Page 13 of Wicked Games

They swallow.

“Get rid of it.”

“What?”

“Get rid of the fucking video—get it off every phone, every server, or so help me God, I will ruin your life.”

Silence.

Then, “You didn’t like the angle?”

I growl.

“Fine. Consider it done.”

Margo isn’t with Savannah. She knows that girl would do anything to get back in my good graces—including tell me ifMargo showed up. Since I have no messages from Dunley, that leaves one option.

My little lamb thought she would outsmart me. But what she doesn’t know is that I’ve been hemming her in since before she came back to Rose Hill. Trimming away at the number of people she can turn to, making it so eventually, she’ll only have me.

I crack my neck. There’s only one place—okay, two, if Theo ends up finding her at Amelie’s—that Margo could be.

Next stop: Ian Fletcher’s house.

Chapter 5

Unknown

“Idon’t understand your attachment.”

I sigh.

No one does.

I’ve tried to explain it before. I’ve written it out, then torn the pages and burned them. There’s a danger in admittance. People think confessing wipes away sin. Speak it out loud, absolve yourself with penance, move on. But confessing is a trap.

I’m done explaining myself.

The little figure sits heavy on my palm. On the screen, the video feed lags by a few seconds. I jostle it, count to three, and watch the image of me jerk and tremble.

This will work well.

I examine it closer, but even to my eye, the camera is hidden.

“Satisfied?”

I nod once.

“Where are they?”

“Strung across Rose Hill,” I answer. “Little fires everywhere.”

Just the way it should be.

Chapter 6

Margo

Ian’s room is kind of what I would’ve expected. The walls are gray-blue; his bedding matches in darker tones. There’s a hockey stick lying across his desk, a roll of white tape beside it, and a helmet on top of a few textbooks. His bag—thankfully closed, because I’m pretty sure hockey boys’ pads smell awful—sits in a corner. The rest of his room is, for the most part, spotless. Closed black closet doors, plush carpet instead of hardwood.

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