Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,65

been after for years.”

There’s something to that phrase that tells me ‘picking his brain’ is a really nice way of saying bring him in for questioning.

“Is he in some kind of trouble?” I ask as Sara does her best to maintain a placid and unthreatening facial expression. Underneath it all though, I can sense it: the intense focus of an animal on the hunt.

“Is he here?” she asks, tucking her hands into the front pockets of her wide-legged khaki slacks. “We really do need to speak to him personally.”

“I’m here,” Cal says, standing on the lawn to the left of the front walk. Constantine actually jumps, putting his hand on his gun but stopping short of actually drawing it on the teenage boy in the hoodie hovering next to him. Callum smiles, his pink lips drawing my attention before I flick my gaze up to his blue eyes. He’s watching me, but he carefully turns his focus back on the pair of feds standing in our decrepit-ass Prescott style yard. That is, weeds and stray bits of trash, a plastic tricycle that belongs to some random kid from two doors down. “What can I help you with?”

“How did you …” Sara starts, glancing back up at the house. She takes a step back and spies an open window on the second floor. Her gaze moves back to Callum, thick with suspicion and twisted with confusion. She doesn’t understand us at all; we don’t fit into her good-versus-evil narrative of the world. Killers are bad guys, right? What about killers who kill killers? It doesn’t make any sense to her. “You came from the roof,” she deduces and Callum laughs, hands tucked into the front pocket of his hoodie. He—very carefully—removes them, palms out, nonthreatening.

“A magician never gives away his tricks,” he whispers huskily, his voice a dark, dangerous moving thing, something alive and twisted in a way that puts my entire body on edge. Thus far, the only boy brave enough to breach that tender barrier of my miscarriage is Oscar. How … ironic. “Let me put on some shoes and I’ll go with you.”

He pads across the wet lawn past Sara Young and then pauses beside me. With Vic’s huge body on one side, and Callum’s right in front of me … Shit, I’ve never felt safer or more turned-on. I look up at him as he reaches out and cups the side of my face in a pale, scarred hand. His thumb traces the curve of my lower lip.

“Save a seat for me at the funeral,” he says, leaning down to brush his hot mouth against mine. Goose bumps spring up across my skin as he skirts past and disappears into the shadows of the house. Apparently, this place is a rental. Vic is paying almost a thousand dollars a month to rent this shitbox. Fucking Christ, all this gentrifying is screwing us here in south Prescott. At the same time, I know better than to direct my anger at fleeing suburbanites: guilt always begins at the top. Those people move here because it’s cheap, because they’ve been pushed out of their own homes by the wealthy.

Not sure if you can tell, but … I fucking hate billionaires. Despise ‘em actually. Pretty sure it’s impossible to be a billionaire and a good person at the same time. Definitely mutually exclusive concepts.

“He won’t be back in time to attend the funeral, will he?” I ask and Sara Young just stares at me. “We haven’t done anything wrong. Callum defended himself.”

“He brawled with an enforcer for the Grand Murder Party and then shot him in the forehead,” Sara explains, as if I haven’t heard the story from somebody that was actually there. She turns around and starts down the sidewalk, but I follow after her.

“Careful, Havoc Girl,” Vic murmurs, his deep voice rumbling through me, like thunder on the night of a summer storm. I glance back to find him with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, sweats slung low, shirtless and perfect. “Keep your temper.”

I turn back to find Sara waiting at the end of the walk with Constantine.

“It isn’t against the law to defend yourself against a school shooter.” I cross my arms over the front of my pajama top, the one covered in coffins and crosses. It’s appropriately morbid. Bought it at the Hellhole almost a year ago with money I stole from Pam. Figured I should support a local business run by an ex-Prescott student—especially