“You still got time to go back. You can still fix this,” Joss said.

Jane hadn’t been cruel enough to shove the cloth gag into his mouth, and she was quickly regretting the decision.

She glanced at Beatrice as she stood off to one side, her posture like that of a zombie, head hung and arms hanging limply at her sides. Jane could only wonder what exactly Ryder had done to deject her in such a way.

They were in Beatrice’s room, arranged in a circle, with Jane and her laptop at the center. Joss had been bound and painstakingly hauled up from the basement as he hurled expletives at the three of them.

“I can still make you dead,” Victoria hissed, rubbing her jaw. She had woken up as Ryder brought her downstairs, and was justifiably enraged at the way she had been treated while unconscious.

“I’m serious, man.” Joss struggled to raise his head enough to look Ryder in the eye. “You keep at this, doesn’t matter who your daddy is. The rest of us ‘r gonna make you pay.”

Ryder looked away. Though it was not obvious in his posture, Jane found that she knew him well enough to see doubt in his eyes.

“Can I put the pillowcase in his mouth? Let me put the pillowcase in his mouth,” Victoria begged.

Jane noted red circles around her friend’s wrists where the ropes had been pulled too tight. She almost agreed to gagging Joss, purely out of sympathy.

“Okay, looks like I was right,” Jane said to nobody in particular. “The IMSI catcher managed to get most of the caller IDs and their locations.”

Ryder was peering down at her screen from behind her, trying to make sense of the data displayed on it. He smoothed his hair back, brow furrowing. “So… you know who the group members are?”

“Only the ones that have been in contact with these two.” Jane indicated Joss and the silent Beatrice.

“You’re just too stupid to back off, huh? We warned you, beanstalk, if you ever-” Joss yelped as Victoria reached over and twisted the lobe of his ear.

“… uh, right.” Jane glanced between the two as they glared at each other. “I’ve got most of the people who are low on the totem pole, but there’s one number that’s under a fake name.”

Ryder nodded, understanding. “Let me guess, it leads to my house.”

“Yeah,” Jane said. She was examining him closely, eyes tracing the subtle ridges of worry around his eyes. She’d studied his face enough on her laptop that she could perceive something as subtle as his currently repressed uncertainty.

Jane wasn’t sure he was capable of trusting her again, even if she dearly wished she could. Why hadn’t she come clean about hacking him back then, on their first date?

Regardless, it was not the time to ask him about something that private, especially with zombie-Beatrice in the room.

“It’s always a fake name,” Ryder sighed. “My dad’s too careful to be caught by something like that.”

“He’s gotta have a blind spot, right? Like, I don’t know, a secret black-mail video tape or something?” Victoria said.

“Every system has a point of failure.” Jane was quoting her father, though he had meant more in terms of electrical grids than criminal enterprises.

Victoria turned to Beatrice, eyes narrowed. “You’re like his creepy secretary. What’s his ‘vulnerability’?”

Beatrice looked up, pulling her absent gaze from the floor. A semblance of her usual spite seemed to coalesce within her eyes. “Secretary, Allyson? Don’t give me that. I bet you know everything about playing second-in-command.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Victoria’s voice held a hard edge, a warning.

“Oh, I don’t know, what about the things you do for your dad-”

“Beatrice. Listen to me. I know where your parents are,” Jane said, impatiently interrupting the dark-haired girl’s scathing reply.

This stopped Beatrice dead in her tracks. If her expression had been cold before, it was positively frigid now. “Don’t you dare, beanstalk. I don’t care what kinda info you have, I swear I’ll- I’ll kill you if you do anything to them.”

At some point in the past, a threat like that would have scared Jane. But, instead, looking around the inside of Beatrice’s room, with its pink frills and scattered bits of make-up, Jane felt only pity. The illusion of the perfect highschool cheerleader was gone, revealing the lonely girl beneath. A lonely girl much like Jane had been.

“I’m not gonna do anything to them, Beatrice,” Jane said, “but you have to work with us. You know more about Jackson than anyone else.”

Ryder smoothed his hair back, though he nodded in agreement. Beatrice knew his own father better than he ever would. She was their best, and only, lead.

