Page 54 of Unmask

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“Yes,” the three of them replied in unison.

I snapped my mouth shut as the bell rang. I was supposed to be in class.

Kreed rubbed a hand along his jaw, glancing over at Maddox and Mason. “I need at least one of you at the house. I want ears on the ground. Dad’s been quiet…too quiet. He’s holding something back about who the Viper informant is. I can feel it. He’s got something on the bastard. We need to find out what and, more importantly, who.”

Maddox tilted his head, smirking. “Still think we should rotate. Keep it fresh. What do you say, menace? You and me? A proper sleepover?”

We stopped at my locker, and I turned the dial. “Drop dead, Maddox.”

Maddox’s lips twitched. “That’s my girl.”

Kreed pressed his back into the locker beside mine, shooting his brother a cold scowl. “She’s not yours.”

Maddox shrugged one shoulder, completely unfazed. “Yeah, so you’ve said, but you’re not the only one who gets to claim her.”

I was starting to think agreeing to this was a bad freaking idea. “No one is claiming me. Is that clear?” I shoved shit in my bag, uncertain it was the right stuff. I turned to look at each of them one by one. Mason with his lazy charm, Maddox with his calculated grin, and Kreed with his unreadable storm cloud gaze. “I’m not property. I’m not a prize. I don’t belong to anyone.”

The words hung between us, brittle and daring someone to challenge them, but none of them did. Instead, they all smirked, amused, like I was theirs anyway and they didn’t need to say it out loud to make it true, and damn it, part of me hated how that didn’t make me want to run.

It made me feel…anchored even if they drove me crazy. Even if they made me want to scream and punch walls and possibly commit actual crimes. I had them, and in a world like this, where loyalty was rare and betrayal was a currency, that meant everything.

The bigger question was, what the fuck was I going to do about them?

12

KREED

Practice hadn’t even officially started, and already I was on edge. I sat on the bench beside Maddox, Mason, and Nash, watching the team warm up on the field. I didn’t want to be here. Football no longer held the importance it once did or the release. I couldn’t stop playing last night over in my head. The idea that someone had been lurking outside, someone who probably expected Kaylor to be alone, nagged at me the entire day. If I’d had a clearer head, if I hadn’t indulged in so much alcohol, perhaps I would have been able to catch them before they were able to run off or hide.

“She needs security at school,” Maddox said, his helmet dangling from his fingers, sweat glistening on his forehead.

Coach yelled across the field at Dylan, one of our defensive ends, as he landed flat on his back. “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, my mind only partly listening to Maddox.

“You weren’t here yesterday.”

My spine stiffened, and I slid my eyes to him, getting this bad feeling that I was about to get pissed off. “So?”

“Well,” Maddox continued with a shrug that was far too casual, “there was an incident. With Kaylor and a few guys from the team.”

My jaw clenched hard, muscles ticking as a slow burn crept beneath my skin. I didn’t like where this was going. “Define incident.”

“We handled it,” Mason assured, leaning forward on the bench, elbows resting on his knees as he let his helmet hit the ground.

Something was definitely up. I scanned the field, and that’s when I saw them, Bodie, Dawson, and Keenan leaning against the bleachers with bruises blooming across their jaws. The sight flipped a switch. “Is that why their faces look like roadkill?”

“They’re lucky it wasn’t worse,” Nash muttered. “If it had been you who found her?—”

My hand curled into a fist. Blood pounded in my ears. “What the fuck did they do?”

Mason toyed with the strap of his helmet. “Don’t freak out.”

Too late. “You’re telling me not to is only going to make things worse.”

“Shit,” Nash mumbled under his breath, and I sensed not a single one of them wanted to tell me what happened. If it was that bad, why hadn’t Kaylor mentioned it?

Maddox sighed. “They cornered her in the guys’ bathroom,” he said, straight to the point. “We got there before it went too far, but it scared her.”

I was up in an instant, a buzzing vibrating in my ears. “What the fuck. Why am I just now hearing about this?”