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“Is it Mr. Halifax or not?” Sophie asked.

RJ smiled.

“Is that a yes?!” she shrieked.

“I’ll tell you who it is,” RJ said. “If you both do something for me first.”

“What do you want?” Sophie asked.

“Wait for it,” he said.

“How long exactly do we need to wait for it?” I asked.

“Just wait for it.” His smile grew. In that devious way. That meant he was up to no good.

“At least tell me it wasn’t a drifter,” I said.

RJ shrugged. “I guess that’s fair. It’s not a drifter.”

“Is it one of our suspects?”

“What is this, 21 questions?”

“Just answer me,” I said.

“Yes. He’s one of your suspects. And you’re going to be shocked, baby doll. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Stop calling me that. We’re not in the middle of an operation.”

“I think we kind of are until I tell you the name. Operation All Eyes on Baby Doll is still on. Look. Even your dad’s participating.”

I forced myself not to look at my dad.

Jacob leaned in to whisper in my ear. “Thank you. For not going any further with the kiss thief.” He kissed my cheek.

Oh screw me.

My phone buzzed. I pulled it out and couldn’t unlock it. Come on. “RJ, can you please fix my phone?”

“You’ll owe me another favor.”

How many favors did I already owe him? And I was pretty sure I was going to have to do something weird for him in order for him to reveal the identity of my kiss thief. “Never mind.” I shook my head and grabbed my glasses.

Axel had finally responded: “Oh, sorry. I got a couple pints of soup sent to me. I wasn’t sure if one was from you or not.”

Who else had sent him soup? And he knew one was from me. I always sent him chicken noodle from the same place. What the hell? “You know I sent you soup from your favorite place,” I texted. “Are you super sick?” I hit send.

“Nah, I was just up late,” Axel texted back. “If you know what I mean.” There was a winky face at the end of his text.

What? “No, I don’t know what you mean. I was worried about you.”

“Does the boyfriend know you’re texting me right now? Tell him I say hi.”

I looked up. “Axel says hi, everyone. He’s not sick. He was just up late, whatever that means.” I put “up late” in air quotes.

“He was probably hooking up with someone,” Liam said. He was giving me a weird look.

Was he expecting me to react to that? Because I wasn’t going to. Axel had spent every night in my bed recently. And the one day he didn’t come, of course he’d crawled into someone else’s. Because Axel was the slut, not me. I shrugged my shoulders. “Good for him.” My heart was beating funny in my chest.