by Callie Rose
“I like your tattoo,” I say, not quite sure how to broach the subject of her dead friend.
“Oh. Thanks.” She smirks. “My mom was furious when I got it, but whatever. Fuck that bitch.”
Jesus. At some point, I’d really like to meet a teenager from Fox Hill who likes their parents. Maybe it makes me a huge nerd, but my mom is one of my best friends, and I don’t give a fuck who knows it.
Bypassing her statement entirely, I glance at Lincoln, who nods. No point beating around the bush, I guess.
“Did you know Iris Lepiane?” I ask, shifting my focus back to the girl.
She blinks. I have a feeling if she made a list of the top thousand things she thought I might say, that question would’ve been somewhere around nine hundred ninety-nine.
“Yeah. I did. So?” Her gaze darts around our little group again, really taking us in this time.
“I need to ask you a question about her. Can we go somewhere quieter and talk for a second?”
The girl’s eyebrows pop up. She looks torn between telling us to fuck off and satisfying her curiosity by finding out what we want. Curiosity wins, and she shrugs lazily. “Sure. Whatever. Anna’s parents aren’t home, so we’ve got free run of the house. As long as all the bedrooms haven’t been taken already.”
A few have, but we find an empty room on the second floor. Whoever Anna is, I’m guessing this room belongs to her little sister. It’s pink, with pictures of ponies everywhere.
We’re all still in our swimsuits. I wasn’t gonna risk letting the girl with the tattoo—Summer—get antsy and ditch us while we changed. I purposefully avoid sitting on the furniture, not wanting to leave a wet ass print in this poor little kid’s room, but Summer sprawls across the bedspread, looking like a fucking swimsuit model just waiting for the ocean spray to crash over her.
Now that she’s decided to play along, the annoyed look has left her face, and she’s staring at the twins again like she wants to eat them.
I’m trying to talk myself out of crawling onto the bed and smacking the crap out of her when Dax and Chase save me the trouble. Leaving River next to Lincoln, they cross the room at the same time, coming to stand on either side of me, so close that the bare skin of their arms brushes mine. They glance down at me, and I swear I see laughter dancing in Chase’s blue-green eyes.
When I glance back at Summer, the annoyed expression is back on her face, and I like this look so much better.
“What do you want to ask me about?” She sits up a little, seeming more anxious to get this moving along now that she knows she won’t be getting a twin sandwich.
That’s right, bitch. My sandwich.
Making sure not to let my thoughts show on my face, I take a step forward. “Someone told us that you knew Iris, and that you might’ve introduced her to an… an older man she was seeing. Is that true?”
She looks amused, a satisfied smirk playing across her lips. “Yeah. Probably.”
“What do you mean, probably?” Lincoln asks, his voice hard.
“I mean, I taught her my technique. I didn’t know she snagged a man though. Good for her.”
“What technique?”
Summer sighs, sitting up and swinging her legs off the bed. She leans back on her hands, eyeing the four boys before looking at me.
“Well, you seem like you’re doing okay. But in general, high school boys tend to be a bit of a letdown. I prefer older guys. They know what the fuck they’re doing in bed, plus they’ve got money to actually give you presents and stuff. Cartier jewelry,” she adds with a heavy inflection, as if I’m supposed to be impressed by this.
“So what’s your technique?” I ask.
“Well, if you want to land a big fish, you have to go where the big fish are.” She bats her eyelashes, and I decide I like this girl even less than I liked Iris. “My parents get about a billion invitations to black tie galas and fundraisers and stuff. They can only go to so many though—my mom doesn’t even like them, and my dad is so tightfisted he doesn’t like giving his money to anybody. So I take their invitations and go instead.”
So she can go trolling for rich older men. Ugh. Gross.
“And you taught this ‘trick’ to Iris?”
“Yeah.” She gives a satisfied smile. “I took her with me once. Said she was my plus-one.”
“What was the event? A gala? A fundraiser?”
Summer waves a hand airily, as if that little detail doesn’t matter one bit. I guess, for her purposes, it doesn’t.
“I don’t know. Some fundraiser.” She makes a little scoffing sound. “I can’t believe that bitch got a hookup and didn’t tell me.”
I want to ask if she knows Iris is dead, because she sure isn’t acting like it. But she must—it was all over the news. I guess her attention span just isn’t long enough for her to still be in mourning.
“Do you remember what it was for?” I press, taking another step forward. “When was it?”
She rolls her eyes in irritation, but purses her lips as she thinks about it. “In the spring. I dunno, it was a fundraiser for a politician. Halloway or something.”
My skin prickles all over, like a ghost just walked through me. It takes all my effort to keep my voice steady as I force words past my lips.
“Hollowell? Alexander Hollowell?”
“Oh, yeah.” She nods. “That was it, I think. She must’ve given her number to somebody there that night. I can’t believe she didn’t tell me, that bitch.”
“She never… told you anything about him? Never talked about a guy she was seeing?”
“Oh, she talked about Trent all the time.” Summer makes a face. “And I sort of got the sense she had another guy on the hook, but I thought it was someone else from Linwood.”
“Do they usually have photographers at those sorts of things?” River asks softly.
