Crew Princess

by Tijan

  Then I knew. I knew.

  He fucking knew too. He looked between me and Taz, seeming all sorts of twisted.

  “No! Get the fuck out of here. No! You don’t get to come here, not now, not when my girl was taken from me tonight.”

  “Shit,” said Jordan under his breath.

  Zellman grunted. “I need a drink. I don’t care if it’s an adrenaline shot or straight Jack.”

  Blaise kept looking at Taz, looking at me, still giving me that look.

  I was seeing red all over again. I started to climb up over my brothers. I didn’t give a fuck. No way was that brother going to get in, no fucking way in hell.

  Jordan cursed, catching me as I leaped. Congo, Moose, Lincoln, and Chad all scrambled. Two of them ran around Jordan to catch me. The other two were coming up behind me. I glimpsed them from the corner of my eye, and then Moose reached up, grabbed my shirt, and yanked.

  The material tore, but I was ready for him this time.

  Launching up, kicking off from his massive chest, I jumped between Jordan and Zellman. Chad and Lincoln went to grab me, but I landed and shot off from the ground, ducking and dodging them. It was a desperate, last-ditch effort, because I was only going to get one shot at him, but it worked. Luck was fucking on my side, and then I charged my half-brother.

  He just braced himself.

  Zeke Allen shouted. Their group tensed in surprise, but I was already there. My hands found him, and I hauled Blaise around, slamming him into the vehicle beside them.

  “You don’t fucking come near her! You got that?! I will end you if you try to hurt her. I swear!”

  He wasn’t even trying to fight. He was barely paying me attention, his head turned, his eyes still on Taz.

  “STOP LOOKING AT HER!”

  That’s when people clued in. I heard a few gasps. More curses. Sudden silence fell over the crowd, only interrupted by the sound of tires pulling into the parking lot. A door opened. A second.

  Then, “Cross?”

  A door slammed shut. “Cross! Get your hands off him.”

  A different voice, a feminine one, “Get off my son!”

  They were running over, but all the while, he kept looking at Taz.

  I had two options. Finish this later, or do it now.

  I chose now. I reared back, ready to throw the first punch, but my dad was there. He shoved in between us, growling, “Goddammit, Cross. GET THE FUCK BACK! NOW!”

  “Dad?” Taz asked. “What are you doing here?”

  “We got a call, said our children needed us.”

  “Blaise. Honey.”

  A woman launched herself at him. As soon as I stepped back from him, she was there, holding and hugging him. He didn’t move, didn’t lift his arms. His face was expressionless. But she kept mauling him, smoothing his hair, down his arms.

  Taz came up next to me, her eyes glued to his.

  I growled again.

  My dad smacked me on the chest. “Stop it. I know you know, so calm down.”

  And in the middle of all of that, a black SUV pulled into the lot and parked. Two doors opened, and two guys got out. One was famous, and the other was infamous around here.

  Zeke Allen gasped, his eyes bulging. “NO WAY!”

  The bigger of the two, with jet black hair, gave us a scan before heading inside. The other one had brown hair, still just as pretty, and a cocky smirk.

  He stopped and stared at us, then sighed. “Aw, fond memories. Remember the times we beat people down, just for the fun of it?”

  The bigger guy was at the door now, and he yelled back, “Logan! Get in here.”

  I knew who Channing now meant by the cavalry. He’d called in the Kades.

  “Why’d he call them?” Jordan asked, shifting to stand next to me.

  I grunted. There was only one reason. “Their dad is the biggest benefactor for this police station.”

  He and Zellman both looked at me. So did my dad and Blaise. I felt their attention.

  “How do you know that?” Z asked.

  I gave him a look. “Police arrest every student from our school and not theirs? You bet your ass I’m doing my homework. I’ve got a list of who has the power to pull strings, and James Kade is at the top.”

  Jordan grinned. “And there’s our fucking leader. Always two steps ahead.”

  I broke free from everyone. Channing had called in his fancy friends. That told me one thing: Bren was in more trouble than I’d thought.

