Page 153 of Kings & Corruption

The bartender set our drinks down and I took a sip of mine, trying to relish the unique taste of huckleberries. If I wanted to be alert for the meeting at the cabin, I wouldn’t be able to finish it.

Shame.

Less than a minute after I’d taken my first sip, Claire came barreling toward the bar with Erin and Quinn on her heels.

“There you are!” she said, clearly many drinks ahead of me. She threw her arms around me. “I thought you’d never get here!”

“You look amazing!” Quinn shouted over the music.

Claire pulled back from our hug to give me a once-over. “You do!” She looked at the three Kings, lined up at the bar like sexy Italian statues. “Bonnie and Clydes!”

I smiled. “You got it. And look at you! What a great costume!”

Claire’s dress was full of ruffles and flounces, clearly inspired by the French Revolution, but the details were where the inspiration ended. This was the XXX version, with a hemline that didn’t even try to cover her ass and a deep neckline that made me hope she’d used some tape.

Her makeup was over-the-top Marie Antoinette, and her red curls had been piled onto her head in an elaborate style that must have taken hours.

She turned around to give me a look at the back, showing off ruffled, petticoat-inspired panties that barely covered her exposed ass cheeks. She wore white, thigh-high stockings, complete with a sheathed knife tucked into the lace. I hoped it was fake, but knowing Claire, it probably wasn’t.

“Wow,” I said. She really did look incredible, and the best part was the blood she’d splattered all over the costume. “You look unbelievable!”

“Thanks,” she said.

Erin and Quinn looked appropriately creepy as Manson girls, both wearing long brunette wigs and flowery, 1970s-style dresses. They’d taken a different tactic with the fake blood, smearing it over their necks and arms and leaving bloody handprints on their dresses.

We exchanged a few more compliments and I waited while they ordered another round of drinks, holding up my nearly full Huckleberry Twist when they tried to include me. Then I turned around and blew a kiss to the Kings, leaning against the bar and looking like three bronze gods.

Rock grinned and Oscar looked like he wanted to have me for dinner, but Neo obviously wasn’t amused by my playfulness. His features were drawn into his trademark scowl, his eyes dark with the hatred I sometimes saw there.

I didn’t understand him, but tonight was definitely not the night to try.

I squeezed my way onto the dance floor with Claire and glanced at my phone as we started moving. It was almost 10:30 p.m., and it might take me up to an hour to get to the cabin. One of the people who’d posted a map to it online had said there were old markers on the trees, but apparently they were faded and the trail was mostly overgrown.

I’d printed the map, but I had no way of knowing exactly how dense the woods would be leading to the cabin, or how hard it would be to find the markers at night.

I needed to be out of here by eleven at the latest.

I smiled and laughed with Claire and the girls while we danced, but a ticking clock was running in the back of my mind, my gaze constantly pulled to the Kings. I tried to play it cool, to look like I was just casually glancing around, but I needed to know when it was safe to make a break for it.

I was sweaty from dancing when one of the Knights, an enormous blond with shoulders as wide as a barge, approached Neo. They conferred, heads bent together, for about a minute. Then, Neo spoke to Oscar, who glanced in my direction, and left the room with Rock and the big Russian.

Two jailers down, one to go.

It was as good as it was going to get.

I shouted that I was going to the bathroom, not that Claire and the girls cared given their current state of drunkenness, and headed that way. I didn’t doubt that Oscar would follow, but it would take him time to move through the crowd, and even more time for him to find it suspicious when I didn’t leave the bathroom.

Then, he’d have to find Neo and Rock to report my absence before the three of them tried to sniff me out like hunting dogs.

Well, good luck with that boys. I didn’t know how I was going to make my own way through the woods, and I at least had a map of where I was going.

The thrill of victory didn’t last long. What I was doing would be a reckless, too-stupid-to-live moment in any horror movie, but this wasn’t a horror movie. It was my life. Emma’s life. If there was something to know about my sister’s disappearance, I would risk anything to hear it.

There were only two other girls in the bathroom when I got there. I walked into one of the empty stalls and waited until they left, then moved to the one closest to the wall.

Standing on the toilet, I reached for the ceiling panel where I’d hidden my boots and jacket — my Fendi coat had been handed over to the coat check — and pulled them down.

I shoved my feet into the boots, laced them in a hurry, and slipped on the jacket. I removed the map and gun from my bag and hesitated over my phone. Once I left campus, it would be the only link I had to the Kings. If I left it behind, I’d really be on my own, but if I took it and the Kings managed to find me before I got information about Emma, I might lose my only chance to know what had happened to her.

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