Summer tosses him a look like he’s some kind of ill-bred heathen. “Of course.”
We question her a little longer, but she keeps insisting she doesn’t know anything about the secret older man Iris was seeing. And even though I don’t want to, I believe her. Iris barely told Savannah anything about Hollowell, which means she either realized how taboo what she was doing was and wanted to keep it under wraps, or she was worried her “friends” would try to steal him from her.
When I can’t think of any more questions to ask Summer, we all go back downstairs, and the kings and I make a beeline toward our clothes. I considered telling Summer not to mention our conversation to anyone, but decided against it. She seems like the kind of girl who gets off on drama, so asking her to keep it quiet would basically be like daring her to tell everyone she knows.
My bikini has dried a bit by the time I tug on my pants and top, but the guys must be freezing as we step outside and hurry to Linc’s car.
As soon as the doors are closed, he turns on the engine, blasts the heat, and pulls away from the curb.
The car is silent for a second before Chase speaks.
“Sooo…”
“So, we know how they met.” I turn toward the back seat, even though I’m not sure River can see me in the low light.
“He picked her up at his own fucking fundraiser.” Dax taps on the window pane with his knuckles. “That’s ballsy.”
“Or stupid. There are pictures.” River looks up from his phone. “This probably isn’t even all the ones that were taken, but there’s a gallery online—and I bet the photographer has everything backed up somewhere.”
I crane my neck. “Can I see?”
He nods and passes his cell up to me. I swipe through the pictures as Lincoln drives and the guys murmur in low voices around me. I’m only half listening as they debate what we should do with the information we have now. My gaze tracks over every picture, searching each image from top to bottom.
And then I see her.
Iris Lepiane is done up to the nines, her light blond hair artfully arranged on her head with little tendrils cascading down her neck. She’s w
earing a full-length gown, and the combination of the dress, hair, and makeup seems to add ten years to her appearance.
I’d been skeptical of Summer’s claim that she could just waltz into these fundraisers and galas with a bunch of adults without anyone raising an eyebrow.
Now I know how.
Judge Hollowell could be forgiven for mistaking Iris for someone in her mid-twenties if he met her at the event. But at some point not long after that, he had to have discovered her true age, and the fact that he didn’t immediately walk away shows his true colors as a lecherous bastard.
The photographer caught Iris with a glass of champagne in her hand, smiling as she gazes out at the crowd around her. She looks ethereal. Timeless. Nothing at all like the girl I heard screaming at Savannah in the girls’ locker room more times than I can count.
It’s like she had this whole secret life outside of school.
I guess we all do, in a way. But most people’s don’t get them killed.
Before I scroll on, I snap a screenshot on my phone, saving the image. But it’s the next photo she appears in, several pictures later, that has me sitting up straighter in my seat.
She’s not in the foreground this time—she’s just one of many in the background.
Her face is partially turned away from the camera, but it’s still quite obviously Iris.
And she’s talking to Judge Hollowell.
12
I sit at the marble island in the Lauders’ house, nursing my coffee as I hunch over my phone. It’s on the counter in front of me, and I keep flicking my finger back and forth across the screen, shifting from the picture of Iris by herself to the one of her with Judge Hollowell.
“It’s the right call, Low.”
Dax’s voice is serious, and he scoots a little closer to me, glancing over my shoulder as the pictures slide back and forth.
“You think?” I murmur.
We spent all weekend debating about it—the question of what to do with the information Summer gave us, and with the picture of Iris meeting Judge Hollowell at his fundraiser.
“It makes sense to me,” Chase puts in, resting his hand on the small of my back as he leans over my other shoulder. “We said we’d go to Dunagan when we had something to tell him. And now we do.”
“Yeah.”
I draw my bottom lip between my teeth, biting so hard it leaves an indentation in my skin. I’m scared as fuck to do this, but the guys are right. Dunagan has resources we could never hope to, and with the ticking countdown to my mother’s trial marking the days, we don’t have any more time to waste fumbling around in the dark.
We have to do this.
“Yeah,” I say again. “Okay.”
“Ready?” Dax asks. “We gotta swing by and get River.”
I down my coffee in two long gulps. It’s too hot for that, but I don’t care. I need the caffeine. Actually, I’d prefer a shot of something stronger, but the caffeine will have to do.
On the way to River’s house, I make the phone call. Dunagan left his card with Samuel Black when he questioned him after Mom’s arrest, and Linc texted me the number for his direct line last night. I hit the green CALL button and try to control the thudding of my heart as it rings once… twice…
Dunagan answers on the third ring, and the sound of his voice is like a visceral flashback to the night Mom got arrested.
“Hello?”
“Detective Dunagan?”
“Yes,” his measured voice says, “who’s this?”
“It’s Harlow Thomas. I met you when you—”
“Yes, I know who you are, Miss Thomas.” His voice has sharpened, and I can practically feel him sitting up straighter in his seat.
Fuck. Here we go.
“I wanted to see if I could meet with you. I have information about Iris Lepiane that I don’t think you found in your investigation.”
“I see.” His voice settles into a tired gravel. “Is this about that mysterious masked man?”
