Revealed Read Free Page B

Officer Marciano burst through the door with his gun drawn, and I was reading a memo about Post-its.
    My T-shirt-covered finger couldn’t move the arrow up to the task bar, so I used the edge of my pinkie to get there and click on FILE. Did the sides of your fingers leave prints? No doubt. My eyes raced down the list of files Thornhill had recently opened. Cell phone policy changes; Letter of Rec. Dr. Thomas; Minutes, March Board Meeting; Cast list —Much Ado About Nothing; Spring events—tentative (no athletics); Spring events—definite (athletics).
    Well, what had I expected— Thornhill’s possible attackers (definite) ? I scanned the list one more time, the pointlessness of the whole enterprise overwhelming. There was nothing here. There was nothing anywhere. How many times had we checked the website for clues about Amanda’s disappearance, only to discover everyone who knew her was as mystified (and misled) as we were?
    Why should Thornhill’s attack be any different?
    I stood up and put my hand on the computer to shut it when my eyes caught the name of a file one last time.
    Cast list —Much Ado About Nothing.
    Much Ado About Nothing.
    But Much Ado About Nothing wasn’t the play being put on at Endeavor this year. The play being put on at Endeavor this year was As You Like It .
    Could Thornhill have made a mistake? Or could he have the cast list from a previous year’s play? For a second I tried to remember what play the high school had put on last year, and then I was sliding the arrow back up to the file menu and clicking open the cast list (misnamed or otherwise) for Much Ado About Nothing .
    The document that opened before my eyes was nothing like any cast list I’d ever seen. It looked more like the files my dad sometimes brings home from his work as an accounting consultant, columns of data that made absolutely no sense—words that seemed to morph into numbers, numbers that stretched on forever. C-33528, F-514, M-229, beta file-4421(a). Dem_94. At first, I was so overwhelmed by the meaningless information that swam in front of me I could barely make sense of the rows and columns, much less the data they contained. And then the senseless mass began to make sense.
    The font was tiny, so small I had to squint to read it, but the left-hand column of the chart was definitely a list of names in no particular order that I could discern. At first, they meant nothing. There was a Reeve, Cecile and Hayes, Gracie. But as my eyes slid down the column, they landed on a name that did mean something to me. In fact, it meant a great deal to me.
    Because it was mine.

Chapter 3
    Bennett, Henry .
    Bennett, Cornelia .
    Bennett, Katharine .
    Bennett, Edmund .
    Cornelia? What did my sister have to do with this? And my parents ? What were my parents doing on Thornhill’s list?
    My heart began to pound so fast I almost couldn’t breathe. There was Callie’s name and Nia’s, Callie’s mom’s and Nia’s parents’ names. I made my way down the list, my eyes moving too fast to read more than a few of the names I was racing through. Was Amanda’s name there? I scrolled to the bottom, but there seemed to be no bottom, just hundreds and hundreds of names. I needed to write them all down. I needed to print out the list. I needed—
    â€œFor the last time, get a hold of yourself, Callista!”
    Print. I needed to print. Hands shaking, I hit Apple, P, and as I did, the computer gave a strange sound, almost a sigh, and the screen went blank. A second later, the computer turned itself off.
    â€œWhat?” Forgetting the need to be silent, forgetting everything except that I had to get that list, I hit the power key. Nothing happened.
    â€œNo,” I whispered, frantically hitting the key again and again.
    Nothing.
    â€œ. . . so when I come back out, I want you gone. I want you on your way to the nurse. Do you understand me, young lady?”
    And as