Beatrice was silent as she considered what Jane was saying. “… and the cops won’t find them, right? You’ll leave them alone.”

“I swear. No cops.” Jane nodded.

By any account, the Ruths deserved jail time. The things they did were horrible. But Jane knew that alerting law enforcement would only draw more attention from Jackson. She had to play it smart.

“And… you.” Beatrice was addressing Ryder, but refusing to look at him. Her eyes were placed firmly on the pink carpeting of her bedroom.“You know what this means, right? That you’re throwing everything away. There’s no going back.”

Ryder exhaled, a resigned determination in his jaw. “Yeah. I told you. I never wanted this life in the first place.”

The room was silent enough that Beatrice’s shuddering breath was audible. She hung her head, dark hair obscuring her face.

“He has a digital master-record. It’s a black book that keeps track of every large purchase his shell companies make, every shipment we’ve sent, even blackmail on a lot of the people in town. There’s no copies, and its biometrically locked. He always has it on him.”

“B! Shut up! Jackson’s gonna have you skinned alive for this,” Joss sounded more panicked than threatening. He was lying in such a way that he couldn’t see Beatrice. The ropes groaned as he struggled against them, face quickly turning red from the effort.

“Joss. Enough. It’s over,” Beatrice ordered, voice quiet.

Victoria lowered her extended hand, surprised. Evidently she had been about to quiet Joss with another twist of the ear.

“I need more info. What kind of storage is it? A thumb drive?” Jane’s mind was whirring, already planning on how best to break into this supposed master record.

Beatrice’s voice was strained, as if she were forcing herself to speak. “He’s always wearing it. It’s a piece of tech disguised as an accessory.”

To everyone’s surprise, it was Ryder who answered. “It’s his watch, isn’t it? It’s the only thing he never takes off.”

They turned to Beatrice, who, hesitantly, nodded in agreement.

“How are we even supposed to get to that?” Victoria groaned. “It’s hopeless. Everything we’ve been doing is just one road-block after another.”

Jane and Ryder shared a glance, somehow laced with understanding yet communicating nothing. They were fighting an uphill battle, and it seems they had reached a standstill. The toll of it was obviously rough on Victoria.

“You okay, Vicky?” Jane took one hand off the laptop’s keyboard and placed it on her friend’s forearm.

Victoria glanced at Jane’s hand, skin pale in contrast to her own, and nodded. A thin smile grew on her lips. “Yeah. Sorry. Moment of doubt. Lets keep going.”

Jane nodded slowly, unconvinced but sympathetic. It was late at night, and they were covered in bruises. She was just as tired as Victoria.

“So what do we do?” Ryder asked, eyes on Jane.

Jane blinked, surprised. “Since when am I the leader here?”

The room grew silent once more as her friends regarded her with amusement, all thinking the same thing.

“Oh,” Jane said, realization dawning on her. “I guess it’s always been me, huh?”

Victoria chuckled. “You started all this. So tell us how to finish it.”

All eyes, excluding Joss’s, were resting on Jane expectantly. She felt the familiar pressure in her stomach. The desire to hide, to not be seen. To avoid unnecessary attention.

“Well…” she began, “I think…”

They leaned in, ready to be amazed by her master plan.

“We should sleep on it.”

Victoria groaned, eyes rolling. Ryder chuckled, white teeth flashing. Even Beatrice seemed entertained, in her sarcastic way.

“You idiots are so screwed-” Joss’s outburst ended in a yelp once more as Victoria, apparently reaching her limit, violently sat down on his back. He made a choking sound as the breath was pushed out of him beneath her weight.

“What about these two?” Victoria asked, still seated on the boy’s back.

An unanswered question. The elephant in the room. Joss and Beatrice would rat them out to Jackson the moment they were out of sight. They were at a stalemate, and nobody could leave until it was settled.

Jane regarded the two teenage criminals, one tied up and the other shackled by the lives of her family. She hated to do this, but it appeared to be the only way.

“Beatrice, you know what happens if Ryder’s dad finds out about this, right?” Jane asked. The threat was thinly veiled, and despite all that Beatrice had done, Jane found herself feeling guilty for it.

