UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Advance Reader’s e-proof
courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers
This is an advance reader’s e-proof made from digital files of the uncorrected proofs. Readers are reminded that changes may be made prior to publication, including to the type, design, layout, or content, that are not reflected in this e-proof, and that this e-pub may not reflect the final edition. Any material to be quoted or excerpted in a review should be checked against the final published edition. Dates, prices, and manufacturing details are subject to change or cancellation without notice.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Dedication
[dedi tk]
Contents
Cover
Disclaimer
Title
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
What Happened After
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Romily Bernard
Copyright
About the Publisher
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Somehow I think I always knew I’d get arrested. I just never expected it to happen during Home Ec. From the looks of it, Principal Matthews agrees. His face is ham-pink and shiny. He seems angry until I see the grin.
“Miss Tate?” he says. “Could we have a word?”
Love it when they make an order sound like a request. I mutter apologies to my group partners and grab my messenger bag from under the counter, pulling the strap across my shoulder. I’ve been expecting this moment for almost five months now, and I know I deserve it, but I can’t help one last glance at the open window across the room.
If I ran full out, I could escape.
“Now, Miss Tate.”
Or not.
I walk to the nearest of the two officers and bump up my chin so I can pretend my joints aren’t loosening. The policeman looks me over, scowls. I know what he sees—long, pale blond hair; short, pale blue dress—and what he’s thinking: trash. He might even be right.
Nice girls don’t write computer viruses.
Let alone use them.
The officer takes my bag and, after he glances through it, all of us tromp into the hallway. Just like I always pictured, Detective Carson is waiting. He looks so happy I start to shake.
“Here she is, Detective.” Principal Matthews pats my arm and I have to resist the urge to bite him. “Like I said she’d be.”
“Great.” Carson jerks his head to the left. “Can we use this classroom?”
Classroom? One of the officers prods me forward and I trip, my feet suddenly useless. If I’m not being arrested, then what—
Shit. It’s another job. He’s going to make me hack for him again.
“Um.” Matthews rubs the back of his head, looking dumbfounded, which, to be honest, isn’t much of a stretch for him. “It’s not really protocol.”
“It’ll only be for a few minutes, and we’d really appreciate the help.” Carson’s smile goes crocodile wide. “I’ll be sure to remember it.”
“Oh, good. That’s good.” Matthews retreats, refusing to meet my eyes. He pats his pockets like he lost something. “We’re always happy to be of assistance.”
And, to Matthews’s credit, he does sound happy, but when he looks at the floor, the roots of his hair are glittery with sweat.
I can’t blame him. The detective has the same effect on me.
I follow Carson into the empty classroom, neither of us saying anything until the door clicks closed.
“Well, well, Wicket Tate.” He smiles. “You don’t call. You don’t write. What am I supposed to think?”
“It’s not you. It’s me.” I tap one finger to my lower lip. “Nah, it’s definitely you.”
Carson laughs. He sits down on a desktop so we’re almost eye to eye, a poster of Spanish verb conjugations above his head as he paws through my bag. “I miss this, Wick. You’re always such a smart-ass when you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared of you.”
“You should be.” He looks up, the amused smile snapped off. “You’re not keeping up with our deal. You do what I want now. Remember? Or else you go to jail for computer hacking.”
Carson leans closer and I have to push my feet into the floor to keep from running. “I have evidence you hacked to catch Todd Callaway.”
My breath dries up. Stupid how after so many months the name can still make me flinch. Todd. My former foster dad and my former best friend’s rapist. He almost killed me. What I did to catch him was justified . . . it just wasn’t legal.
“If I can find evidence on what you did to Callaway,” Carson says, “imagine what I could find on the work you did for that shitbird father of yours.”
Odds are, he could find loads—especially if my father and his partner decide to roll on me. I focus on the Spanish verbs so I don’t have to meet Carson’s eyes. “What do you want?”
“I have another job. It’s perfect for you.” When I don’t respond, the detective clears his throat and continues, “I want to track Jason Baines and I want you to make it happen. Immediately.”
He’s right. It is kind of perfect. Baines is a mid-level drug dealer who worked for my father. We have history. If anyone could get close, I could—except this is beyond the type of work I usually do. Before, Carson needed an email track here, a credit card trace there. This is way riskier.
“Find someone else, Carson. I do cyberspace. Tracking that fast would require contact.”
