Live and Let Ride (Ridgemore #3)

Chapter 1

Boss and His Bitches,

Psycho Murderer and His Underlings

The priest droned on in a nonsensical monotone of Latin I probably would have understood had I been inclined to listen.

I wasn’t. I was too busy willing my eyes to shoot laser beams to slice every lying, fake motherfucker at this ruse of a funeral into so many tiny pieces that the coroner’s office would never finish sorting what parts belonged to whom.

Regrettably, though I’d been trying for a solid ten minutes, my eyes weren’t sparking anything deadlier than a molten, furious anger—pretty much a constant since Griffin’s Mustang, Clyde, erupted into a fireball.

I was certain I’d never recover from the horrifying sight, no matter how long I lived.

For fuck’s sake, our faux parents didn’t even believe in religion!

They condemned it as global-scale brainwashing for the weak of mind, worshipping science and its “concrete, verifiable explanations” instead.

Yet here we were, at Ridgemore’s largest cemetery, beside a gaping hole in “consecrated” ground behind a church, which waited to be filled with the remains of the man I loved.

Layla growled into the telepathic group chat that only Brady, Hunt, and I could currently hear,

Although the unrelenting afternoon sun beat down on our heads, making my scalp prickle hotly, Layla remained beneath a dense black veil that concealed the anger tightening her features, contorting her face into something bordering monstrous.

Certainly murderous. It was the same combustible anger I wore, only I did so openly.

I was beyond hiding that I wanted to kill every single sonofabitch here, playing their quaint little roles in Magnum’s farce.

They could all die for all I cared, all of them with their fake tears and faker sympathy. I’d cavort on their still-fresh graves.

On my right, with the imposing presence of a hulking volcano, stood Brady, with Layla at his other side.

His face was unnaturally flushed, as if he were sunburned.

The tendons in his neck bulged, his shoulders, arms, and hands tensing in a dance of ink and corded muscles.

Even as our classmates and teachers of Ridgemore High pretended to brim with sympathy as they joined us in mourning Griffin, they gave Brady a wide berth.

He was a rabid animal in the body of a man, who wore danger like a cloying cologne.

All he needed were some cute blue shorts that showed off his ripped legs, plus a gun or two, and he’d be ready to go postal on everyone here.

I’d never been the cheerleader type, but that … that I would cheer. Shit, I’d don a face-splitting smile, a microskirt, high kick my legs, and chant Ridgemore High’s cheerleading squad’s favorite: Be aggressive. Be-e aggressive. I’d do it till Brady ran out of bullets.

Hunt stood to my left. In stark contrast to the rest of us, he’d never looked more stoic, more solemn.

He didn’t twitch and barely appeared to breathe for long minutes at a time.

I imagined it was because he was barely holding himself together.

If he did anything to distract from keeping himself in one piece, he’d explode into a million shards of bloody, pulpy gore—like Griffin had.

Or maybe I only imagined he felt that way because it was how I felt.

According to everyone here but the three of us, Griffin Conway was dead.

Dead as dead got, really. Blown into so many bits that the mere thought of his beautiful body ripped to shreds like that threatened to still my heart.

For the first time in my life, I believed it was truly possible to die of grief, to feel a part of you missing like a crumbling, gaping chasm that could never be filled.

Without Griffin, I didn’t think I’d ever be whole again.

I didn’t think my friends would be either.

His was a loss I wasn’t equipped to bear.

It wasn’t like when he’d gone over the side of the cliff at the wheel in Clyde. Then at least Magnum had shown the decency to leave his body whole. Dead from a snapped neck, yes—for an agonizing while. But at least intact.

This time around, Magnum hadn’t just killed Griffin. He’d committed sacrilege. He’d taken something precious to me and my crew and decimated it.

Him.

When we’d finally managed to extinguish the flames, Clyde had settled into several heaping, smoking mounds, and Griffin’s body—his wondrous, gorgeous body—had been smeared all over Clyde’s charred skeleton.

Brady had tugged on Griff’s burnt arm to slide him from the wreckage.

