It was just two words:
fifty pills.
“She’s getting blackmailed?” Aiden asked. “By Evan Andrews?”
“No way,” Peter said, shaking his head. “It’s definitely more than just him. But he’s got something to do with it.”
“She would have told me about that.”
“You think? And risk them finding out?” Peter spoke quickly, without any doubt. “Think about it. Did anything change recently? Did you notice her acting different?”
Aiden stopped. “When did you say that was?”
“The date on here is September twenty-sixth. Three weeks ago.”
Aiden stood slowly and floated to the closet. His testimonial journal was tucked in the back of his sock drawer. He flipped forward a few pages, then back—
“September twenty-seventh. ‘Emma didn’t talk to me again today. Something’s seriously wrong.’” He looked up. “That was three weeks ago. And she’s been like that ever since.”
Peter exhaled slowly. “Damn.”
Warm relief melted in his stomach. It wasn’t about him, or anything he’d done.
They weren’t breaking up; she was getting blackmailed.
“You’re happy she was being blackmailed, and then disappeared?”
Aiden hadn’t felt his mouth creeping into a smile. He swallowed it quickly. “No, sorry,” he said. “It just . . . explains a lot. So, what do we do? How do we tell somebody?”
“Tell somebody, are you serious?”
“Yeah, I can go to Coach Bryant about it. Or Dr. Roux. . . .” Peter was glaring at him. “What?”
“I think you may have forgot for a moment that your girlfriend is a drug dealer.”
“Oh . . . oh.” He hadn’t thought about what might happen to Emma if the school found out about Apex. She’d be gone, before they could even welcome her back.
“Which I think,” Peter said seriously, “means we gotta find her first.”
“We? What do you have to do with this?”
“I don’t know how many times you’re gonna make me remind you of this, man. I buy drugs from her. She gets busted, I get busted, everybody gets busted.”
Aiden examined him, more critically now. He wore the same oversized coat and a thin black beanie. The hair popping out was curly, and his teeth were large and slightly crooked. Aiden barely knew anything about him. But everything he said made perfect sense.
“Okay.” Aiden nodded. “How do we do that?”
Peter slid down into the desk chair on his level, already a step ahead. “First, we’ve gotta figure out who all was following her, or checking on her. The hoods.”
“So we go talk to the kid, Evan Andrews.”
Peter shook his head. “If we go to him right away, they’ll know we’re onto them. I’ve got a better idea,” he said, dropping his voice a decibel. “You bought last night, right? Five hundred, you said? For the basketball team?”
Aiden pursed his lips. “Maybe.”
“I got a proposition for you. Don’t give it to the team.”
“What?”
“Apex is your way in. Whoever was onto her, whoever took her—you’ve got what they want. And you’re the only one.”
Aiden could already feel his heart racing. “What do we do with it?”
Peter stood and started to pace. “We gotta draw people out. Have a stakeout. Tell them we’re selling and see who shows up.”
“That’s stupid,” he argued, trying to catch up. “She’s missing. Nobody’s gonna show up if they know she won’t be there.”
Peter’s confidence was unshaken. “Yeah, probably not most people, right? Just the ones who’re really desperate? So desperate they might do something to her, only to find out she doesn’t have any more Apex? That she sold it all to her boyfriend?”
It seemed almost like common sense as Peter said it. “Okay,” he agreed. “Okay. So how do we do that?”
“Here.” He clicked open the door and leaned out into the hallway. “Ay, Mischa!”
A tall kid Aiden didn’t recognize met him outside the door. “I need you to get the word out on something.” The kid nodded. “Tell people, they’re selling the rest of the Apex, nine p.m. tonight, at the old basketball court. Don’t tell them where you heard it. Got it?”
“Wait!” Aiden shouted, but Peter clicked the door shut.
“What?”
“I have a voluntary shootaround tonight.”
“Oh.” Peter ambled back into the room. “Don’t go.”
“I can’t.”
“But it’s voluntary. It’s right there in the name.”
“Voluntary doesn’t mean voluntary. Why don’t we just do the stakeout a different time?”
“It’s a little late for that. . . .”
“You just told him! Go catch him, tell him to change it!”
Peter looked to the door but didn’t move. “Mischa runs track, man. Can’t catch Mischa.”
Aiden exhaled, rocking back in his chair.
“Look, if you don’t wanna miss your practice, I get it. I’ll do the stakeout and let