The Risk: Kings of Linwood Academy #3

by Rose, Callie

  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 remember.

  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 ou
rs 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 perusal 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.

  “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 te
ll 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.