“Oh, me too!” I exclaim, jumping up from the couch and hooking my elbow through hers. We’re barely around the corner when I hiss, “Oh, my God, what are we doing here? We have to get out. Now.”
Carly grins, an evil one that tells me she’s up to something. “Definitely, but first, come on.”
She drags me to the kitchen, refilling our plastic cups damn near to the brim. “I don’t want another drink. We didn’t drink the first ones.”
But she leads me to the stairs, and like a dork, I follow her up to the second floor. She moves us to a point by the railing where we can see Max and Ben below us.
“Okay, on the count of three, dump and run to the bathroom.” She points down and then behind her.
My eyes widen. “No, we can’t.”
But she’s already counting, and on three, I do it.
Our cups fall through the air, landing right in Max and Ben’s lap and splashing the very red and very alcoholic punch all over them and the couch. The very expensive-looking, antique ivory couch. Red everywhere.
We quickly and quietly make our way to the bathroom, and where I’d slam the door, selling us out, Carly closes it silently, like we’ve been here all along. The footsteps stomp up the stairs, yelling voices rising with them.
Then doors start opening. In the bedrooms, people cry out in surprise at the interruption. My breath catches in fear, the knowledge that we’re going to be caught already settling in.
But Carly drops to her knees in front of the toilet and spits thickly into it, a hint of red from the punch she did sip.
When the door opens, she moans. “Oh, God, I don’t feel so good.” She looks up, somehow faking glassy eyes at Max and Ben. Their pastel polo shirts are covered, dripping in punch. “Oh, no, you too? What was in that?”
Surprisingly, the guys buy Carly’s lightweight drunk act and keep looking around for who did this to them. In the mayhem, I shuffle Carly out into the night. She got us out safe and sound, although at the crash of broken glass from somewhere in the house behind us, we did break into a sprint. Odd looks be damned.
I’d kept waiting for someone to rat us out, for us to have to pay for the expensive couch. But no one ever did. And with a bit of teamwork and some ingenuity, we’d gotten away scot-free.
“And Max and Ben never talked to us again,” I finish. I look over at her, offering a high-five. “We’re a good team, girl.”
She smiles back, smacking hands. “Yeah, we are.” And then I see her swirl her drink and mouth, “One . . . two . . .”
“No! That’s not what I meant!” I call out, stopping her just as Kyle catches on and starts to bail out of his seat.
Her brows lift, and she huffs in mock disappointment. “That’s obviously what the moral of that story means. Dump the punch and run.”
She spreads her arms wide, palms up, telling me ‘duh’ without a word.
I look pointedly at the guys and repeat, “We are a good team. Maybe it’s about time we try that now too. What do you say?”
Nathan’s and Kyle’s eyes narrow, obviously not onboard with the plan but not negating the idea outright either. So I agree for all of us. “Good, that’s settled then. Let’s lay all our cards on the table then, shall we?”
There are a few grumbles, but I dive in full-steam ahead. “Here’s what we know. Michael and Anna worked together. Michael was killed here in the States, Anna a few days later in Italy. The only connection between the two is their work together. The FBI thought Nathan killed them both to inherit the company. The power.”
Nathan growls, his hands tightening around his tumbler. “I would never. I wasn’t even in the country when that happened.”
Carly hums, working it out in her brain, “But if you didn’t, someone else did. Who? Didn’t you look into your own dad’s death?”
Nathan looks to me, questioning whether he should share, and I tell him with my eyes that I trust Carly implicitly. And if she trusts Kyle, I trust her assessment of him.
“I said we did . . . are, but we’ve come up empty. Admittedly, we didn’t have a great relationship, so it’s not like I was a grief-stricken zombie. What I was, was pissed. Angry that even in his