the shots? I’d always known that he was like a puppeteer, manipulating the world and clutching it in his fist.
I was shaking from the cold, and my sticky skin was covered in goosebumps. It was late. I’m sure my mama was blowing up my phone by now, but Rogue had taken my clutch with my cellphone inside, so I had no idea exactly what time it was.
“The car here?” Rogue asked.
Bonham looked down at his cell, the screen lighting his face up into an eerie blue. “Yeah, I had the driver leave it for us.”
Of course, my own driver was long gone by now, thanks to Rogue calling him from my phone and cancelling.
Rogue checked the area one last time, making sure nothing else was left and that there was no trace that anything had happened there.
“Let’s go.”
None of them looked at me, but when they passed by, Rogue patted his leg at me in a, “come here” motion like I was a damn dog ordered to follow him.
Clenching my teeth, I followed behind them, all the way past their property line, where a dark SUV was waiting with its lights off.
Rogue climbed in the driver’s seat, Bonham sat shotgun, and Luis and Godfrey got into the back. None of them waited for me, and they all slammed the car doors shut, making me stop short, staring in confusion.
Then the trunk lifted, making me grind my teeth together even harder. “Fucking assholes,” I muttered under my breath. With absolutely zero dignity, I climbed my trembling ass into the back of the SUV. The trunk automatically shut behind me, and then Rogue sped off, slamming my head against the back window.
“Think you can take it easy?” I snapped.
Godfrey turned around, eyeing me. “Typically, when fleeing a murder scene, the getaway car doesn’t take it easy,” he said mockingly.
I pulled the hem of the shirt down over my thighs, feeling cold and barely covered. Rogue’s shirt swallowed me, but the thin material did nothing to fight the fall chill, even in the car. I kept stealing looks at Rogue’s profile, a hundred questions roiling around in the pit of my stomach.
When Godfrey saw the expression on my face, he grinned. “Oh, I bet the curiosity is just killing you.”
It was, but I didn’t like giving Godfrey Taylor the satisfaction of falling into his traps, so instead of asking about the murdered man whose body we just disposed of, I asked something else.”
“Where are we going?”
“My new place downtown. Maria bought me a nice pad over one of the nightclubs that she owns as an early graduation gift,” Luis answered with a cocky smirk, but I saw the playful way he was evading the true story. Luis called his mama by her first name to let her know just what he thought of her abilities as a mother. I knew him well enough to know that Maria Salvador only bought him expensive gifts after she disappointed him, and her disappointments usually came at the end of a line of cocaine. But I refused to feel sorry for him. This wasn’t like old times.
“You can just take me home,” I offered.
At that, Bonham started laughing hysterically, bending over in his seat like what I said was hysterical. He looked back at me with a disdainful curl of his lip. “You actually think we’re gonna let you out of our sight? You look like a snitch. Smell like a snitch. And until we can figure out how to keep you quiet, you’re stuck with us.”
I smiled to myself. They wouldn’t be keeping me anywhere. Mama was determined to send me away to the boarding school overseas, and they couldn’t just kill me. That man might have been a stranger, but people saw me at the party, they saw them torture me. If I went missing, people would talk. I just had to survive until Monday. “Is this the part where you kill me in a field somewhere? Do I get any last wishes?”
Rogue turned around in his seat and glared at me. “Stop talking. You don’t get to call the shots, Scar, and this definitely isn’t something to joke about. Keep those pretty lips of yours closed, and maybe you’ll survive tonight. Don’t think this changes anything. You’re still a fucking nobody.”
That’s what they all kept saying, right? But something about the dead man’s last words still had me confused. “I think you care,” I mumbled under my breath, making Godfrey look over at me.