I pull out my phone. Bulldozing it is.
twenty-five
Rory
Myphonelightsup.One new notification. It was from Eli, so I open it immediately.
Eli: Can you meet me outside in ten?
Rory: Wow cryptic much.
His reply was instant. Eli wasn’t messing around tonight.
Eli: Bring the key card.
That little piece of plastic Abram gave me to get up to the top floor of Hardin. Why would Eli want that?
Rory: Why?
Eli: We need to use it to get in.
He’d saidwenothim. I would have been open to the idea of helping if it’d only been Eli. I knew by his text; the other hellhounds would be tagging along as well.
After yesterday, I wasn’t up for seeing Cole. What he’d said still too raw.
Rory: Pass.
My phone vibrates again seconds later but this message wasn’t from Eli.
Iceman: Five minutes or I’m coming up.
Rory: I’m going to need an explanation.
Why should I help them out? They’d done nothing but cruel things to me. Seemed sacrilegious.
I set my phone down, realizing I hadn’t heard any music blaring from Finn’s side of the hall in hours. I was getting better at learning his preferences and how they reflected his mood.
Hip-hop meant he was cheerful. Rock meant he was tense. Heavy metal—the most common—meant he was angry. That genre played excessively since I arrived.
Tuning out the noise was easier when I had something to focus on. Biology was the winner tonight.
Ironically, we were studying ecosystems. All living things dependent on something else to survive. Perfect example, Finn is dependent on Abram buying the school a new roof. Instead of studying and getting decent grades himself.
Iceman: Two minutes.
Peeking over my desk, I spot a running black SUV sitting outside the house. I click my tongue. Separating those three was like cracking a walnut from its shell.
Painful and not worth the effort.
Iceman: Ignore me. You know the consequences.
His text shoots a shiver down my spine. Cole was always good for his word.
I reply not because I’m afraid of Iceman. I didn’t want him coming up to my room; it felt too personal. Intimate almost.
He told me I made him irrational and to stay away. Before yesterday that was one thing, I had no trouble doing. Now, I didn’t know what to think.
I wasn’t fast enough. His heavy footsteps pounding across the tufted carpet of the hallway drawing nearer. My breath gets locked in my throat. Cole Kellet was about to enter my room.