Read The Amanda Project: Book 4: Unraveled for Free Online

kind of shiver of dread. After twenty-four hours and hardly any sleep, Thornhill’s computer file made no more sense to me than it had the day before. And I wasn’t exactly filled with optimism that some innocuous explanation for what we’d found was waiting around the next corner. There was just no waythis much surveillance could lead to good news.
    “That would be the year.” Callie pursed her lips in grim resignation.
    From the gazebo, we rode our bikes to the library, locked them there as a decoy in case any of our parents came looking for us, and then took the city bus to the OCP campus. It was a short, easy ride out there, and for a second I wondered why Orion would still bother to maintaina bus line going out to the campus of a school that had been closed for more than twenty-five years.
    We found seats in the back and, since the bus was empty, we were able to talk in low voices about the Thornhill files and strategies we might employ to find Robin in Washington, D.C.
    “So has anyone had any more thoughts about the files?” Nia asked.
    “It seems so weird,” Hal said. “That he’d becompiling all that information. It’s creepy.”
    “I know we’ve been assuming he’s a good guy and all,” Callie said. “But what if he’s a criminal? What if he’s stealing all those people’s identities or something?”
    “Frankly,” said Callie. “It’s a just a little hard to take in. I mean, a couple of weeks ago I would have sworn Mr. Thornhill’s one goal in life was to punish students, and now I haveto reconcile that with him as . . . a human being. Someone’s dad.”
    “And Amanda’s dad no less,” Nia added.
    “He wasn’t awful,” Callie mused. “He was strict, but now that I think about it, he was always fair, too.”
    “And outside of school, he was actually nice,” I volunteered, immediately regretting that I’d shared this information.
    “What?” said Nia. Three pairs of eyes turned to stare at me.
    “You knew him outside of school?” Callie’s voice echoed Nia’s tone.
    “Sort of,” I answered. “He was a family friend.” I didn’t add that, in Orion, he was our only family friend.
    Nia put her fingers on her temples as if a headache had just exploded.
    “When we moved to Orion, he took care of everything for us,” I reluctantly went on. “He got my mom the job at the school. He helped us find our house.He was—he was the only person we knew in the world. My mom told me my dad trusted him. Now that I know he’s Amanda’s dad, I can see why.”
    Suddenly the three of them were staring at me like I’d done something wrong. “What?” I said.
    “Nothing,” Callie answered, looking away, like if I didn’t get it, maybe I didn’t deserve to.
    Hal was the one to explain. “It’s just that it kind of blows our mindsthat you know all this stuff about Amanda’s life that we don’t. That you knew Amanda when she was—” It was clear he didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
    “The real her,” said Nia.
    “I don’t know how much of the person I knew was real,” I offered.
    “Yeah, but you knew so much more than the rest of us,” Callie said. “Sometimes I feel like everything Amanda ever told me was a lie. I know shehad to, but still. I wonder.”
    “I still can’t believe her name isn’t even Amanda,” Nia said.
    “It isn’t Arabella either,” I pointed out.
    “But you knew her,” Callie said. “Before she was starting to figure all this stuff out. Before she was prepping us to be her guides. There’s something about all these secrets . . . I don’t know. It’s just wrong, somehow.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “But it isn’t her fault.All of this—those sneaky pictures, all that collected information. That’s what’s really wrong.”
    Callie nodded, reassured.
     
    With squeaking brakes and a grinding engine, the bus came to a stop across the street from a decaying sign hanging crooked from a single post: ORION PHARMACEUTICAL COLLEGE: WHERE