My face is warm when I finally force my eyes open. Sunlight streaks across me, brighter than it is in my room at the manor or Uncle Arbor’s. That’s when I remember I’m not in my own room. I’m in Leo’s.
And I’m in his bed despite falling asleep on the floor. What the—
The sheets fall away as I sit up, huffing in relief to see I’m still in my same leggings and T-shirt from last night, my ruby necklace tucked beneath it. Although, I must have kicked off my shoes at some point. I glance around the room. All that’s left is a mess of blankets on the floor. From the brightness, it must be late morning.
Beside his bed is a nightstand, which my phone sits on, plugged into a charger. Leo must have done that. I unplug it and hold the power button, the screen coming to life and showing no new notifications. Uncle Arbor must still be away and Daisy at Kev’s.
I shuffle out of bed, stretching my sore limbs and straightening my clothes. In the light of day, I realize I never even put a bra on before abandoning my room.
Yes, because most people getting attacked in the middle of the night would prioritize supporting their boobs. Except now, the chill of their central AC makes me very aware. I grab a hoodie of Leo’s slung over the back of a desk chair and tug it on, hoping he won’t mind.
I make a pitstop in his bathroom, the tampon taped to my hand evidence that last night really happened. It all feels so ludicrous, as if it were just a nightmare. But it wasn’t, and that’s even more terrifying.
I pause before I step into the hall. It’s almost eleven, so his parents should be at work. I slowly slink down the staircase.
His house is the same as when we were kids. Modest size, all open, the stairs entering into the living room that shares the same space as the kitchen, the foyer between the two. The navy couch is faded from time and the arms threadbare in some spots. The TV has a bit of a butt on it, like it’s trying to be a flat-screen but it’s a little too old. The walls are half white paneling, half wallpaper with floral designs, peeling in some places. It gives the air of someone who tried to have a nice house but then had four kids wreck it throughout the years.
Maybe I don’t blame Mrs. DiVincenzi for being so short-tempered last night.
“Good morning!” Leo calls cheerily from the kitchen. He sits at a stool at the counter, his piece of the map on the granite surface beside a cup of coffee. He’s dressed for the day in cargo shorts, a Dri-FIT black shirt, and his dark hair damp and curling against his forehead from a shower, I assume. “You slept in.”
“Your parents aren’t here?”
“Nope,” he says. “But Quinn and Caleb should be soon. His bus was running late, so she’s meeting him at the stop and they’re gonna walk here.”
I nod, awkwardly standing in the middle of his living room in his hoodie, the same one he wore the other night with the hockey sticks on the front. I cross my arms over my chest just in case it’s not enough. “How’d I get in your bed?”
“Around seven you woke up, grumbled something about how you hated sleeping on the floor, and climbed in.” He gives an exasperated sigh. “And before you ask—yes, I stayed on the floor. Although I am a snuggler, so it was tempting.”
He flashes a smile, so I know it’s a joke. “Proud of you. And thank you. For letting me stay here. And—” I raise my hand to show off the makeshift bandage.
“Of course,” he says, turning back to his map. “I only ask you give a good Yelp review. Helps business.”
“I’ll consider it.”
We fall into an easy silence as I peer over his shoulder at the map. “Any chance you’ve figured out where the next clue is?” I ask.
He takes a long sip of his coffee, which looks more milk and sugar than java. “I might.”
The doorbell rings, jerking me to attention. “It’s just Quinn and Caleb,” Leo reminds me, getting up to open it.
It’s not until they step through the threshold that I relax.
“We need to talk.” Notes of panic are woven into Caleb’s tone.
Leo has barely locked the door behind them before Caleb’s in my face.
“What happened last night? Did you see faces? Get video? How far did they chase you? Do they know you’re here right now? Are they—”
“Whoa.” I rub my temples. “I need you to take five steps back. One question at a time.”
He takes two steps back. “Leo told us you got attacked in the middle of the night. They’re going to come after the rest of us next, so I need details.”
I spill everything, starting with the full story about the Rosewood Inc. board member news and sparing them the end of my talk with Daisy, although I mention her driving off. Quinn stares at the counter, seeming uninterested except for the subtle tilt of her head in my direction. Caleb hangs on every word, eyes huge behind his glasses.
“And then I came here,” I say, finishing the story with a vague gesture.
“Why here?” Quinn asks. “Why not the police?”
“Too far. And . . .” Words stick in my throat. For the first time ever, I say what’s been tucked in the back of my mind for a year. “When I found my dad and called nine-one-one, it took them forever to get to our house. I guess I just don’t have a lot of trust in them.”
“There’s also Hayworth and the town paper to think about,” Quinn says. “You go to the police now, that’s gonna be the top story. ‘Iris Rosewood’s Granddaughter Attacked in Violent Search for Treasure.’ We’ll have even more of a target on our backs.”
