Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys Book 5)

by C. M. Stunich

  “Let’s keep going,” I suggest, leading the boys outside and down the street. We check several abandoned lots, scouting outbuildings and piles of debris, rusted cars on cinder blocks, dumpsters, anywhere that Callum could’ve crawled into in order to hide.

  It’s not until we come on a foreclosed home with a sagging front porch and a roof covered in moss that I spot a broken basement window. It could be something, more than likely it’s nothing. We’ve seen dozens of broken windows already, most of them destroyed months or even years prior.

  My heartrate picks up as I duck down and peer inside.

  A pool of congealed blood sits in the middle of the floor, the only color in an otherwise gray and empty space.

  “Over here!” I shout, my voice cracking as I climb in and stumble briefly, putting my hand on the wall and closing my eyes against a wave of dizziness. This is easily the worst period I’ve ever had in my fucking life. The universe really is throwing everything she’s got at me, isn’t she?

  When I hear Hael climbing in behind me, I open my eyes and straighten up. The boys are going through that overprotective stage in our relationship. If they see how much I’m struggling, they’ll send me home. The thing is, I’m going through the queen stage of my own relationship with myself. I won’t be sent home or told what to do, not today.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Hael murmurs, dropping into a crouch and touching two fingers through the blood. Just the sight of it makes me sick. “This is cold, but it’s still wet.” He points out the dried edges around the pool. “Half a day in and it turns black, crusts over.” Hael stands back up and meets my gaze across the ruby red stain, brown eyes dark with concern. “This can’t be more than … mm, six hours old?”

  Vic hops in the window next with Oscar following, iPad clutched under his arm as he drops down into a dignified crouch and rises up like a demon from a summoning circle. I turn back to the blood as Victor steps up beside it, analyzing it with crow-black eyes and nodding once.

  “I bet this was Cal,” he says, pointing at the dried edges. “He came here not long after the shooting and he stayed until recently.” Victor looks up again, gaze sweeping the basement. “But he isn’t here now …”

  “Let’s check the house,” I say, and I swear, it takes a supreme physical effort to pull my attention away from the blood so I can locate the steps to the first floor. Deep down in my heart, I want to cry. That little girl who sat sobbing over her dead daddy, the one that Callum reached out a hand for and invited to dance, she weeps for me. The rest of me remains a dark monarch.

  I make my way carefully up the steps, avoiding rot and pest damage, and shoving my shoulder into the door. It doesn’t budge. When I step back and look at it, I can see that there’s no blood on it. Not on the stairs either.

  “If Cal was here, he didn’t leave this way,” I say, turning back and finding all three boys at the bottom of the steps. My teeth grind in frustration, but I manage to keep it together, sweeping the basement with them as we look for clues.

  So far as I can tell, there are none.

  “He doesn’t want anyone to know where he’s going,” Victor says, exhaling sharply and putting his hands on his hips. “That’s a good sign. Despite … this.” He gestures at the blood again. “He still has his head.”

  “Or he was taken by the GMP,” Hael inserts, and I flick my gaze to him. He holds up his palms in an apologetic gesture. “But likely not. I mean, they wouldn’t have tried to hide the fact that they were here, right? And I don’t see much disturbance in the debris.” He points down at the floor where our footsteps have kicked up years of dust and leaves and pine needles.

  “He could be on his way back to the house,” I suggest as Oscar pulls up a map on his iPad and turns the screen so that we can all see it.

  “Here are our closest rendezvous points. Let’s check these first.” He flips the cover closed and then pauses for a brief moment, his eyes on mine. I know that he and Cal have a bromance sort of thing going on. He does his best to hide it most days, but it’s there now, reflected back in a tentative sort of tenderness that he shares with me in a single sweeping glance.

  As soon as he looks away, back toward Vic, it’s gone.

  “Agreed,” Victor says, and then his eyes stray over to mine, and I know he can sense that I’m not feeling so good right now. Luckily for him, he says nothing, and I make sure that when I crawl out of the broken window, that I show no weakness.

  But something is wrong. I can fucking feel it. I just don’t know what, exactly, that is yet.

