Max

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They’re early. All of them. The office isn’t even closed when Carson comes bulling in, Kyle and Rachel hot on his heels. Kate and Wes get off the elevator as my assistant’s getting on. And it’s not even six. One of them better have something, because I’ve come up empty.

I wrap up my business and join them as the shadows start to lengthen. Any hope I had of a last-minute miracle drains away as I walk in the door. The atmosphere’s leaden. Subdued. No one’s talking, not even Carson. Kyle’s holding Rachel. Kate’s stroking the back of Wes’s hand. I look away from that, swallowing jealousy. They’re friends. And she’s... We’re not together.

I stand at the head of the table, leaning on the back of my chair. Carson’s avoiding my eye. Kate’s studying Wes with concern. The rest of them are watching me dumbly, lambs to the slaughter. “So—”

“We need to blame Dev.”

I blink in surprise. Of everyone I’d have expected to come out with something heinous, Rachel would’ve bottomed the list. But she’s the one sitting pale and stiff, lips set in a mutinous line.

“He’s dead. It’s too late for him. But we can still save ourselves.” She lifts her head in challenge. “The prank was his idea, anyway. If we’re talking responsibility—”

“Bullshit.” Carson’s on his feet. “First of all, fuck you for thinking that, much less saying it out loud. Second, what good’s blaming Dev going to do? I’m on that video, and Max and Kate—probably the rest of us, too.”

“So there’s proof we were at the party. So was half the school. That doesn’t mean anything.”

“And at the beach, after that? You don’t think you said anything incriminating? I know I did.”

Rachel buries her hands in her hair like she’s trying to keep her head from exploding. “I don’t know. I don’t know. But we could still say.... We could downplay our parts. Kate—you could say Dev bought the rats. And Max—what?”

I’m glowering. Hovering over the table like a vulture. I pull back, forcing myself to relax. “It doesn’t matter who did what, or when.”

Rachel grits her teeth. She looks like she’s about to scream.

“Fact is, we were all there.” I pull out my chair and sit down. “We didn’t leave that cigarette burning. We didn’t get Matt so drunk he couldn’t run out with the rest. But we all had answers that family would’ve killed for. And we’ve been sitting on them for a decade. And if we hadn’t, Dev might still...might not have....”

“Oh, God....” Rachel whines high in her throat. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“I understand. Really. But blaming Dev... That’s not going to change anything. We have two choices. No, three. We can come forward—tell the whole truth. We’ll be free of Matt Danbury...but there’s no guarantee the rest of our files won’t be exposed. And even if they’re not, there’ll be consequences. Hard ones. Ones we might well deserve, but we should be prepared to lose everything.”

“Fuck.” Carson tugs at his dogtags and tucks them under his shirt.

“Next option: go through with the demands. There’s a lot we can do, in terms of damage control. We won’t come through unscathed, but we’ll live to fight another day.”

“And the last option?” Kyle’s slumped over the table, head bowed.

“Do nothing. Call his bluff.” My guts twist into a tight knot at the thought of giving up that kind of control. But we need to decide together. This is all our lives.

Wes digs his hands into his pockets. “Should we take a vote?”

Kate nods. “I know what I want to do.”

“All for confessing?” Carson glares round the table. Rachel sticks up her hand, but she’s the only one. “Going through with the demands?” Carson’s hand’s already raised. Kate’s and mine go up next, then Wes’s.

Kyle looks at Rachel. “Sorry, hon. I just don’t....” He raises his hand, too.

“That’s all of us. No one’s for ignoring the problem.”

I heave a sigh of relief. Thank fuck for that.

“What if it doesn’t stop?”

Everyone turns to look at Rachel.

“I mean...what if I tell my six-year-old son we picked his father out of a baby-blue binder in a fertility clinic, and the demands keep coming? What if he keeps pushing us till, one by one, we—till we’re all—” She sobs harshly, hands fluttering at her chest, her face, her hair.

I don’t have an answer for that. Neither, it seems, does anyone else.

“We’ll keep looking,” says Kate at last. “He has to have slipped up somewhere. We’ll catch him, and—”

“How?” Rachel’s nearly wailing. “And what then? We can’t turn him in. He’ll ruin us all. We’ll have to kill him. Don’t you see? There’s no end to it. Doesn’t matter what we do, where we turn—it’s hopeless, and—”

“No.” Kyle pulls her into a tight embrace. She struggles at first, beating at his chest, but Kyle hugs her tight. “Ssh—we’ve got this. Soon as we know who he is, we can dig up our own dirt. Throw it in his face: mutually assured destruction. It’ll be like the Cold War. He’s got his nukes. We’ve got ours. None of us can use ‘em.”

