by Callie Rose
But we need to know. Maybe the car that killed Iris is sitting in Hollowell’s garage right now.
I turn to face the back seat, staring at each of the guys with a hard expression. “Fine. But be fucking careful. And keep texting me. If I don’t hear from you every twenty minutes, I’m coming to get you.”
“Deal.” Dax nods, looking somber.
When Linc pulls up outside of Linwood, the school looks quiet. During the early fall months, kids hung out on the front steps during their free periods, but it’s too fucking cold to do that now. Everyone’s inside the building.
I turn back to the dark-haired boy in the driver’s seat. “Be safe. Please.”
“Always.”
He leans over and kisses me, and when I get out and watch the car drive away in the gray January light, it feels like it takes four pieces of my heart with it.
They do what I asked, and the first text comes through as I’m in gym. I stuck my phone in my sports bra, and I tug it out when I feel it vibrate, slowing to a fast walk as I circle around the indoor track. Savannah clips my shoulder and glares at me as she brushes past, but I ignore her and swipe the screen of my phone.
RIVER: Just got here. Ditched the car and found a place where we can see.
I know he’s carefully avoiding using Hollowell’s name or giving too many details, just in case. I wish he could say more about how it’s going, but at least I know they’re still alive.
Another update comes just under twenty minutes later, from Chase this time.
CHASE: Nothing yet.
I shower and change, then go to lunch, but I can’t do more than move my food around my plate. I think if I tried to take a bite, I’d throw up.
Business and Economics is after lunch, and Mr. Arndt confiscates my phone after he catches me staring at it. My heart sits in my throat for the entire period, and when the bell finally rings and I launch myself toward the front of the classroom to reclaim it, he looks at me with concern.
“Is everything okay, Harlow?”
“Yeah.” I barely look up, too busy checking the messages from the guys. They’re still okay. Still waiting. “I’m just… waiting for news about my mom.”
“Ah, right.” He looks like he has no idea what to say to that. I’m sure he doesn’t have a standard teacherly response for my particular situation. “Well, you’re not allowed to have your phone out in class, so just be careful. Ms. Watson will take it away until the end of the day if she catches you.”
I can hear the unspoken warning in his voice, and I appreciate it. Mr. Arndt isn’t exactly a rebel—he was the one who brought me to the principal when Savannah fucked with my tests to make it seem like I’d cheated—but I think he’s trying to help me not get busted.
In Calculus, I hide my phone in the pages of my textbook, flipping ahead every once in a while to check for new messages.
Still waiting.
Finally, in my last class of the day, I get a text message from Linc that’s longer than two words. Mr. Heller has his back to me as he writes on the board, so I snatch my phone up quickly and read the message.
LINCOLN: It’s not here. There’s a red sports car and a silver Bentley, and that’s it. Whatever car he used, it either wasn’t his or he hid it somewhere. Or destroyed it.
I stare at the screen for several long seconds, reading over his message again and again.
“Miss Thomas!”
Mr. Heller’s voice draws my attention, but when my head snaps up, the look on my face must be so distraught that he backs off immediately. He doesn’t demand my phone or threaten punishment, just clears his throat and tells me to pay attention.
But I don’t.
I put the phone away, but my mind keeps spinning around and around the words Lincoln sent me.
It might not have even been his car. He might’ve destroyed it.
Every time I try to catch a lead, it seems to slip through my fingers like fucking sand. I want to message Lincoln back and tell him he’s wrong, that there must be another car in Hollowell’s garage that they missed. But I’m sure there isn’t.
As soon as the bell rings, I sling my backpack straps over my shoulders and march from the room. I head down to the first floor and stride quickly toward the bank of lockers Savannah and a few of her cheerleader minions use. She’s laughing at something one of the junior girls just said, but the sound turns into a yelp when I grab her backpack and pull.
“What the fuck?!” She digs her heels in and yanks out of my grasp, turning to glare at me.