  Whatever it is though, it can wait until I find my man.

  Havoc puts me first. I put them first.

  Blood in, blood out.

  It’s early morning by the time we get home—we’ve wasted an entire day on nothing. Cal is not at any of the rendezvous points and none of our crew has seen him. I slam the front door into the wall as I walk in, finding Aaron taking a cold slice of pizza from one of the boxes.

  He’s got dark circles under his eyes, and he looks fucking exhausted.

  My heart flutters in that fairy-tale way it does when I see my childhood sweetheart safe and sound. He encapsulates my dreams of something better in the way he smiles at me; he holds the very last shred of my innocence in the warmth of his arms around me.

  “You’re back,” I whisper, sauntering forward and acting like I don’t have blood all down my thighs. I’ve stopped in four bathrooms to empty my cup and put new pads in. Still, I bleed.

  “Just got here,” he says, setting the pizza aside and then holding his arms out for me. Without hesitation, I step into them, letting his sandalwood and rose scent wash away some of the agonizing frustration I feel. I haven’t even really had time to process that we survived a school shooting. Or that I killed the son of a notorious gangster. All I’ve been able to do is focus on Callum, the way I did on Aaron when he was missing. “One of the boys told me about Cal.”

  Aaron pauses there and waits, but when nobody says anything, a deep frown appears on his face.

  “What took so fucking long?” Vic asks, moving up behind me and stealing Aaron’s pizza slice. We’re all starving; we have to take a break to eat. Really, I could use a shower and a nap, too, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to relax enough to do any of those things.

  “When they wouldn’t tell me if Bernadette was safe, I spit in Constantine’s coffee.” Aaron strokes his fingers through my hair and smiles down at me. “He left me in the interrogation room for six hours by myself.”

  I almost laugh, but the sound hurts too much trying to come out, so I don’t bother. Instead, I curl my arms around Aaron’s neck and lean up on my tiptoes, watching his long lashes flutter as our lips brush and then ignite with that usual sense of desperation and need. We were separated for too long; we can’t get enough. Even as we kiss, and I dig my fingers into his wavy chestnut hair, I know that I could fall forever into him and I would never hit the ground. It would be an endless sensation of floating, of falling, of dizzying heights rushing past at the speed of light.

  The home phone rings, and I startle so bad that I end up nicking Aaron’s lip with my teeth.

  “Cal …” I breathe, glancing back.

  “Go,” Aaron says, pressing an aggressively affectionate kiss to my forehead and giving me a small push with his hand. I notice that his cast is missing which annoys me since it’s about two weeks early for it to come off. But I’ll chastise him later.

  This could be Callum, calling to let us know he’s okay.

  It has to be Callum, right?

  Because as much as he jokes around about being the first of us to die, I won’t allow it. I won’t allow any of them to sacrifice themselves or be snuffed out in a stupid fucking gang war. Prescott—and the city of Springfield—belong to us. We deserve to rule first; we deserve to be happy first.

  “I feel like I’m in a fucking nineties movie,” I grumble, because dark humor is Cal’s thing, and it makes me feel closer to him when I use it. �
�Hello?”

  I swear to fuck, if this is someone asking me if I like scary movies, I’m going to kill them and bury their body under an endangered plant so that nobody can legally dig it up.

  “Bernadette, it’s Sara,” the detective begins, and I sigh. It’s a sound so heavy and ominous that it causes police girl to hesitate. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I don’t want to hear from Sara motherfucking Young.

  That is … unless she has news about Callum.

  I close my eyes.

  “Where did you get this number from?” I ask, but then I realize that I already know the answer: off my fucking phone. “Never mind, don’t answer that. It’ll just piss me off.”

  “Honey, I need to talk to you for a moment. Are you alone?”

  That gives me pause, but I just shrug my shoulders, remember that she can’t see me, and sigh again. “Close enough. What’s up?”

  “Well, the hospital just called your cell.”

