Anyway, after having hard-launched my relationship with Quill this morning, talking to a known drug dealer doesn’t seem that scary. I sit down resolutely in front of Finn Austen. His eyes drift over to me but he doesn’t even blink.
“Hey,” I say, shoveling a forkful of cake into my mouth. “What’s up?”
A very weird opener when I’m not even sure the guy knows of my existence. Oh, well. Too late.
He takes a sip of his black coffee as his eyes focus on me. “You’re Quill’s girl, huh?” he mutters after a beat.
News sure travels fast. I shrug in lieu of an answer.
“He’s lucky,” mumbles Finn. “He’s a lucky guy.”
Somehow, I can tell the luckiness Finn refers to has nothing to do with me. I wait for him to continue, but he merely gulps down more coffee.
“Late night?” I guess, sounding way too much like my dad. Attempting to come off a little cooler, I add hastily, “Did you… uhm… take too many drugs?”
Even worse. I bite down on my tongue, but Finn doesn’t seem amused or annoyed. Or anything, really: just very out of it.
“In a manner of speaking,” he says slowly in answer to my question. “Not by choice.”
“Huh?”
A long sip of coffee is all I get in response.
“Someone drugged you?” I insist, my eyes widening.
But he’s closed up again, his back pressed against the wall of the cafe, his face greyer than ever.
Crap. If I’d been vaguely curious before, I’m nowveryintrigued. Especially since it occurs to me I haven’t seen him in school these past few days. Not since… Wednesday.
I suddenly realize both he and Cass have been absent on Thursday and Friday. Probably a coincidence. But what if it’s not?
“Is it related to the, uhm, experiment I saw you taking part in at Devil Tower?” I ask, struggling to put two and two together.
He shrugs.
“Did they try out drugs on you? Did you not want them to? That’s like, illegal. You should go to the police. Put whoever is running that experiment in jail.” I pause in dishing out my clearly unwanted advice. My curiosity has suddenly become very self-interested. “Mr. Campbell should be behind bars. He’s the one who drugged you, I assume?”
Maybe I made an ass out of myself last Thursday trying to get my revenge, but if Ray’s dad goes to prison… that will just about make my year.
However, just as my thoughts drift off to revenge, I notice the vicious expression that’s taken hold of Finn. He grabs the collar of my shirt, pulling me to him, and hisses, “No. Campbell didn’t drug me. Cass Henley did. Cass Henley destroyed my life. She’s a fucking psychopath. And you’re going to fucking tell her something. You’re going to fucking tell her that if I ever fucking see her again, she’s dead. She’s motherfucking dead. Do you hear me?”
He doesn’t wait for confirmation, instead heading out of the cafe and slamming the door behind him, leaving me reeling from his sudden outburst.
Chapter 12
Quill
“Please, Quill… please…”
“WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?”
Al Campbell merely shakes his head, actual tears bubbling up in his eyes.
He’s lying in a hospital bed, his leg stiff and bandaged before him, staring at me helplessly. I’ve spent the past twenty minutes waving a gun to his face, but it’s starting to feel like I’m not going to get my answer before history class.
“I went to your house yesterday afternoon,” I rehash, pacing furiously around the room. “Your idiot piece of shit son wasn’t there. He sent me that text message and then, just, what… evaporated? His stuff is all gone. You know where he went. Youmustknow. So FUCKING TELL ME.”
“Quill, I…” He pauses as I train my gun on him. “Quill, he’s just a kid. He made a mistake. He shouldn’t have sent that text, but he didn’t mean a single word of it.”