  Bren

  The door opened and the two detectives from before came in. The woman carried a folder.

  “Let’s try this again.”

  The other cop didn’t sit. He moved against the wall behind me, his arms folded.

  She sat, her head down as she skimmed through the papers.

  One, I knew what they were doing.

  Two, they’d already tried the friendly, we’re-just-trying-to-help-you act.

  Three, this bitch knew exactly who I was, because I knew who she was.

  Four, I’d asked for my lawyer, so the most I had to worry about was curbing the inner feral Bren I turned into when I was feeling cornered, which no doubt was their new agenda. It was in my files. I’d undergone counseling. It was well-documented that I lashed out when I felt pushed into a corner. So we were now on to their second attempt: emotional and physical intimidation.

  Detective Broghers was making me wait, and she was doing it intentionally.

  A full minute. Three. Then, after the fifth, she pretended to be done reading up on me. She closed the file and lifted her head, a smile on her face. She angled her chair toward me, at the side of the table rather than not across from me.

  “Bren,” she said. “Would you like a water? Soda? Something to eat?”

  “Water.”

  “We can do water.” She nodded behind her, and that cop left the room.

  While we waited, she looked me over and winced. “We didn’t let you wash up, huh? Would you like a washcloth?” She indicated my hands. They’d been scraped, the skin torn.

  I pulled my hands down to my lap. The zip-ties were gone, but red lines from them remained. They’d pushed the line, pulling them tighter than was comfortable. In a sense, I knew they were just doing their job: push the line, make them uncomfortable, lean on me, get me to give up what they wanted, and then the case would be wrapped up.

  “So.” She pretended to be bored, even tired. She yawned. “You were at prom earlier?” She gestured to my dress. “I bet the pictures are beautiful.”

  All their tactics were working, but I knew what they were doing, why they were doing it, and I had to remember that. I had to keep a cool head, no matter how long they kept me in here. Had to, or I’d give them some reason to hold me. That’s the real reason they were pushing, because they hadn’t asked about Alex again since I’d said I wanted a lawyer. There were no pictures in that file. I’d been looking. Just papers with words, numbers, and signatures.

  I had to wonder a few things.

  Why would Alex take the time to tell me all of that about Drake setting me up, if he was going to die? The way he went down, he would’ve had to be drugged. For him to say Drake set me up would indicate he knew Drake was setting me up for killing him. Alex wasn’t pleading for help. And he would’ve, if that had been the correct scenario.

  Which meant he didn’t know he was drugged, and he was telling me Drake had set me up in another way. That’s the only thing that made sense. I hadn’t felt for his pulse, just saw that he passed out.

  They’d told me Alex was dead… No, they’d implied Alex was dead.

  Alex might not be dead.

  It was ironic in a way. Here I was, hoping once again that Alex Ryerson wasn’t dead.

  A knock at the door. The other detective came in and set a bottle of water in front of me.

  Detective Broghers reached forward to take off the cap. She pocketed it, pushing the opened bottle to me. And again, she offered that same fucking friendly smile. “There you go.�
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  I didn’t reach for it. Not yet. “I asked for my lawyer.”

  “You did.”

  I hated how condescending she was.

  She lounged back in her chair, fingers drumming on the table as if she were the impatient one, as if she were the one who wanted this over with. “We’re just waiting for them to arrive.”

  There was no clock in this room, another thing they did on purpose. Take everything away from the criminal. Shove them in a room with no windows—a tight and confining room, and make them yearn for the bare necessities. Like time. Like water. Like conversation. You took it for granted until you lost it. That’s what they used against you.

  “So you’re in school?’

  I didn’t answer.

  She didn’t care. Still friendly. “Senior, right? That’s what your file said. College? Plans after graduation?”

  Again. Silence. But they weren’t expecting me to talk.

  “I was so worried about what I was doing next when I was your age. Thought I had no time. A lot of pressure, right? Even more so now, these days with the internet. The Gram…”

  She was talking, but I tuned her out.