  I stare at the wall above the phone where an old painting sits. It’s a wolf, painted by Aaron’s mom back in high school. I’d wonder why it was still hanging here if I didn’t understand how screwed up mommy issues could be. My mother allowed her husband to rape my sister. How could I ever forget that? Why don’t I just want her dead and fucking gone?

  “Okay,” I say, because I have no idea where this is going. “And?”

  “They’d like you to call them back. It sounds urgent. Do you want to write their number down?” I just narrow my eyes slightly. I don’t like the direction of this conversation. Immediately I’m thinking internal bleeding or some shit. I let them draw my blood when I was there, do some tests. Maybe a result came back that isn’t good? At least if I call them back now, maybe I’ll understand why I feel like such shit at the moment.

  “I have Google, but thanks for letting me know. I’ll call them.” I hang up and turn back to the table, grabbing Aaron’s laptop off the edge of the couch arm on the way.

  “What’s up?” Vic asks, but I just shake my head.

  “I need to call the hospital real quick,” I say, and he gives me a dark look. “I have no idea what for. That was Sara Young; she said they called my phone, so I’m calling them. Chill out.”

  My stomach clenches again, and I let out a long, low breath, putting my hand across my belly. Period cramps plus body aches from being beaten on the front lawn of my school. Fucking ouch.

  I sit down at the table with the cordless phone receiver, flip open the laptop, and search for Joseph General.

  “The hospital,” Aaron says, taking the seat across from mine. He moves gingerly, like maybe he got the crap beat out of him, too? He’s still wearing the medical boot which makes his survival during the shooting even more miraculous. If I’d had a broken fibula and a medical boot, I might not’ve been able to make it out alive. “What could they possibly be calling about?”

  I shrug my shoulders, trying to play it off as nothing.

  “Probably after me to pay the bill since I don’t have insurance.” I smile tightly because jokes about our fucked-up for-profit healthcare system aren’t really all that funny (it’s actually entirely probable that that’s why the hospital called) and then dial the number.

  Hael sits beside me, Oscar across from him, while Vic takes the head of the table. They eat pizza and share the two-liters of soda around, not bothering to get a glass. Well, Oscar gets a glass. Nobody else does. And, shocker of all shocks, he actually eats.

  I just stare at him as the phone rings and rings, offering me one useless menu after another.

  “What?” he asks finally, setting the crust down on his plate—also the only boy to use a plate by the way. “See something you like?”

  “You,” I say succinctly, and that shuts him the fuck up. I avert my gaze back to the pizza boxes and try not to let that itchy feeling beneath my skin take over. Callum was alive as of six hours ago. Alive enough to get up and leave that basement. Alive enough to consider not leaving a trail.

  That’s something, right? Because … “Hope is the thing with feathers,” I breathe aloud, not meaning to quote Emily Dickinson but doing it anyway. Because, deep down, in my heart of hearts, I am a poet and not a killer.

  “That perches in the soul,” Oscar continues for me, picking up his pizza crust and finishing it as I try to fight back a weary smile.

  “Fuck, you two are weird sometimes,” Hael murmurs, but not like he dislikes our weirdness. No, quite the contrary. As much as he and Oscar squabble, I know they love each other in that strange, obsessive sort of way that the rest of us do. Havoc’s way. Poison and possession, delivered down the throat in a dose as smooth as cognac.

  Finally, after a half-dozen department transfers, I get someone at the hospital. She looks my name up, transfers me, and then I’m finally on the phone with the doctor.

  “Hello Bernadette, how are you?” she asks, but I’m officially done with peopling today, so I barely grunt in acknowledgement.

  “Fine. What’s going on?” I ask, listening as the woman shuffles around on the other end of the line.

  “I just wanted to let you know that we got your blood results back. Bernadette, you’re pregnant.” The doctor pauses a moment before continuing, saying something about the injuries I received today, how a hard blow to the belly can cause miscarriage in early pregnancy.

  I hang up the phone on her.

  When I set the receiver down, I see that my knuckles are as white as virgin snow.

  I choke out a laugh and stand up, my chair scraping across the floor with a loud sound.

