BREE WAS PRACTICALLY CRAWLING OUT OF HER SKIN WHILE she waited in her bedroom for John, desperately trying to keep her mind off Tammi Barnes.
Everything she believed in had been turned on its end. She’d cast herself as a hero, or at least a penitent sinner, attempting to atone. Instead, she had just made things worse for Tammi. And how many others? Coach Creed and Ronny DeStefano had turned up dead. Now Wendy Marshall was MIA. Was that on her head?
And then there was Christopher. His death would stay with her forever.
Seriously, she was a menace. Maybe she should just join a convent, like her dad kept threatening. She would be doing the world a public service by locking herself away where she couldn’t do any more damage.
A loud thud from her window snapped her out of her self-pity.
John’s muffled voice floated through the pane. “Are you going to let me in or should I just hang out here all night?”
Bree leaped out of bed and threw open the window. “Why are you here so early?”
John planted his hands on his hips in a fake pout. “If you don’t want to see me I can just leave.”
“No!” Damn, she wanted to see John more than anything else in the world. “But school’s not out yet. Did you ditch gym?”
“School was canceled after fourth period.”
“What?”
“Throw down your hair, Rapunzel,” John said. “We have a lot to talk about.”
Twenty minutes later, Bree sat on her bed, stunned. “Rex and Amber in the same day? Whoever did it is either incredibly smart or painfully stupid.”
“What do you mean?” John asked.
Bree shrugged. “Pulling off a prank is the easy part. But not getting caught afterward? That’s where it gets dangerous. This new DGM group pulled off two missions at once after just a few days of planning. That’s not going to end well.”
“I wonder who it is.” John shifted onto his side and lay down next to her, propping his head up with his hand. “One person? Two people?”
“At least,” Bree said. She thought of all the different roles she and the other girls had played during their missions. Recon, tech, contact, research, breaking and entering, decoys, red herrings. There was no way they could have pulled off any of their missions with fewer than the four of them. “Four was the perfect number for us.” She paused, and considered the current state of DGM with its two newest members. “I guess six is even better.”
John smiled up at her. “You’re the DGM master.”
“Yeah.” A Star Wars quote popped into her head, oddly appropriate to her mood. “Only a master of evil.”
“You’re not blaming yourself for Tammi Barnes, are you?”
“Why not?” She flopped back onto her comforter. “DGM was the catalyst for everything that’s happened to her. She went from being a normal teen to a homeless one, all because of me.”
“Bree . . .” John eased his way up to her side and tilted her face toward him. “Did you ever think that maybe you helped her? Even though she’s broke and living in a group home, maybe that’s an improvement from what her life was like before?”
“Stop trying to make me feel better.” She didn’t want to be absolved.
“Yeah, yeah,” John said, dismissively. “You crave the guilt. I get it, Catholic girl.”
Bree scowled at him, not because he was wrong but because he was right.
“But beating yourself up over this isn’t going to make up for anything. Not for what she did, and not for what you did.”
Bree had to admit he had a point.
He leaned down and kissed her, soft and slow, and all thoughts of Tammi Barnes faded. She caressed his cheek, her fingers lingering on the square lines of his jaw. She felt so much calmer when John was with her. He was the only person in the world who cared about her, who really listened to her, and she knew that he would always be there when she needed him.
She arched her back and his kiss deepened. Right now she needed him. Badly.
John shifted his body and Bree slid her hands down the back of his pants, pulling his hips closer. He moaned into her mouth, the hum buzzing her lips, then he moved lower, kissing her chin, her neck, her collarbone. She lifted her arms over her head as he slid her dress up and—
A sharp knock on the door jarred both of them from the moment.
“Bree?” her mom said. “Are you in there?”
“Shit!” Bree whispered. Her mom hadn’t been in her room since she got out of juvie. Why now? She glanced at the window, where the rope ladder still hung. Dammit, she’d forgotten to haul it up. Had the neighbors noticed and called her mom?
John rolled off her onto the floor and began to shimmy under the bed.
“No,” Bree hissed. She pointed at the window.
“No time,” he said, and slithered his skinny torso under the frame.
“Bree, did you hear me?” Her mom jiggled the door handle. “Why’s this locked?”
The last thing she wanted was for John to witness the horror of drunk Mrs. Deringer, but she didn’t have a choice. She dashed to the window and pulled the curtains closed, then quickly unlocked the door.
