Page 6 of Wicked Brutal

I stopped. Ally was standing waist-deep beside their dock in a black-and-white gingham bikini, and that registered immediately. I’d seen Ally in a swimsuit before — our families had owned neighboring lake houses our entire lives — but childhood swimming and an eighteen-year-old Ally O’Toole standing in the morning sun were apparently two very different things. Her red hair was twisted into a messy knot on top of her head, sunglasses covered her eyes, and water beaded across her shoulders while she crouched with both hands beneath the surface. Tobias stood a few feet off with his green net.

“Don’t move,” she told him.

“I’m not.”

“You’re moving right now.”

I laughed, and Ally’s head turned. Even behind the sunglasses, I knew the exact second she saw me. “Harrington.”

“O’Toole.”

Tobias spun around. “Ryan!”

“Morning, menace.”

“I found a frog.”

“Looks like you’re doing a great job keeping him.”

“He escaped.”

I walked down the dock. Tobias pointed at the water. “He went under there.”

“Where?”

“By Ally.”

I looked. Then I looked at her. The gingham wasn’t helping my concentration, and her eyebrows rose over the top of the sunglasses.

“Eyes up, Harrington.”

“They were,” I said.

“Liar.”

“Can’t prove it.”

She splashed water at me. It hit my legs, and I looked down, then back at her. “That was hostile.”

“Call the police.”

“Probably will.”

Tobias groaned. “Can you guys stop talking?”

“No,” Ally and I said together, and then we looked at each other, and she smiled. Small.

I stepped into the water. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Saving the frog.”

“From Tobias?”

“Obviously.”

“Ryan!”

I grinned at him. “Where’d he go?” Tobias came closer, and Ally immediately caught his arm.