It had come free with a crackle of blackened, crispy flesh.

Brady had puked until he dry heaved. Layla, who under normal circumstances probably couldn’t shut up for an entire day to win a million-dollar bet, hadn’t uttered a word for the rest of the night.

Hunt, already thin, had appeared gaunt, his face drawn into harsh, haunted angles.

And I … I seesawed between feeling unbearably much, or nothing at all. I was a raging inferno fueled by hatred and a pulsing need for revenge—or a desolate ice cave, where nothing thrived, nothing lived.

Layla growled into our minds, but also aloud, a guttural rumble that puffed out her veil, drawing the scrutiny of football coach Mr. Lauderbeck and his wide-receiver star, Duncan Mills.

Brady glared at them. The men hastily averted their gazes, pinning them on the skinny priest with the too-narrow nose who was still intoning his religion’s rituals for the dead.

But Griffin Conway, the man I loved, wasn’t truly dead.

He couldn’t be.

I wouldn’t allow it. I’d rip him out of the embrace of Death itself.

Layla said.

Brady grumbled while the tendons in his neck bulged.

We were silent for long beats filled only by the rustling of the dozens of people who’d come to pay their respects—actors, all of them, it seemed—and the rote Latin I feared might actually never end, another form of torture for our already tortured minds.

Layla said, Even threading through my own thoughts, Layla’s voice caught, nearly broke.

According to a recent memo that went out to our faux parents, my crew wasn’t supposed to know we were capable of dying and coming back to life.

We were supposed to be unsuspecting dumbasses without a clue that most of our high school, if not the entire fucking town of Ridgemore, was in on whatever plan Magnum Chase, megalomaniac gazillionaire, had concocted this time around.

We were expected to be wholly ignorant, to believe there was nothing extraordinary about us beyond our usual high intelligence levels.

We were the butt of an ongoing joke that wasn’t even remotely funny.

Brady said into our minds, Even tangling with my own thoughts, his words were gritty asphalt, the kind that tore up your knees so they wouldn’t stop bleeding.

He swallowed loudly enough that I heard it with my ears.

Hunt asked softly, as if he didn’t want to speak the words into existence.

I bit out harshly, when surely Hunt didn’t deserve it.

But everything that came out of me since the doomed race at the crossroads was harsh.

Whatever softness I had, if any remained, was beyond my reach, even for the friends I knew to be suffering as much as I was.

I insisted.

Hunt said.

I insisted.

Again we settled into a disturbed quiet. Every cough or cleared throat, every rustle of the uniformly black attire of the other “funeral” attendees, grated on my nerves like the touch of an open flame.

Layla said, dipping her hand under her veil to itch her nose. Or maybe it was to blot it. My girl didn’t like to let on when she cried, especially not around her brother.

So far, I’d caught Brady crying more than she had.

As for me, I was too empty to cry. Too dry to have anything to unleash beyond anger.

Of that, I had enough to burn down every single building in Ridgemore, including the entirety of Magnum’s pretty new institute.

Oh yes, I’d roast marshmallows as it burned.

But first, I’d trap him inside the sleek modern design I’d been foolish enough to admire.

From the relative privacy afforded by my dark sunglasses, I studied him.

Taller than our fake parents, he stood out as he nestled among them, as if they truly were all chums from way back.

Not the boss and his bitches. Not psycho murderer and his underlings.

Crazed maniac who wanted actual superpowers for himself and didn’t care how many people he had to mow down to get them.

Dressed in impeccably tailored black, he stared back at me despite the anonymity of my lenses. Ever so subtly, his head tipped. He was dissecting me from afar, always seeking more data, more advantage, more rewards from his highly unethical experiments.

Magnum possessed more money and resources than sanity, and enough charisma to convert zealots to his cause, making him very, very dangerous.

I offered miserably into our group bond.

Layla shook her head, her veil swaying. A warning not to betray that we were having private conversations slid to the edge of my tongue, where it withered. What did it matter anymore? Whatever advantage we’d worked so hard to preserve was meaningless when we couldn’t even save one of our own.