Alarm

“I can’t believe all the shit that went down with that, can you?” The girl shook her head slowly.

“Um…no,” I said, my mind still spinning, “I can’t.”

My heart was racing. Of all the ideas I had in my head, I hadn’t given much thought to what had happened with Aiden’s ex. It never would have occurred to me that she had died.

“Well, when he gets his hands on them,” the girl continued, “they don’t stand a chance. I have never seen him mad personally, but I hear it’s not pretty.”

My eyes widened and my head spun. What was he going to do when he gets his hands on whom? What had happened to his ex?

I wanted to ask more, but Lance walked up with Mo and Lo, effectively ending the conversation, and the girl stood to loop her arm around Lance’s elbow. I looked at Lo, wondering if I could pull him away from the group long enough to ask him some questions, but he was in some deep debate with Mo over the last Star Trek movie.

“Here ya go, Chloe.” Redeye appeared on my right with another shot.

“Oh, um…thank you.” I watched as he handed out a few others. Mo took his glass before turning to Lance.

“You’re watching The Walking Dead, right?” he said. “Holy fuck, that last episode!”

“I had to DVR it!” Lance yelled. “No spoilers!”

“Spoilers are the devil’s orgasms,” Lo announced with a huge laugh. “Don’t let the devil come!”

We all drank to the sentiment, but my mind was still on my all-too-brief conversation with Lance’s girlfriend. Aiden came back outside, and Redeye penalized him for missing the last shot by making him do two more. He took the first with no problem but cringed after drinking the second.

“What the fuck is that shit?” he yelled.

“That’s Bakon!” Redeye announced with a big grin.

Lo and Mo began to cackle.

“I told you!” Lo screamed. “I fucking told you!”

“Holy shit, that’s nasty!” Aiden shook his head and took a big gulp of his vodka and Red Bull to get rid of the taste. “Damn, it stays with ya, too!”

“Just a little somethin’ to remember me by,” Redeye commented as he went out in search of a new victim.

Aiden sat back down beside me, and I couldn’t stop myself from staring at his profile as he talked to his friends. What had happened to Megan? He hadn’t said anything about her, aside from her teaching him to cook. He hadn’t even told me her name—that had been Lo. If she had just succumbed to some disease, wouldn’t he have said so?

What happened to her? Did Aiden have something to do with it?

No, I didn’t believe that. I couldn’t.

&nbs

p; I continued to watch Aiden, barely hearing the conversation as the alcohol in my system began to take hold. I wasn’t as bad off as I had been the night Aiden and I met, but I also knew I needed to avoid any more shots.

It occurred to me that I could try Googling the name Megan in the Miami area to see if I could find out anything. If she was tied to some crime, maybe I could pull up a police record of some sort. I reached down and took my phone out of my purse.

Apparently, I hadn’t turned it back off after texting Mare. It was totally dead. I remembered that I was supposed to have called Mare back days ago but hadn’t done it. If she had tried to call me, she wouldn’t have been able to get through.

Crap.

“Hey, can you hold these for me for just a second?” Redeye stood at my side, holding two shot glasses in his hand.

“Sure.” I said. I was just glad he wasn’t telling me to drink another one.

I watched as he poured more shots and then passed a set of two glasses to Aiden, Lo, Mo, and Lance.

“Picklebacks!” he called out as he raised the glasses.