Page 15 of Artifice

“Tomorrow I’ll observe some of the classes. I’m sure everyone will be trying to put their best foot forward. But if I want to find out what happened to Colin, then I need to get in deep. I need to figure out who his friends were. What his last days at the school were like. I’d even love to see his room if I could.”

“Sounds about right.”

She let out a long breath. This boy didn’t just disappear into thin air. Something happened to him, and Olive needed to figure out what.

Tevin left a few minutes later, and Olive leaned back on her bed, ready to unwind.

As she sat there, she glanced at her phone and saw she’d missed two calls from Jason.

Her heart sagged as soon as she saw his name.

Nothing had been the same . . . not since Tevin had discovered a possible tie between Jason’s father and the murder of her family.

Only a couple of weeks ago, she was ready to give their relationship another shot. Jason had been her first love, and they’d been apart for many years before being reconnected in Chicago in January.

Olive wasn’t the type to trust too easily. But she’d been ready to throw caution to the wind.

Then she’d gone back to Texas, to the town where she and Jason had met as teens. She’d even gone back to her family’s old house . . . and she’d discovered that no one had lived in the place since her family had moved out.

Upon digging deeper, she’d discovered the house was now being held in an overseas trust.

She’d gotten Tevin to look into it for her, and he’d discovered that one of the people named on that trust was Jason’s father.

Olive’s own family history was complicated. She, her dad, mom, and twin sisters had moved around every couple of years. Each time her dad took on a new job and a new persona, with new names for them all. For the longest time, Dad had told Olive the reason they did those things was because he worked for the government doing top-secret assignments.

Olive had desperately wanted to believe him.

Now it was clear that he’d never worked for the government. More likely he was a con artist. He’d perfected the art of taking innocent people’s money by telling lies and winning favor.

She still felt sick to think about it.

Where all that money had gone, Olive had no idea. She certainly hadn’t seen a cent of it. In fact, after her family was murdered, she’d discovered they’d virtually had no money at all. She’d had to venture out on her own with no backing of any sort.

She was proud to say she’d done that. Tom Greer, an FBI agent, and his wife, Jill, had taken Olive under their wings. They’d been a big help.

But despite that, Olive had been thrust into the world alone.

Now she was desperate to uncover the truth about her dad and about who’d murdered her family. Their killer had never been found.

But Olive was going to change that.

She just needed a little more time.

CHAPTER 8

TWELVE YEARS AGO

Two months into Olive’s time at Oakridge, her father remained very interested in how she was doing there. With Brianna as her new best friend, Olive thought she was doing very well.

Brianna’s group of friends had taken Olive in. She’d become particularly close to a girl named Zoe.

Olive’s father picked her up from school on most days. Thankfully, his job let him set his own hours. That meant her mom didn’t have to load up the twins to pick her up.

“Tell me again about your new friend, the one with the eccentric grandmother,” her father said as he drove Olive home one day.

“Zoe?” Olive glanced up from her book. “What about her?”

“You mentioned she stays with her grandmother after school. I’m trying to remember where you said that was.”