Dig up our own dirt. I turn to Wes. “How’s it coming with Dev’s computer? Find anything interesting?”

His gaze flicks to me, then to Carson. He shifts to the edge of his seat. “I, uh...his appointments, his expenses—they were mostly work-related. Except—”

Carson tenses visibly.

“Except, Carson, you....”

“He loaned me some money. That what you’re tiptoeing around?”

Wes nods miserably. “I wasn’t going to say it in front of everyone.”

“No. Let’s get it out in the open.” He beetles his brows. “My wife kicked me out, okay? Money wasn’t our only problem, but it was a big one. And Dev—he wanted to help, and he could, so he did. I don’t know. Maybe he wanted me off his couch. I’m a pain to live with. But I wasn’t fucking blackmailing him.”

Rachel laughs, a high, brittle sound. “So you’ve got nothing. That’s what you’re saying. You hit the same dead end Kyle did, the same one we all did, with those stupid lists, and now we’re fucked.”

“Rachel....” Carson leans in, tone uncharacteristically soft. “It doesn’t have to be so bad. We got each other’s backs.”

She buries her face in Kyle’s neck and says nothing.

“Look, we got through senior year, didn’t we? And ten more years after that? We’ll get through this. All of us, together.”

Rachel pushes Kyle away. She sits up, eyes slitted. I get a sudden, unpleasant glimpse of how she’ll look in twenty years—furrowed and careworn, a deep line between her brows. She glares around the table, flinching when Carson meets her gaze. “Fine. Do what you want. I’m outvoted, right?”

I open my mouth to say no, of course not, nothing happens without her—but the words won’t come.

“You know....” Wes speaks slowly, like he’s reluctant to say what he’s thinking. “He probably won’t bust out the big guns just for her.”

“What?” I’m not sure I like where this is headed.

“I mean, he’s got pages of dirt on all of us. Good dirt, if mine’s anything to go by. If Rachel’s the only one to hold off, he’ll probably spill one of her secrets. But the rest of us should be safe.”

“We don’t know that.” Kyle’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “We don’t know that at all.”

“Not for sure, but it makes sense. Those threats were aimed at each of us individually. It doesn’t say we all have to be on board. He won’t unload on all of us if one of us craps out.”

Rachel sits up straighter, eyes fever-bright. “My secrets aren’t that bad, if you don’t count Matt. And I’m just a wife. A congressman’s wife, but still. No one’ll care. One news cycle, I’ll be forgotten.”

Kyle’s looking at her with something like horror. “Rachel—you’re not—”

“I’ve decided. I’ll take my chances.”

I don’t like this. But who am I—who are any of us—to force her to blow up her kid’s world? “We still have two days. Let’s concentrate on what we were doing back then. On who’d have been filming us, and why, before anyone knew Matt was going to die. That might get us somewhere.” I bite back a sigh. “But in case it doesn’t...it’s time to think about damage control.”

Kyle takes off his glasses, revealing tired, watery eyes. “There’s a couple of questionable riders on that education bill. I could frame my vote as a conscience thing. It’ll still raise plenty of hackles, but....”

Carson’s nodding, but for once, he doesn’t have anything to add. Wes looks like he could cry. Kate fills his water glass and pushes it toward him.

I let my gaze drift to the window, to the aircraft warning light on the building across the way. It pulses dull red. Normally, I find it calming. Tonight, it’s like staring at a visual representation of a headache. I frown and drag my attention back to the room. “If there’s anything I can do, in the interests of keeping the fallout to a minimum...call me. Any of you. Day or night.”

Wes fixes me with a shellshocked stare. No one else looks my way. I get it. They’re doing the same thing I’ve been doing all day: running over nightmare scenarios in their heads. Casting about for answers, anything they’ve overlooked.

Carson gets up and goes when no one’s said anything noteworthy for five minutes. Kyle’s next out the door, supporting Rachel. Kate gives me a regretful look, but it’s Wes she leaves with. Wes, who actually is crying, now. Can’t hold that against her—or him—but I needed her here. Needed to hear her say we’re doing the right thing.

I’ll see her at Dev’s tomorrow. But my office has never felt so desolate. Neither have I—not in a long time.

Kate....