RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,164
going to fall off her any second. It’s a goddamn Christmas miracle she hasn’t fallen down a ravine and snapped her neck in the white stilettos she’s wearing. She rubs her hands over my chest, purring like a satisfied cat. “Never mind. I don’t care about the mask. Doesn’t matter. You still caught me. Now I’m yours for…” she purses her lips, “…however long you want me.”
“Stop, Dami.”
She lunges, trying to kiss me.
“Jesus, fucking stop! I’m looking for Elodie. Have you seen her?”
Her pleased look turns sour. “Fuck Elodie, Wren. How many times do you need to hear it? I a—”
I leave her in the dark, flying into the forest, my pulse racing so fast I’m shaking all over. She’s got to be around here somewhere. Turns out a two-mile radius is a really fucking massive area of land, though, and I’m not having much luck finding anyone useful in the dark. I check my cell phone, hoping and praying to god that there’ll be a message from Elodie, but I only have one bar of reception and—scratch that. I have zero bars of reception, and I doubt anyone else has any either.
What a fucking disaster.
This situation could not get any worse right now.
But then, typically, thirty seconds later they do.
I blaze right into Mercy. She’s sitting on a fallen tree trunk, smoking a cigarette like it’s totally normal for her to be out by herself in a forest in the middle of the fucking night. She’s dressed in a red and white cheerleader uniform, her hair in pigtails, makeup smeared all down her face. I think she’s supposed to be some sort of zombie. She doesn’t even look surprised when she looks and sees me.
“S’up, big brother. Enjoying your little game?” She blows twin jets of smoke down her nose.
“Elodie’s out here somewhere. I’ve gotta find her.”
“Huh. There’s a shocker.”
“I don’t have time to trade punches with you right now. Just tell me if you’ve seen her.”
Her eyebrow curves. She takes another drag from her cigarette. “Why would I tell you, even if I had? You’ve been quite terrible to me recently, Wren.”
I feel like fucking screaming. “You know perfectly well why I’m mad at you! This entire mess is your fucking fault!”
She twists to face me, anger in her eyes. “What the hell are you talking about? I did nothing wrong.”
“You meddled in my shit, Mercy, just like you always do. You told Fitz that I was seeing Mara when I wasn’t. You made out like we were serious and in a fucking relationship, when you knew he was out of his fucking mind. Mara went missing because you said that. You made me responsible for what happened to her!”
“I was just trying to help,” she hisses, flicking her smoke into the undergrowth. She gets up and stalks toward me, jabbing at my chest with her finger. “And we don’t know what happened to Mara, okay. She’s probably in Cabo, drinking trailer park margaritas and blowing frat boys on the beach. She was always the type to ‘Gone Girl’ you morons.”
“You tell yourself that if it helps ease your conscience, Merce. But Fitz would never have screwed with Mara if you hadn’t told him I was with her. She was your friend. Whether you like it or not, you threw her under the bus.”
For the first time in years, tears shine in Mercy’s eyes. She’s never shown one ounce of remorse for what she did. And, real though it looks, I’m not about to believe that this display of emotion is real now. Mercy’s always turned on the waterworks to get what she wants. “You’re right. She was my friend. And yeah, I said something that I shouldn’t. But I was trying to help you extricate yourself from a situation that you should never have been dumb enough to get yourself into in the first place. Christ, Wren, you don’t even like guys. What the fuck were you thinking?”
I shouldn’t have avoided her for this long. We should have hashed this out months ago, but I’ve been too angry to even look at her. I still feel that way. “Look, I can’t stand here arguing with you about my sexual orientation when Elodie’s in danger. Fitz is out here, and I think he’s looking for her. I have to find her first. If you’re not gonna help, then this is where I leave you.”
I charge off through the trees, heading to the north. My eyes are accustomed to