Get Dirty (Don't Get Mad Book 2)

by Gretchen McNeil

  Her mom must have forgotten her keys again. She dumped the pill bottles on her bed and rushed to the front door.

  Only it wasn’t her mother on the landing.

  “Amber!” Olivia exclaimed. Amber didn’t even make the short list of people who might have been knocking on her door in the middle of the afternoon. “What are you doing here?”

  Without answering, Amber shouldered past Olivia into the living room. “So this is where you live,” she said, eyeing the small interior. “I didn’t know it was a one-bedroom.”

  Olivia stiffened. She’d been in Amber’s gorgeous four-bedroom home more times than she could remember. The eight hundred square feet Olivia and her mom shared could have easily fit into Amber’s room alone.

  She was ashamed of the way she lived, afraid of letting her friends know just how poor she really was. But she wasn’t going to let Amber see that.

  “It’s all we can afford,” she said proudly. “My mom works double shifts to cover rent.”

  “Worked,” Amber said. “Past tense. Right?” She turned and faced Olivia for the first time. “I ran into her out front and she told me she’s doing a Broadway play?”

  “It’s previewing here,” she said, holding her head high, unwilling to let Amber see the shame she felt over her mother’s delusions of grandeur. “Before a possible run off-Broadway. My mom’s a well-known figure at the Public Theater in New York so it’s a perfect fit.” Okay, slight exaggeration. But Amber wouldn’t know that.

  “I guess.”

  Olivia took a deep breath. She was tired of the mind games. “Why are you here?”

  Amber looked Olivia dead in the eyes. “I want to ask a favor.”

  “From me?” Olivia blurted out. Amber had never admitted to needing anything from anyone in the history of their friendship. Maybe today’s humiliation had affected her more deeply than Olivia realized.

  “I know that Rex and I are broken up,” she said by way of an answer. “But I’m asking you not to date him.”

  Olivia laughed. She couldn’t help it. “I don’t want to date Rex.”

  Amber took a step closer to her, scrutinizing her face. “Are you sure about that?”

  Why didn’t she believe that Olivia was in no way interested in her ex-boyfriend? “Absolutely sure.”

  “Because I remember the night of the bonfire. I saw how you kissed him.”

  Dammit. That stupid bonfire! Olivia desperately regretted the act of making out with Rex to make Donté jealous. That momentary lapse in judgment had caused her nothing but grief.

  “Amber, I know what you saw that night,” she started. She just needed to make a clean break of it. Get it off her chest. “But it’s not what you think. I was only—”

  A shrill, old-fashioned telephone ring ripped through the room. Amber’s cell phone volume must have been on full blast. She whipped her phone out of her purse and quickly answered it.

  “What is it, Kyle? I’m busy.”

  Olivia could hear the muffled, unintelligible syllables coming through the phone, but the only hint as to what Kyle said was in Amber’s reaction. The color drained from her face, the hand holding the phone shook uncontrollably, and her eyes glassed over. Her arm fell away from her face; her phone clattered the floor.

  “Amber?” Kyle yelled, so loud that Olivia could hear it. “Amber, are you there?”

  “What happened?” Olivia asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Amber lowered herself to the arm of the sofa but didn’t say a word.

  Olivia snatched the phone off the floor. “Kyle? It’s Olivia. What happened?”

  “Oh, thank God you’re with her,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  BREE WAS PRACTICALLY CRAWLING OUT OF HER SKIN WHILE she waited in her bedroom for John, desperately trying to keep her mind off Tammi Barnes.

  Everything she believed in had been turned on its end. She’d cast herself as a hero, or at least a penitent sinner, attempting to atone. Instead, she had just made things worse for Tammi. And how many others? Coach Creed and Ronny DeStefano had turned up dead. Now Wendy Marshall was MIA. Was that on her head?

  And then there was Christopher. His death would stay with her forever.

  Seriously, she was a menace. Maybe she should just join a convent, like her dad kept threatening. She would be doing the world a public service by locking herself away where she couldn’t do any more damage.

