Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,21

The boys are going through that overprotective stage in our relationship. If they see how much I’m struggling, they’ll send me home. The thing is, I’m going through the queen stage of my own relationship with myself. I won’t be sent home or told what to do, not today.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Hael murmurs, dropping into a crouch and touching two fingers through the blood. Just the sight of it makes me sick. “This is cold, but it’s still wet.” He points out the dried edges around the pool. “Half a day in and it turns black, crusts over.” Hael stands back up and meets my gaze across the ruby red stain, brown eyes dark with concern. “This can’t be more than … mm, six hours old?”

Vic hops in the window next with Oscar following, iPad clutched under his arm as he drops down into a dignified crouch and rises up like a demon from a summoning circle. I turn back to the blood as Victor steps up beside it, analyzing it with crow-black eyes and nodding once.

“I bet this was Cal,” he says, pointing at the dried edges. “He came here not long after the shooting and he stayed until recently.” Victor looks up again, gaze sweeping the basement. “But he isn’t here now …”

“Let’s check the house,” I say, and I swear, it takes a supreme physical effort to pull my attention away from the blood so I can locate the steps to the first floor. Deep down in my heart, I want to cry. That little girl who sat sobbing over her dead daddy, the one that Callum reached out a hand for and invited to dance, she weeps for me. The rest of me remains a dark monarch.

I make my way carefully up the steps, avoiding rot and pest damage, and shoving my shoulder into the door. It doesn’t budge. When I step back and look at it, I can see that there’s no blood on it. Not on the stairs either.

“If Cal was here, he didn’t leave this way,” I say, turning back and finding all three boys at the bottom of the steps. My teeth grind in frustration, but I manage to keep it together, sweeping the basement with them as we look for clues.

So far as I can tell, there are none.

“He doesn’t want anyone to know where he’s going,” Victor says, exhaling sharply and putting his hands on his hips. “That’s a good sign. Despite … this.” He gestures at the blood again. “He still has his head.”

“Or he was taken by the GMP,” Hael inserts, and I flick my gaze to him. He holds up his palms in an apologetic gesture. “But likely not. I mean, they wouldn’t have tried to hide the fact that they were here, right? And I don’t see much disturbance in the debris.” He points down at the floor where our footsteps have kicked up years of dust and leaves and pine needles.

“He could be on his way back to the house,” I suggest as Oscar pulls up a map on his iPad and turns the screen so that we can all see it.

“Here are our closest rendezvous points. Let’s check these first.” He flips the cover closed and then pauses for a brief moment, his eyes on mine. I know that he and Cal have a bromance sort of thing going on. He does his best to hide it most days, but it’s there now, reflected back in a tentative sort of tenderness that he shares with me in a single sweeping glance.

As soon as he looks away, back toward Vic, it’s gone.

“Agreed,” Victor says, and then his eyes stray over to mine, and I know he can sense that I’m not feeling so good right now. Luckily for him, he says nothing, and I make sure that when I crawl out of the broken window, that I show no weakness.

But something is wrong. I can fucking feel it. I just don’t know what, exactly, that is yet.

Whatever it is though, it can wait until I find my man.

Havoc puts me first. I put them first.

Blood in, blood out.

It’s early morning by the time we get home—we’ve wasted an entire day on nothing. Cal is not at any of the rendezvous points and none of our crew has seen him. I slam the front door into the wall as I walk in, finding Aaron taking a cold slice of pizza from one of the boxes.

He’s got