I brush the back of my hand over my mouth—just to check—then laugh as I shake my head. Considering I was literally freaking out and terrified not ten minutes ago, I have to say I’m feeling pretty darn good. “You have made my entire day,” I tell him. “I mean, you have completely turned it around.”
He’s grinning, too. “So are you finished? She always did talk too much,” he adds with a quick glance toward Damien.
I smack him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m too giddy to berate you for teasing me,” I say. “How are you even here?”
“I took the wrong left turn,” he says, alluding to our own private joke—one that started in fourth grade, though I don’t remember how, and we both start laughing again.
Beside us, Nikki clears her throat, clearly fighting a laugh of her own. I see her glance toward Damien, who reaches for her hand before speaking. “I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you two know each other?”
I meet Renly’s eyes, then shrug. “Nope.”
“Never seen her before in my life,” he adds. He glances between the two of them, then turns back to me. “I don’t think they believe us.”
“Yeah, well, Damien’s pretty sharp. He doesn’t miss much.”
“Thanks a lot,” Nikki says, and I flash my boss—my partner—a happy grin. This day has done a complete one-eighty.
“We grew up next door to each other,” Renly explains. “We made a pact in fourth grade. Me and Abby.”
“Poor Red,” I say.
“I have to second that,” Nikki says. “I’m definitely Team Red.”
I look between the two of them, the pieces falling together. “Wait, you’re saying that the guy named Red who helped you during the hostage thing in Manhattan was Red Cooper?”
“We were all three friends,” Renly continues, “but Abs and I were practically joined at the hip, especially in junior high.” Renly meets my eyes again. “Red is going to have a cow when he hears you’re in town.”
“Red’s here?” Now my head is really spinning. Red and Renly both in the LA area? “How did I not know any of this?”
It’s a rhetorical question; I know perfectly well what happened. We’d lost track after his mom dragged them all the way from the Santa Clarita Valley to Houston. And, to be painfully honest, we’d started to drift apart even before that, a sad fact for which I blame myself since by that time I’d developed an honest-to-goodness crush on him. And, of course, was avoiding him completely.
It wasn’t hard. I was a techie hanging out in the STEM wing, and he was suddenly ridiculously popular, what with the athletics and his seriously awesome looks. Which, of course, means he barely noticed how little I was around. After all, he practically had a harem of girls who’d matured a hell of a lot faster than me.
If I sound bitter, it’s only because I was. At the time I blamed him. Now I know I was a shitty friend.
Maybe we would’ve found our footing again, but then they left for Texas. After that, we had a few calls and emails during high school, then just sort of lost touch. I knew that Renly had joined the military, but once I got sucked into college and work, I lost complete track of him.
Of course, he lost track of me as well.
Right now, though, none of that matters. I’m too happy to see him again. This boy who’d been my best friend and my first crush.
“—but what the hell is going on?”
I realize I’ve gotten completely lost in my own thoughts, and I blink up at him. “What?”
Renly’s expression is part concern, part exasperation. “Nikki said there was an emergency—that you were in trouble.”
“Oh!” I whip my head around to Nikki and Damien, who’ve completely flown from my mind, not to mention the mess on my car that is what had made me call Nikki in the first place.
“No, no.” I shake my head. “It’s okay. I realized after I called that it’s okay. Weird, but not as scary as I’d thought. When you pulled up, I was telling Nikki and Damien that I’d cried wolf too early.”
“And I was pointing out that just because it’s fake doesn’t mean it wasn’t intentional,” Nikki says, her mouth curved down into a frown.
“Fake?” Renly repeats. “Fake what?” He moves over, shifting his angle enough so that he can see the hood of my car. I follow him, grimacing when I see it again. The horrible mess of red goo smeared all over the hood. “What the hell?” he says, his voice low and dangerous.
“I saw it and freaked,” I explain. “I’ve been getting these weird calls with hang-ups and so I was on edge. I thought it was blood, and I overreacted.”
“It is blood,” Renly says, moving closer and then dragging his finger through the goo. “Of a sort, anyway. Corn syrup, dye, a little soap. A few other ingredients. All adds up to the kind of fake blood they use on film sets.” He turns back to me with a grimace. “Guess whoever’s harassing you didn’t have the stomach to actually sacrifice a goat on your hood.”
I cringe, then hug myself, my joy at seeing Renly fading in the knowledge that somebody had at the very least, wanted me to think it was blood.
“It’s not just your car,” Damien says from a few yards away. I hadn’t realized he’d stepped away, but now he’s walking back toward us along the row of cars parked parallel to the sidewalk. “Two of the cars between you and the intersection have the same stuff on their hoods.”
Hope flutters in my chest. “So this wasn’t about me? I don’t need to worry?”
“I want to hear more about these calls,” Renly says firmly. “But if there’s only been a few hangups and no escalation, then you’re probably okay. The question is—is this goo an escalation?”
“I’d be more concerned if it was only your car. Or real blood,” Nikki says as Damien frowns at his phone screen. “The fact that it’s fake already has me feeling less worried. And now that we know you’re not the only one, it doesn’t really feel like you’re a target.” She looks at Renly. “What do you think?”
“Probably someone filming a movie nearby,” he says. “Something low budget, with a volunteer PA who decided to get their jollies on after the filming.”
I look at Renly. “Wow. That’s very specific.”
He shrugs. “I’ve been doing a lot of work on movie sets these days. I’ve seen a lot of the interns, and I know how college kids can be. Especially if one of them is trying to impress their friends. It wouldn’t happen on a big budget action movie, but someone from one of the film schools doing a short film that needed some fake blood? I can see some idiot on the crew spreading it around a few cars just for kicks and grins.”
“Good call,” Damien says. “There’s a student crew from UCLA about three blocks over filming a horror movie. One of their buckets of fake blood was stolen last night.”
“How do you know—”
He grins at Nikki. “I texted Rachel,” he says, referring to his executive assistant. “She called the local precinct. The supervising professor reported it. Some folding tables and equipment were also pinched.”