The queen bee of Alexander high was glaring pure hatred at Jane. “I’m gonna kill you. Maybe not soon, but I’ll kill you.”

“Beatrice…” Ryder’s voice was chiding, like she had crossed a boundary. It seemed to deflate her glare, somewhat.

“What, Ryd? Gonna tell me there’s a better way to do things again? Gonna lie to me and play with my feelings?” While Beatrice’s words were scathing, her tone told a different story. Jane found herself looking away, as if she were spying on a private moment.

Funny, spying on private moments is your forte, the voice in her head mocked.

Ryder hadn’t replied to Beatrice’s outburst. His eyes rested on the dark-haired girl’s head, expression immutable.

“… okay. Fine. I won’t say anything. Just leave my family alone,” Beatrice muttered, begrudgingly.

Jane breathed a sigh of relief, though she knew only half the problem was solved. “And what about Joss?”

The tied-up boy tried to say something, but succeeded in only letting out a choking noise. Victoria eased up, raising herself off him.

“You got nothing on me-” he began, but Beatrice cut him off.

“Joss. Don’t you dare put my parents in jeopardy. You know what I’ll do,” she said.

The enraged look on the boy’s face turned to one of confusion, and perhaps a touch of hurt. Even free of Victoria on his back, he didn’t reply. Perhaps, facing resistance from both the other side and his own, he was quickly realizing the narrowness of his options.

Ryder straightened, his hands rummaging through his pockets. “I guess that settles everything, right?”

Victoria rubbed the growing bruise on her jaw. “Really? We’re just gonna let them go?”

“We got what we wanted,” Jane replied. “We own them now. All of them.”

“Everyone but my father…” Ryder was pacing around the room, eyes distant. “Almost feels too convenient. A watch with everything on it? And yet, I’ve never even heard of it?”

“What are you trying to say, Ryd?” Beatrice asked. Jane noticed her hands were scratching slowly in the carpet, creating furrows in the fabric. A nervous gesture.

“Even if she’s lying, it won’t help her,” Jane said. She had never been a good liar, but it seemed now was as good a time as any to try again. “If anything happens to us, I wrote a script that will send her parents’ info to the police.”

It was a bluff, but Jane hoped it would be enough to make Beatrice think twice about ever double-crossing them. In truth, making a fail-safe like that was difficult, and prone to malfunctioning. Even a simple timed email that had to be reset could go off for a multitude of reasons.

Much to her relief, Beatrice seemed to believe it. Her expression tightened even further as the reality sunk in. Truly, Jane owned them.

Victoria, wincing, pulled herself to her feet. She swayed unsteadily for a moment, and Ryder paused his pacing to support her with one hand. “You gonna be alright?”

She turned to him, exaggerated expression of petulance on her face. “Why do I feel like that’s all you guys ask about me?”

“Because we’re worried about you,” Jane said. She closed her laptop gently, and began repacking her things.

“I’ll be fine, just a bruise,” Victoria replied. “I think I’d better call a ride home though, my ankles acting up again. You guys gonna walk?”

Ryder nodded. “Yeah. Probably better if you leave us behind. Don’t push yourself.”

With a grunt of effort, Jane stood as well. The three surveyed the room, Joss still lying on his stomach, and Beatrice carefully avoiding eye contact with them.

The house was positively trashed, far more than it had been at the start of the night. The trio were battered and bruised, their heads swimming with the gravity of what they would need to undertake. It seemed an impossible task.

The silence was awkward, each teen mired in their own worries and thoughts. It was Beatrice that, surprisingly, broke it first. “Can you just- before you go, tell me one thing, beanstalk?”

“Hmm?” Jane looked down at the girl, interrupted from her careful gadget inventory-taking.

“Why?” Beatrice sounded almost accusatory.

“Why what?” Jane countered.

“Why did you start doing all this? There’s no reason for any of it. I don’t get it.”

Ryder and Victoria’s footsteps trailed down the staircase, outside Beatrice’s room. Jane paused at the doorway, balancing the bags on her shoulders. The straps cut into her bony collarbone.

“… I was lonely,” she said.