“I need to talk to you. Now.”
“Fuck off, skank.”
“Wrong answer.”
She curls her lip disparagingly and turns back to her little posse. I turn right along with her, and before she can open her mouth, I address the wide-eyes gaggle of girls.
“Hey, did you know your queen has—”
Savannah makes a strangled sound, stiffening like someone shoved a steel rod up her butt. “Wait.”
I break off, angling my head to look at her. She’s gone white, and I wish I could enjoy this a little bit, but the honest truth is, I’m not fucking with her. I’m not doing this to jerk her around, but I am done playing nice. I’ll spill every one of her most embarrassing secrets right now if she doesn’t give me what I want.
“What do you want?” she hisses.
“Outside.”
I jerk my chin down the hall and wait for her to start moving before I follow. We join the throng of students heading for the exit, and when we slip through the front doors, I tug her around the side of the building. Her cheeks are flushed from either anger, cold, or embarrassment, and she looks like she’s thinking about stabbing me in the eye with a pen.
Not giving her time to indulge whatever violent fantasies are floating around in her head, I step up to her, putting my face close to hers. “You need to tell me something else about that friend of Iris’s. Right. Now.”
Her eyes widen. She looks torn between being scared and pissed off. “What the fuck is it with you? Why are you so obsessed with her?”
“It doesn’t matter. If you help me find that Waverly girl, I’ll leave you the fuck alone, and I’m sure you want that, right? So help me. What else did Iris say about her?”
“I told you, I don’t know!” Savannah shoves at my chest, making me stumble back half a step, but I recover my balance quickly and take a full step closer, bringing us nose to nose.
“Fine,” I mutter. “But if you don’t tell me something, I’m gonna make sure everybody at Linwood finds out everything there is to know about you. So think hard.”
She blanches, and I almost feel bad for her. I’m trapping her the same way I feel trapped, forcing her into a situation where doom lurks on the horizon and she has no way out.
Except she does. She has to.
Because her way out is my way out.
She has to know something.
“Please, Savannah,” I whisper. The threatening tone is gone from my voice, and I don’t blink as I watch her, willing her to dredge up something from the recesses of her vacuous mind.
She makes an annoyed noise and brings her hands to her head, her fingertips pressing into her temples. She looks like she’s trying to do some kind of cheap mind-reading act, but I don’t point that out, stepping back and waiting as she thinks.
“I seriously don’t know,” she bites out. “It’s not like Iris told me—” She breaks off. “Wait.”
“What? What?”
“She said something once about how this girl was at, like, every party thrown by any of the Waverly boys.” She drops her hands, leveling another glare at me. “So if you go to a Waverly party, she should be there.”
My heart seems to kickstart in my chest.
It’s not a lot. But it’s something.
11
The guys swing by to pick me up from school, and by the time they arrive, Savannah is long gone, having flounced off in a huff after swearing that little tidbit was all she could remembe
r.
Everyone in the car looks defeated as I climb into the front seat, frustrated by the fact that their long stakeout of Judge Hollowell’s house revealed nothing. But when I tell them what Savannah just told me, Chase’s face lights up.
“That’s fucking perfect! When I was asking around about a girl with a flower tattoo, I got wind of a Waverly party coming up this weekend. It sounds pretty big.” He grins. “And even better, it’s an indoor pool party.”
My breath catches as he says the word “pool party”, and a barrage of vivid images and sensations flood my mind and body. The air in the car seems to heat up several degrees, and there’s a loaded pause before Dax clears his throat.
“That’s perfect. We won’t even have to ask around for a girl with a tattoo. With everybody in bathing suits, we should be able to spot her ourselves.”
The party is on Friday, which means I spend two days feeling like a worthless lump as my mom sits in prison and I try to keep myself from going insane.
