This is WAR (8 page)

“Um, I already have my phone, so I’m all set.” Rose tried to push past him, but the bouncer deftly blocked her entrance
.

“Every lady must accept a phone.”

Rose looked behind her, confused. One of the boys she recognized from the pool approached and grabbed a card from the basket. He nodded at the bouncer and gave Rose’s all-too-accessible butt a little squeeze
.

“Wouldn’t mind dialing your digits tonight.” He winked and disappeared into the crowd of people dancing and mingling inside
.

“What the …”

Just then, Willa Ames-Rowan scooted around Rose and grabbed a phone. “It’s like spin the bottle,” she whispered. “Guys text girls to meet up in one of the fancy rooms.”

Rose blinked. She began to feel sick
.

Willa touched Rose’s arm, grazing her skin just as lightly as James’s lips had grazed her mouth. Her expression was serious. “Don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable, okay? If it rings and you’re not into it, just hit ignore. Easy.”
She grabbed a phone out of the basket and turned around to look at Rose again. “Oh, and stay away from James. He’s spoken for tonight.” Willa waved her phone in front of Rose’s face, her smile so disarming that it took Rose a minute to understand what she was saying
.

“Um, yeah. Okay?” Rose tried to avoid Willa’s eyes, questions flooding her brain but never making it past her lips. She knew Willa liked James
. Everyone
knew Willa liked James. But now that Rose had spent so much time with James she thought it was just gossip. Rumors. Truthfully, she hadn’t really thought about it at all
.

Willa pressed a phone into Rose’s hand. “Everything is going to be fine. No, better than fine, it’s going to be fabulous,” and she smiled her heartbreaking smile again
.

Rose looked at her closely, trying to see past the perfect teeth and the sparkling blue eyes, searching for a hint of anger, resentment, or even laughter. Maybe this was all some big joke. But that smile was genuine. If Willa did know about the time Rose was spending with James, she didn’t hate her for it. Or maybe she just didn’t see Rose as competition. Maybe James had been in love with Willa all along, and Rose was just some pathetic Club employee’s daughter he’d been stringing along for fun
.

The phone felt like a time bomb ticking in Rose’s hand. Taking it felt like making a promise she had no intention of keeping, but Rose couldn’t force herself to let it go. She wanted to make a run for it. To throw the phone back at the weird guy standing there in the tux. Willa walked into the party to join her friends, and Rose looked back toward the upper deck, searching for a way out. The adults looked like they were beginning to feel the effects of all that top-shelf gin. Rose stiffened as she saw the Captain grab a petite woman with long
black hair toward a shadowy corner at the top of the stairs. His third wife was a statuesque blonde. Something about the way the other woman moved reminded Rose of her …

Mom
.

Rose recognized Pilar the second the Captain tipped her face up toward the moonlight. His lips were on hers almost immediately. Rose’s stomach twisted. She couldn’t move, but she couldn’t look away. The Captain’s hands moved under her mom’s dress. She stared so long and so hard that some long defunct mother-daughter bond must have been activated, because all at once her mom froze and looked down to exactly where Rose was standing
.

She tried to duck into the shadows, but the look on her mom’s face told her it was too late. So, in the end, the choice was made for her. Rose squeezed the phone and walked into the party. The tears pricking her eyes only made her more determined to find James. She’d find him and ask him why the hell he’d invited her to a party when there were girls like Willa Ames-Rowan falling all over him. She pushed through the crush of teenagers dancing, drinking and laughing. Her eyes scoured the crowd for his shaggy blond hair, those dark blue eyes … for the one person who might actually be able to redeem this horrible night
.

And then she saw him
.

With Willa
.

She was on her tiptoes, her lips on his ear. James swayed uneasily on his feet, brown liquor sloshing dangerously in his glass. And then he wrapped his arms around her, wove his fingers through her perfect blonde hair, his mouth crashing down on hers
.

Rose wanted to be off that boat more than she’d ever wanted anything in her entire life. She looked out one of the
circular windows, to the water sloshing over the glass. And she debated. If the phone in her hand hadn’t vibrated, she would have climbed back up, jumped into the dark water, and swam back to shore
.

Harbinger’s Port in 10.

But instead Rose took a different leap. She grabbed an abandoned bottle of champagne on her way past the bar and took a long swallow. Staggering through an endless maze of narrow hallways, she ignored the noises that floated out from underneath the doors. Instead she focused on each room’s pretentious-sounding name. Mariner’s Cove, Caleb’s Corner, Lawrence Bay … By the time she came to the door with a shiny plaque engraved with Harbinger’s Port, she had finished off the bottle of champagne. Warmth slowly spread from her stomach out to her fingers and toes. It made her smile, made everything feel right. She abandoned the bottle beside the door and turned the handle
.

Rose slipped across the threshold, pressing her backside against the door to click it shut. She needed the darkness if she was going to go through with any of this. It snuffed out everything—inhibitions, fear, reality. Her eyes worked frantically to adjust before she moved forward. But she heard him breathing before she could even make out the outline of his body
.

He laughed quietly as she approached
.

“I was hoping it’d be you.”

He kissed her roughly on the mouth, and she kissed him back even harder. He pressed her down into the bed, and she raised her body to meet him, to feel him
.

