Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
I curl an arm over his shoulders. “I’m glad you made it.”
“Me, too.” I hear tension in his voice.
Shit. What happened? I squeeze his shoulder before letting go.
The door bangs shut. Oliver, Nova, and Hailey are here.
Oliver hurdles the couch with his arms outstretched to Trevor for a hug. “Our little psychopath,” he greets him affectionately.
That nickname throws me back.
We were all at a coed boarding school in upstate New York for a short period. The six of us would sneak out every Thursday night and meet up at a cemetery a quarter mile from the school to catch each other up. One of those nights, Hailey and Phoebe were drunk on expensive vodka and giggled about how we were a part of some secret club. And we needed names.
We came up with six.
The mastermind.
The seductress.
The silver-tongue.
The chameleon.
The getaway.
And the psychopath.
Hailey, Phoebe, me, Oliver, Nova, and Trevor.
Trevor was the youngest of us. So to get him in the same grade, he had to come to the boarding school as a prodigy. We convinced everyone that he skipped four grades and was actually two years older.
After Oliver squeezes Trevor in a bear hug, my brother’s shifty gray eyes flash from Hailey to me to Nova. “We’re missing one,” he says.
I nod my head out the window.
Trevor rotates back to the festival. “She’s with someone?”
“The landlord,” I explain, not digging into Phoebe’s fake business with him.
Hailey has brought her pumpkin, mine, and carving tools with her. Of course she has. Nova carries both pumpkins for my sister. And she continues working on the thing on the coffee table.
“Why are you here?” I ask Trevor.
He’s fixated on Jake down below. “Is he a Sagittarius?”
That’s code for Is he the mark? But his casual brush-off of my question only tenses me.
“This is a no fun zone,” Oliver tells him, sitting on the armrest of the couch. Nova sips a beer, listening quietly.
Trevor frowns. “How wide is the zone?”
“The whole town,” Hailey says, glancing up from her pumpkin.
Trevor looks like he was told Christmas is canceled. “What the fuck? Why?” He looks back to Phoebe at the festival with more confusion. Probably not understanding why she’d be talking to Jake if it isn’t for a job.
I’m not explaining that shit in code. It’s a jumbled mess.
“I could use your help,” Hailey calls over our brother, nodding to my pumpkin. “Rocky quit.”
I roll my eyes.
Our brother says, “Sounds like him.”
“It does not,” I refute.
Trevor picks up the smallish pumpkin and a carving knife. Holding the pumpkin in hand, he starts expertly cutting it without any guidelines. His eyes draw to me. “You’re not replaceable, you know.”
There it is.
The truth he was reluctant to share.
“I tried to replace you at the Seattle job,” Trevor adds without remorse.
And that’s why he didn’t want to bail on Mom and Dad. He saw an opportunity to be in a role they rarely, if ever, put him in: face-to-face deception and manipulation. In the action, not behind the scenes.
My role.
For many, many years, I hoped my brother wouldn’t become like me. Bitter. Cynical. I never imagined, not once, that he’d want to be this person. I see him claw toward the darkness that I’ve lived and breathed and suffocated under for decades, and I just want to push him away.
I keep trying.
“How’d that work out?” I wonder.
“Mom wouldn’t even let me attempt it.”
Good.
“I was done begging, so I came here.” He scowls and sets the pumpkin back on the coffee table. Tossing the knife with it. “Oliver was geotagged on social media.”
“Shit,” Oliver sneers a curse and unpockets his phone, his olive skin flushed at the collar of his button-down.
I groan, raking a hand through my hair. “So they’ve found us.”
Hailey is frowning at Oliver. She crawls onto the couch beside him to look.
“I don’t understand how . . .” He shows her, and she cups his phone in her hands. Oliver looks to his brother. “I have no social media presence here. How could I be geotagged?”
Nova is rubbing his forehead. “I need to get Phoebe.” He’s out the door in a blip.
“One of your clients,” Hailey explains to him. “They took a photo of you during a session. Your face is clear. My dad could’ve done a facial recognition search, and your client tagged her location.”
Victoria, Connecticut.
Oliver sees the image. “Edith,” he says in displeasure, then to Hailey, “I’m sorry, Hails.”
She lifts her shoulders, then meets my gaze. “It was bound to happen.”
Yeah, but we all wanted longer for our sisters.
“They’ll be here soon, you know,” Trevor says at the window. I join him again, hands in my jacket, and Hailey comes over on the other side of me.
“What’s soon?” I ask my brother.
“The Seattle job only has two weeks left.”
Two weeks.
Jesus.
Everyone is quiet. My brother, sister, and I gaze down at the festival. Vibrant leaves paint the trees, pumpkin juices stain the cobblestone, and bright laughter bleeds into crisp autumn air that I feel seep through the windowsill. A Harvest Festival banner hangs high across the streets, and little kids drop pennies in the fountain. Idealistic. Content.