I go to school, staring up at my teachers like a zombie as I try to focus, but I spend every lecture daydreaming up scenarios where Iris’s friend leads us to pictures of the blond cheerleader and Hollowell together, evidence of their affair. It wouldn’t prove he murdered her, but if we can prove a connection between them, that’s a solid start.
On Friday evening, we all gather at Linc’s house. Both of his parents are out, and Bri, their new Executive Housekeeper, is in the apartment in the service quarters where my mom used to stay. The room I stayed in is still full of boxes of Mom’s and my stuff, and the closet and dresser still have clothes I didn’t bother to pack when Linc first brought me over to River’s place.
I dig out the bikini I brought from Arizona and slip it on, then throw a pair of jeans and a top over it. The guys don’t bother throwing jeans over their suits, since it would be too tight a fit. They just put on t-shirts and jackets. We’re barely going to be outside anyway.
“So, what do we ask this girl when we find her?” Chase asks as we drive across Fox Hill toward the Waverly school district.
“How she knows Judge Hollowell. How Iris and he met. If she has any evidence of the two of them hooking up.” I count them off on my fingers as I list them.
“If she does know Hollowell, how do we know she won’t tell him we were poking around?”
“We don’t. But we have to stop playing it safe.” I chew my lip, glancing out the window at the dark, snowy landscape. “And we’ll be careful how much we tell her.”
Twenty minutes later, Linc pulls to a stop in a neighborhood I don’t recognize. Cars line the street, and one house several yards ahead of us has kids hanging out on the large front lawn. They’re dressed in swimsuits and probably freezing their asses off, but the guys are acting all manly and cool, and the girls clearly don’t want to cover up their best assets as they huddle together, smoking and drinking out of Solo cups.
The house is nowhere near as fancy as Linc’s or the twins’, but it is big. And when we step inside and follow the sound of shouts, laughter, and blaring music toward the back, we find a massive pool house attached to the mansion.
Whoever lives here obviously decided they’d rather spend their money on practical stuff than on decorative bells and whistles. Can’t say I blame them.
The pool is bigger than some of the outdoor ones I used to go to in Arizona, a fat rectangle that occupies the middle of the space. Floor to ceiling windows overlook the backyard on one side, and there are lounge chairs and tables set up on the tiled floor surrounding the pool. There’s an attached anteroom where we peel off our outwear and hang it on hooks, then we step back into the massive pool house.
The heavy thud of the bass seems even louder in the echoey room, and kids cluster in groups in the pool, swimming in the middle or clinging to the edges as they drink and gossip.
“Hey, what the fuck? Who invited Linwood?”
A guy who reminds me of Trent—broad-shouldered and a little oafish—steps into our path as we walk inside.
“We invited ourselves,” Linc says coolly, eyeing him with the same disdainful expression he usually wears when he looks at Trent. All four of the kings are athletic and muscular, but none of them seem to have a fondness for jocks. Not that I blame them, based on the ones I’ve met so far.
“What, got tired of banging the ugly chicks that show up at Linwood parties?”
The guy laughs at his own stupid joke, and I resist the urge to step forward and shove him backward into the pool. We need keep our heads down, not go around starting fights.
Lincoln stiffens and clenches his hands, but he keeps his cool too. “Nope. Not interested in any of them.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
The guy scoffs, but his gaze shifts to me, and his eyes gleam with lecherous interest. Lincoln takes a step toward him as all three of the other boys tighten ranks around me, and the guy stumbles back in surprise. I don’t think he realized I was with one of these guys, let alone all of them, and their reaction has put him totally off balance. He glances from one to the other before finally backing down. His puffed-up chest deflates a little, and he huffs a breath.
“All right. Fine. Whatever. But don’t think you can just crash all our fucking parties.”
“Believe me, we don’t intend to,” Linc drawls, arching a brow as he glances around the room disdainfully, and I suppress a grin. I knew the dark-haired, hard-edged boy could be intimidating as fuck, but I never knew he could be so bitchy.
I kinda like it.