She told herself it didn’t matter who it really was
.

She told herself she was ready even as Willa’s voice ran on repeat in her mind
. “Don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable. Don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable. Don’t do anything …”

She didn’t look back. Not even when the light from the large window overlooking the lake caught on his red hair and she recognized Trip Gregory. He was probably pretending she was someone else, but Rose didn’t care because she was pretending he was James
.

When it was over she couldn’t look at him, she just lay on her side, her eyes wide open drinking in the blackness of the room. Even after she heard him get dressed and quietly shut the door, she couldn’t force herself to follow. Instead she stared at the ceiling thinking about James and Willa and all that she’d lost that night. She lay there for what felt like hours. She lay there until she heard the sound of the fireworks exploding in the night sky and only then did she force herself to pull her body from the bed. Too humiliated to turn on the lamp, she dressed slowly, finding her clothes as occasional bursts of light illuminated the way. Ironic: everyone else on this boat was celebrating. They knew nothing of Rose’s humiliation or how much she had given up to be on the boat that night. They had all turned a blind eye. While some danced, others drowned
.

Chapter 9

It took all of Lina’s flinty determination to remain focused on painting her fingernails a deep inky blue. Madge was practically dancing around the attic, spouting off ideas to destroy the Gregorys. Lina wasn’t sure what it was about Rose McCaan, but she couldn’t quite trust her. Everyone had an agenda, an angle. So what was Rose’s? She wasn’t friends with Willa. Not the way the rest of them were. Her mother was a Club employee working for the Captain, and her dad was the detective who had let James Gregory walk free. There was no way she would be willing to risk her parents for some girl she barely even knew. There was something she wasn’t telling them. Something she was hiding. Lina was sure of it.

“It’s perfect. We’ll plan something epic, and they’ll lose everything. No more country club, no more inheritance. Nothing.” Madge’s face glowed in the flickering light of the candles. “And after they’ve lost it all, maybe then the truth will come out. Maybe they’ll finally pay.”

“But how …” The words were barely past Rose’s lips before Sloane tactlessly interrupted.

“So … we’re going to steal all their money?”

Lina’s fingers tensed around the bottle of nail polish. Her eyes snapped to Rose, daring her to react.
Just try it
. Lina had put a lot of time and effort into training herself to ignore the things in her life that she couldn’t control, so she didn’t really see much point in this War. After years of doing everything she could to get her parents’ attention (including but not limited to: chopping off all of her ridiculously long black hair and dying it white-blonde, getting tattoos that snaked up and down her arms, and carefully creating a reputation for being a total slut), she had come to terms with their complete ambivalence about their only daughter’s well-being. She learned to forget that she even had parents.

When they’d pulled Willa’s body out of the lake, Lina knew just as well as everyone else on that yacht that James Gregory had killed one of her best friends. What she also knew was that talking to the police would result in her exile from the Club. And the Club was all Lina had. So she ignored that, too. And, of course, her lips were sealed for reasons she’d never be able to admit to herself—let alone anyone else.

She understood why Madge wanted revenge. She wanted to punish the Gregorys just as much. But Lina made it a point never to fight losing battles, and there was no doubt in her mind that they were going to fail miserably. She’d handed Madge her money and she’d be there for her friends. There was no way she was going to bail after what happened to Willa, but that didn’t mean she had to put up with bullshit from this new girl. To make matters worse, Rose clearly didn’t know what to make of Sloane.

When they were ten, Lina was the only girl not invited to
Carlisle McCord’s birthday party. Sloane faked a stomachache, and they’d lounged around Sloane’s house slurping homemade chicken noodle soup at Mrs. Liu’s insistence. When Lina’s parents failed to show before winter holiday at Rennert, her boarding school, the headmistress made arrangements for her to board over break—that is, until Sloane drove all the way up to collect her. It was the best Christmas she could remember, filled with more pie than anyone needed, roaring fires, and presents with
Lina
hand-written on tags as though she’d been part of the Liu family since birth. Sloane guarded Lina silently. Her rescues were never discussed. They just happened. Protect and be protected. So, yeah, she’d be damned if she was going to let some trashy event planner’s daughter mock Sloane. But as Lina opened her mouth to answer Sloane’s ridiculous question, Madge beat her to it.

“No one’s stealing anything.” Even in her frenzied state Madge was careful to be patient with Sloane. “We’re just going to show the Captain that his grandsons are a couple of assholes undeserving of his precious inheritance. And hopefully reveal the fact that James is a cold-blooded murderer at the same time.”

“Easier said than done,” Lina mumbled under her breath.

Madge must not have heard her. Or she was just ignoring her. Either way she dragged Rose over to a pair of chairs situated near the wall and began whispering plans.

Lina felt a quick stab of jealousy. She had always been the person Madge planned with. The idea girl. But ever since everything with Willa, things had changed. Madge was distant. Distracted. Lina tried not to be hurt. The girl’s stepsister had just died, after all. Madge had every right to retreat within herself, to mourn and hide in private. But as Lina watched Madge and Rose beneath her lowered lashes, she wondered if
perhaps she was being replaced. There was something about the way Rose kept touching the key around her neck that made Lina want to scream. Why couldn’t anyone else see that this girl couldn’t be trusted?