Oscar checks something on his iPad and makes a hiss of disapproval.
“You were at the lake house on the twenty-ninth, most definitely,” Oscar agrees, frowning as Vic sighs and grabs his cherry soda, flipping the plastic top off and using a flask of whiskey from his pocket to spike it.
“Alright, fine, you fucked her on the twenty-ninth or thereabouts. Keep going, Oscar. I haven't heard the tail end of this but just yet.” Vic swigs his whiskey-laced soda, and then offers the cup up to me. I just glare back at him until he scowls and takes it away again. We are not friends, not today. I'm still pissed, and we have yet to actually talk about my feelings in detail.
“Did you use a condom?” Aaron asks, which, apparently, is the wrong thing to say to Hael right now. He stands up and grabs his own milkshake, throwing it as hard as he can against the side of an old train car. It sits in the grass nearby, all its wheels missing save for one that's being eaten by rust. The side is covered in graffiti and now, strawberry milkshake.
It doesn’t need explaining that the graffiti tagged on that car says HAVOC.
“Of course I used a condom!” Hael roars, and I'm surprised to see so much emotion from him. Gone is the cocky swagger, and the cocksure smirk. He looks like any other member of Havoc now, just a tortured, tattooed asshole with a chip on his shoulder. “Keep going, let's just roll through the possibilities.” He snaps his fingers to get Oscar to keep going.
Oscar sits there with the iPad on his lap and gives Hael such a withering look that he finally sits down again, lifting a hand in an indication that Oscar should continue.
“We give her what she wants on the stipulation that she takes a DNA test at the earliest opportunity, and we require her honesty beforehand, to see if there's any other possible father.”
“There's no way,” Hael says, but almost like he's pleading, wishing he could change the past with a snap of his fingers. “It was just us at the lake house, and we were there for an entire weekend.”
“Four days to be exact,” Oscar corrects, and I wonder, if he's keeping such good track of everything, is he monitoring my fucking menstrual cycles, too? Dick. “But Brittany is—excuse the language—a whore. Likely, there are other candidates for her child's father.”
“So we give her what she wants on a trial basis, and we schedule a DNA test?” Vic asks, like he's mulling this over. “If the baby is Hael's?”
Hael makes a noise of protest but doesn't say anything.
“We tell her to kill Kali,” Callum says, speaking up for the first time. He's eating his fries one by one, carefully pushing the length of each one between his full lips. His voice is as deep and dark as usual, like black velvet and forgotten promises. “Pretty little white girl like her, she'd get away with it. Then we'd have Kali off our backs, but a smaller body count to our own names.”
“What is your body count by the way?” I ask, leaning back against the table and propping my elbow on the surface. “Because I'd love to know. You're all acting like …” I trail off for a moment and shrug again. “Like the other night wasn't the first time.”
“It wasn't,” Vic says, and my stomach drops. He turns back to Oscar. “Keep going. I'm not happy with any of this; it feels like we're getting screwed either way.”
“If the baby is his, then we have her kill Kali. If it's not, Hael walks free and clear, but”—Oscar holds up a finger and smirks like the sociopath he so very clearly is—“she also has to sic her father and his task force of pigs on the Charter Crew.”
Goose bumps rise on my arms, and I find myself grinning, even though I simultaneously want to punch Oscar in the nuts.
“Either way, it's a win,” Oscar explains, folding the cover on his iPad and setting it aside. He isn't eating anything—in fact, I've never actually seen him eat before, not once—but he does have a cup of crushed ice next to him. Casually, he picks it up and places a single cube on his tongue, crushing it with his teeth as I stare at him. “I like the odds on this one, to be honest with you. Besides, it isn't like Hael would