Page 128 of My Brother's Best Friend

I scanned the cafeteria for anyone who might be suspicious and caught Sandra staring at me from across the room, her eyeliner so sharp that it could cut me, and her lips curled into a sinister smirk. I balled my hands into fists underneath the table.

No more hasty decisions, Maddie.

Yet my hands ached to wrap around their throats. If either of them had been the one to do it, to hurt Piper and Vera and all of my friends, then they would pay for it. I didn’t care what kind of trouble it would land me in. They would get everything that was coming to them.

CHAPTER78

ALEC

“You’re coming with us, Wolfe,” João shouted across the parking lot after school.

Maddie, Allie, Sakura, and Nicole, who had apparently come back to school today, had gone straight to the hospital after the last bell rang while I stayed after for hockey practice with Oliver. I sighed and tossed my belongings into my car’s trunk.

“Kai wants to talk to you about something,” Landon said. “Follow us.”

Sweat dripped down my forehead from drills during practice, and I wiped it away with the back of my hand and slid into my driver’s seat before following them. João and Landon drove down into the slums and parked outside of a run-down house.

After eyeing the boarded-up front door, I turned off my car and followed them to a side door that led down into a basement. Landon held the door open for us to walk down the creaky steps, then shut it, flicking on a dim hanging lightbulb.

“This is Kai’s place?” I asked.

Neither of them responded. João placed his finger on the electronic lock, and then the door clicked open. I walked into a small room with about twenty television monitors or more on the wall, and Kai was in a swivel chair, staring at a bunch of code.

“You look like shit,” Landon said to Kai.

In the midst of a yawn, Kai side-eyed Landon.

João lit up a cigarette and leaned against the doorframe. “You always look like shit, Landon.” After taking a long drag on the cigarette, he pulled it out of his mouth and drew his tongue across the scab on his lip, where Landon had punched him yesterday during their fight at the hospital. “Hit like a bitch too.”

Landon scowled at João and headed for a back room while I sat down at the table next to Kai and hoped that Landon and João wouldn’t drag me into the middle of their fight. Kai set one of his laptops in front of me, a video on the screen.

“I found out who did it,” Kai said.

I snapped my head toward him, eyes wide. “You did?”

“Took me all night and all day, but I did it.” Kai paused and looked over at João, who glared at the room that Landon had disappeared into.

Then, in a burst of anger, João followed him and slammed the door, yelling.

Kai cleared his throat. “Don’t worry about them. They’re pissed at each other for what happened to Imani.”

“But they didn’t do anything,” I said.

“Yeah, well, that’s how they are.”

“So,” I said, glancing at the video, “why’d you want to talk to me about it?”

Instead of answering me, Kai pressed play.

On the screen, the girls pulled up to the side of the road in front of Nicole’s house. For a few moments, they lingered by the car, then began walking to the front door as a car slowed down on the street.

I clenched my jaw when the girls began falling to the ground, one by one. Anger rushed through me, my nostrils flaring and my fists tightening by my sides.

Kai took note and paused the video as the car began driving away. “You good?”

“I want to kill whoever did this to them.” I was seething. The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them.

I’d had so much pain these past few weeks, but I hadn’t wanted to kill anyone before I saw what had happened to Maddie and the others. How could someone do this to them? All they had wanted was to check up on their friend.

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