by Elle Thorpe
Devious Little Liars
Saint View High #1
Elle Thorpe
www.ellethorpe.com
Copyright © 2020 by Elle Thorpe
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Line editing by Studio ENP
Proofreading by Karen Hrdlicka
Cover and formatting by Images for Authors
#3
For my friend and fellow bully romance author, Sara Massery. Thanks for the shove to write this book.
Contents
1. Lacey
2. Lacey
3. Lacey
4. Lacey
5. Lacey
6. Lacey
7. Banjo
8. Lacey
9. Lacey
10. Lacey
11. Lacey
12. Lacey
13. Lacey
14. Lacey
15. Lacey
16. Rafe
17. Lacey
18. Banjo
19. Lacey
20. Lacey
21. Lacey
22. Lacey
23. Colt
24. Lacey
25. Lacey
26. Lacey
27. Gillian
28. Lacey
29. Lacey
30. Lacey
31. Lacey
32. Lacey
33. Lacey
34. Lacey
While you’re waiting for your next bad boy fix…
Also by Elle Thorpe
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
Lacey
I was about to be arrested.
That was my first thought when a flash of movement outside the window caught my attention.
Extreme overreaction?
Perhaps.
But when you’d illegally let yourself into your school on a Sunday, these were the worries that plagued a girl.
Acting on instinct, I hurled myself off the piano stool and onto the floor, scuttling to the windows overlooking the quad. Maybe they hadn’t seen me yet. The late afternoon sun was sinking, and perhaps, if I was lucky, the glare would temporarily blind them. I could make my escape out one of the back doors. There was an exit in the administration hall. Others in the math and history wings. Of course, not one anywhere near the music rooms. Helpful.
Ever so carefully, I lifted to peer out the window, and yelped at the face on the other side. I ducked down again, though there was no chance he hadn’t seen me, what with his nose an inch from the glass.
I was totally busted. But at least it wasn’t the police.
Lawson’s laughter on the other side of the window made me realize how ridiculous I was being. I stood, embarrassment heating my face.
“You want to let me in?” he yelled.
I squeezed my eyes closed but nodded. “I’ll meet you at the door.”
Scrambling down the hall, I tried to come up with a plausible story that would result in the least amount of trouble. I still had nothing by the time I pulled open the heavy, ancient oak doors of Providence School for Girls.
My uncle stood on the other side, boxes of his work balanced precariously in his arms. He shifted beneath their weight, sending a USB stick and a pile of papers sliding off the top. They fluttered down around our ankles.
I knelt hastily, tucking the USB stick into my pocket and gathering up the runaway pages. I glanced up at his familiar face. “Before you say anything, just remember, I’m your favorite niece.”
“You’re my only niece,” he grumbled, but there was still a hint of laughter in his voice.
I put the papers back on top, then took the box from him, lightening his load. “Which means you won’t have me arrested?”
He kicked the doors closed behind him. “Well, that depends on how quickly you start explaining why you’re at school on a Sunday night, instead of at Meredith’s, which is where you said you were going. How did you even get in here without tripping the alarm? If you broke a window, I won’t be impressed.” He walked toward his office.
I hurried to keep up. “No, no. All windows are intact. I used the code.”
“What? How do you even know it?”
I snorted, then remembered I was probably about to be grounded until I turned eighteen. Which, admittedly, was only a couple of weeks away. But still. I tried to force my expression into something more suitably chastised. “Sorry. But you’ve been driving me to school and unlocking that door in front of me for the past three years. The code is my birthday. Just like all your passwords.”
That resulted in a withering look, but I knew he wasn’t really angry at me. We wove through the administration offices until we reached Lawson’s, his gold-plated Principal nameplate on the door. He unlocked it, and we both dumped our boxes on the table.
Then he turned to me, folding his arms across his chest, giving me his best principal’s glare. “How long have you been sneaking in here for?”
No point lying about it now. “Months.”
His mouth dropped open. “To do what? Please don’t say drugs. If you say drugs, I swear, I’m going to take you down to that police station myself.”
I sniggered. “No. Something much worse.”
“Sex? Booze? What could be worse?” He narrowed his eyes, but they crinkled at the corners. He was trying not to laugh. “Are you running some sort of illegal cock fighting ring out of the gym?”
I raised an eyebrow. “No, but wow. Thanks for the ideas. If college doesn’t work out for me, I’ll be sure to consider those options. I’ve just been practicing in the music rooms. All alone. No sex, drugs, or farmyard animals of any kind.”
My uncle frowned and grumbled. I’d won him over. He knew how important music was to me. “So. No police?”