“No.”
Yes, it is, but I’m not telling him that. He already thinks I’m crazy and desperate. He won’t listen to me if he thinks I’m just going to rant conspiracy theories.
“Miss Thomas, I understand you’re upset about your mother, but I don’t have time to go on wild goose chases, do you understand me?”
“I do. This isn’t that. Can I just talk to you? I found something out that I think you should know. Please?”
There’s a long pause on the other end of the line before he finally speaks again.
“Fine. Next week. Monday. Come to my office.”
A week? Fuck, that’s further out than I was hoping for.
I get the feeling it’s deliberate on his part—Dunagan’s way of making sure I know that even though he’s agreed to meet with me, he doesn’t consider anything I have to say of urgent importance.
But if I push back, I’m sure I won’t get a meeting at all.
“Sure. Okay, I’ll be there. Thank you.”
“Uh huh.”
He hangs up, and I pull my phone away from my ear and stare at the screen, only realizing belatedly that my hands are shaking.
“He said yes?” Chase leans forward anxiously from the back seat.
“Yeah. Next week. I have to go to his office.”
The twins’ faces both fall in perfect synchronicity, and they recover themselves at almost the exact same time.
“Hey, it’s something.” Chase’s copper hair gleams in the morning light as he cocks his head. “At least he said yes.”
Yeah. He did.
And maybe that means he’ll actually listen to what I have to say.
A few minutes later, we pull up outside River’s house. He slips into the back with Chase, and I turn around to fill him in on my phone call with Dunagan. He listens intently and nods when I finish, seeming to agree with the other two that it’s about the best we could’ve hoped for.
Lincoln is waiting for us outside Linwood’s front doors when we arrive. By the way he straightens as we approach, I know he’s anxious to hear about the call too.
I repeat the story for him as we make our way through the halls, keeping my voice low, and when I finish, he leans down to press a kiss to my temple. It shocked me the first time he kissed me at school, but since then, all the guys have become more openly affectionate in public. Every time something like that happens, we draw stares from some people and glares from others, but I’m trying to ignore both.
“So now we just have to get through the week,” I say with an exhausted laugh as we reach my locker. “Maybe I’ll actually do my homework for once.”
Linc gazes down at me, gripping my chin lightly between his thumb and fingers. “You’re an amazing girl, Harlow Thomas.”
When he looks at me like this, it’s hard to remember that he ever looked at me any other way. That there was a time when we both disliked each other intensely, fighting against the attraction that pulled us together even then. When he looks at me like this, it’s hard to imagine my life without him.
“You’re not so bad yourself, Lincoln Black.”
The right side of his mouth lifts in a lopsided smile, and he drops a kiss to my lips. The other kings all kiss me before they head to class too, and I do my best to return the soft press of their lips without making it obvious that I’m hyperventilating.
That’s another first.
And I can tell it hasn’t gone unnoticed.
Quiet whispers ebb and swell around me as I pass, but I steadfastly ignore them, marching into Political Science as if nothing at all is out of the ordinary.
I do my best to focus on the lecture. My grades have been slipping this semester, and I should really try to catch up. But between the call with Dunagan and the kisses floating around in my mind, there’s just no way Mr. Becker’s droning voice can hold my interest.
I’m heading toward my second class of the day, Biology, when someone grabs my backpack and hauls me backward. I dig my feet into the floor, but befor
e I can regain my balance, I’m pulled through a door into a first-floor stairwell.
Savannah shoves me away from her, dusting off her hands as if they need to be cleaned after touching me.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I growl.
Okay, fine, I pulled the same move on her a week ago, but I had a damn good reason. I’m sure she doesn’t.
She smiles, and there’s something both vengeful and self-satisfied in it that makes my stomach clench.
“Oh, I just wanted to let you know I’m planning on keeping my word,” she tells me in a falsely sweet voice.
“Your word about what?” I bite out.
“About getting you back.” She smiles cruelly. “I mean, I could consider the fact that your mom’s going to be convicted of murder to be enough, but it really isn’t.”
The dig at my mom stings, twisting a knife that seems to be permanently lodged in my heart these days.
“Do whatever you want, Savannah,” I say curtly, tired of dealing with her and her petty bullshit. “But if you come after me, I’ll just tell the cheer squad everything I know about you. I’m sure the whole school will hear about it pretty quick after that.”
Instead of fading, her smile only grows wider.
What the hell?
“No, you stupid skank.” Triumph gleams in her eyes. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You won’t do that.” She holds up her hand to stop me before I can speak. “Because if you do, I’ll make sure everyone at Linwood finds out about Samuel Black and his little baby momma. About the fact that his wife is leaving him because he knocked up the fucking maid.”
That stops me.
I stare at her for several longs seconds, absorbing her words and the full meaning behind them.
She knows about Mr. Black’s affair. I don’t know how she found out, but she knows.
And Audrey is leaving him? Is that true, or is she lying?
Does Linc know?
As far as I’m aware, Mr. Black has still been playing along with Paige, acquiescing to the woman’s demands in an effort to keep the whole sordid story from spreading far and wide in Fox Hill.
