Page 88 of Keep Your Friends Close and Your… Work Enemy Closer?

Max

"Man, you really need to get glasses or something if you still don't recognize the Stratton sisters," Landon said in the seat beside me.

"Or just get the surgery," Gabriel suggested. "It worked amazingly well for me."

"Yeah, I'll look into that," I said dismissively, hoping they'd move on.

"The Stratton sisters are all hot as fuck." Xavier craned his neck from the front, giving his two cents. "You're missing out if you can't see them properly."

Landon nodded his head. "Aria's off the market now, but as far as I know the other two are still available."

Something about that pissed me off. "They're not pieces of meat."

"I know that. Jesus. I'm not a fucking Neanderthal. I'm just saying whoever they end up with will be very lucky."

"You can say that again," someone said, not that I cared who.

At this point, I'd tuned out, because all I could think about was that brief moment of eye contact with Annalise Stratton, any face blindness I had disappearing in a flash. Iknewher. I more than knew her somehow.

And I couldn't quite figure out how.

Her eyes told a story, a story that I felt to the depths of my soul, a feeling that no one else in the world gave me except one single person. And that person was Dee.

So what the fuck was this all about?

It was an irritating puzzle, one I couldn't piece together the entire ride home while the car dropped the others off first. And by the time I rode up in my elevator, that agitation had only grown, the feeling unusual for me.

Normally, I was pretty happy and content with my life. But between this strange vibe left over from tonight and the fact that I hadn't told Cordelia the truth about me and couldn't until our date, I was full of tension, everything gnawing at me.

The second I walked in, my grandma pounced on me. "What's Dee's last name?"

I shoved off my shoes and pushed them to the side. "Hmm? It's Dole. Why?"

"Dole? Like the fruit?"

"Yep. And my supposed last name is Jensen. Jared Jensen. Always be thinking alliteration," I said out loud, her expression turning to confusion at my goofy comment. "Uh, never mind. Just a joke."

"That's nice, dear."

Her dismissive tone made me smile as I followed her into the living room where she sat down in her favorite chair, phone in hand. She was deeply immersed in something because she usually peppered me with questions whenever I came home and she was here.

"Is Mom still out with her friends?" I asked.

"Hmm? Oh, yes. She is," she answered, not looking up, clearly absorbed in whatever task had her preoccupied.

"Why'd you want to know Cordelia's last name again?"

But I might as well have been talking to myself because she didn't pay me the slightest bit of attention. Boy, whatever shewas doing, she was obsessed to be acting so out of character. Was it something she'd been watching on TV? Some true crime she was determined to solve?

"Do you have a photo of Cordelia?" she asked, finally looking up, her eyes sharp with her mission.

What an odd request. "Um, yeah. Let me see."

I scrolled through my phone but didn't have to go back very far to find a picture I'd taken of Cordelia and Mona right before we'd all boarded the bus to come home from the retreat. I'd stared at it an embarrassing number of times, studying everything about her face, her smile, how damn cute she was, especially with that knowing little twinkle in her eye that to me screamed secret hot tub rendezvous.

Of course not saying a word aboutthat, I handed the phone over to Nana. "Here's one. She's on the left."

She studied it, going back and forth between my phone and something on her own screen, something I couldn't see from this angle. Craning my neck, I caught a glimpse as she blew up an image on her phone, and I spotted a woman with dark hair.

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