The Inside Job by Jackson Pearce Page B

your parents, Beatrix.”
    â€œYeah, I know,” she said, and smiled. “But it’s okay. We’re all okay. Also, we’re all tired. Seriously, Hale, your eyes look like someone punched you. Unless—were you trying to help Kennedy with that cheerleading pyramid she wants to do? Because Ben tried a few weeks ago, and she kicked him right in the eye on accident.”
    â€œNo—just tired,” I said, and smiled too. I stood up and pushed my chair in. “Are you going to bed?”
    â€œI guess so. I’ll run everything through the system again tomorrow just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. But . . . do you think maybe we can look into SRS now that the noble gases turned up nothing?” she asked.
    I bit my tongue for a second, because I was thinking,
Of course we can—mission first, right?
Then I let my fingertips linger on the list of partygoers that rested on the edge of the table. “Yes. Of course, yes . . . but can I go over these people one more time to make
sure
they’re dead ends?”
    Beatrix sighed a little—her talk, however moving, however sincere, hadn’t gotten to me quite as completely as she hoped it would. “You can do whatever you want, Hale. But you trust me, right? I went over them all.”
    â€œOf course I trust you; I just . . . I just want to be sure, I guess. It’s not even because I don’t want to look into SRS. It’s that I feel like I missed something.” Once I said it aloud,the feeling grew stronger—that gut feeling that SRS had taught us to trust.
    Beatrix lifted her Right Hand. “Well, let’s go over it together. So, we ruled out all the employees, right? Ben and Kennedy felt pretty confident about those.”
    â€œOkay, yeah.”
    â€œAnd then . . . we have the three families from Hastings’s birthday party who live in other countries, but I picked through their bank accounts. No sign of an influx of money, and no sign of sudden helium buying.”
    â€œAll right, yes . . .”
    â€œAnd then there are the country club families. I checked them for helium buying too, but you also cleared the Stonemans, the Alabasters, and . . . what was that final name?”
    â€œThe St. Claires.”
    â€œOh, right, the ones who made fun of Hastings for having a clown at his birthday party—”
    Beatrix nearly dropped her Right Hand. Our eyes snapped together and widened in sync. The paper slipped from my fingers.
    â€œAccess to helium. Attended the birthday party.
The clown
,” I said under my breath. “We never looked into the clown.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    Because it was a weekday, we couldn’t talk to Hastings about the clown until that evening, when he’d arrived home from the bank. There wasn’t much to do on the
poney
farm other than look at the aforementioned ponies, so we—everyone but Beatrix and Ben, who stayed behind to source uranium for something or another—got to Hastings’s early, broke in, and made sandwiches. Clatterbuck worried Hastings might be mad at us, using up his groceries. Otter wasn’t worried; he said Hastings owed us a break-in and a few sandwiches, given that we’d been in Switzerland for a week now just for him.
    â€œCheese is Annabelle’s favorite,” Kennedy said fondly, feeding the dog another cheese sandwich. I think this was number four. Maybe five? It was hard to count, since Annabelle had smashed her entire body onto my lap andher giant head blocked most of my view. Annabelle swallowed her sandwich, then looked back at me with wistful eyes; I patted her head again, because even though she was sort of suffocating me, it was sort of impossible to say no to those eyes.
    â€œWhat’s the next trick you’re teaching her?” I asked.
    â€œFetch, maybe? She’ll run after the ball, but she won’t bring it back. Watch—”
    Kennedy