From across the circle, Kenna shot me a chilling grin. “Not so secret considering everyone knows about it.”
Ainsley reached for another chip. “The house will be empty.”
“Probably,” Josie agreed, the corner of her lips curving.
My friends were crazy. I loved their train of thought, but at the same time, I couldn’t let them risk getting caught. It was one thing to jeopardize my future at KU but another thing for all of us to go down.
“I don’t like the gleam in your eyes. We’re not doing something stupid, just searching.” I knew Josie, and she would use the opportunity to teach Sterling a lesson.
It was as if I hadn’t even spoken. “Fuck yes we are,” she replied, gleefully sounding like the cheerleader she’d been in high school, chanting the academy motto.
“We don’t know that no one will be home,” I argued, wondering why I was the only one being the voice of reason. Then I thought,What the fuck am I doing?This was precisely what I wanted. Reason could go fuck itself. At least for the night.
Kenna was right. We needed to try.
No one was backing down, not even the newest addition to our group, Ainsley. “It doesn’t hurt to check it out,” she offered.
I thought my cousins were scary when they schemed, but add Ainsley into the mix and they were frighteningly brilliant.
“Tonight is our best chance,” Kenna pressed on. “With fraternity doing rush shit, it’s an opportunity we can’t let slip by.”
Ainsley held up her can in salute to Kenna. “I agree.”
Kenna wasn’t done yet, and Ainsley's agreement only energized her. “He fucking deserves so much more than us snooping about. I want to make him spend every day of his life looking over his shoulder. What he did to Mads, it’s unforgivable.”
The incident with Sterling shooting me up hit a little too close to home for Kenna. She had been given a date rape drug by someone she thought had been a friend. Unlike what happened to me, no one had been there to save her from her attack. She’d spent two years recovering from her wounds. It had been the internal scars that did the most damage. A few still remained. Some scars cut deep, and no matter how much they lightened over the years, an imprint lingered.
She’d come so far from that dark hole, crawling and clawing her way out. I was so proud of her.
But was this really the best idea? How much of her thirst for vengeance was she projecting? Did it matter? Carter, Sterling, and every other douchebag out there all needed to be held accountable for their actions. And if the system failed, sometimes you had to take matters into your own hands—Elite law.
It looked like this was happening tonight. A little sooner than I had anticipated, but Kenna was right. This was the perfect opening.
“What’s the plan?”
“Are you sure we can’t pull a Carter? Drug him, strip him, and torture the truth out of him?” Kenna asked, dead serious.
The funny thing was she had actually done just that with Josie last year.
Ainsley waved a chip in the air. “Same trick, different dog.”
I wasn’t going to lie. I kind of liked thinking of Sterling as a dog.
“How about we come up with new material?” I suggested. “Our goal is to get rid of anything he could use against Micah, like the pictures, and see if we can discover why Sterling wants to hurt him to begin with. It could be important.”
Josie nodded. “Agreed. We need to get to the bottom of his grudge. It’s the only way we put an end to it.”
“So, a little B&E,” Kenna mused. “Seems a bit tame, but we can always add a dash of spice.”
I rolled my eyes, digging into the guacamole.
And so the four of us brainstormed, going over ideas and suggestions, strategizing the best way to get inside Chi Sigma unnoticed. There might not be anyone in the house, but they had neighbors, and Greek Row tended to be swarming with people at all hours. It wouldn’t stop me from uncovering what it was that Sterling had against Micah. Something must have happened in the past that triggered such a deep-rooted desire to hurt him.
I knew virtually nothing about Sterling Weston, other than his parents had money and he was the president of a fraternity. Finding information on his background could be imperative, and there was only so much we could do online. And we did.
Out of the four of us, Ainsley was the most tech-savvy. I didn’t know if that was saying much, seeing as the only device I really used was my cell phone and my laptop to take notes or watch YouTube. We needed a bit more in-depth skill. Fynn would be perfect, but I assumed the Elite were already using him to dig up their own dirt. I doubted they would be up for sharing. Not to mention it would lead to questions I didn’t want to answer.
It would be better and more efficient if we all worked together on this, but Micah had made his position clear, and I wasn’t ready to see the jerk. Not yet. Not any time soon. I was giving him his break, and that included seeing my face.