The Risk (Kings of Linwood Academy 3)

Lincoln tugs me into an embrace, wrapping his arms around me. His grip is so tight it almost hurts, but I don’t want him to stop. The feeling is grounding somehow, as if being physically held this tightly stops me from feeling the metaphorical noose tightening around my neck.

This is it. The moment I’ve been anticipating and dreading since this whole thing began. The moment when we’re out of options. When my mom’s fate becomes set in stone.

Unless…

I cling to Linc, my fingers digging into his back as I bury my face against his chest. The others are all surrounding us, so close I can feel the heat seeping from their bodies into mine. We stay like that for several long beats as a thought bounces around in my mind like a single stray ping pong ball.

Judge Hollowell looked surprised.

When I accused him of killing Iris because he’d gotten her pregnant, there was the briefest moment of hesitation, a look of surprise, before he agreed.

Why?

He has to know she was pregnant; that news couldn’t have caught him off-guard. Everyone knows she was pregnant. The kids at Linwood all know, which means their parents must know.

But he still seemed taken aback by my accusation, as if some part of it was untrue.

She was definitely pregnant.

And he definitely killed her.

But maybe… maybe that wasn’t the reason he killed her.

“There’s something else,” I say quietly, pulling out of Linc’s embrace so I can look at the kings. “Something we missed, something we haven’t thought about.”

“What do you mean?” River shakes his head in confusion.

I pull my bottom lip between my teeth, replaying that moment in our hushed conversation over and over in my mind. I’m certain of it. Judge Hollowell was lying.

“I don’t think he killed Iris because she was pregnant,” I whisper. “Or at least, not just because of that. There’s something else.”

Chase’s eyes widen. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.” I curl my fingers into fists, wanting to press the heels of my hands against my eyes, to block out the entire world and all of this insanity. “I don’t know. But the way he acted, the way he so readily admitted to it… It was like he wanted me to think that’s why he killed Iris. Like he wanted me to stop looking there, to leave it at that.”

“And you think there’s more to it,” Dax says slowly, his brows lowering as he considers this.

“Yeah. I do.”

“So what do we do?” Chase’s gaze bounces around our small circle before landing on me. “If we think there’s another explanation out there, what do we do?”

My stomach tightens.

God, I hope I’m not making the biggest fucking mistake of my life.

“We keep looking.”

15

Silence falls in the little room, heavy and stifling.

I lick my lip

s. I said “we”, but the honest truth is, this fucked up situation is reaching the point where I can’t ask these boys to keep wading in deeper with me. It only puts more of us in danger, and I hate the thought of that.

But before I can say anything else, Lincoln dips his head once. “Okay.”

The others are already nodding in agreement as he speaks, and a surge of overwhelming emotion chokes off my breath.