Page 36 of Not That Impossible

I had a legit police contact, and I failed to get even one exclusive detail out of him.

Instead of being available, rushing over there, successfully interviewing people, and getting a quote from a contact, I’d assaulted a police officer, ran from the scene of the crime, and now I was hiding in my house.

It wasn’t a great hiding place. Liam knew where I lived, and I was expecting him to come and arrest me at any moment.

I sat glumly in my desk chair, staring at my computer. I’d pulled up theInquirer’swebsite, and there it was. Already. An article, by Karen Strickland: “Scandal at Sycamore Close.”

Good title.

I didn’t bother reading it. Not today. Eventually, I’d print a copy, get my highlighters out, and try to break it down and learn from it.

But today?

No.

Today, I didn’t have the heart for it.

I closed the browser, opened up my fanfic, and stared at the blinking cursor where I’d left off.

Right.

Warlord cupping my manly bulge.

I sighed, and poked at the return key.

Blank line.

Blank line.

Blank line.

I kept going until the words had scrolled up and the screen was empty.

There was zero chance of the warlord cupping my manly bulge.

There was, however, a very strong chance that the warlord was going to storm my citadel, wrap me in chains, and haul me off to the dungeon.

Liam was a proud man. A proud, determined, humourless man who wasn’t going to take me shoving him around in front of his officers lying down.

He was going to arrest me. I was almost sure of it.

When I was fourteen, I ran wild. Or as wild as you could get, living in Chipping Fairford where there wasn’t all that much to do.

Unfortunately for me, back then I’d been dazzled by the new boy at school, Evan Bennett, and when he said, “Hey, Jas. Meet me tonight and we’ll go tag some shit, yeah?” I’d said yeah.

I didn’t actually know what he meant bytag some shit.

I did know that Evan was from Islington in North London, everyone thought he was cool because his mum worked in the music industry, and everyone in my year at school wanted to be his friend.

For some baffling reason, he’d chosen me for this adventure. I wasn’t about to say no. I was the new boy last year, and thus far no one had shown any particular enthusiasm for being my friend.

I climbed out of my bedroom window just before eleven o’clock, landed hard in the flowerbed, and spent the next twenty minutes trying to zhuzh up my mum’s peonies, which I’d comprehensively crushed.

When I got to the bus stop where he’d told me to meet him, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one invited. It was me, Evan, and Adam Blake. I glowered at Adam. He glowered back.

We were both the weedy kids everyone picked last for football. Adam at least had a couple of inches on me and was okay-looking. Despite being fourteen, I had barely entered puberty. And I had a new bout of acne coming. I could feel it simmering on my face.

Amalie Galloway sauntered up while Adam and I were still sniping at each other. Evan was texting on his phone, bored. Looking back, I realised Evan was testing out members for his new crew.

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