His expression morphed into fatherly affection. He put his arm around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head. “What do you think? I’m hardly going to call the police when I’d be the one to pay your bail. I’ve got work to do. Go on, go do your thing. But set your alarm and meet me back here in two hours. You know how you lose track of time when you play.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. He so rarely lost his temper, and almost never at me. I couldn’t have stood it if he were angry. I kissed his stubbled cheek. “Love you…”
Not for the first time, the word ‘Dad’ formed on my lips. But at the last moment, I swallowed it down. Instead, I gave him a grateful wave and hurried back to the music rooms.
When I got there, I shut the door behind me and made a beeline for the piano, running my palm over its gleaming black surface. This was my happy place. And it filled something inside me in a way that nothing else did.
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I set the alarm so I wouldn’t be late.
Then I pressed my fingers to the keys and closed my eyes, the first lilting notes lifting to the air. Time ceased to exist until a blaring alarm cut through my bubble.
I lost focus, hit the wrong key, and the entire song unraveled. “Dammit!” I slammed the keys hard.
I glanced at my phone and silenced the obnoxious beeping. In the blink of an eye, two hours had passed, and the real world came rushing back in. The sun had set, leaving me in near darkness, and I hadn’t even noticed. Patting the top of the piano like it was a dog who’d just completed a new trick, I murmured, “Until next time.”<
br />
In the corridor, I stopped dead as I caught a whiff of something unpleasant. “What the hell…” I murmured, wrinkling my nose. I took a few more steps, then froze.
Smoke.
I peered into the darkness, trying to remain calm while my brain scrambled to find logical conclusions. It was nearing the end of summer. People could be having barbecues nearby, and the smoke might have just blown in on the breeze. Or perhaps a wildfire had started. The smoke alarms weren’t going off. Nor were the sprinklers. I picked up the pace, heading for the admin offices. The entire time, I scrabbled with my thoughts, fighting against the obvious. Pushing myself to believe those excuses, because what was right in front of my eyes was too scary to comprehend. I rounded a corner and stopped dead.
There was no denying it anymore.
The building was filling with thick, acrid smoke.
Something instinctual pushed me forward, and my feet went with it, instead of listening to the panicked voice in my head screaming to turn and run in the opposite direction. I fumbled for my phone, pulled it out, and dialed nine-one-one. Smoke invaded my chest and eyes. I coughed, trying to clear it while fear clawed its way up my spine.
“Fire!” I gasped when the operator answered. “Providence School for Girls.” Racking coughs took over. I hung up, but the farther I got, the thicker the smoke became, until it didn’t matter if I spoke or not. I held my arm over my mouth and nose, trying to keep it out, but it was a losing battle. My lungs protested, but I moved on, my pace increasing until I was running. I skidded around the corner, bashing my hipbone on the wall. The darkness was disorienting. The visibility next to nothing. I couldn’t see farther than a few steps ahead of me.
“Lawson!” I yelled, immediately regretting it when smoke filled my mouth and nose. It got thicker with every step. I coughed again and ran my hands over the wall where I thought the light switch should be. I came up empty, my nails scratching over nothing but drywall.
I spun around, confused now at exactly where I was. I needed to get to my uncle. I knew, that if there was a fire, he would have come for me. Called me. He knew where I was. And there was only one way to get there. We couldn’t have missed each other. I pushed my legs harder, not certain that I was even heading in the right direction, but I had to try.
Suddenly, the room around me opened up, and I nearly wept with relief as I recognized the foyer. But there was no time for that.
I’d found the source of the smoke.
Flames licked the walls.
“Lawson!” I yelled again, tasting ash. Panic surged, adrenaline kicking in and powering my movements. My brain short-circuited, whether from lack of air or fear, I didn’t know. The one thing I was certain of was that I couldn’t lose another parent. I couldn’t add my uncle to the broken part of me that had existed ever since my birth parents’ disappearance. He was the only father I really remembered. And he wouldn’t have left without me. I knew that without a doubt. He wouldn’t have left me there to die.
Which meant he was still inside.
I ran in a crouch toward the flames. They grew with every second that passed. “Laws—” I couldn’t even get his name out this time before the lack of air stole my voice. I held my breath and rushed toward his office, throwing open doors as I went and dodging the deadly heat.
I skidded to a stop at the glass window of the principal’s office. A scream curled up my throat but came out silently.
Lawson’s still form lay facedown on the floorboards.
Flames billowed up around him, higher in here than anywhere else. They crawled across the ceiling, like slithering beasts of orange fury. I bashed on the window so hard it should have broken, desperately yelping my uncle’s name between racking bouts of coughing.
Overhead, a beam cracked.
Sparks flew and I flinched away. I tried again, lunging for the door, but the heat drove me back. Tears streamed down my face. “Help,” I croaked.
