2 Sisters Detective Agency(52)

Fifty kids jumped into the pool with me in one united motion. There was no consensus. No starting gun. They all just dropped their phones and jumped. Kids were all around me suddenly, whooping and splashing and trying to lift me. More kids piled into the pool as the seconds passed. The rooftop was flooded again. Screaming and laughing and cheering filled the air.

I was an instant hero. My plan had worked. Like a thousand youth icons before me, I’d made a spectacular, dangerous, and stupid gesture, and in response the teenage mob had accepted me as their queen.

There was only one figure outside the pool who was standing still. Who was not grinning. Who was not shouting praise at me. That figure was Baby, and in the chaos and noise she soon disappeared.





Chapter 68



Vera threw open the door. She knew she had lost touch with reality, and that disconnecting in this way was a good thing. Disassociating. It would help her make decisions faster, go into a fully instinctual mode to protect herself. She had already decided as she stood there in the room slowly being consumed by fire that it was fine if Ashton, Sean, and Penny didn’t get out of this mess alive. She cared about only herself. It was time to fight, then flee.

She pivoted, stepping into the hall and bringing the gun up in one smooth motion. The lights were on. The space seemed smaller now than it had in the darkness. A tall woman stood there in a robe with a pump-action shotgun held with the barrel pointing upward. Vera fired twice. Aimed low. Hit the woman in the stomach. A self-defense strategy, if she needed it later. I panicked. I closed my eyes and fired.

She blasted the dogs without really aiming. Vera didn’t really like dogs, but she respected them. They were loyal. Predictable. Dependable. She hit one in the leg, and the others bolted, startled by the white light and the noise of her gun and the sound of their owner hitting the floor. The smell of blood. Vera ran for the back door, twisted the deadbolt, and yanked it open, running out into the cold night air before the woman with the bullets in her guts even realized what had happened to her.

When Vera turned and looked over her shoulder from two blocks away, she saw three masked figures behind her. Her crew had escaped. That was a plus, she supposed. Less cleanup. When they all stopped in the dark outside some mansion, she realized that Sean, Penny, and Ashton were huffing like they’d run a marathon. Her own pulse had hardly risen at all.

“Well,” she said. “That was unexpected.”

“What was unexpected?” Sean’s voice was low, dangerous. “The three attack dogs? The shotgun? Or the four of us now suddenly facing murder charges?”

“Attempted murder at best.” Vera snorted. “She’ll be fine. I hit her in the stomach. Maybe she’ll have to wear a bag for the rest of her life, but there’s no need to get all dramatic.”

Vera could smell smoke on the wind. In the distance, sirens wailed. She pulled off her mask and folded it, tucked it into her pocket, and slipped the gun back into her waistband.

“You’re weirdly quiet,” she said to Ashton. “I’ve been standing here bracing myself for your classic moaning and whimpering. Have at it.”

“I have nothing to say,” the boy said.

Vera waited, but he didn’t continue. She looked at them all, felt the tide turning against her in their silence. She was the only one unmasked, and they were standing there, hiding their contempt behind plastic and cloth. Typical. All mutineers are cowards, she thought.

“Listen,” she said. “If you guys think—”

Her words were cut off by a sound, a sharp pop on the sidewalk at their feet. Sparks. They all looked. Another pop and Penny collapsed like a folding chair.

“Oh, God,” she wailed. “I’ve been shot! Help me, I’ve been—”

Vera didn’t stay to hear the rest. She threw herself behind a car as more gunshots went off all around them.





Chapter 69



I’d done three laps of the house, trying to find Baby, toured the Strand all the way to Hermosa Beach, my clothes drenched and heavy and my hair plastered to my skull. When my phone buzzed, I looked down at it, clutching the device in my fist without a dry pocket to put it in. A Twitter account I hadn’t used in six years was being tagged in a new post. The teens from the party had found me and were linking me to the video of my dive. It was going viral. A tweet attached to the video read:

Bell E Flopp just OWNED a house party at Manhattan Beach! EPIC!

I stood on the beach and looked up and down the stretch of darkness, watching the waves crash, feeling helpless. A couple of girls walking up the beach stopped and pointed at me.

“Yo, there she is!”

“It’s her! It’s Bell!”

I gave an awkward wave, politely refused selfies.

When I finally found Baby, she was sitting on the ramp of a lifeguard tower, vaping as the wind tousled her hair. Her phone was glowing on the ramp beside her. She spotted me and stood.

“Don’t run off again,” I said. “My clothes are wet. I’m getting chafed like you wouldn’t believe.”

“You were right.” She threw her hands up. “You’re queen of the house. Queen of the internet. Queen of the world. You win, Rhonda. Now go away and leave me alone.”

I was glad she was still angry and not crying. Angry meant we could talk, that the responses would be rapid-fire instead of sullen and wading through misery. If I played my cards right, I hoped I could bring her around to my side of the argument without her being embarrassed by her tears. An angry teenage client had always been a lot easier to handle than a sad one. But then nothing about Baby had adhered to the principles of managing teenagers that I had followed since I had been one myself. She was my sister. She shared my blood. And yet she was the one kid on the planet I couldn’t possibly understand.