She's Got a Way (Echo Lake #3) - Maggie McGinnis Page 0,2

will be driven there in the school van—using the ignition key this time.” Priscilla smiled, pleased with her little attempt at humor. Then she looked straight at Gabi. “Ms. O’Brien will be taking you.”

Gabi felt her eyes go wide.

Wait just one flipping Barbados minute. Oh, no, she wouldn’t be.

“I’m sorry, Pris—Ms. Pritchard. I have a flight that evening. We’ll need to find someone else to drive the girls.” Gabi knew damn well that Priscilla was aware of her trip. It had taken the woman a full month to hem and haw over whether Gabi could be allowed to take the two-week unpaid vacation, but maybe in the chaos of the morning, she’d forgotten.

Gabi felt her stomach clench as her lips tightened. The girls’ heads all swiveled to look at her. They knew how much she was looking forward to this trip. They’d been cutting out tropical pictures for her bulletin board all spring. They’d planned her sightseeing itinerary down to the minute for her, and they’d loaded up her tablet with ten of her favorite movies to watch on the beach.

Priscilla cleared her throat. “Actually, Ms. O’Brien, we need to talk about your trip.”

Gabi’s stomach fell.

Or … maybe she hadn’t forgotten at all.

* * *

“Boarding-school girls?” Luke Magellan shook his head in confusion later that afternoon. “Here?”

Oliver nodded, rocking back in his rickety lawn chair as he sent a hand through his shock of gunmetal-gray hair. “Nothing I could do. Briarwood bought the property in April. They own us now. And I guess they’re getting started on the ‘using us’ part.”

Luke looked out at Echo Lake, glistening in the early summer sun. The beach was quiet, the dock was quiet, the dining hall was empty … just like he’d thought it was going to be all summer. No boys on the tire swings, no boys paddling the lake, no boys whooping and hollering from the diving raft.

Utter, awful silence.

He put his hands on his hips, completely mystified. “I don’t get it. First, they buy the place as a completely transparent tax write-off. Then, despite their promises to keep it operating as you’ve run it for three decades now, they close us down for the summer and hand us a project list that makes it very clear they actually have no such intentions. And now they’re sending us a group of little rich girls who are this close to expulsion? What the hell are we supposed to do with them?”

Oliver blew out a pained breath. “I don’t know.”

Luke paced the dock, automatically stepping over the three loose boards he hadn’t had time to fix. Then a thought occurred to him. There was no way this Briarwood headmaster would send her students if she knew the true shape of the facilities right now. The girls’ parents would shit bricks.

He turned back to Oliver. “They know we don’t have anywhere for them to sleep, right?”

“We have tents.” Oliver shrugged slowly.

Luke snorted. “Right. You’re thinking a limo full of Briarwood girls are going to roll in here and be okay with us showing them to their army canvas?”

“I’m thinking these particular girls have reached the end of the Briarwood rope, if the alternative was to send them home for good. Tents might be the least of their problems.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Why didn’t they just expel them, if that’s what the girls deserved?”

“Two words: rich parents. You piss them off, you kiss your future endowment money good-bye. Briarwood wants the money, so Briarwood has to keep the kids.” Oliver shook his head. “But it sounds like the board insisted on a consequence that matched the crime. Maybe they’re using the girls as an example to their other wannabe-miscreants. I don’t know.”

“So they chose Camp Echo.” Luke sighed. “They know that besides the dining hall, every last thing here is on its last legs, right? They know you and I are the only staff members left?”

As he said the words, he swore silently. How could they not know? They owned the place now, damn it all.

“They know. And it might just be me, but it seemed like the headmaster was actually happy to hear it.”

“Then she must be extremely pissed at this crew. We’ve got no programs, no counselors, no nothing. And they wasted no time demoting me right down from director to camp handyman. Who’s supposed to supervise them all summer? Who’s going to keep them from running wild all over this property?”

Oliver looked down at his notepad. “Gabriela O’Brien. The housemother. Apparently she