  I looked up, staring at the point between her eyebrows. It was a trick I’d once heard. You could look there, and the person thought you were making eye contact. It was a nonverbal cue that you were interested in what they were saying, and they’d keep going.

  I was banking on that because I had my own thinking to do.

  First: Drake.

  She droned on. I never wavered from that point between her eyebrows.

  Drake had found me when I was in Fallen Crest. He wasn’t using the buddy system. He hadn’t been on the crew scene. Months before that, he’d announced that he was back in town, texting us where Alex was waiting for a beatdown from me. He gifted us vengeance for what Alex did to Taz, and we took it.

  But Drake had known where, he knew how, he knew when.

  He could’ve rigged a video to record us.

  But we had his texts gifting us his own brother.

  What else did he have on us or know? He knew when District Weekend was. All those cops being there, it was an organized event. That meant they were alerted in advance. Someone told them where the party was, but it could’ve been the Academy Crusties. Was it them? They’d attacked Jordan up in the woods. Did they do that knowing the cops were coming and we wouldn’t have time for retaliation? They could’ve...

  Someone burned down the Frisco school. According to Alex, it was this secret group who wanted to sell drugs.

  When the Fallen Crest Academy students were caught, intending to burn our school down, they claimed it was Alex who told them to do it. That could’ve been a lie said to cover their backs. We’d never questioned them. Shit. We should’ve questioned them.

  Instead, Zellman blew their cars up.

  They’d tried to come to Tabatha’s party. We kicked them out. They found out who did their cars.

  The next night was when they beat on Jordan.

  Since then, we’d showed up at their school. They came at us, waiting for a fight. They’d been expecting a fight. We hadn’t been there for a fight, but when it presented itself, we took it.

  In that same moment, Blaise saw Cross face to face. He’d acted like he didn’t know who he was. That could’ve been real or could’ve been a lie.

  But since then, there’d been nothing except Drake’s visit with me in the dress store.

  He was the one who’d told me about Neeon marrying Principal Broghers’ sister, who now sat across from me.

  I glanced at her ring finger. There was a white line there. “Broghers—is that your maiden name?” I asked, stopping whatever she’d been saying,

  Her lips parted.

  I’d surprised her. She’d been expecting a different question, but I didn’t ask her if she was related to my principal.

  She cleared her throat.

  I noted that reaction, and at the same time the guy behind me pulled his hands out of his pockets. I caught it from the corner of my eye, but her eyes flicked up to his and he put them back in.

  She gave me that smile again. “Why do you ask?”

  I nodded toward her finger. “You’re married.”

  Her lips didn’t part this time. They pressed together. She wasn’t happy with me.

  She wasn’t going to answer. I saw the wall come down, and I tuned her out before she even started. I had my answer.

  Drake had told the truth. About that part.

  I remembered what Alex had said, that the group recruited Drake to come and be their person on me. If that was true, Broghers was either in that group, or she was being used by that group. And then what? Alex said the group wanted to push drugs through Roussou’s high school. How would they get that going?

  The answer came at me, startlingly and fast. They had someone else in my school, someone ready to start pushing their drugs for them.

  They could’ve used Drake, but according to Alex, he was kicked out of their crew. That meant Drake was out. I’d been arrested on Alex’s supposed death, so that meant Alex was out. Who then?

  I could’ve kicked myself, because we hadn’t been paying attention. No one had been paying attention. The documentary wasn’t there to threaten us with national exposure. It was there to distract us from what was really going on.

  The Ryerson Crew.

  If Alex was right, if Drake had been kicked out, that meant there’d been a mutiny. Someone rallied their crew. Someone stepped up to be their new leader. That someone was going to push the drugs. Had to be. It’s the only thing that made sense.

  But Fallen Crest? I was here. How was I here? What part of this was I missing?

  Principal Broghers had wanted the documentary to be here. Kenneth had asked them to be here. But he was kissing Becca’s ass. Why was he kissing her ass if the end goal was just to distract us? That didn’t make sense. A person kisses someone’s ass because they want something. The documentary crew was already there. But if Kenneth was already getting what he wanted, he wouldn’t have kissed Becca’s ass.