  A loud thud from her window snapped her out of her self-pity.

  John’s muffled voice floated through the pane. “Are you going to let me in or should I just hang out here all night?”

  Bree leaped out of bed and threw open the window. “Why are you here so early?”

  John planted his hands on his hips in a fake pout. “If you don’t want to see me I can just leave.”

  “No!” Damn, she wanted to see John more than anything else in the world. “But school’s not out yet. Did you ditch gym?”

  “School was canceled after fourth period.”

  “What?”

  “Throw down your hair, Rapunzel,” John said. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  Twenty minutes later, Bree sat on her bed, stunned. “Rex and Amber in the same day? Whoever did it is either incredibly smart or painfully stupid.”

  “What do you mean?” John asked.

  Bree shrugged. “Pulling off a prank is the easy part. But not getting caught afterward? That’s where it gets dangerous. This new DGM group pulled off two missions at once after just a few days of planning. That’s not going to end well.”

  “I wonder who it is.” John shifted onto his side and lay down next to her, propping his head up with his hand. “One person? Two people?”

  “At least,” Bree said. She thought of all the different roles she and the other girls had played during their missions. Recon, tech, contact, research, breaking and entering, decoys, red herrings. There was no way they could have pulled off any of their missions with fewer than the four of them. “Four was the perfect number for us.” She paused, and considered the current state of DGM with its two newest members. “I guess six is even better.”

  John smiled up at her. “You’re the DGM master.”

  “Yeah.” A Star Wars quote popped into her head, oddly appropriate to her mood. “Only a master of evil.”

  “You’re not blaming yourself for Tammi Barnes, are you?”

  “Why not?” She flopped back onto her comforter. “DGM was the catalyst for everything that’s happened to her. She went from being a normal teen to a homeless one, all because of me.”

  “Bree . . .” John eased his way up to her side and tilted her face toward him. “Did you ever think that maybe you helped her? Even though she’s broke and living in a group home, maybe that’s an improvement from what her life was like before?”

  “Stop trying to make me feel better.” She didn’t want to be absolved.

  “Yeah, yeah,” John said, dismissively. “You crave the guilt. I get it, Catholic girl.”

  Bree scowled at him, not because he was wrong but because he was right.

  “But beating yourself up over this isn’t going to make up for anything. Not for what she did, and not for what you did.”

  Bree had to admit he had a point.

  He leaned down and kissed her, soft and slow, and all thoughts of Tammi Barnes faded. She caressed his cheek, her fingers lingering on the square lines of his jaw. She felt so much calmer when John was with her. He was the only person in the world who cared about her, who really listened to her, and she knew that he would always be there when she needed him.

  She arched her back and his kiss deepened. Right now she needed him. Badly.

  John shifted his body and Bree slid her hands down the back of his pants, pulling his hips closer. He moaned into her mouth, the hum buzzing her lips, then he moved lower, kissing her chin, her neck, her collarbone. She lifted her arms over her head as he slid her dress up and—

  A sha
rp knock on the door jarred both of them from the moment.

  “Bree?” her mom said. “Are you in there?”

  “Shit!” Bree whispered. Her mom hadn’t been in her room since she got out of juvie. Why now? She glanced at the window, where the rope ladder still hung. Dammit, she’d forgotten to haul it up. Had the neighbors noticed and called her mom?

  John rolled off her onto the floor and began to shimmy under the bed.

  “No,” Bree hissed. She pointed at the window.

  “No time,” he said, and slithered his skinny torso under the frame.

  “Bree, did you hear me?” Her mom jiggled the door handle. “Why’s this locked?”

  The last thing she wanted was for John to witness the horror of drunk Mrs. Deringer, but she didn’t have a choice. She dashed to the window and pulled the curtains closed, then quickly unlocked the door.

  “Heeeey, Mom,” she said, hand on her hip in what she hoped was a casual pose. “What’s up?”