I nod, glancing at my phone to confirm no new notifications have appeared. “We’re running on borrowed time anyway. My uncle must still be in Boston, otherwise I’m sure he would have flipped out at my obliterated door. Once he sees it, he won’t let me out of his sight.”
“Getting the police involved will slow us down,” Leo agrees. “Between the other people searching for it, the threat of your family losing its spot in Rosewood Inc., and now whoever is targeting you, we’ve only got like two days to find it.”
Quinn looks at Caleb. “Brains, what’re our odds?”
He releases a long, suffering sigh, taking his glasses off to clean the lenses on his forest-green polo. “Of finding a quarter of a billion dollars in two days? Not great. Of finding it before others do, some of whom are targeting us now? Even worse.”
She shrugs. “So it keeps us on our toes.”
“Why do you think they came after me?” I ask.
“It’s not like anyone knows you have the map,” Quinn points out. “Daisy’s broadcasted a lot of shit, but not that.”
“I bet she would if she knew,” I mutter.
“I don’t know,” Caleb says. “But obviously, it gives us more motivation than ever to hurry.”
A raucous knocking on the front door startles us. Panic flares in my chest as I turn to Leo. “Is someone else supposed to come?”
He shakes his head. The knock comes again followed quickly by another harsh rap. Two sets of hands.
“It’s them,” I say, not even sure who “them” is. But I know it must be the same people from last night. Suddenly, I’m sprinting through the darkness again, breath short, tripping through gardens in the moonlight. “They found me.”
“We should run,” Caleb whispers.
In one motion, Quinn pulls her switchblade from her hair, flicking it open. “I’m not afraid of them,” she snarls.
“I am!” Caleb’s voice is an octave higher. He crouches behind the counter, and I fall down next to him, realizing Leo has slipped out of the room. Did he ditch us to sneak out the back?
He stalks back in, clutching a hockey stick like a bat. Quinn flicks the lock on the door, then goes to the knob. Caleb and I peer from behind the safety of the corner of the counter, our breaths stilted with panic. Leo jerks his chin as a go ahead to Quinn, winding back as she flings the door open and—
“Whoa, dude, what’s with the stick?”
I collapse in relief. Behind the door is none other than Jordan Bankson, Moriah Phillips, and Kev Asani—the other half of Leo and Daisy’s friend group. Jordan pushes his overgrown blond hair from his eyes, looking perplexed.
“Oh, hey,” Leo says, the tension slipping from his body as he lowers the hockey stick. “Just, uh, thought you were someone else.”
“We’ve been trying to reach you all morning, dude. We’re heading to the country club for a pool day. Hot as balls out. You down?”
Jordan looks past Leo to see Quinn standing beside the sofa, the knife still in her hand and a murderous gaze trained on Kev. His eyes rove further to take in Caleb and me, both of us still awkwardly crouching behind the counter. Slowly, we stand.
“What are you doing with her?” Moriah asks Leo, jutting her chin toward me. Her dark eyes narrow. “You’re with the wrong Rosewood.”
“Where’s Daisy?” I ask Kev. I assumed she was still with him, since she would have surely seen my door if she went home.
He pointedly ignores Quinn’s death stare, shrugging his obscenely broad shoulders. “I dunno. She left this morning and said she had things to do today.”
Great. She obviously didn’t go home, because I’d hope she would care enough to check on me if she saw my ruined room. But if not home, then what the hell is she up to?
“My dad is holding a private cabana just for us,” Moriah says, always happy to flaunt her status as the daughter of the owners of Rosetown Country Club. “Leo, you’re coming, right?”
Silence stretches, six sets of eyes peering at him. My heart gives a strange little lurch, our conversation from last night resurfacing. I’m the yes guy.
He looks over his shoulder at me, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
You don’t have to be, I try to tell him with my eyes.
“I should probably stay here,” he says finally. A small sigh of relief escapes me against my will. “We’re kind of working on a project, so I’ll have to catch up another time.”
“Whatever, dude. Good luck with your project.” Jordan rolls his eyes, which are typically half-closed since he’s under the influence of something probably illegal 90 percent of the time. He steps off the porch, muttering about all the beer he snuck from his brother’s stash. If it’s supposed to be last-ditch bait for Leo, he thankfully doesn’t take it.
“I’ll miss you today, Le,” Moriah says, fluttering her lash extensions at him. Her gaze shifts to me, freezing into a cold glare. She looks me up and down, surely taking note of Leo’s hoodie. With a toss of her shiny black waves and a sneer, she follows Kev and Jordan off the porch. Leo closes the door behind them.
“I think I might have preferred the kidnappers,” Quinn mutters, tucking her knife back into her bun.
