“What are we going to do?” Vero asked me.
“Nothing. Your only job is to stay out of sight.”
Ten minutes later, we were parked in the tiny staff lot behind the sorority house. The service door opened, and Zoey waved frantically for us to hurry.
“What took you so long?” she whispered, darting anxious looksaround the parking lot as we got out of the van in our coveralls and beanies. “Celeste is supposed to be here any minute.”
“Sorry,” Vero said. “We would have been here sooner, but our IT professional was too busy shaving all three of his chin hairs.”
Cam threw her a death glare as he handed me the backpack containing his laptop.
“We’ll need to work fast,” Zoey said, taking Arnold from his hands. “I left the window in my room unlocked. You and Finlay can wait for me and Cam in there. If Celeste gets here and sees you, we’ll all be in trouble. Come on,” she said, nudging Cam and his tool bucket into the kitchen.
Vero grabbed two shovels from the back of the van and passed me one. “Here, it’ll make us look less suspicious.”
“We’re skulking behind a girls’ dormitory dressed in maintenance uniforms and sneaking into windows. And you think carrying shovels is going to make us looklesssuspicious?”
Fortunately for us, Zoey’s room was on the ground level. Unfortunately for Zoey, it boasted an impressive view of a wooden enclosure containing a dumpster.
Vero and I crouched behind it. She shoved Zoey’s window open, putting her shoulder into it when it stuck. We left our shovels on the ground and took turns climbing in. I set Cam’s backpack on the floor. Like Zoey, her room was vibrant, warm, and stylishly disheveled. Her patchwork quilt looked homemade from a collection of artfully cut concert T-shirts. The walls were covered in video game posters, a bean bag chair was littered with throw pillows, and a game controller had been dismantled on her desk.
“I can’t believe she’s still in the same room,” Vero said, shutting Zoey’s window and closing the blinds.
“Which was yours?” I asked.
Vero pointed at the ceiling above us. “My view of the staffparking lot wasn’t much better. But beggars don’t get to be choosers in places like this.” At my puzzled look, she sat on Zoey’s unmade bed and dusted off her hands. “I got a full ride from the university, but the amount they gave me wasn’t enough to cover my sorority fees, and the chapter bylaws state that board members have to live inside the house. When Mia nominated me to be treasurer, I told her I couldn’t take the job because I couldn’t afford a room here. She offered to cover my extra fees from the sorority’s operating expenses. She said if I was handling the treasury books, no one would have to know. Celeste was great about a lot of things, but money wasn’t one of them,” she said with a nostalgic sigh. “We probably could have gotten away with it, but I said I didn’t feel right taking the chapter’s money. It wouldn’t have been fair to the other girls. So they fundraised to create a scholarship instead. It didn’t leave the chapter much money for fun stuff, but we raised enough to cover expenses for one new pledge every year. Zoey got it when she became a member. In hindsight, I guess that’s why they decided to make her my Little. Guess they figured we had that much in common.” Vero frowned as she looked around her. “Mia and Ava would never admit it, but the charity cases definitely got the crappiest rooms.”
“Sounds like they really wanted you to be treasurer.” It also sounded like they were willing to break some rules to make that happen.
“Theywantedsomeone who was good with money,” she corrected me. “We had some really great fundraisers while I was treasurer, enough to cover the scholarships and some fun trips, but nothing paid out like those poker nights. Between Ben’s business savvy and my knack for accounting, we really raked it in. We charged a hefty cover, the table minimums were set high, and admission was strictly invitation only, so we could be sure the people who came were serious and wouldn’t run around telling anyone.
“We had the whole thing figured out. But then Bennett and Jackson started pushing to make it bigger and invite more people. They started demanding larger cuts and more say over the money. The more cash we had, the more the six of us argued over what to do with it, and it all spiraled from there.”
We both jumped as the door to Zoey’s room flew open. Zoey, Cam, and Arnold tumbled in, and Zoey slammed the door. She leaned back against it, breathing hard. Cam’s laugh was a little unhinged, and Zoey started laughing, too.
“That was close,” he said, setting Arnold on the floor to sniff around.
“You’re not kidding. I thought we were toast when the cleaning lady came in to empty the trash cans while you were unscrewing the PC behind Celeste’s desk. I don’t know what I would have done if Arnold hadn’t saved the day.” Zoey turned to Vero and me to explain. “The cleaning lady yelled at me for having a pet in the house. Arnold got scared and peed all over the floor. We only got Cam out of there because she ran to get her mop. Don’t worry,” Zoey said at my worried look, “I told her the dog belonged to a friend of mine. And she never even spotted Cam.”
He blew on his knuckles and polished them on his coveralls. “We’ve got nothing to worry about, Mrs. D. I put everything back right where I found it. No one will ever know the hard drive was gone.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I checked the screen, expecting to see Nick’s name, but it was Ramón. “It’s your cousin,” I said to Vero. Her face fell as I connected the call. “Hello?”
“Where are you?” Ramón did not sound happy. I could make out the clatter of tools in the background, the hiss of an air compressor. He was calling from his garage.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Officer Oates just left a message on my phone. She wanted to know where Vero was and if I was with her.”
“Vero and I are at the mall,” I said, snapping my fingers to get Cam’s attention. “She has an hour left until she has to be home for curfew. Why does Officer Oates want to know where she is?” I gestured to Cam’s backpack and made a circling motion with a finger. He nodded and quickly took out his computer.
“She said Vero’s signal’s acting weird and she wants me to confirm her exact location.”
“Her exact location?” I peeked over Cam’s shoulder as he opened his laptop and moved Vero’s beacon in short hops from one end of the mall to the other. “Tell her the last time you spoke to us, we were in Target.” Cam nodded and gave me a thumbs-up.
“Do not tell me you two are using that damn belt,” Ramón said.
I winced. “Okay, I won’t.”
