Rebel Nation by Shaunta Grimes Page B

hours at least. He won’t go to the dorms before eight.”
    â€œEight hours to do what?” He was still struggling to figure out what exactly was happening.
    â€œJesus.” Leanne pushed strands of wet hair off her face. “I don’t know.”
    James took a bottle of what passed for whiskey these days from his sock drawer and poured a couple of fingers into a plastic cup. He handed it to her, then pulled a chair over and sat in it. “Why don’t you start from the beginning.”
    â€œWest isn’t sure we can trust you.” She gulped the whiskey, grimaced. “I told him that we could. We can, can’t we?”
    He gave her a little more whiskey. Just another swallow. He was tempted to knock some back himself, but he had a feeling one of them should be sober. “Trust me with what?”
    â€œWell, I mean, I’m still alive and I haven’t been arrested yet, so you haven’t told anyone what I’ve already told you.”
    Not that he hadn’t agonized about it. “I haven’t.”
    â€œSo if there’s more. If something else is happening. You want to know, don’t you?” She swallowed the whiskey.
    â€œYes.” The word came out easily, even though James wasn’t really sure.
    â€œYou have to decide,” Leanne said.
    â€œI said yes, didn’t I?”
    â€œSo you’re in?”
    James went back to the window. Back to the picture of Jane under the umbrella. She smiled at him, like they had a secret. They did, of course. She was already pregnant with West. They hadn’t told anyone yet. For a few weeks, he was just theirs. “Yeah. I’m in.”
    â€œLike I said, Bennett plans to call Clover back to the messenger program today.”
    He exhaled slowly. He hadn’t seen Clover as much as he would have liked since she came back in August. Really, only twice. He told himself that he would have taken care of her, if she hadn’t gone directly to the Academy dorms. It was a lie that he didn’t like to examine very closely. “She’s with her brother.”
    â€œYes. Among others. There’s a problem, though.”
    â€œWhat problem?”
    Leanne held out her cup and James poured another shot into it, then poured himself one as well. “Bridget Kingston is still in the city. She knows where the ranch is. It won’t be long before Bennett talks to her.”
    James pictured the pretty, blond, privileged girl he’d met when he visited Clover in her dorm on campus. “She won’t hold up.”
    â€œNot for long, no. I don’t think so.”
    James swallowed his whiskey and felt it burn its way into his belly. “So what now?”
    â€œNow you and I do what we can to give West time to move the kids out of the ranch, and then we leave the city.”
    â€œShit.”
    â€œWe can’t stay. Tell me you get that.”
    James sat on the floor next to her, still holding the half-full bottle in one hand. He got it. Once Bennett found out that Clover was gone again, there would be no more pretending that West was dead. And no matter what James did, his life was on the edge of chaos. He might save his job, but only if he turned his kids in. It had been a long time since he was anything even vaguely resembling the kind of father he thought he’d be when he took that picture of Jane, barely pregnant. “Shit.”
    â€œI agree.”
    â€œSo what’s the plan?”
    â€œWe talk to Bridget and Isaiah—”
    â€œIsaiah Finch? What does he have to do with this?”
    â€œHe knows about the ranch. Not where it is, but that it’s there. We’re going to talk to them both, try to get them to leave the city. If they won’t, then we do what we can to put Bennett off for a while. A day at least. Tell him Clover is sick, maybe. If that came from you, it might work.”
    James had the oddly disjointed feeling of being separated from his