Free Killer Summer by Ridley Pearson

that possible?” a winded Brandon asked.
    “Professionals,” Walt answered, a sense of dread overcoming him.
    He’d had her within arm’s reach.

18
    S ummer was having doubts. Her plan had seemed pretty simple at first, but its execution required a commitment she wasn’t sure she could make. “Easier said than done,” her father would have lectured. Oddly enough, just thinking of him, whether he was right or not, steeled her to her purpose.
    She’d left a note on the coffee table in the suite’s living room: Dad, found a friend. Going out. Back by midnight.
    She assumed the last bit would piss him off, since her curfew was eleven P.M. She had no intention of missing her curfew, but she didn’t want him knowing that. He’d get in well past eleven, but she just wanted to give him a little heartburn before checking her room and finding her asleep.
    The events of the next few hours were critical to her bigger plan. Her mother, with her many business dealings, had taught Summer how to use strategy. The prize went to the best planner, the one with the foresight to lay the necessary groundwork. To cinch the deal, to make the relationship stick, you had to get the other person to take the bait without knowing what he was swallowing.
    She would leave him this message tonight, then obey the rules, and by tomorrow night it would become routine. He’d automatically grant her an extension on her curfew in expectation that she’d never need it. Then . . .
    “Hey, dude,” she said, sliding into the passenger’s seat of Kevin’s beater Subaru. The contents of the laundry bag she carried clattered. He looked over at it, curious.
    “Whaddya got?” he asked.
    She opened the bag, revealing little liquor bottles from the mini-bar in the room. “Goodies.”
    “For real?” he said.
    “Including four cold beers.”
    “Sweet.”
    She pulled the rearview mirror her direction to inspect herself. She then pushed it back into place.
    “Seat belt,” he ordered.
    “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    “You want to get stopped? The cops here . . . well . . . I happen to know they’re sweeping for seat belts right now.”
    “You’ve got the inside track, do you?”
    She clipped the seat belt at her waist, then leaned forward against the shoulder strap, trying to emphasize her chest. She wanted his attention in all the right places, wanted him to be thinking ahead. His cooperation was key to her plan.
    “I actually do . . . have the inside track,” he said. “My uncle is the county sheriff.”
    “No way.”
    “Way.”
    “So are you cool with this?” She nodded at the laundry bag.
    “As long as it’s not open in the car.”
    “You’re going to drink with me, though,” she said, as if fact.
    “If I get too loaded, I can borrow a friend’s bike and ride home,” he said.
    She liked that.
    “A planner,” she let slip.
    “What . . . ?”
    “You’re a planner.”
    “Yeah, I guess so . . . sometimes.”
    “You either are or you aren’t.”
    “You?”
    “I’d put a check in that box, yeah,” she said. “But I’m no type A . . . not hardly.”
    “You’ve got a real thing about your father, don’t you?”
    “My mother’s dead,” she said.
    The engine sounded rough when their voices weren’t covering it, an unfamiliar rhythm under the hood like someone clapping out of time. The silence between Summer and Kevin stretched out uncomfortably.
    “My dad killed himself,” Kevin said, catching his reflection in the windshield, proud that he could look so emotionless.
    “Whoa!”
    “At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. No one’ll say. Mom lost, like, a million pounds after he died and, I don’t know, changed. My uncle and grandpa are pissed off at each other most of the time, mainly, I think, because of what happened to Dad. It was ruled accidental, but I’m pretty sure he did it, and that my uncle covered for him, and that the only reason he did that was because Grandpa made