“You’ve got blood on you,” I said, earning a growl from Rogue.
“Don’t say another fucking word,” Rogue spat, as Bonham rolled up his sleeves, showing off the Rolex watch on his wrist.
I crossed my arms with irritation. “Fine, then I won’t tell you that Godfrey swiped dead man’s wallet.”
Rogue’s head snapped to his friend, and Godfrey shot me a glare. “Fucking narc.”
I shrugged, unable to keep the self-satisfied smirk off my face.
“Hand it over,” Rogue ordered, his hand outstretched.
Godfrey grumbled something under his breath and tossed it to him.
Bonham and Luis shook their heads at him. “What?” he asked defensively.
“You know what, idiot,” Luis said with a roll of his eyes. “You can’t take a fucking trophy back.”
Godfrey didn’t even look remotely contrite. He was just too damn curious about people. Even dead ones, it seemed.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful and call…” Rogue began before looking at me. “...him.”
Him? Who was him?
“No. Absolutely not,” Godfrey answered with a scowl. I watched their secretive back and forth in rapt attention, hanging on to every word while clinging for clues as to what the fuck was going on.
“He was going to figure out eventually. At least this way we can use his connections to get us out of this mess. I know you’d rather not, but we don’t really have a choice,” Rogue interrupted with a frown. “Do it as soon as we figure out what we’re doing with her. We’ll go with you so he doesn’t try anything stupid.”
“Fine,” Godfrey growled.
Bonham looked over at me, making me tense. “What the fuck are we going to do with you?”
I kept my mouth shut, not sure how to answer him. I didn’t want to give the Heirs any ideas and end up with that guy at the bottom of the lake. Silence was smart.
Rogue sighed in irritation, drawing my attention away from Godfrey and back to him. “Leave it to me.”
“Yeah, yeah. We know the drill where she’s concerned,” Godfrey said bitterly.
What the hell did that mean? Was Rogue responsible for them hating me? Was he calling 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. He was wearing that cynical smile I’d come to expect from him. He’d always let it crack his lips when he was certain he figured someone out.
“Aww. Look at her,” he began, while resting his bare arm on the headrest. “See that right there?” He pointed at my eyes, keeping the padding of his finger just millimeters from my eyeball. “She’s still got hope. Pathetic.”
I scowled at him as Luis turned to check what Godfrey was talking about. I hated how easily they could read me. I was like an open book, except they were writing the story, and the story fucking sucked.
Chapter Eleven
Rogue pulled the car to a stop at the back of a building, and Luis got out, instructing us to stay in the car while he grabbed some clothes.
Drunk girls walked by on wobbly heels and music thumped in the air from the club. Luis passed the front of the headlights of our SUV, waving and smiling at them, not at all phased by what we’d just done. The drunk chicks giggled, watching as he strutted around the building to head for the stairs at the back.