Page 11 of The Perfect People

“And I forgot how crazy you were,” Hannah shot back, trying not to chuckle. “What are you wearing?”

Patrice was known for her bold fashion choices but this one was especially outré. She had on a barely-there vintage red floral crop top and yellow-and-white-striped short shorts that might as well have been bikini bottoms.

“I’m going for a ‘sixties flower child at the beach’ vibe,” Patrice replied. “Did I nail it?”

“I think you did,” Hannah assured her, noting the rest of the Wildpines crew start to pour out of the house as well.

“Please don’t comment on the house,” Patrice whispered in her ear as the others approached. “I know it’s awful but if you say anything, it’ll just set Doug off on another ten-minute style rant that I’ll have to make sure my mom isn’t around to hear. I can’t deal with that.”

“My lips are sealed,” Hannah promised before they were surrounded.

There were Melina, Carlos, Annie, Doug, and, leisurely pulling up the rear of the group, Chris. At the sight of him, and completely without warning, the flutter of butterflies in Hannah’s belly took flight again. She noted that his thick blond hair was almost as long as her own. As he held up a hand to shield his sky-blue eyes from the late morning sun, he smiled amiably, and his white teeth sparkled.

He wasn’t especially tall or ripped and his nose bent awkwardly to the right—she liked to think that it had been broken in a pre-teen soccer mishap or an ill-advised middle school fight. But he had a quirky charm that had appealed to Hannah from the first time she’d seen him. And standing reservedly behind everyone else in his swim trunks and a gray T-shirt that readPoly-State University Mascot Go Team!only added to his allure.

He waited until the others had all given her hugs before coming over and asking with a wink, “How’s it going, Heidi?”

Despite her best efforts, she felt a surge of pink heat paint her cheeks. Heidi was the fake name she’d used in Wildpines when she, Jessie, and Ryan were trying to keep their identities hidden. Once the Night Hunter was dead, under complicated circumstances that the gang didn’t need to know the specifics of at the time, she was able to reveal her real name to them.

They had all thought it was pretty damn cool that she’d had a pseudonym—that she’d had cause to need one. So there was no reason to be embarrassed about having used it. And yet hearing the name said by Chris Balfour, especially so softly and in such close proximity, was doing a number on her.

“It’s going well,” she said, managing to regain some of her equilibrium and nodding at his T-shirt. “By the way, is that where you’re going to school in the fall?”

Chris smiled at the crack and Hannah fought hard to keep her knees from turning to pudding.

“Hey, Chris,” Patrice instructed, “be a gentleman and grab the lady’s bag. Let’s get her settled into her room so we can hit the beach. Daylight’s wasting!”

Chris turned to Hannah.

“My lady,” he said, extending his hand to take the backpack.

“Good sir,” Hannah said, handing it over and walking ahead of him toward the beach house. It took all of her will power not to look back over her shoulder.

***

A half hour later they were on the sand.

Patrice’s parents and younger brother, who were staying in a separate wing of the house, had come to the beach earlier and staked out a good spot so they didn’t have to battle the growing pre-holiday crowd for space.

Once they were all settled in, with giant umbrellas set up, beach towels down, sunblock applied, and lemonades in hand, the interrogation began. Apparently the whole Wildpines crew had been holding off on pummeling Hannah with their myriad questions until she at least had a chance to lie down.

They lulled her into a sense of complacency with a question about her summer. Everyone listened politely as she talked about how, after her internship with Kat had to be put on hold, she decided to go to summer school at UCLA, where she took classes in both Abnormal Psychology and Anthropology of Food, finishing up just yesterday. After offering congratulations, they apparently decided the gloves were off, and pounced.

“So did you really stop an assassin who was trying to kill you and your boss?” asked Doug Mercy, the fair-skinned, red-headed young man in the pink sundress and wide-brimmed floral hat. He’d been a violin prodigy at the Wildpines Arts Conservatory and was headed to Juilliard in the fall.

In fact, all of the people surrounding her were incredibly talented in one way or another. Though the conservatory was nestled in an isolated, artsy mountain town, it was considered one of the top arts-based high schools in the country and drew students from around the country, as well as internationally.

It was also extremely expensive, which apparently wasn’t an issue for Patrice’s family. But no one seated on the beach towels around her was interested in discussing their curriculum. All of them, save for Chris, were staring at her intently, waiting for an answer to Doug’s question.

Normally, Hannah would have been reticent to satisfy the curiosity of folks who were interested in the titillating details of her trauma. She didn’t love reliving it anddefinitelydidn’t like when people pried. But these guys were different. Because they met her under a fake name and already knew that she’d been in Wildpines to hide from a serial killer, the interest felt somehow less intrusive.

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” she replied, “but the short version is yes, a hitwoman named Ash Pierce was hired to kill me and my friend Kat Gentry, the private detective I was interning with. Together we were able to stop her.”

“I read that you kicked her ass,” Melina Katsaros volunteered with a wicked grin, throwing back her endless, curly black hair. Melina, olive-skinned and gorgeous, was wearing a white, one-piece bathing suit that accentuated her long dancer’s legs.

Hannah and Melina had gotten off on the wrong foot up in Wildpines. Both of them had sharp-edged personalities and they kept bumping up against each other. Hannah also suspected that Melina had a little thing for Chris. But after Hannah confronted a leering jerk who’d been harassing them at a local restaurant one night, embarrassing him in front of dozens of customers, Melina was won over. They’d had no major issues since.

“We needed to make sure she was really incapacitated,” Hannah said diplomatically. She had no intention of sharing the fact that she’d come dangerously close to bashing in Ash Pierce’s head with a police baton.

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