Free Deadly Cool by Gemma Halliday Page A

ten o’clock news. If my mom was afraid of negative energy, Sam’s parents ate it up like it was fuel. They even had a map posted on their kitchen wall with little pushpins stuck in it where, according to the Megan’s law website, every registered sex offender within ten miles of their house lived. Needless to say, those streets were blocked out in red as routes Sam was not allowed to take to school.
    “Did Raley give you the third degree?” I asked, breaking into my Red Delicious apple.
    Sam nodded, her tongue whipping out to remove the mayo glob. “And fourth and fifth. God, you’d think I was the one who killed her, the way he grilled me. I was an innocent witness!” she said. Then she paused. “Well, almost innocent. He told my dad that we snuck in Josh’s window.”
    I cringed. “Ouch. What did your dad say?”
    “That Stanford does not let breakers and enterers into their premed program.” She paused. “I’m paraphrasing here. It was hard to make out the exact words, what with all the shouting.”
    “Sucks,” I said.
    “No kidding. Did you talk to Josh last night?” Sam asked, reaching into her brown bag for a napkin.
    I glanced up. The cafeteria was crowded, but most people were paying more attention to their taco platters than the conversation around them. Still, I leaned in, whispering my answer, lest Raley somehow pry the info out of the masses.
    “Yeah.”
    “Did you see him?”
    I shook my head. “We IM’d.”
    “Good. Then you aren’t technically aiding and abetting.”
    I raised an eyebrow at her.
    “That’s what Raley told my dad last night. That if I knew if you knew where Josh was I had better tell him because it meant I was concealing information about someone aiding and abetting. He seemed pretty serious.”
    I blew out a breath, ruffling my hair. “I know. Which is why I had to talk to Josh about the text Courtney got.”
    She shoved a straw into a juice box, sipping grape juice into her mouth. “So, what did he say? Did he send it?”
    I shook my head, and quickly relayed the conversation with Josh.
    “If he didn’t send it, who did?”
    I shrugged. “Obviously someone who wanted to make it look like it was from Josh. Someone who heard the rumor that Josh and Courtney were . . . you know.”
    “Effing?”
    I cringed. “Yeah.”
    Sam looked around the room. “I hate to tell you this, Hart, but that doesn’t narrow the field down a whole lot. Pretty much everyone had heard by then.”
    I pulled my pride up off the bottom of my shoe. “Thanks. I needed that reminder.”
    Sam ignored me, instead tilting her head toward the front of the cafeteria. “Don’t look now, but here comes our ‘partner.’”
    Of course I couldn’t help swiveling in my seat to get a better view of the front entrance.
    Where Chase was framed in the doorway.
    His broad shoulders filled the entryway almost as tightly as anyone on the HHH football team’s would. He was tall, but not in a gangly way, and he had muscles pumped up in all the right places. He was wearing a pair of jeans and was once again doing the black T-shirt thing. He had on a pair of black Docs, a black leather cuff on his right wrist, and his black hair was spiked up from his head in a mussed kind of way. Not crusty straight, but more bedroom tousled.
    Not that I had any firsthand knowledge of what bedroom tousled might look like, but I imagined that was it.
    Um, wow. Chase was actually kinda hot.
    I mean, if you went for that whole bad boy thing. Which I totally didn’t. Bad boys were bad, and I’d had enough bad boyfriend to last me a lifetime, thank you very much.
    Chase’s eyes scanned the room and found mine staring back at him.
    I blushed. God knows why.
    Luckily he didn’t seem to notice and made a beeline toward our table.
    “Oh, great. Here he comes,” Sam said, completely oblivious to the heat in my cheeks.
    She put her head down, sucking loudly through her straw.
    “Hey,” Chase said, planting himself on the