She played her trump card. “It was your daughter’s.”

The Big Announcement—and that was how Shannon had thought of it since she’d first figured out how she was going to respond if she got caught framing Josie—didn’t deflect the heat as much as Shannon had hoped. In fact, if anything, the Big Announcement only seemed to turn up the heat.

Marion Gracelyn had become even further outraged at the accusation of her daughter.

Shannon had offered to show them the e-mails that she’d received from Allison. They were all in a file Shannon had set up on her computer in her dorm room.

Everyone knew that Allison was a geek when it came to computers. She did everything on computers. All her free time was spent on them. She organized all the Graces on computers and PDAs, posted their schedules and outlined her expectations in terse, well-written e-mails that came in at all times during the day.

Allison’s roommate even complained that Allison used a computer to wake her. Every morning, the roommate told them, Allison’s computer would come on and speak like a Borg, one of the cybernetic/human hybrids that were the bad guys on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Allison Gracelyn, Shannon knew, was a complete geek in her mind, but she had the good looks and body of a runway model. Those were two perfectly good reasons to like her. And to be envious.

As it turned out, Allison was also more clever than Shannon would have believed.

After they’d all tramped back to Shannon’s room with the academy coming to life around them, Shannon had logged on to her computer and brought up the file where she’d saved the e-mails from Allison.

The file was empty.

Panic settled into Shannon then. Josie hadn’t been the only one who’d gotten set up. Shannon had gotten set up, too.

“I don’t understand,” Shannon whispered as she looked at the empty folder open on the computer monitor. “They were right here. All of the e-mails Allison sent me about framing Josie for the thefts.”

“Why would my daughter do something like that?” Marion Gracelyn asked. She was definitely not happy.

“Because Josie would break,” Shannon replied. The tears that rolled down her cheeks now were real. She was in a lot of trouble. She’d never, even in her wildest imaginings, thought she’d ever be in this much trouble. “Allison said we should frame Josie because she would crater.”

“Why would Allison want that to happen?”

“Because Allison wanted to win the competition against the Cassandras.”

Everyone knew about the rivalry between the Graces and the Cassandras. That was a thing of legend at the academy over the last few years. Rainy and Allison had always competed at everything. And everyone knew that Allison carried the competition further than Rainy did. Rainy just wanted to do her best and make everyone else raise the bar. Allison wanted—no, she needed—to be the best.

Shannon understood and respected that. She felt the same way.

“I can’t believe Allison would do something like that,” Marion Gracelyn countered.

But Shannon sensed the hesitation in the woman’s words. Marion knew about her daughter’s strong desire to beat Rainy.

Work with that, Shannon told herself. She tried to ignore the feelings of desperation that ate at her. You can’t get into any more trouble than Allison if you were only following orders. And they’re not going to do anything to Allison.

The problem was, in the end, that Shannon couldn’t prove anything.

Allison flatly denied ever sending the e-mails. They’d never talked about the scheme around any of the other Graces. Or even among themselves, Shannon realized only then. Everything had been done through e-mail.

But that was how Allison did everything.

Principal Evans pointed out that the campus server would have created a log and kept track of all the e-mails sent through that server. Athena Academy kept all their computer hardware on-site and managed computer security.

Of course, once a computer interfaced with the World Wide Web, that security could be compromised. They all knew that.

Allison maintained her innocence so strongly and sincerely that Shannon was tempted to believe her, as well. She totally got why Allison didn’t confess. Her mother’s brainchild—the Athena program—would have been compromised. Millions of dollars in funding would have been at risk.

Shannon had heard all that while sitting outside Principal Evans’s office. She knew that things weren’t going to go well for her. She also knew there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

Waiting outside that office had been hard. Shannon had wanted someone to rescue her. The stares of the other students—all of whom knew what was going on by that time because the grapevine at Athena was incredibly vigorous—were unbearable.

Traitor.

That word came up a lot.

Despite the fact that junior-and high-school-age girls brought with them huge amounts of personal problems and vendettas, everyone agreed that no one would have done what Shannon did.

By lunch Shannon had the same social standing as a plague carrier. She told herself that she could get through this. There had to be a way. No one could hate someone forever.

Could they?

By five o’clock the outcome had been decided. Principal Evans summoned her into the office. Marion Gracelyn stood at the window and looked out at the school. She didn’t even turn around to acknowledge Shannon’s presence.

“Have a seat, Shannon,” Principal Evans said. She pointed to one of the chairs in front of the desk.

Knees weak and trembling, unable to speak, Shannon sat. She held her arms across her chest, but it wasn’t out of defiance this time. It was simply to help keep herself together. She was afraid if she let herself go that she would shake to pieces.

“We’ve talked about this all day,” Principal Evans said.

I know, Shannon thought with a trace of rebelliousness. Who do you think was sitting outside your office, waiting? But she didn’t say anything. She didn’t think her voice would work.

“This hasn’t been easy.” Principal Evans tried a reassuring smile, but it didn’t come off very well. She looked more tired than Shannon had ever seen her. “This school is demanding. Of its administration and of its student body. We knew it would be when it was designed. We don’t judge a student on her ability to do and understand the work. We trust that the ability and understanding will come in time in an environment like Athena Academy.”

Get to it, Shannon wanted to say. Tell me I’m grounded. Tell me what privileges I’m going to lose and for how long. Then let me get back to my room and disappear till this blows over.

“What we cannot have here,” Principal Evans said, “is anyone who doesn’t hold to the higher moral ideals of the academy. What you’ve done isn’t just irresponsible. You framed Josie with malicious intent.”

To win a competition that Allison wanted to win, Shannon wanted to point out. But she couldn’t.

“I can only hope that in the rest of your academic career you use this experience to make better choices,” Principal Evans said.

Shannon almost breathed a sigh of relief. She could make better choices. She would. And one of the first choices she was going to make was to demand to be taken out of Allison’s group. If that was how Allison was going to handle loyalty, Shannon didn’t want to be around her. No matter how many cool points were involved in hanging with the senator’s daughter and the academy’s star student.

“Unfortunately,” Principal Evans said, “the rest of your academic career isn’t going to be at Athena Academy.”

It took Shannon a moment to process what Principal Evans had said. “No,” she said weakly. “No. That’s not fair. You can’t just kick me out.”

“We can.” Marion turned then. She was cold and distant. Shannon had never seen the woman like that before. In the past she’d always been understanding and kind. “You’re here by invitation, Miss Connor.”

Miss Connor? Shannon had never been addressed by Marion like that before.

“An invitation the academy can rescind at any time,” Marion went on. “We have rescinded that invitation. Effective immediately. School staff are packing your room for you now. Your parents have been notified. You’ve already been booked on an evening flight. You’ll be back home in Virginia by tonight. Your parents will meet you at the airport.”

Shannon wanted to scream. She couldn’t imagine going back to her parents or to that small house where it was so cramped she couldn’t breathe. She’d been away from there for three years.

That place wasn’t home anymore. That family wasn’t her family anymore. Didn’t anyone understand that?

Even though she wanted to speak and tell them again that she hadn’t acted alone, that Allison was as guilty as she was and therefore just as deserving of being kicked out of the academy, Shannon couldn’t. Her voice wouldn’t work, and her throat hurt so badly that all she could do was cry as silently as she could.

“I’m sorry, Shannon,” Principal Evans said.

She sounded so sincere that Shannon believed her. That only made things feel worse.