Leo doesn’t comment, but I sense the unease rolling through him. He probably regrets staying. Surely, they’ll tell Daisy, and she’ll jump to her own conclusions.
“A guy I was talking to told me about how stuck-up people from Rosetown High can be,” Caleb says. “I thought he was exaggerating.”
“Oh!” I turn to Caleb. “Miles, right? I forgot you guys hung out the other day. How’d that go? I’ve been so wrapped up I forgot to reply to his texts yesterday.”
Caleb suddenly finds the granite countertops very interesting. “It went fine.” He clears his throat. “More important, we need to figure out the next clue. I’m in this with you guys, but I’m not trying to let it ruin my life. I have a perfectly normal family at home. I’m projected to get into Yale. I don’t want everything getting messed up because some lady I barely knew sent me on a death hunt. Maybe this is a lesson, you know? Like, greed is lethal and all that.”
“Have you eaten breakfast?”
We turn to Leo in confusion, who’s already pulling a pan from a cabinet and a carton of eggs from the fridge.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“It’s just, I don’t think any of us have eaten breakfast,” Leo explains.
My stomach chooses this exact moment to be a dirty snitch and growl.
He grabs a spatula and points at it. “Case proven. You can’t make life-altering decisions on an empty stomach. It’s facts.”
“And I suppose you have scientific evidence to back this?” Caleb prods.
“Yep. The evidence that I make a mean omelet. Now chill out for five minutes.”
Caleb gives an exasperated sigh, collapsing on one of the stools and staring at Leo’s piece of the map and the corresponding clue. I want to scream at Leo that we’re wasting precious time, but if he wants to become a short-order cook, I doubt anything I can say will stop him.
And fine, maybe I wouldn’t say no to an omelet.
“Come here,” Quinn says, pulling me toward the couch. She nudges the coffee table out of the way, leaving an expanse of carpet for the two of us to stand. “If someone’s out to get you, you need to know how to fight them off.”
“I’m hoping that somebody breaking into my room with a weapon doesn’t become a regular occurrence.”
A wry grin feints across her lips. “Glad the Michael Myers shit didn’t kill your sass. It’s good armor. Now square up with me.”
“What are you doing?”
“Teaching you how to defend yourself. Pretend this is a knife.” She picks up the TV remote. “And I’m trying to attack you. What do you do first?”
“Scream,” I reply honestly, something I did plenty of last night. “Run.”
“But you can’t because I’ve cornered you,” she says. “So, your next best option is to disable me.”
“Grab the knife?”
“Yeah, if you want your hand chopped off.” She jabs the remote at me. “Grab the wrist. It’ll slow their movement, giving you enough time to go for the throat. If you smash your elbow into someone’s trachea, the blow could be hard enough to damage it and disrupt their breathing. Throw them off.”
“And then I grab the knife?”
“If you want a knife so badly, you should have brought your own.”
“Hey!” Leo calls from the kitchen, two strips of bacon in his hands. “Watch the vases on the mantel!”
Quinn and I move away from the mantel and its fragile decor.
“The elbow to the throat will stun them. You should run, but if you’re feeling gutsy, wrangle the knife out of their grasp so you can stab them. And kicks to the groin are always pretty effective, too.”
We try it, moving in slow mo. “Where did you learn this?”
“My mom made me take self-defense classes,” she says as if it’s as common as parents forcing their kids to do soccer or art camp. “We moved all the time, and some of our neighborhoods weren’t as nice as others. Safety precaution.”
“Bet you never thought you’d need to know it in Rosetown.”
Her dark eyes glitter. “No, I definitely did. From the moment we came to this town, I could tell all the glamour was a front for something feral. And once I started school, that was confirmed.”
My gaze flickers to Leo. His back is to us, two pans on the stove and enough eggs to feed ten people between them. Caleb still hunches over the counter, and every now and then he mutters something, which Leo always has a response to. The two of them make an odd pair. The jock and the nerd.
She uses the distraction to jab her elbow into my throat. I cough and glare at her. “Caught you slippin’. Again,” she says, motioning for us to keep practicing.
“You have good instincts.” I pick up from where she left off a minute ago. “You got yourselves in with the wolves.”
To my surprise, she laughs. The sound is nice, and it lights up her face, her bun bobbing. “And wolves they are.” She nods toward Leo. “Especially that one. Whatever’s going on between you two, watch your back.”
“Nothing’s going on,” I say. “We’re coworkers.” Who, apparently, sleep on floors together. “But why do you say that?”
“Aside from being at the mercy of Moriah’s demon gaze since she’s obsessed with him?” She shrugs. “Don’t get me wrong—Leo is the best of them. He was the only reason I became friends with the ‘cool kids.’” She rolls her eyes. “I was pretty quiet my first day, and he wouldn’t stop asking me questions. Asked if I wanted to eat lunch with him, and I said sure, not realizing what I was getting myself into. Or who.”
