She knew on that awful day, when I found Pen. Heather knew before she knew, you know what I mean? I remember her starting to scream, throwing her body against my arms, straining for the stairs.

Penelope was already gone by then, loaded into a bag that looks an awful lot like the tarps we’ve been using, transported away to Neil’s friend at the morgue. Buried. Drowning in dirt. Rotting. My stomach clenches with cramps, and I turn away sharply, closing the door to the girls’ bedroom.

Heather and I are staying here enough. Maybe I should get her like, a cot or something? Would that be better than an air mattress?

“Good morning,” Callum says in that husky voice of his, standing by the table when I come downstairs. There’s a heap of chocolate in the center of it, a literal freaking mound. I narrow my eyes, and he grins back at me. “We heard. Congratulations on not being pregnant with Victor’s child.”

“Shut your mouth, you smart-ass,” Vic says as he leans back on the sofa and crosses his ankles on the coffee table. He’s shirtless and wearing only pajama pants. Come to think of it, they’re all shirtless and wearing only pajama pants. Even Cal, in his usual sleeveless hoodie, has left the damn thing unbuttoned and gaping open to the point that I can’t even figure out why he’s still wearing it.

They did this shit on purpose, I think, just because it makes me feel like they’re being spiteful so I can be spiteful back. In reality, I know we’re all just settling into a new normal.

I am a part of Havoc; I am one of the guys.

Except … with a vagina that they all want to fuck.

Okay, maybe not Oscar, but the others.

“Any news about …” I trail off, because there’s no point in saying it aloud when we all know what I’m talking about. Any news about Danny? Or Ivy? I feel nothing for the former, but there’s some shred of feeling deep down inside of me that aches for the latter. Ivy … she was snooty and full of herself, her essays in English last year were as bad as Kali’s, and she cheated at every game she ever played, but she wasn’t a terrible person. A misguided, gossipy little cunt, but that’s about it. She didn’t deserve to die for that.

“Nothing,” Hael says with a groan, lying on his stomach on the small sofa. I grab a dark chocolate bar from the table and try to forget how stupidly cute it was for them to think of getting me candy. They’re not supposed to be cute; they play games with corpses. “There won’t be. If the Charter Crew is smart, they’ll just put Danny somewhere else.”

I come around the end of the couch to look down at his face. Hael is pretty badly swollen still. Worse than that, he mentioned Brittany’s dad threatening rape charges. That’s not good.

That makes sense, about Danny though. Of course Mitch isn’t going to call the cops with a body in the trunk of his car. It really wouldn’t look good for him. Question is: what are they going to do to us now that we’ve struck back? And so much worse than firebombing an old minivan.

Havoc escalates things, but never unnecessarily. It’s just right, just the correct amount of menace to perfume the air with violence.

“And the other?” I ask, trying to be cryptic. I feel like you can never really know who’s listening in.

Callum starts stretching in front of the fireplace, just below the flickering screen of the TV. He glances my way, blond hair hanging into his eyes.

“Likely, we won’t see news about her as a missing person for days. In any other regard, she shouldn’t make headlines either.” Cal curves his body over to touch his toe, and I admire the sinewy perfection of his muscles. Some guys get all bulked up, and turn into these stiff statues, strong but about as limber as the stone they’re made out of. Callum is bendy, and vibrant, and I want to know what would happen if we started dancing … and didn’t stop.

I sit down on the chair between the two couches, figuring that’s the safest place for now. We might be fighting multiple wars on different fronts—real wars, ones with body counts—but there’s also an underlying current of male politics, testosterone, and romance. That’s the real clincher right there, the most dangerous thread in our tapestry of politics and intrigue.

“What’s our plan for today?” I ask as Aaron pads over and hands me a plate with toast and scrambled eggs on it. The fuck is this twisted reality? I wonder, staring at my ex and feeling his sweaty chest beneath my fingertips, his hips thrusting between my thighs. My god. How far we’ve all come.

I guess, when I spent every day last summer debating on whether or not to call Havoc, that was a smart choice. This isn’t the type of decision you make on the fly. No, you either feel it in your soul or you don’t.

Because I knew what price they’d give me, all along. I knew. In my heart, I knew.

I take a bite of my eggs and do my best to ignore Oscar’s intense stare. He’s been looking at me more lately, ever since Halloween night. It’s annoying the shit out of me.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” I ask, focusing on my breakfast and trying to ignore the violent clenching of my asshole uterus. Dead bodies, you say? Well, have some cramps on top of it, bitch. My lady parts are out to kill me.

“Couple of things,” Vic says, like he’s debating the merits of the itinerary he has in his head. We all know he’s already decided; this bit is just for fun, to pretend like he might actually be human. “I was thinking we start off by paying your stepfather’s partner a visit.”

My head perks up at that, and I turn to stare at Vic like he’s just suggested he perform his own circumcision.

“You’re kidding me? You want to go talk to a cop about another cop? Do you have a death wish? Or perhaps just a dream of incarceration?”

Victor ignores me to glance Oscar’s way.

“You really think she can be of use to us?” Vic asks, and Oscar nods.

“Neil Pence’s partner, Sara Young, is one of those save the world types. She thought she could make a difference by becoming a cop.” Oscar chuckles, like that’s one of the most ridiculous things he’s ever heard. “She wants to save the world. I figure, either I’m right about her and she’ll want to seek justice or, she’s as dirty as he is, in which case, she dies, too.”

Dies.

There’s that word again.

It’d be pretty easy to think the Havoc Boys might just go down my list and start executing people. But killing folks has a tendency to draw attention. They like to inflict damage without leaving permanent marks, just like they did to me. Like they did to Donald. Or Principal Vaughn.

But if anyone were going to die, they had to know it was going to be him.

“You want to tell her about Neil and … what? Wait for her to go vigilante? To report him through official means?” I look up from my eggs and find that Hael’s fallen asleep again. Oscar glances his way, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Guess even that heartless asswipe figures the other boys need their sleep after a night of unburying, and then re-burying, bodies.

“You’re not going to tell her anything just yet. You’re just going to talk to her.” Oscar leans back into the couch, watching me with empty gray eyes and giving me the chills. He’s gearing up to something; I just have no idea what, exactly, that is. “Confide in her, make her your friend. You can handle that, can’t you, Bernie?” Oscar asks, but then, he doesn’t get to hear my answer because Victor’s phone rings. He glances at the screen, still casually slumped into the old sofa.