  Her mom stood in the hallway, arm braced against the doorjamb, and peered over Bree’s shoulder into her bedroom. “Why did you take so long to answer?”

  “I was sleeping.” And to illustrate the point, Bree stretched an arm over her head and faked a massive yawn.

  “Mm-hm.” Her mom’s eyes lingered on the drawn curtains. Bree held her breath. “And why was the door locked?”

  “There’s a strange guy living in our house,” Bree said. “My door is always locked.”

  “Olaf is not a stranger,” her mom said with a huff. She breezed past Bree into the bedroom, eyes still searching. “He’s practically part of the family.”

  “Right.” Bree folded her arms across her chest. “And I’m sure your intentions toward him are purely maternal.”

  Her mom’s head snapped around, eyebrow raised. “Purely.”

  The curtains fluttered in the breeze, exposing the hooks of the rope ladder. Bree casually moved to the other side of the room to keep her mom’s focus away from the window.

  Her mom strolled around, examining the band posters tacked up on the wall. She paused at the dresser and her eyes swept across the framed photos. They were all of Bree and her brother, Henry, at various stages of childhood through his high school graduation. Bree wondered if her mom even processed the fact that there were no photos of either parent in the montage.

  Finally, her mom sat down on the edge of Bree’s bed. “I wanted to continue our conversation from yesterday.”

  “Are you going to give me my phone back?” Bree asked.

  “No.”

  “Let me have internet access?”

  “No.”

  “Allow visitors?”

  Her mom pursed her lips. “I can’t do that.”

  Bree set her teeth. “Then we have nothing to talk about.”

  “Bree,” her mom said. She sounded almost sad. “I know you think I’m a horrible mother . . .”

  That’s because you’re a horrible mother.

  “. . . and that I’ve abandoned you here in Menlo Park. But did you ever stop to think that maybe you’re better off without me?”

  Every single day.

  A faint buzzing sound emanated from beneath the bed. John’s phone! He muffled it immediately, but Bree held her breath, praying her mom didn’t hear it.

  “I realize,” her mom began, oblivious to the cell phone, “I haven’t been particularly . . . motherly. You have to realize, Bree, that I was raised to be selfish. To think only of myself. I was miserable here, playing the dutiful politician’s wife. I didn’t want to feel like that, and I certainly didn’t want you to see me like that.”

  Bree snorted. “Are you trying to tell me that you did me a favor by taking off for France?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  Lady, you are out of your mind. She wanted to say it, but starting a fight with her mom was not going to get her out of the room faster. Better to just play along.

  “You know what, Mom? You’re right. I think you made the right decision.”

  “You do,” she said drily.

  “Absolutely.” Bree put her arm around her mom’s shoulder and guided her toward the door. “We learned in therapy today about processing our emotions and looking for noncombative solutions. So I think, right now, the best thing for me is to have some alone time to process what you’ve said.”

  “Okay.”

  She practically shoved her mom into the hallway. “I’ll see you at dinner. Bye!”

  Bree twisted the handle, locking it firmly, and rested her forehead against the smooth, cold wood of her bedroom door. “That was close.”

  John dragged himself out from underneath the bed. “I’m sorry.”

  She turned and smiled. “It’s not your fault you got a text.”

  “Not that.” He walked purposefully toward her and enveloped her with his arms. “About your mom.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me she lived in France?”

  Bree avoided his eyes.

  “So if your dad’s in Sacramento all the time, that means you’re here alone in this house. Is that even legal?”

  Bree shrugged. “There’s Magda.”

  “Who?”

  “The housekeeper.”

  He took her face in his hands and tilted it upward. “You should have told me.”

  “How could I? Just blurt out, ‘Oh, my parents both abandoned me once my brother went off to college. Isn’t that awesome?’” She shook her head. “Not exactly lunchtime conversation.”

  He leaned closer. “From now on,” he said softly, “you tell me this kind of stuff, okay?”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  John’s cell phone buzzed again. “Crap, I forgot about that.” He pulled it out of his pocket and swiped the screen. After a second, he gasped.