The guy wanders off, tail between his legs as he seems to realize he has no backup.
Although that could easily change.
I reach out and touch Linc’s elbow, drawing his attention. “We better hurry up so we can get out of here before he comes back with friends.”
“Yeah.” He nods toward the table laden with bottles and cups, where a large group has congregated. “Let’s go.”
We all turn to head in that direction. Dax and Chase’s nearly matching tattoos shift over the muscles of their back as they walk, sticking close to River protectively. No one here would know it, but I can tell that they’re keeping an eye out for him, making sure he doesn’t miss anything in this crowded environment.
I start to step after them, but before I can, Linc’s arms wrap around me from behind, his breath brushing my ear as his hands splay across the bare skin of my stomach.
“They call this a pool party,” he whispers with a chuckle. “But they have no fucking idea.”
A little ripple of desire and giddiness sweeps through me, and I turn in his arms to face him, tilting my head back to look into his eyes. He’s smiling, humor and heat reflecting in his amber eyes.
“Yeah,” I murmur, running my fingers over his back. “I liked ours way better. There are only four people in the world I want to go swimming with.”
“Good.”
The word is a possessive growl, and he presses one hard, demanding kiss to my lips before reluctantly drawing back.
He slips his hand into mine, and we join the others at the drink table, grabbing cups and filling them before jumping into the pool. The water is warm and smells strongly of chlorine, and we gather near one edge, slicking our wet hair back as we scan the crowd around us. The pool is in the middle of the room, so from here, we have the best vantage point to comb through the crowd looking for any kind of floral tattoo.
That is, assuming Savannah wasn’t just lying to get me off her back. Maybe she sent us here hoping the guys would get jumped by a bunch of Waverly jocks.
At first, I don’t see anything in the throng of bodies. Just a bunch of kids I don’t know moving around the space, the girls flirting and laughing, the guys puffing up their chests. Normally, I love people-watching, trying to figure out what people’s hidden subtext is, what floats beneath the surface of their words but goes unsaid. What makes them tick.
But I can’t enjoy any of that right now, and as my gaze returns to the same spot where I started my slow perus
al of the room, agitation bubbles up inside me.
“Fuck. What if she’s not here?”
“We just got here,” Chase comments, craning his neck to see through the legs of a group of girls that stop a few feet in front of us to whisper among themselves.
Something warm fills my chest as I realize that despite the prominent display of legs, tits, and ass, Chase barely seems to register the girls themselves as anything other than obstacles to his search.
Nope. Not interested in any of them.
Linc’s words from earlier flash through my mind, and it suddenly hits me how true that is. Since this thing between all of us started, I haven’t seen any of the kings so much as look at another girl, and I know I haven’t looked at any other guys like that. Why would I, considering what I’ve got right in front of me?
I hope they know tha—
My thought is cut off when I catch a glimpse of pink and red through the throng of bodies. I stiffen, using the edge of the pool to haul myself farther up out of the water and craning my neck. “There. There!”
A couple who’re making out and giggling move out of the way, and I see it.
Large pink and red cherry blossoms bloom from a woody branch that crawls up the girl’s side, all the way from her hip to her shoulder blade. I can see why Iris was obsessed with it, it’s fucking gorgeous. The girl who it belongs to turns to scan the room. She doesn’t have a drink in her hand, and it looks like she just arrived.
Perfect.
“Come on.”
Before the words are even out of my mouth, all five of us are surging out of the water, clambering back onto the tiled floor. We abandon our drinks and make a beeline toward her, cutting her off before she can be surrounded by friends.
She jerks to a stop as I come to stand in front of her, her gaze darting from me to the guys. She has chestnut hair that falls over her shoulders in waves, and big blue eyes that make me think of Iris’s.
“Uh, yeah? Can I help you?”
Her gaze tracks over all of us, and although it lingers on Dax and Chase appreciatively—guess she’s got a twin thing—she still sounds annoyed.