“Heeeey, Mom,” she said, hand on her hip in what she hoped was a casual pose. “What’s up?”
Her mom stood in the hallway, arm braced against the doorjamb, and peered over Bree’s shoulder into her bedroom. “Why did you take so long to answer?”
“I was sleeping.” And to illustrate the point, Bree stretched an arm over her head and faked a massive yawn.
“Mm-hm.” Her mom’s eyes lingered on the drawn curtains. Bree held her breath. “And why was the door locked?”
“There’s a strange guy living in our house,” Bree said. “My door is always locked.”
“Olaf is not a stranger,” her mom said with a huff. She breezed past Bree into the bedroom, eyes still searching. “He’s practically part of the family.”
“Right.” Bree folded her arms across her chest. “And I’m sure your intentions toward him are purely maternal.”
Her mom’s head snapped around, eyebrow raised. “Purely.”
The curtains fluttered in the breeze, exposing the hooks of the rope ladder. Bree casually moved to the other side of the room to keep her mom’s focus away from the window.
Her mom strolled around, examining the band posters tacked up on the wall. She paused at the dresser and her eyes swept across the framed photos. They were all of Bree and her brother, Henry, at various stages of childhood through his high school graduation. Bree wondered if her mom even processed the fact that there were no photos of either parent in the montage.
Finally, her mom sat down on the edge of Bree’s bed. “I wanted to continue our conversation from yesterday.”
“Are you going to give me my phone back?” Bree asked.
“No.”
“Let me have internet access?”
“No.”
“Allow visitors?”
Her mom pursed her lips. “I can’t do that.”
Bree set her teeth. “Then we have nothing to talk about.”
“Bree,” her mom said. She sounded almost sad. “I know you think I’m a horrible mother . . .”
That’s because you’re a horrible mother.
“. . . and that I’ve abandoned you here in Menlo Park. But did you ever stop to think that maybe you’re better off without me?”
Every single day.
A faint buzzing sound emanated from beneath the bed. John’s phone! He muffled it immediately, but Bree held her breath, praying her mom didn’t hear it.
“I realize,” her mom began, oblivious to the cell phone, “I haven’t been particularly . . . motherly. You have to realize, Bree, that I was raised to be selfish. To think only of myself. I was miserable here, playing the dutiful politician’s wife. I didn’t want to feel like that, and I certainly didn’t want you to see me like that.”
Bree snorted. “Are you trying to tell me that you did me a favor by taking off for France?”
“In a way, yes.”
Lady, you are out of your mind. She wanted to say it, but starting a fight with her mom was not going to get her out of the room faster. Better to just play along.
“You know what, Mom? You’re right. I think you made the right decision.”
“You do,” she said drily.
“Absolutely.” Bree put her arm around her mom’s shoulder and guided her toward the door. “We learned in therapy today about processing our emotions and looking for noncombative solutions. So I think, right now, the best thing for me is to have some alone time to process what you’ve said.”
“Okay.”
She practically shoved her mom into the hallway. “I’ll see you at dinner. Bye!”
Bree twisted the handle, locking it firmly, and rested her forehead against the smooth, cold wood of her bedroom door. “That was close.”
John dragged himself out from underneath the bed. “I’m sorry.”
She turned and smiled. “It’s not your fault you got a text.”
“Not that.” He walked purposefully toward her and enveloped her with his arms. “About your mom.”
“Oh.”
“Why didn’t you tell me she lived in France?”
Bree avoided his eyes.
“So if your dad’s in Sacramento all the time, that means you’re here alone in this house. Is that even legal?”
Bree shrugged. “There’s Magda.”
“Who?”
“The housekeeper.”
He took her face in his hands and tilted it upward. “You should have told me.”
“How could I? Just blurt out, ‘Oh, my parents both abandoned me once my brother went off to college. Isn’t that awesome?’” She shook her head. “Not exactly lunchtime conversation.”
He leaned closer. “From now on,” he said softly, “you tell me this kind of stuff, okay?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
John’s cell phone buzzed again. “Crap, I forgot about that.” He pulled it out of his pocket and swiped the screen. After a second, he gasped.
“What?” Bree asked.
John’s body went rigid. “Oh my God.”
“What is it? Who’s it from?”
John glanced up at her. There was fear in his hazel eyes.
