Page 4 of Cruel Games

“They also know who pushed him down the stairs and called the paramedics, who then called the police.”

With a groan, I dashed up the stairs, waiting for her to call me a snitch. Or one of the other insults she had hurled at me when Billy got sentenced.

I sped past our bedroom into the sewing room Sammy and I had set up a few months after I had moved in. It was the smallest room, slightly bigger than a box, with a sewing table in the middle and a dressmaker’s dummy by the sash window.

Streams of afternoon sun filled the room, making me squint to find my cutting shears.

Beneath the tiled hearth of the cast iron Victorian fireplace lay a stash of money we’d saved for a rainy day. Clutching my shears like a dagger, I hacked at the grouting, creating tiny clouds of dust.

“Lilah, are you still there?” asked Mother.

I hunched a shoulder and brought the phone closer to my ear. “Yes?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Um…” I wedged the blades of the sewing scissors under the tile and loosened it from the hearth. Six dust-covered rolls of fifty-pound notes lay in the secret stash. I pulled one out and slipped it into my bag. Sammy could consider it my severance pay for all those hours I’d spent mixing nutrients and maintaining grow lights as his underground horticulturist.

“No?” I said.

“Someone’s probably watching the house right now.” Her voice rose to a squeak.

A spike of adrenaline lanced through my heart, making it pump harder. Every limb trembled with readiness as I pushed the tile back into place and cleaned off the dust with a square of fabric. “Shit!”

“There’s a social worker,” said Mother. “Ummm… Sameera Shetty, I think.”

“Ms. Reddy?”

“The dykey-looking Indian girl with the bright red lipstick,” she replied.

I would have rolled my eyes if I wasn’t in so much trouble. Married to the largest dealer of cocaine in Richley, but she didn’t have an ounce of tolerance for alternative lifestyles.

“What about her?” I asked.

“She’ll introduce you to the headmaster of Templar Academy.”

“I’m not going to Scot—”

“Where are you going to hide?” she hissed. “Billy’s leaving prison in a few weeks, and he’s convinced you were the one who told CID to follow him to his warehouse.”

The lie slipped from my lips. “But I would never—”

“Shut up for a minute and listen! People might have given you the benefit of the doubt when Billy got arrested, but Sammy…”

My shoulders slumped. Telling anyone from this lifestyle that he hit me first wasn’t going to fly. “Where can I find this headmaster—”

The bell rang.

Every ounce of blood drained from my face.

“Is there someone at the door?” asked Mother.

“Yes,” I whispered into the phone.

“Find somewhere to hide,” she whispered back. “And stay away from the windows.”

“Right.” I bent into a low crouch, glad to be upstairs.

The sound of a motorcycle engine so close to the back of the house turned my stomach into knots.