“Your point? Don’t play shy, Wick. Baines specializes in roofies.” Carson searches my face and, even though I keep my features disinterested, he still sees something that makes his eyes go plastic bright. “He preys on women. That’s not too different from the men you used to catch, right?”
Right. Up until five months ago, I ran an online business specializing in catching cheaters and gold diggers. Most of my targets were guys. Most of my clients were women. And yeah, I did it fo
r money—my sister, Lily, and I needed it—but I also did it because those women needed answers. I made sure the men they loved were really who they said they were. I made sure no one ended up like my mom did.
And later, I used those same skills to bring down Todd and save my sister.
But Carson only knows a little bit about the last part and nothing about the first. He’s fishing and I play it blank, realizing too late that I should have played it stupid.
“What are you talking about?” I say, twirling a strand of hair around my finger. Carson’s mouth thins and I switch the conversation around. “Look, your best bet for tracking Baines is putting something on his phone, only that’s no good because I’d have to get close enough to do it and—”
“And it shouldn’t be hard since you two go way back. One of my sources says he’ll be selling at Judge Bay’s Carnivale party tonight.”
“You sure?” Bay is a local luminary: rich, well-connected, the kind of guy who uses summer as a verb. I know of him the same way most people like me know of him: He presided over our legal cases. “That’s pretty bold.”
“My source says your new mommy has accepted an invitation as well.”
I go very, very still. “You’ve been watching Bren?”
“Scared now?”
“No.” I’m fucking terrified. I shove suddenly sweating hands into my pockets. “You wouldn’t dare touch her.”
Only, he would, to get to me. My sister and I were adopted by Bren Callaway two months ago in what the papers are calling a fairy tale ending. Although the description makes me gag, I can’t fault the observation. Lily and I went from foster care rejects to looking like poster children for Ralph Lauren. Yeah, Bren was married to Todd, the psychopath who tried to kill both me and Lily, but aside from Bren’s seriously crappy taste in men, she’s straight out of Disney casting.
She doesn’t deserve what Carson would do to her to get to me.
“I want you there.” The detective stands, tosses my bag to me. “Do whatever you have to do. I want to be able to follow Baines’s movement by tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’m fresh out of magic wands.” Then again, I might not be. Baines isn’t the only one who can get roofies. I could knock him out, download a tracking app to his phone. There’s a certain poetic justice to it. I’m very capable of this . . . and that fact should scare me.
Actually, it does scare me. Thing is . . . if I tag Baines, Carson will go away. Bren and Lily will be safe. I can go on pretending I’m normal.
For a little while at least.
“Make it happen.” The detective stares down at me, and even though it’s finally healed, my injured arm starts to burn. “You wouldn’t want to ruin that lovely new life you landed, now would you?”
“No.” And isn’t that just the funniest punch line? Here I am with a new life, new start, and I’m already ruining it. Worse, I’m risking ruining it for my sister—and for Bren—and they deserve any happily ever after life will give them.
I consider Carson. This is probably where I should cry a bit, but I’ve swallowed my tears for so long they’ve turned to bone.
I roll my hands into fists. “Maybe you’re the one who should be careful. I brought down a rapist you couldn’t. The papers are calling me a hero.”
Even if I can barely say the word.
Carson’s upper lip wrinkles. “That so?”
Above us, the bell rings. School’s finished for the day and the hallway swarms with students, their voices swelling like the growl of distant thunder. How long before the rumor of me getting hauled out of class by the police reaches Bren? Or my best friend, Lauren?
Worse, how long before it reaches Griff?
Is it considerate that I want to be the person who tells him first? Or paranoid? I never told him I was working for Carson. He thinks I’m free.
And just like that, my hands are shaking again. “I’ll send you a text when it’s finished.”
“Good.” Carson smacks open the classroom door and motions me forward. I’m almost into the hallway when his fingers sink into my bad arm, pinning me against the lockers to hide his grip. “The next time you think about blowing me off, Wicket, you think about everything I could destroy.”
I hold my breath, waiting for Carson to twist my arm until I want to scream. His hold stays light though. It’s not punishment. It’s a promise.
“Understand?” he asks, fitting Bren and Lily and everything I want into one word.
I nod, but the detective doesn’t let go and I shouldn’t look at him. . . . I do, realizing too late he isn’t focused on me. He’s staring at Griff.
Who’s headed straight for us.
“Smile for the boyfriend,” Carson says.
Funny how I still can. Smiles are so easy when they’re for Griff. I smile. Carson smiles. Griff’s too far away, but I know his eyes have narrowed.