  He wanted something else.

  I felt it in my bones. The documentary was there to distract us, so that meant the principal didn’t know.

  He was a puppet.

  And this cop? Was she a puppet too?

  Who was pulling her strings?

  Neeon? Drake had talked about Neeon’s daughter.

  If Drake wasn’t in on pushing the drugs, he was being used too.

  Alex knew. Drake didn’t. Who was using Drake? How would Alex have known?

  Then I realized something. What brought them together? Their family. Someone in their family was behind all of it. That would make sense. Use the Fallen Crest police station to pull attention away from Roussou. Make us focus here, not in Roussou. Everything was a distraction. Everything.

  That meant I needed to find someone who was active with the Fallen Crest police station, find someone who was connected to Drake, to Alex, find someone who was in communication with the new Ryerson Crew leader—the mastermind of all of this.

  Drugs. It all came down to fucking drugs.

  I was here because of goddamn drugs.

  “Why am I here?”

  Detective Broghers stopped, blinking once. “Why do you ask?”

  “Was it a joint task team? Roussou and Fallen Crest together?”

  She didn’t answer, but she was listening.

  “Who put that together? Whose idea was it?”

  She wasn’t going to answer. I knew she wasn’t, but I was betting she knew. Follow it back. Always follow it back, and there would be one person who connected everything together.

  We just had to follow the right string.

  Someone knocked on the door. It opened, and a guy’s head poked around.

  “Her lawyer’s here.”

  It wasn’t just one lawyer. Channing had his normal team come in, along with another guy who smiled wide at the detectives when my bail was posted.<
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  Broghers sighed. “Keep it up, Kade. I’m sure we could find something on you while you’re in town. And don’t think we don’t know you’re still in law school. You ain’t a full lawyer yet.”

  The guy’s smirk just deepened. “Keep it up, huh? Is that a challenge? An innuendo?” He shifted, facing her. “You coming on to me, Detective Broghers? You sure you want to do that? Pretty certain your entire force is well aware of how I handle challenges. I always rise to the occasion.”

  Broghers cut to my brother. “You called these guys in? Your normal lawyers weren’t enough?”

  Channing had been still, eerily still when I was led out, but now he turned his cold eyes her way.

  “You don’t want to ask me the lengths I’ll go for my sister.” He shifted, deadly power radiating off of him.

  There was another guy standing with him, but in that moment, no one could look away from Channing.

  “You took SWAT in. SWAT.”

  The cop in the back shifted. “We got a tip there was a shooter. That’s protocol—”

  “Stop!” Another cop shut him down.

  Channing’s eyes were slits now. “I can’t help but wonder, who really pays your salary? If something gets shaken up, who’ll fall out from the bottom of the bag.”

  He wasn’t asking, and she wasn’t answering, but his message was received. Her eyes went flat, and she straightened, her hand falling from her hip.

  The cop at the front desk finished with my paperwork, sliding the sheet over to me. “Signature, please.”

  I lifted my wrists, zip-tied once again.

  Channing snapped, “Are you serious? Even I didn’t have cuffs on when I was leaving.”

  Broghers lifted a shoulder. “Just following protocol. You know us. Every rule of the book, we follow it.”

  Well, in that case… I finished signing, waited for my zip-ties to be taken off, and looked at her. “You know there’s video of when you arrested only Roussou students and not the Fallen Crest students at that party. Was that protocol?”

  Her eyes narrowed to slits. “What are you saying to me?”

  Fuck it. I stepped toward her. “I heard a rumor that someone was pushing drugs in Frisco. That someone didn’t like it when the Red Demons focused only there, so they burned down the Frisco school to send students to Roussou and Fallen Crest, and they had me assigned to that documentary to distract my crew from noticing a new leader stepping up in the Ryerson crew. I also heard Drake Ryerson was pulled in to set me up, that Alex was used as a pawn to arrest me, and that whoever is pulling all the strings is pulling yours too.”