Free Kissing Trouble by Airicka Phoenix, Morgana Phoenix Page A

last, when it became apparent that no one was going to admit to the crime, Mason shut the door and sighed.
    “Help me clean it up before the kids see,” he said to his friends.
    “Wait!” Julie moved to stand between them and him. “You can’t clean it up. We have to phone the police. This is serious.”
    For one fleeting second, Mason and Shaun exchanged glances over her head before those blue eyes were on her once more.
    “I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said.
    Julie blinked and then frowned. “Not necessary? Someone butchered those poor...” She couldn’t even bring herself to say it. “And then hung them up like Christmas ornaments. I’m sorry, but we’re phoning the police.”
    Mason exhaled so heavily that it ended in a low growl. “Okay, fine. I’ll phone them. You get the kids out to the pool.”
    “The pool? Why—?”
    “Because they’re expecting it and if you want to keep this from them, they can’t be here when the police arrive.”
    Julie shook her head. “But I—”
    “I’ll call you when they get here. I promise,” he added when she continued to stand there.
    Cradling her insides together solely by willpower alone, Julie accepted his assurance with a solemn nod. She ducked her head and made a straight line to the powder room and the solitude it promised.
    Inside, she locked the door and slumped over the sink. Her stomach muscles churned and coiled like an angry serpent prepared to lash out. It writhed until she was all but sagging under the counter. It was by sheer grace that she heaved herself up. Her fingers fumbled with the knob as she twisted cold water into the porcelain basin and scrubbed at her face. The icy burn of it on her flushed face made her choke upon contact, but she splashed until she was no longer in danger of fainting.
    It had to have been Shaun, she thought, snapping the water off and reaching for a hand towel. No one else was capable of that much cruelty. She had often wondered how Mason could be friends with someone who took pleasure in terrorizing others. But shoving people in the hallway and knocking books out of people’s hands was a far leap from torturing and killing innocent creatures. Or was one synonymous with the other? Escalation of crimes wasn’t unheard of. Small, cruel things later growing into more heinous and nightmarish acts. At least, that’s what her textbooks said about serial killers. After all, wasn’t the torture of animals the first step?
    She shuddered and held her breath as another wave of nausea passed over her. Her heart drummed between her ears, almost muffling the low, urgent whispers coming from the hallway.
    “You’re not seriously going to phone the police,” Shaun was saying when she held her breath and moved to listen more closely.
    “I said I would,” came Mason’s short retort.
    “Why? Because some walking vagina told you to?”
    Julie’s gasp of disgusted outrage was swallowed by Mason’s agitated response.
    “No, because it’s the right thing to do.”
    “Right,” Shaun scoffed. “You know exactly what will happen the minute you call the cops, and yet you’re still going to do it because you’ve always been a little bitch when it comes to her.”
    “This has nothing to do with her.”
    “Bullshit!” Shaun spat. “She is the root of everything you’ve ever done.”
    Confusion drew Julie’s brows in a knot between her eyes. She pressed closer to the door, but whatever Mason said was too low to hear, although the tone rippled with an anger that left a hot wave through the room.
    “You expect me to believe that?” Shaun shot back. “Like I don’t know—”
    “Shaun, enough.”
    Mason didn’t shout, but there was a finality in his tone that speared the air with an icy arrow. Julie half expected ice particles to begin forming on the door and dripping off the doorknob.
    “I get that you’re pissed,” Mason continued in a more even tone. “Because of your nose—”
    “Fucking right