Ding.
She stiffened before pulling away.
That was when he realized they weren’t alone.
“Brecken!” she yelled.
Garrett glanced at the door to see Brecken with Flynn and Keaton. Only yellow feathers were missing from his brothers’ canary-eating grins.
Taryn rushed toward the teenager and hugged him. “Are you okay?”
Brecken blushed. “I didn’t mean to make people worry.”
“Did you get in touch with your mom and dad?” she asked.
Garrett glanced at Flynn and Keaton. “Yeah.”
Something was going on, and it involved his brothers. He gave both his spill-now look.
“He used my phone,” Keaton said, not offering much.
Garrett prepared to go into cross-examination mode.
“Dial it back, Gar,” Flynn said. “Some kid mentioned seeing Brecken at the Summit Ridge Bakery, so we drove over there.”
“How did you get to Summit Ridge?” Taryn asked.
“I walked,” Brecken answered as if that would have only taken him ten minutes when it would have been an hour or two, depending on his pace. “I thought about hitching a ride, but my parents told me never to do that.”
“Never do that,” all three brothers said in unison.
Taryn appeared confused.
So was Garrett. “Can you start at the beginning?”
“Brecken?” she asked.
He inhaled deeply. “I told you I would fix things.”
“You did,” Taryn said.
“The only way for me to do that was to go to Summit Ridge, so I walked. I found a pawnshop. Did you know they’re open on Sundays?”
“No,” she said. “Go on.”
“Oh, well, first I headed to the drugstore and bought a pair of flip-flops and a bottle of water. I was sweating, and my mom always says to hydrate. Anyway, after that, I headed over to the Summit Ridge Bakery where I filmed videos of me telling what they did and put them online.”
“Not on one platform,” Keaton clarified. “Everywhere.”
“He made posts, too,” Flynn added. “With receipts from his emails with Nick Baxter.”
Brecken nodded. “Gotta keep the receipts.”
“Yes, you do.” Garrett didn’t like what had happened, but the kid’s actions to “fix things” impressed him. “What did you do after that?”
“I sold my phone and shoes at the pawnshop.”
“That’s why he needed the flip-flops,” Keaton, always the professor and filling in gaps, added.
