“Hello?” I answered the phone.
“I need your help,” Avery whispered.
I frowned and looked down at my watch. “Are you okay?”
“I’m hiding in a janitor’s closet,” she whispered.
Terror started to pour through my veins as scenario after scenario of exactly why she was hiding in a broom closet rolled through my brain.
“Why?” I stood up, catching the attention of the men surrounding me.
Adam, Malachi, Saint, Nathan, and Louis all looked up, frowning at my stiffness. Now they were alert and on their feet, too.
“Just… everything’s okay.” She paused. “But shit. This is so embarrassing. Can you bring a handcuff key?”
I frowned hard down at the table we’d been having our weekly meeting around.
“Yes,” I said.
“Thank you,” she breathed. “I’m okay. I promise.”
I had a feeling that things weren’t okay.
Things were very far from okay if she was hiding in a janitor’s closet, calling me, while whispering.
Not okay in the least.
“I’ll be there in five minutes, okay?” I said.
Her hum of acceptance was enough to make me lose some of my tension.
“Okay.”
Then she hung up, leaving me staring at the table with anger rolling in my veins.
“Something wrong?” Saint asked once I hung up the phone.
I looked at Saint and shrugged. “I have no fucking idea.”
Malachi stood up and said, “Well let’s go. We can take Bertha.”
Bertha was our newest acquisition, an armored vehicle that was meant to protect us in dangerous situations. It weighed a fucking ton, had bulletproof glass and metal siding that could withstand a fifty caliber bullet, and got four miles to the gallon.
It was a fucking beast.
“I don’t…”
“We’re going.” Nathan stood, too. “We weren’t getting shit done, anyway. We have to log all these hours this week for training. We might as well make use of this distraction and capitalize on it.”
He was right.
It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have the backup.
And the men could keep everybody distracted while I went to find Avery.
“Didn’t you say that she only had half days?” Malachi asked as he fell into step with me.
Malachi was the newest member to the SWAT team. He was also one of the most supportive on the team when it came to Avery, and I didn’t know why.
Honestly, I had a feeling it was likely in part due to the fact that he knew what it was like not to have parents.
Oh, his weren’t dead or anything, they’d just always been absentee parents and he might as well not have had any at all.
“She used to have half days,” I said. “But she was able to work it out with the school. She still has an early day, but she gets them all done on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday now. She’s there from eight to one. Doesn’t have to go to lunch anymore, either. Which they were requiring her to do before. Tuesday and Thursday, she doesn’t have to go at all except for a night class that the local college is putting on around six.”
Malachi nodded. “I remember graduating with a lot of college credit hours. Is that what she’s doing?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea about that. I know that she’s taking two online courses, and two actual in-room courses. I’ll have to ask her.”
“I’m driving,” Nathan called.
“Shotgun.” Adam jogged around the vehicle once we reached it.
The rest of us piled in the back.
“I don’t remember high school being bad,” Louis said. “I remember it being great.”
“That’s because you were popular,” Saint added his two cents. “If you weren’t, you would’ve been bullied just like Avery. It’s not cool being unpopular. It’s even more uncool to have to go to school when you know that it’s going to be fuckin’ awful.”
“You sound like you have experience,” I said, my eyes trained on Saint.
Saint shrugged. “You could say that.”
I snorted. “Come on, details.”
Saint sighed.
“I was the puny kid that didn’t get a growth spurt until the summer between my junior and senior year,” he answered. “Needless to say, I got a lot of crap for it growing up. They planned to start right off where we’d left it the school year before, but I’d put on a foot and a half of height, twenty pounds of pure muscle, and they decided it would be prudent to leave me alone. I had to get suspended for fighting to do it, though.”
I snorted. “Avery’s not going to fight anyone. Or she better not.”
Saint’s eyes came to me.
“Sometimes that’s the only way to make them back off. Kids are assholes, man. Bullying is at an all-time high. Kids are getting worse and worse because their parents just don’t discipline them. The schools let it go because they’re more worried about their attendance numbers than they are about kicking kids out for doing shit wrong. And all the while the kids that are getting bullied think that the only way out is by doing really bad shit to the kids that bullied them, or contemplating suicide to just make it end.”
The back cab was silent for a long moment as we all processed that news.
“Which one were you?” Malachi asked quietly.
Saint didn’t answer because we arrived at the school and he bailed out before he could.
I looked over at Malachi and raised my brow at him.
“This world is fucked up,” he muttered, following the rest of the men out.
Adam, Malachi, Saint, Nathan, and Louis all followed me into the school.
I walked straight up to the office and ignored all the stupid asshole kids that I passed that were in awe of us.
I found Principal Bailey right where I thought he’d be.
In Mrs. Teague’s office. Mrs. Teague being the assistant principal, and the woman that he had a crush on even when I was in high school.
It was a very poorly kept secret if you asked me.
“Principal Bailey,” I said, coming to a stop in the main room of the office instead of going into the office itself. “May I have a word with you?”
Principal Bailey stiffened when he saw all the men at my back.
He came out, as well as Mrs. Teague, and frowned at me.
“What can I help you with, Derek?” he asked.
I’d spent quite a bit of time in their offices. They definitely knew me by sight, even all these years later.
“I had a call from Avery Flynn,” I said. “She’s currently hiding in a janitor’s closet somewhere because of something, and I want your permission to go find her.”
His face went hard. “You’re not allowed to go walking around my school.”
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I’m sure that Superintendent Roman will fucking love that I got a call from Avery in the middle of school hours because she was scared shitless and crying because you can’t watch your fucking students and ensure that she’s safe.” I paused. “May I remind you that this is supposed to be a safe place for these students? Even the ones that aren’t popular and their parents don’t kiss your ass?”