The Risk (Kings of Linwood Academy 3)

My heart presses up into my throat, and I can’t tell if it’s because of Linc’s driving or the words he just said. Or maybe this whole damn day.

“Holy fuck.” Chase finally lets out a low whistle. “So not only was he in bed with these guys, he’s planning to betray them.”

“That was

my thought too,” Linc says. “We don’t know what his exact connection to them has been, but obviously a good amount of money changed hands. Fuck, it’s even possible they financed his rise to prominence as a judge, wanting to have someone in place who’d let them walk if it came down to it.”

“But now Hollowell wants more.” River nods. “He wants to advance politically, and throwing them under the bus is the best way to achieve that. If he has some inside knowledge of their organization, he’d be positioned well to bring them down.”

“Holy fuck,” Chase repeats, scrubbing a hand down his face. “This shit is bonkers.”

“Yeah.” Linc snorts, glancing at his side mirror as he passes a slow moving Honda. “That’s one word for it.”

“So what the hell to we do?” The bronze-haired boy peers out the window at the passing landscape. “And where are we going?”

“I don’t know.” Lincoln shakes his head, slowing the car slightly. “I just wanted to get the hell away from Hollowell’s house.”

He glances in the rearview, scanning the area behind us as if he’s making sure we haven’t been followed, then turns off the larger main road and onto a side street. He pulls over and puts the car in park, but leaves the engine running. Then he turns to look at all of us.

“Hollowell’s been two moves ahead in the game this whole time. He’s powerful and connected enough that he’s managed to control this entire thing—pinning Iris’s death on Harlow’s mom and making sure Low won’t say anything about it. We could take this to Dunagan, but there’s no guarantee that Hollowell won’t use the dirty cops in his pocket to find a way to bury it. And he’ll sure as shit find a way to bury us too.”

A sick feeling of dread fills my stomach. Everything I’ve done for the past several months has been with the singular aim of getting my mom out of prison. She saved my life when I was a kid, and even though that’s a debt I can never repay, I wanted to give hers back to her.

But what if all my meddling, my poking around and peering into dark corners, has only made things exponentially worse?

A horrible thought occurs to me, making my stomach drop like I’m on a rollercoaster: even if Mom gets out of prison early, she might no longer have a daughter waiting for her on the outside.

Is this what she would’ve wanted? Or would she have told me to take Hollowell’s deal, to take the leap of faith and hope that he’d actually hold up his end of the bargain? To back off, letting her take the fall for his crime?

That is, if I had told her about any of this.

But I didn’t. I wanted to protect her, and now I’m in so far over my head that I can’t even see a hint of fucking daylight through the murky waters around me.

“So, what?” Chase gestures up to the front, where River still holds the dry cleaning receipt. “We just sit on that? Pretend we don’t have it?”

“Hollowell will notice it’s missing eventually,” Dax adds, resting his hand on my knee as he leans forward. The touch is warm and solid, an anchor in the chaos. “Maybe not today or tomorrow, but sometime. It probably depends on how soon he notices the window was tampered with.”

“And when he realizes it’s missing, it’s an easy jump to figure out it was us,” I say softly.

I feel like I’m sinking into quicksand, like I’ve been trapped in it ever since the night we saw Iris murdered. And every time I struggle, every time I try to escape, I just get sucked in deeper.

We’re not getting out of this. We’re in too deep.

“So what the fuck do we do?” Chase bangs his fist against the car door in frustration.

“We bypass Dunagan.”

It’s River who speaks, his voice quiet but firm as he gazes at each of us.

“What do you mean?” Dax asks, shaking his head.

“We… bypass Dunagan.” I repeat River’s words slowly, rolling them around in my mouth as if trying to taste them. “We don’t take this to the cops. We take it to the only people who might actually step up and stop Hollowell. The only person in Fox Hill more powerful than him.”

River nods. “Niles D’Amato.”

“What?” Chase’s eyebrows fly up to his hairline.

My heart is tripping over itself, beating so fast it’s like a hummingbird in my chest. It’s hard to believe that somewhere across town at Linwood Academy, seventh period is starting up. Savannah’s probably fawning all over Trent in the halls. Kids are laughing and gossiping and talking about their weekend plans.