SNEAK PEEK: Trust Me, I'm Lying

The Geek Job

“Your mom thinks I’m a ‘bad influence,’ remember?” I put air quotes around bad influence to soften the sore point he hates talking about.

“She’ll just have to deal.” He’s irritated despite my air quotes.

“We’re not in grade school anymore, anyway,” I say. “Sleepovers aren’t exactly kosher.”

“This is serious, Julep. You can’t just brush it off. What if whoever did this”—he nods at the linoleum strips—“comes back?”

I hate to admit it, but he’s right. If the thugs decide to try again, it will be tonight.

“Fine. I’ll stay with you for one night.”

He lets go a breath I didn’t realized he was holding.

“Good,” he says.

I give him a sour look. “Just one. I’m pretty sure they won’t come back. Why would they waste their time? They either found what they were looking for or they didn’t because it isn’t here.”

“What would they be looking for?”

“No idea. Maybe nothing. But I found this.” I show him the note. Then I slowly pull out the gun. “And this.”

His expression turns stormy again, and he takes the gun from me, dropping the note into the chicken drippings.

“Hey!” I say, rescuing it.

He ignores me, ejecting the bullet-holder thingy and checking the chamber with expert skill.

“Since when do you know anything about guns?” I glare at him as I wipe off the note.

“The colonel’s been taking me shooting since I was twelve, Julep.”

Sam’s dad, who he lovingly refers to as “the colonel,” in addition to being a CEO, is a retired army colonel with the military bearing, ambitious drive, and strict governance of Sam to go with the rank. Of course the man would teach his son how to shoot a handgun.

“I thought it was, like, duck hunting or something.”

He shakes his head. “Sometimes I wonder if you know me at all.”

I wrinkle my nose, not wanting to admit that I might be a little hurt by that, mostly because there’s a chance it’s partially true. Very partially. Like, a minuscule amount.

“Anyway, it’s not loaded,” he says.

“My dad gave me an unloaded gun?”

“So it appears.” He puts the gun back together and hands it to me. Then he reaches for the note. “What does it say?”

“‘Beware the Field of Miracles.’”

He scans the note. “What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But it’s just like my dad. Riddles.”

“Do you think it’ll lead us to whatever it is these people want?”

“Possibly,” I say, shifting uncomfortably.

“But . . . you think it leads to something else?”

“It could lead to the missing millions or whatever. Or it could lead to my dad. But the note is definitely from him, and he clearly wants me to do something.”

Sam sighs and takes my hand. I let him keep it.

After I pack a bag and we move our party to Sam’s house, Sam and I have a perfectly uneventful sleepover, involving sneaking me in through his bedroom window and arguing over who’ll be taking the bed versus the Star Wars beanbag chair. I win the argument for the beanbag chair and yet somehow wake up in the bed anyway, and so I am extremely grumpy the next morning. I then sneak back out his bedroom window when the maid knocks on his door. I give half a thought to hot-wiring Sam’s car and taking off without him, but he shows up with the keys and drives us to school.