Beneath the Surface

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue

Prologue

Athena Academy

Outside Glendale/Phoenix, Arizona

Fifteen years ago

“Shannon, you need to get up.”

“Inaminute,” Shannon mumbled automatically. There was something disturbing about the voice. It had a mom quality to it, but it definitely wasn’t her mom. Now isn’t that interesting.

Not that she was getting up. Nope, that wasn’t going to happen. This was Saturday. At least she was pretty sure it was Saturday. She always slept late on Saturdays unless the academy had a field day or exercise scheduled.

“Shannon.”

Instead of responding, Shannon curled up more tightly into her bed. She reached up and pulled her blanket over her head. The light was on in her room. That bothered her even more than the voice.

Who would turn on the light? Or had she left it on? She wasn’t sure. She’d been too excited after her “special mission” last night to go to sleep immediately. Instead she’d stayed on the Internet, shopping for new clothes and a new way to do her hair. Her hair she could deal with, but new clothes were going to be impossible until—

Someone yanked the blanket off Shannon. And that was the last straw. Back home, when she’d been living with her older sister and younger brother, people had learned to give her space.

Usually finding space at home wasn’t a problem because she was largely ignored. She wasn’t as helpful around the house or as precious—whatever that meant, though Shannon had come to believe it meant passive—as her older sister and she wasn’t Daddy’s only son. They’d gotten all the attention, and Shannon had gotten all the space she’d cared for. In fact, sending her to the Athena Academy after she qualified had seemed an easy way for her parents to get her out from underfoot.

Thoroughly irritated now, Shannon cracked open her eyes. She glanced at the room’s only window above her computer desk and saw that it was still dark outside. She might be awake in the middle of the night, but she didn’t get up then.

“Hey,” she protested. “What gives? This isn’t one of those stupid fire drills, is it?”

“No. It’s not a fire drill.” The voice was losing some of its patient quality. The momness was coming through even stronger.

If Shannon had still been at home, the yelling would have started by now, and her mother would be telling her father how impossible Shannon was to deal with. And she would have been blamed by everyone in the family for whatever went wrong for the rest of the day.

“Get up, Shannon. We need to talk.”

That voice—the one so carefully measured it sounded like a military cadence—finally woke Shannon. That voice said she was in trouble.

Shannon hated being in trouble. Well, mostly she hated being in trouble. Sometimes trouble meant that she was getting the only attention she was going to get.

She twisted, shaded her eyes against the light and looked up at Christine Evans, the principal of Athena Academy. Principal Evans was almost fifty years old—at least that’s what the rumors around the school claimed—and an ex-Army officer.

She’d lost her left eye in some kind of accident—everyone in school insisted it had happened in a military engagement and Principal Evans had killed a whole platoon of bad guys—and been appointed as principal of the academy by Senator Marion Gracelyn, the founding mother behind the special finishing school for girls. The principal and the senator had been friends for a long time.

Principal Evans was stocky from a lifetime of military work and a dedication to staying in shape rather than staying thin. Her short-cut gray hair offered more testimony to the fact that she didn’t try to hide things.

Principal Evans wasn’t hiding anything now. She was irritated. Big-time.

Okay. Chill. Buy some time. Shannon levered her legs over the side of the bed to show that she was willing to comply with the request but was too tired to do so immediately. She yawned. She stretched. She rubbed her eyes.

Then she noticed that Tory Patton was standing in the back of the room, near the door. Tory was naturally beautiful. She’d never had to work at it. Gifted with black hair, an olive complexion and green eyes, she turned the heads of boys everywhere she went. And she didn’t even seem to care. It was enough to make Shannon gag.

Great. Tory Patton, one of my rivals. In my room. And I have probably the worst case of bed-head since bed-head was invented.

“What’s she doing here?” Shannon demanded.

Principal Evans ignored the question. “Get dressed,” she ordered. “You’ve got five minutes. Otherwise you’re going in your robe.”

“My robe?”

“Five minutes,” Principal Evans repeated.

“Going where?”

“Start dressing or we can go now.”

Witch, Shannon thought. But that was more a knee-jerk reflex to being awakened in the middle of the night. Normally Shannon got along with Principal Evans all right. Except for a few incidents involving hazing students new to the academy.

She bolted up from bed and dived at her chest of drawers. She wasn’t going to be caught walking around the academy halls in a robe. As usual, she’d worn only a football jersey to bed. She’d told everyone her boyfriend had given her the jersey, but she’d actually stolen it from her little brother.

Tory wore boys’ pajama pants, an academy T-shirt and was barefooted. Somehow on her it looked like an ensemble and a statement. Even underdressed, Tory still looked beautiful.

It’s just not fair, Shannon thought again. Tory hardly had to do anything to look great in the television broadcasting class they were taking together. Shannon, while she was beautiful, still had to work to make it happen.

Arms filled with clothing, Shannon sprinted for the bathroom. Her roommate slept through the whole thing.

Minutes later, dressed in capris, good shoes and a crop top, Shannon walked at Principal Evans’s side. Shannon had her arms crossed to show her displeasure but also because it was cold this time of year up in the White Tank Mountains, where the school was located.

Years ago the campus had been a mental-health and rehabilitation facility for movie stars who’d fallen off the wagon or gotten involved in drugs. Wealthy families had stashed their black sheep there.