“I’ll take you. I know every single street and alleyway.” She reached behind her waist and pulled her apron off, hanging it up on the wall behind her, walking over to where I was.
“I don’t know why I thought it would be easier to get around here.” I closed the distance to the nearest couch and settled in with my coffee.
“Becca, I’m off the clock,” Hailey shouted.
“Got it,” someone, Becca, I assumed, shouted back. “Deacon is supposed to be here in five minutes.”
“That’s an easy way to get off the clock.” I smiled over my coffee.
“Family business, remember?” Hailey said. “Owned and operated. Deacon is our uncle, but he’s only like five years older than me, so he’s more like an older brother and Becca’s my sister. Half-sister. Same mom, different dads.”
“That’s pretty cool. That’s my dad’s dream, to have all his kids working together in one place.”
Of course, a multi-million-dollar media industry, which included various television networks all over Latin America and the US hardly compared to a coffee shop and bar. In all honesty, I’d take this life over the one my father wanted us to be a part of any day.
“What does he do?” Hailey asked.
“He owns businesses.”
“Hm. You don’t seem thrilled about that.” She looked at me for a long, silent moment.
“I’m not.” I looked at my coffee and focused on that.
“Maybe you’ll end up loving working for your dad. Mine was never around, so I guess you can say I have daddy issues, or abandonment issues, or really any kind of issue therapists try to pin me with.”
“I’m sorry.” I lowered my mug. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I should’ve asked.”
“Yeah, because that’s a totally normal question—hey, did your father abandon you as a kid? Just checking so I don’t bring up my own, loving, doting father.” Hailey let out a forced laugh. “Trust me, it’s totally cool.”
“I never said mine was loving or doting.” I raised an eyebrow. “Anyway, maybe you should start telling me all of those deep, dark secrets now before I put my foot in my mouth again.”
“What do you want to hear about first? The supposed serial killer? The secret societies?”
“Wow.” I didn’t know if I should be hearing about either of those things right now, but I shrugged anyway. “Both, I guess. Is the serial killer related to . . . Lana Ly?”
“No. I don’t think so anyway.” She glanced at me wide-eyed. “I’m surprised you know about her and came anyway.”
“Oh my God.” I laughed despite myself. “If I had a dollar for everyone who said that to me.”
“You’d be the youngest person on the Forbes list this year?”
“Not quite, but on my way there. Let’s talk the secret societies. I’m guessing they’re less dangerous than the serial killers.”
“Depends who you ask.” She laughed at the look on my face. “I’ve been pretty obsessed with them since I was a kid. I know someone in them, well, allegedly, and the idea of them fascinates me.”
“Are you a journalism major?” I perked up in my seat.
“More like, nosey as hell. I’m a psych major, but I want to be a private detective.”
“As a job?”
“Yeah. As a job.” She laughed. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing at all. I’d just never really heard of a young person say they wanted to do that.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I’m a journalism major, so I’d love to report on world causes, investigative news, things like that.”
“I would’ve pegged you as a fashion blogger.”
That gave me pause. I looked at her again, really looked at her. “Do you know an Ella Valentine by any chance?”
“Yeah.” Her eyes widened. “She’s my mom.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not kidding, pretty sure she’s my mom.” She let out a nervous laugh.
“Well, this makes sense.”
“What does?”
“You both said similar things to me. About Lana and about the fashion blog thing.”
“Really? Mom said that to you?” She smiled, as if she was trying not to laugh.
“She sure did.”
“When did you meet her?”
“When I went to the paper to try to land an internship there and she interviewed me and then assigned that I be the photographer instead of a writer.”
I tried to keep my voice light, but wondered if I sounded bitchy now. I felt bitchy. Two people had reduced me to a fashion blogger in less than ten minutes of having met me. What the hell? I mean, I loved fashion, loved, and would love blogging about it, sure, but I was trying to be a journalist, for fuck’s sake.
“Well, I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t think it would offend you. I mean.” Hailey waved a hand over me as if she was presenting me for sale.
“I know what I’m wearing,” I said. “And I know what I look like. I get it.”
“You’re just really pretty is all. Sorry.”
She didn’t sound sorry and she was still obviously trying not to laugh, but I let it go. I was used to dealing with girls like Hailey, though I had to say, normally it was because they were jealous over a boy I was dating. In this case, it appeared, she was jealous of the fact that I was pretty, dressed designer, and had a father. I guess there’s a first time for everything.
“How’d your mom end up with a coffee shop, a bar, and a job at the school newspaper anyway?”
“It was part of her and dad’s agreement when they separated.”
“Oh. That doesn’t sound like a terrible outcome to a bad situation.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Her expression told me she didn’t agree, but she shrugged it off.
“It seems like she’s done well for herself.”
“She has.” She smiled. “Anyway, back to my interest in the societies. I’ve heard that one of the groups meets in The Tower. Smack in the middle of campus. Hidden in plain sight.”
“That’s an odd place to meet if you want to be secretive.” I frowned. “What kind of tower is it? What do they talk about in the meetings?”
“Um, hello.” Hailey laughed. “It’s secret.”
“I guess if they’re not bothering anyone, what does it matter?” I shrugged, but in the back of my mind, I remembered Ella Valentine talking about how Lana had been investigating them too.
Was that what happened to her? Had she gotten caught up in something with them? Something so sinister that they had to kidnap her? All the crime fiction I’d been reading wasn’t doing me any favors. If I said this to Lincoln, he’d laugh at me and tell me to snap back to reality. If I said this to my ex-boyfriend Travis, he’d roll his eyes and tell me I needed to put my books down and rejoin the real world, as if the real world ever had anything fun and exciting to offer.
“I just think it’s crazy that you have to be invited, and not everyone is. Even royalty has been turned down. It’s that exclusive,” Hailey said. “Organizations like that should be allowed, don’t you think?”