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I raise a questioning eyebrow. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to go after the guys who graduated last year? If she was going to blame anyone, it’d be them.”
“We didn’t exactly do her any favors after she came back. Or did you think she just forgot about you playing her sextape in the middle of a party?” He lets out a frustrated sigh as he rises from the floor, still empty-handed. “Maybe she’s happy fucking with us because we’re the only target that she can reach. Killing our chances at Initiation is pretty goddamned good revenge, if you ask me.”
“We’ll find the ledger and even if we don’t—”
“We’ll what?” He snarls the question. “Go down in history as the graduating class who lost a century’s worth of Havoc House records? Even if the alumni let us be Initiated, we will be the butt of jokes for the rest of our lives. As far as our standing goes, none of us will ever live this down.”
Loud footsteps echo in the hallway outside the suite. If the girls are back, I don’t want them walking into us raiding their hotel room. But when I rush to the door and throw it open, Vaughn and Nolan stand there dressed in suits, ready to go to the Initiation that might not actually happen.
“Cole texted us,” Vaughn says as he pushes past me. “Did you find it?”
Nolan slides past me with a grim look on his face. “I always knew we should have taken this bitch out when we had the chance.”
“We haven’t found anything yet,” I inform him. “Save the death threats for when you’ve got some proof to back them up.”
“I don’t have to find the ledger to know Olivia Pratt is a fucking snake.” He spits out her name like it tastes bad. “Whatever tricks she used to convince Brady to let her pledge are the same ones she used on you.”
To my surprise, Vaughn nods in agreement. “We should have sent her packing a long time ago. Let’s tear this place apart. The ledger has to be here.”
I stare at Vaughn and he just stares right back at me, face impassive. With a sick sense of dread, I realize this situation has somehow spiraled entirely out of my control. I was stupid enough to believe it when Jack Deguerre told me that this could all be over and done. So I hadn’t been paying enough attention to the scattered puzzle pieces spread out in front of me, just waiting to be snapped into place.
The question I ask is only loud enough for Vaughn to hear. “What are you doing?”
He doesn’t bother answering me, not that I expect him to. Nolan has already wandered off to look under the couch cushions, as if the enormous ledger dropped between them like spare change. Cole has to be back in the bedroom because I hear annoyed noises coming from that direction.
“How long have you guys been looking?” Vaughn asks casually, seeming unbothered as I continue to stare at him.
Cole comes out of the bedroom and answers before I do. “About twenty minutes.”
“Hotel rooms don’t have that many hiding places.” Vaughn turns in a half-circle as he surveys the room, staring at every corner with exaggerated interest until he suddenly stops. “Any of you ever seen that show, Dexter?”
Vaughn doesn’t wait for an answer as he grabs a chair and drags it under an air-conditioning vent on the far wall.
He sticks his fingers through the metal slats and lightly pulls on it. The vent comes easily off the wall — too easily. When he carelessly tosses it on the couch, I see the wrapped bundle tucked inside the small opening left in the wall.
“Is it there?” Nolan asks eagerly.
Vaughn steps down from the chair and turns around. Cradled in his arms like an infant is a familiar leather-bound book, the cover peeking out from where it’s wrapped up in a black hoodie.
His voice is a grim murmur. “Found it.”
Cole and Nolan react like Vaughn just showed them a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Whoops and hollers that are deafening in volume. I’m too shocked to pretend to be excited.
What the actual fuck? “How did you know that was there?”
Vaughn shrugs as he tosses the hoodie away. “Lucky guess. I figured you’d already looked in the more obvious places.”
My heart beats painfully hard in my chest. It isn’t a coincidence that Vaughn strolled right in here and found the ledger in the first place he looked for it.
Nothing about this is a fucking coincidence.
From the triumphant look on his face as he studies me, Vaughn knows precisely what I’m thinking.
They’re all right about one thing: I have been well and truly played.
But it wasn’t by Gigi.
Cole takes the ledger, holding it almost reverently as Nolan crowds in beside him. “Doesn’t look like any pages are missing, but we still have to call the alumni.”