“I think he just wanted to make sure you felt like you belonged,” I say, wondering how much of that is inspired by how he actually feels.
“Probably. But that still doesn’t change what he did.”
Dread pools in my stomach. “What’s that?”
Our voices have dropped to hushes that I doubt can be heard over the sizzling bacon and Caleb’s questions. Quinn leans in close, and I’m struck by the memory of my life before Dad died—swapping secrets with friends, giggling into each other’s ears, passing messages just for our eyes. Quinn and I have none of that history, but it’s nice to pretend for the moment.
“I’m sure you know the rumor about me and your cousin.”
I try to keep my face impassable, the broken picture frame flashing in my mind. “There are lots of rumors about my cousin.”
She doesn’t buy it. “You know the one. That we kissed.”
I give in, still moving to block her attacks with the remote control. “Listen, I’ve never believed it—”
“You should have. It’s true. But I kissed her only because she kissed me first.”
I try to hide my shock. Daisy’s been out as bisexual since sophomore year, but I didn’t want to assume something was up between the two of them just because they were really close and then suddenly not. “What does that have to do with Leo?”
“He was all for it,” Quinn says. “He was the one who told me Daisy had feelings for me. When we kissed, I couldn’t wait to tell him. But she had already gotten to him, twisted it so it sounded like it was all me, like she never liked me at all. And he knew she was lying—he knows her better than anyone and vice versa—but he didn’t stop her from telling our friends that version, that I came onto her and it wasn’t mutual. Moriah’s always been a bitch, and Jordan and Kev are brainless. With Daisy and Leo teamed up against me, there was no point in sticking around. I stopped eating lunch in the cafeteria and would go to the gym. Got into lifting and longboarding. I hadn’t talked to Daisy since Christmas break when it all went down.”
“Until the night of Gram’s party,” I recall. “You wanted to talk to her about Kev.”
Quinn hits me extra hard. I yelp when the remote stings my wrist. “When we were friends, Kev was always flirting with her, and it pissed me off. She doesn’t give a shit about him. She’s just hooking up with him as an extra ‘fuck you’ to me.”
“She obviously still cares about you if she’s trying to make you jealous. I don’t get why she’s acting like that if she’s the one who pushed you away.”
Quinn gives me a dry expression. “Because she’s a Rosewood. You have thorns, and anytime somebody tries to get close, you prick them. I didn’t want to waste my time, and I think she’s mad I didn’t put up more of a fight for her.”
Finally, the remote clatters to the ground, my grip so tight around her pale wrist that it leaves red splotches when I let go. Quinn nods in approval. “It’s a talent of ours,” I say.
“It’s ridiculous.”
“It’s time for breakfast!” Leo calls cheerily. We venture to the counter and slide onto stools, the conversation we just had disappearing as quickly as it started. I can’t help but glance at Quinn, a weird feeling in my chest that might be gratitude. It’s a piece of her I didn’t know, and I’m grateful for it.
And maybe a little bit relieved to know that Leo didn’t exclusively choose Daisy over me. It seems to be a habit of his. Just like Daisy seems to develop sudden reasons to hate the people closest to her.
Leo dishes an omelet in front of me: bacon, cheese, and green onions with a side of toast. My favorite, though I don’t see how he would have known that.
Caleb takes a tentative bite of his as if he expects it to be poisonous. Instead, his eyes light up. “It’s good!” he says around the mouthful of egg.
“No shit,” Leo laughs, stabbing into his own. “I happen to be an excellent cook.”
“You learned from your mom?” I assume.
His grin falters. “My nonna.”
And all at once, it hits me. I pull his piece of the map closer, then read the clue again. Favorite snack. The memory of Gram’s birthday party shines bright, her holding a plate of meats and cheeses out to me. “Try the salami,” she’d said. “It’s my favorite.”
“It’s at the deli,” I say. When I look up, Leo is already staring at me. There’s a flicker in his eyes, like he already had the thought.
“Then what are we doing here eating omelets?” Quinn says before I can call him out, shoveling the rest of hers into her mouth. “Let’s go.”
“There’s just one problem,” he says. “I haven’t talked to my nonna in months.”
“And Gram would have known that,” I say around the last bite of toast. I push my plate away, no time to do the polite thing and take it to the sink. “Which is why she put it there.”
Caleb’s brows furrow. “You think it’s hidden somewhere in DiVincenzi’s Deli?”
I nod, turning to Leo. From his hesitance, maybe he’s known since the moment we first read the clue. But whatever stands between him and Nonna, it’s not enough to forsake a fortune. We know that, and he does too.
“We’re running out of time,” I remind him. No more stalling.
Quinn hops off the stool and claps a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “Time for a family reunion.”