The detective snorts. “I’m always amazed at the way he looks at you.”
Me too.
Carson leans down, his lips so close to my ear the words escape in a hiss: “Think he’d look at you the same way if he knew what you really are?”
He does know. Griff helped me escape my father and Todd. He knows what I was before and he never wants me to go back.
“Think he’d still want you if he knew you were working for me?”
No. Yes. I don’t know and it makes my chest shrink tight. This is what happens when you end up with a hero. He expects you to be just as noble.
And I’m not.
Carson releases my arm, his thumb curving across the spot where Todd rammed in the knife. “I enjoy our little talks. I like seeing everything you’ve got now, gives me more I can take away. We understand each other?”
“Perfectly.”
“Good,” the detective says, and swings away from me, cutting left, cutting right as the students surge around him.
“What was that about?”
It takes me a beat before I can finally turn around, and when I do, Griff cups my jaw. His long fingers reach into my hair, streak chills down my spine.
“Todd,” I say. The lie is sluggish. I’m looking at Griff and can see only Carson. I shake myself. Another problem with heroes: If you confess your secrets, they will want to save you.
I want to save myself.
“They found some additional information,” I add.
Griff frowns. “Anything we should worry about?”
“No.” I smile and it makes him smile. He looks at me like I’m perfect.
What happens if that goes away?
“It’s under control,” I add, and it is under control. That part, at least, isn’t a lie. I will fix this. I will.
Someone jostles Griff from behind and he steps into me, filling my nose with the smell of grass and gasoline and oil paints from his art class. Griff braces one hand above me, shielding me from the crowd. “We still on for tonight?”
I blink. Dammit. How could I have forgotten? “Um, yeah, it’s just that I have this thing I need to do. With Bren. Can we meet up later?”
“Of course,” he says. And kisses me.
I wrap my arms around his neck and he tugs me close, his hands skating over me, dragging shivers across my skin. I feel my heartbeat . . . everywhere. Does it make me pathetic that Griff can burn everything else away?
Everything, but this: Would he want me if he knew?
Yes. Of course. No doubt.
Even though I repeat the words, I don’t believe in them any more than I believe in the fairy tale ending I’ve been given. There’s no such thing. Or there wasn’t until I met Griff.
Which side of me is worse: the pathetic girl who wants the boy or the pathetic girl who’s afraid of the detective?
I break off our kiss, tell myself I’m breathless from Griff and not because I’m scared. Even though I know that’s what lives at the bottom of this: I’m terrified. I don’t want to lose everything I’ve been given.
I curl my hands into Griff’s shirt. He grins and my heart
stutters.
“So I’ll see you later then, Wicked?”
The nickname still makes me blush. “Definitely.”
Another kiss. This one’s hard and fast. By the time my fingers curl into his chest, it’s done. He’s turning away.
Gone.
I chew my tingling lips and reach for my phone, dialing a number I haven’t used in ages and should have forgotten. Stringer picks up on the third ring. There’s no hello, but I can hear his breathing.
“Hey . . . it’s me.” I lean against the lockers, cradling my bad arm.
“Been a long time, girlie.”
“Yeah, it has.” Months and months, actually. Before I went into foster care. When Stringer and I were just good earners for my dad. “I need your help.”
“What kind of help?”
“Roofies. By tonight.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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There are worse things than going to Judge Bay’s costume party. At the moment, though, I can’t think of any. Things I can think of?
How Bren looked at me when I asked to come.
How Stringer looked at me when I bought the roofies.
How it shouldn’t be this easy. This is not who I am. It’s not.
And yet both of them looked at me like it is. Bren was so happy and Stringer . . . Stringer wasn’t surprised. I wish he had been.
I keep telling myself I can do this. I will drug Jason Baines’s drink. I will wait until he’s passed out. I will install a hidden tracking app on his cell.
I will be okay.
But now that I’m at Bay’s home, I realize my plan is super stupid. I had no idea how massive the judge’s house is or how many people were going to be here. It’s a Carnivale party, which I thought meant feather headdresses and bedazzled bikinis, but I guess when you live in the South, it means resurrecting a tragic Halloween costume.
Seriously. The Tinker Bell to my left looks rode hard and the genie on my right . . . that may not actually be a costume. If Jason Baines is here, I’m going to have a hard time finding him—and if I do find him, how exactly am I supposed to get the roofies into his drink? Which also presumes he’s drinking.
Remember Me Page 1
