The Risk (Kings of Linwood Academy 3)

My bikini has dried a bit by the time I tug on my pants and top, but the guys must be freezing as we step outside and hurry to Linc’s car.

As soon as the doors are closed, he turns on the engine, blasts the heat, and pulls away from the curb.

The car is silent for a second before Chase speaks.

“Sooo…”

“So, we know how they met.” I turn toward the back seat, even though I’m not sure River can see me in the low light.

“He picked her up at his own fucking fundraiser.” Dax taps on the window pane with his knuckles. “That’s ballsy.”

“Or stupid. There are pictures.” River looks up from his phone. “This probably isn’t even all the ones that were taken, but there’s a gallery online—and I bet the photographer has everything backed up somewhere.”

I crane my neck. “Can I see?”

He nods and passes his cell up to me. I swipe through the pictures as Lincoln drives and the guys murmur in low voices around me. I’m only half listening as they debate what we should do with the information we have now. My gaze tracks over every picture, searching each image from top to bottom.

And then I see her.

Iris Lepiane is done up to the nines, her light blond hair artfully arranged on her head with little tendrils cascading down her neck. She’s wearing a full-length gown, and the combination of the dress, hair, and makeup seems to add ten years to hear appearance.

I’d been skeptical of Summer’s claim that she could just waltz into these fundraisers and galas with a bunch of adults without anyone raising an eyebrow.

Now I know how.

Judge Hollowell could be forgiven for mistaking Iris for someone in her mid-twenties if he met her at the event. But at some point not long after that, he had to have discovered her true age, and the fact that he didn’t immediately walk away shows his true colors as a lecherous bastard.

The photographer caught Iris with a glass of champagne in her hand, smiling as she gazes out at the crowd around her. She looks ethereal. Timeless. Nothing at all like the girl I heard screaming at Savannah in the girls’ locker room more times than I can count.

It’s like she had this whole secret life outside of school.

I guess we all do, in a way. But most people’s don’t get them killed.

Before I scroll on, I snap a screenshot on my phone, saving the image. But it’s the next photo she appears in, several pictures later, that has me sitting up straighter in my seat.

She’s not in the foreground this time—she’s just one of many in the background.

Her face is partially turned away from the camera, but it’s still quite obviously Iris.

And she’s talking to Judge Hollowell.

12

I sit at the marble island in the Lauders’ house, nursing my coffee as I hunch over my phone. It’s on the counter in front of me, and I keep flicking my finger back and forth across the screen, shifting from the picture of Iris by herself to the one of her with Judge Hollowell.

“It’s the right call, Low.”

Dax’s voice is serious, and he scoots a little closer to me, glancing over my shoulder as the pictures slide back and forth.

“You think?” I murmur.

We spent all weekend debating about it—the question of what to do with the information Summer gave us, and with the picture of Iris meeting Judge Hollowell at his fundraiser.

“It makes sense to me,” Chase puts in, resting his hand on the small of my back as he leans over my other shoulder. “We said we’d go to Dunagan when we had something to tell him. And now we do.”

“Yeah.”

I draw my bottom lip between my teeth, biting so hard it leaves an indentation in my skin. I’m scared as fuck to do this, but the guys are right. Dunagan has resources we could never hope to, and with the ticking countdown to my mother’s trial marking the days, we don’t have any more time to waste fumbling around in the dark.