  “What?” Bree asked.

  John’s body went rigid. “Oh my God.”

  “What is it? Who’s it from?”

  John glanced up at her. There was fear in his hazel eyes.

  TWENTY-NINE

  KITTY WAS STILL SHIVERING THIRTY MINUTES AFTER THE POLICE arrived. She wasn’t cold. Or maybe she was? She honestly couldn’t tell. “Numb” was a better word. She sat halfway up the staircase, leaning against the wall, her back to the living room.

  She wasn’t even sure how much time had passed since Kyle and Tyler raced downstairs and found Kitty standing over the lifeless body of Rex Cavanaugh. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream, couldn’t even look away until Kyle grabbed her by the shoulders and guided her back to the foyer. One of them must have called 911 because she remembered the sound of sirens. Then bodies bustling in and out of the front door while voices shouted in the distance, at once angry and afraid.

  Kyle and Tyler had disappeared; maybe they’d been asked to leave? Or were being questioned by the police? She had no idea, only knew that no one had bothered her. She probably should have told someone that she was there, that she’d been the one to discover the body, but she didn’t have the energy to peel herself off the soft, plushy carpet. She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. Maybe if she was very quiet, they wouldn’t remember she was there.

  People had been talking nearby, their words indistinct and muddled. Then she heard footsteps, strong and clear against the tile floor, and an authoritative voice broke through the white noise.

  “Dr. Choudhary, do we have a time of death?” he asked.

  Kitty knew that voice. Not daring to move lest he notice her, Kitty opened her eyes and strained to get a view of the foyer. Sergeant Callahan’s back was to her. He stood, hands on his hips, with two women in matching coveralls.

  “The body had been there for quite some time,” Dr. Choudhary said, peeling off a pair of rubber gloves. “I’d say time of death is between eight and ten o’clock this morning.”

  The body? He has a name. Kitty hated Rex, but she felt a knee-jerk reaction to the way the medical examiner stripped him of humanity. Maybe that was just how they managed t
o do their jobs, staring at death every day.

  Sergeant Callahan nodded. “Accidental?”

  Dr. Choudhary arched an eyebrow. “Not unless he broke his own neck.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The straight-line bruising is postmortem, plus there are signs of a struggle.”

  “You’re saying it was murder.”

  She nodded. “My best guess is that the murderer surprised our vic and attempted to strangle him with the belt. Vic fought back, causing the abrasions around his neck, which probably snapped during the struggle. Death was instantaneous.”

  The news that Rex had been murdered came as no surprise to Kitty. She pictured Rex’s face—purple and bloated, eyes open, mouth frozen in a silent scream. It was a look of terror.

  Her hands began to tremble again.

  Sergeant Callahan inhaled deeply then let out his breath in a slow, controlled whistle. “Anything else?”

  “We found several different hair samples on the victim. They’ll go to the lab for DNA analysis.”

  Several different hair samples? Kitty wasn’t an expert but it seemed kind of odd that Rex, who had been home alone since before first period, would have had contact with enough people to accumulate that many strands.

  Dr. Choudhary nodded to her assistant, who held out a plastic bag. “And we found this tucked into his shirt pocket.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Sergeant Callahan held the bag up to the light and Kitty’s breath caught in her throat. She could see the white card printed with clear, black letters. DGM.

  “Does it mean anything to you?” Dr. Choudhary asked.

  “Unfortunately.” Sergeant Callahan tucked the bag under his arm. “Forensics is going to take over. Call me if you find anything else.”

  “You’re not staying?” Dr. Choudhary asked.

  He shook his head. “I need to check out a missing persons report. A Mrs. Gertrude Hathaway called this morning in a panic. Said her nineteen-year-old son Xavier was kidnapped from his bedroom last night.”

  Kitty’s eyes grew wide. Xavier Hathaway was missing too?

  “Another one?” Dr. Choudhary asked. “Do you think they’re related?”