Let Them Dare novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Where It Costs
The Ridgeline Community Pool closed at four on Mondays for cleaning, and the side door was propped open with a bucket.
Robby parked across the street and turned off the engine.
"I'll wait here," he said.
"You don't have to."
"I know." He rested his elbow on the open window. "If she throws you in, I'm the one with a rope."
I walked in alone.
The air smelled of chlorine, and the lights over the water were on, though nobody was swimming.
Delaney sat on the high lifeguard chair in a red jacket with her feet on the rail.
She watched me cross the tile and did not climb down.
"You came to gloat," she said.
"I came to show you something."
I held up my phone.
It had the photograph of the page from the principal's folder, which the principal had let me take after my mother asked her twice.
Delaney came down the ladder slowly.
She took the phone and read the screen, and I watched her read the line about the number.
"Forwarded from four-four-one-seven," she said.
"It's Dane's."
"I know whose it is." Her voice was flat. "I've known since this morning. The clerk who scanned that file lives on my street. She called my mother at lunch."
"Then you know I didn't make it."
"I know you protected it." She handed the phone back. "The report says the source declined to be identified. Somebody asked to keep him out, and somebody agreed. That was you, Selah, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because he told me he'd get in trouble for telling the truth."
She laughed once, without any sound in it.
"Do you know what I thought for a year?" she said. "I thought you and Dane built it together. I thought he took the photo, and you took it to the office, and it was neat. You were first in the class and I was second by two hundredths of a point."
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