Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,39

if I’m imagining his ghost the way I did Kali’s.

I wonder if she knew how far into this she was? Like, she clearly knew about the GMP being at the after-party, but what else? How deep was she? I guess, like with Penelope’s suicide, we’ll never really know. Then again, I could be wrong about at least one of those things …

“He’s notoriously loyal to Maxwell,” Aaron says as he glances over at Vic, as if for confirmation. A very subtle, slow nod from our leader and Aaron turns back to look at me, his eyes shadowed in the early morning light. The sun has just begun to peek its head above the horizon, but the air outside is as cold as ice. I keep checking the time, so I can call Heather as soon as she’s awake. I texted her new phone—Oscar had them ready for when we took the girls to Oak River Elementary—but I haven’t responded to her reply just yet. I want to hear her voice so bad that I ache. “If we take Maxwell down, he’ll come for us all the same.”

“Tell me: do either Maxwell or Mason like call girls?” I wonder aloud, thinking about Stacey’s face that day in the cafeteria. I can’t get it out of my mind. I know we were wrapped up in our own shit, but I can’t help feeling like we let her down. She was Prescott High incarnate, our queen bee, Havoc’s ally.

She deserves justice, and I intend to wreak some havoc on my quest to get it.

“Oh, Mason is nefarious for his treatment of prostitutes. He’s gotten so bad that his boss forbade him from using any of their girls. Now, he just kidnaps women, uses them, and dumps their bodies.” Oscar taps his long fingers on the arm of the sofa. I hear he retrieved a hidden precision rifle from under a liner of an outdoor trash can and set up to snipe GMP fuckers from the roof.

I honestly have no words to describe how I feel about that.

Another cramp rips through me, and I groan, pressing the hot water bottle into my belly. The boys all turn their attention to me, but I ignore them. We have shit to do and likely not a lot of time to do it in.

“What about his house?” I ask, but Vic is already shaking his head, his black eyes on me, his fingers pressing just a bit too hard into the arm of the couch.

“Same deal,” Vic says succinctly, his voice this primal growl that just barely passes for human. Demonic, is how I’d probably describe it if I were scribbling down one of my shitty poems. I remember once when Kali dug one of them out of the trash and tried to claim that I’d sent her hate mail. What a crock of shit. That bitch really thought she ranked high on my radar, huh? I had better shit to do in tenth grade. You know, like mourn my dead sister, worry about whether Heather was going to be molested by the Thing, or keep myself alive in the face of Havoc’s wrath.

Like I said: liar, thief, coward. Good fucking riddance.

“Same deal,” I repeat slowly, looking over at Victor and watching as the edge of his cruel mouth turns up in the slightest smile. For as long as I live, I will never forget the weight of that crown on my head or the words he said to me in those final few moments before the cops stormed the building. “I told you not to worry about being queen.”

So I guess I won’t. Worry, that is.

Nah, I’ll just act like royalty until it fucking sticks.

The way Vic is looking at me, I know he’s waiting to see what I’ll come up with, what ideas I have. This is what he’s wanted all along, for me to stand beside him, a true Havoc Girl. Now that I can see his true intentions, it isn’t hard to imagine why he was so pissed at me when I suggested ‘performing my duties’ or being ‘Havoc’s girl’. He wanted a partner, not just a plaything.

“I hate to take the risk, but what if we use one of Stacey’s girls to get Mason to a known location? I’m sure he’ll have security with him, but it’ll be much less than if we try to raid his or Maxwell’s places.” I flip the cover on the iPad shut and set it aside,