  “Everything okay?” Vic asks, like he’s a fucking mind reader. Frankly, I wouldn’t put that skill past him. He very well might be able to. I hardly know what to say, so I just stare at the wolf painting for a moment. It’s in mid-howl which is funny, considering the whole Cry Havoc trend I started.

  I bite my lower lip.

  Another cramp makes me close my eyes and clench my hands into fists.

  Shit.

  No, no, this is a situation for the word fuck. I don’t care if I’ve used it a hundred and sixty times today. There are just certain times in life when that word is the only appropriate thing to say.

  Fuck.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Motherfucker, cocksucking, son of a bitch!

  “Excuse me,” I say, heading for the stairs and pounding up them as fast as I can. I shove my way into the bathroom and then kick the door closed behind me, putting my hands on the counter and letting my head hang down.

  The pills that Oscar got me, they were real. I’ve been taking them like I’m supposed to. Maybe not at the same time every day, but every day, nonetheless. This is bullshit. This is complete and utter bullshit is what this is.

  Oh, come on, you know that birth control pills are only ninety-nine percent effective. That means that out of every hundred people, somebody gets knocked up. And not taking them at the same time each day … that makes the percentage of failure even higher.

  I lift my gaze to my reflection and stare at myself for a minute.

  If I was pregnant when I stepped into the halls of Prescott High yesterday, I’m not anymore. I just know it. I know it because I’m bleeding again and there’s red all down my thighs. My belly cramps as if in response to that thought.

  A soft knock at the door makes me jump just before Aaron cracks it open to peer in at me.

  “You okay, Bernie?” he asks, and the genuine concern in his voice stabs me right through the heart. He looks down at the floor beneath my feet, spattered with red. He lifts those gold-green eyes up to mine as I clench my jaw against the rush of feeling that spirals through me. Am I relieved? Pissed-off? Am I upset? All of those things?

  “I think …” I start, but the words just don’t seem to want to come out. Aaron slips in the door and closes it behind him, leaning against it with his massive body. When did he get so big? When did he outgrow that gangly teenage form and get muscles in his upper arms like that?

  I turn back toward the mi
rror and find my green eyes again. I have dark circles, too, just like Aaron. Drawn, pale, tired. Determined. My eyes shine with conviction in a way they never have before, even if the rest of me looks like a corpse.

  “You think what?” he asks carefully, voice low and neutral. Gentle but not patronizing. I’m just glad it’s him in here and not Victor. I cannot deal with Vic’s reaction to this right now. He’s going to fucking explode.

  With shaking hands, I shove my pants to the floor and tear off my shirt, climbing into the shower and turning the water on cold. A gasp of surprise escapes my throat when the cool water cascades over my skin, sending crimson swirls down the drain. Fuck, shit, bitch. How am I supposed to bring this up today of all days?! And while Callum is still missing?

  I’m not a religious woman, but if I were, I’d curse out whatever god or goddess is in charge of my existence. This is … well, it’s bullshit is what it is. I close my eyes and lean my head back against the wall. When did this happen? I wonder, because there’s no way I’m that far along. Likely, this is a chemical pregnancy—meaning it’s five weeks or less along. If that’s the case, then I don’t need medical treatment but … holy fuck.

  I open my eyes again to find him watching me.

  “Do you need a moment to yourself?” Aaron asks, raising a brow at me. He taps tattooed fingers against the door behind him and then comes to stand beside the tub, the medical boot making his walk just a bit lopsided. “I’m inclined to say fuck that and stay here anyway, but if you really want me to go …” He trails off and then tucks his hands into the pockets of the borrowed sweats he’s wearing. Second time getting arrested during senior year. Good for him. A Prescott boy through and through.

  “Would you?” I ask, leaning my naked body against the wall of the shower. Aaron tries to be a gentleman, but his eyes make a sweep of my body just once before landing on my face again. “I mean, if I told you to go, would you really?”

  He pauses for a long moment and then smiles tightly at me. A single dimple appears on his face, despite the gravity of the moment. Cal missing, the GMP on our asses, the feds with our phones. That’s how you really know you’re in love, when you’d rather face a crisis with your partner than an eternity of bliss alone.