I couldn’t save him alone. He was right there, the flames getting ever closer, and I couldn’t reach him. I stumbled back the way I’d come, dropping to my knees and crawling when my feet wouldn’t take another step. My eyes stung. My gaze flitted around the smoke-filled room, but my head grew cloudy.
With a sudden certainty, I realized we were both going to die.
There was no way out.
I closed my eyes. At least the last thing I’d done was something I loved. I remembered the way it felt to have my fingers flying over the piano keys, the song soaring, not only in my ears but in my heart. When the flames took me, that’s where I’d be in my head. In the place I was happiest. The only place I had true peace.
Something grabbed me.
Not something, someone.
I dragged myself back into the present. There was somebody else here. Someone who could help. Hope surged within me.
“My uncle,” I choked out.
Startled by hands on my bare skin, and my body being lifted from the floor, I tried to force my stinging eyes open. But my vision was so blurred I couldn’t make out a face. I turned into the person’s chest, and my gaze focused instead on the thing closest to me. Letters floated across my vision, a mere inch from my nose.
The man—it had to be a man, his body had none of the softer curves of a woman—didn’t say anything, but gripped me tighter while he moved through the crumbling building. Heat seared at my legs, my arms, my face. I couldn’t do a thing but fist my fingers into the material of his shirt and hold on. The embroidered feel of the letters scratched, in contrast with the softness of the fabric.
He muttered something that sounded like, “Hold on, Lacey.”
A thought floated through my head, but it was too hard to grasp. I wanted to chase it, grab it, and force it to make sense. But I was too tired. I watched it go, disappearing into a smoke tendril.
My body jolted against his with each step. I wanted him to run. I wanted him to get me out of this place, but it all just seemed impossible now. Everything hurt. My lungs screamed in pain. It was too hard to hold on. My grip on his shirt loosened.
“Lacey!” he yelled, but his voice was far away.
I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.
2
Lacey
If the size of my uncle’s wake was anything to go by, he was the most popular man in town.
I leaned against the wall, in a corner of my house, a tall potted palm doing a bad job of obscuring me from the room full of people. The champagne flute in my hand was almost empty, so I ditched it and grabbed another from a passing waiter.
“Lacey,” a woman cried, grasping my free hand and squeezing tightly. Her wrinkled skin was thin as tissue paper and dotted with age. “Your uncle was a great man. Much too young.” Her voice dripped with fake sincerity.
I tried to force my lips to move, knowing I should thank her.
I couldn’t.
The woman’s concerned look disappeared, only to be replaced with an expression of mild disapproval. She tutted beneath her breath, dropped my hand, and moved on to the next group of people.
I watched her go, not caring I’d been rude. I didn’t even know who she was.
“How you doing, Lace?” Meredith appeared beside me. She propped one stiletto heel up on the wall.
Owen sidled up next to her, casting a worried eye over me.
“I don’t even know who most of these people are. Like those girls over there.” I jerked my head in the direction of a group dressed in pretty blue and green tones. “Have I even met them before?”
Owen eyed the girls, his lip lifting in a sneer of disgust. “Freshman bimbos. Probably just here to gossip.”
I sighed, wanting this entire thing to be over. Waiters in white shirts and black ties circled the room with canapés on their trays as if this were a party, the same as the hundreds my aunt had thrown in the past. Selina had a wine glass stem firmly clutched between her perfectly manicured fingernails, while she held court in the center of the room, surrounded by her tennis b
uddies, her hairdresser, and her nosy best friend. Her over-Botoxed expression didn’t betray any real emotion.
She had her mask firmly in place.
I’d lived in fear of losing mine every day since the fire. It was easier to live behind fake smiles than to allow myself to think about my uncle, the man who’d been my father for thirteen years, being gone.
Fire was all I thought about now. That, and my aunt. She’d lost the love of her life. The man she’d woken up next to every day for twenty years. She was hurting, and I hated I couldn’t do anything to make it better for her.
“I had to talk to the police again,” I said quietly to my friends. “That’s three times now. I think they’re trying to trip me up in my story.”
Meredith frowned. “You think they don’t believe you?”
I lifted one shoulder as I twisted to face her. Her pretty blonde curls had been tamed back into a sleek bun that better matched her black knee-length dress. A single strand of pearls around her neck set off the Audrey Hepburn look. She even had oversized sunglasses perched on her head. “They can’t find any footage from the security cameras that corroborates my version of that night. Apparently, the security cameras were all switched off. Along with the smoke detectors and the sprinkler system. I don’t think they believe me when I say a man carried me from the flames.”
Meredith’s eyes widened. “But you were found barely conscious on the quad! And your burn! You were in such bad shape, they can’t seriously think you walked out of there by yourself?”