Page 4 of Wicked Brutal

I opened the next photograph. Same night: Roman and Tremblay talking, Ally standing between them, Tremblay looking at her instead of the photographer. I went backward. Another event, Ally younger — sixteen, maybe — Tremblay standing behind her chair with one hand resting on the back of it, Roman’s wife seated on the far side of the table while Tremblay sat beside Ally instead of her parents. Another. Christmas, his hand at her back again. Another. Ally seated beside him at dinner.

I sat back. It wasn’t proof of anything. It wasn’t even necessarily strange — our parents’ world was full of people touching shoulders and backs for photographs like they were all one giant happy family. But once I’d noticed it, I couldn’t stop noticing it. Tremblay was always too close to Ally. And Ally never looked comfortable. Not frightened, not angry — just gone. The same blank expression in every single photograph where he touched her.

I searched Tremblay. Then Roman and Tremblay together. Business connections, political connections, shared boards, a company registered in Delaware that led to another company that led nowhere useful. I spent another two hours on it before I closed everything, and I still didn’t know anything.

Only that I didn’t like what I’d seen.

Preston cornered me at my locker the next morning. “Well?”

I pulled out my calculus book. “No boyfriend.”

His grin came fast. “Seriously?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“She’s never dated anyone?”

“I said no boyfriend.”

“Okay, but—“

I closed my locker. “Stay away from her.”

He laughed, then realized I wasn’t laughing with him. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“I paid you seven hundred dollars.”

“And I answered your question.”

“So give me the rest.”

“There is no rest.”

“Bullshit.”

I stepped closer. Preston was bigger than me. It didn’t matter. “You paid me to find out whether Alison O’Toole was seeing somebody. She isn’t. Transaction complete.”

“Then why the fuck are you telling me to stay away?”

“Because I don’t like you.”

His face tightened. “You liked my money.”

“I still do.”

“Give it back.”

“No.”

“Then fuck off.” He moved to go around me, and I caught the front of his blazer and put him back against the lockers. Not hard. Didn’t need to be. The hallway kept moving around us — people noticed, nobody stopped, that was Edgewood — and I lowered my voice.

“Here’s the part you’re struggling with, Avery. You can ask Ally out. I can’t physically stop you.” I let a beat land. “But if you talk about her the way you did yesterday, if you make her uncomfortable, if I hear one fucking thing about you bothering her after she tells you no, I’m going to make your senior year so unpleasant you’ll beg your father to transfer you.”