Read Online Pretty Wanted by Elisa Ludwig - Free Book Online Page B

standing in front of the dorm at the university.
    This time, I only needed to see the infographic: Fox and Murphy Sighting in St. Louis. The screen flashed to footage—it had to have been cell phone footage—of us racing across the campus on stolen bikes.
    “Ohshhhh—” I put down my fork, unable to even complete the curse.
    Aidan and looked at each other, eyes widened in terror. It was just as I’d feared. The cops now knew we were in the area, our time was marked, and we’d barely scratched the surface in terms of doing what we came here to do.
    We didn’t have to say anything else. What was there to say? We dropped a fistful of dollars on the table and walked out.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
    SIX
    “I COULD KILL you right now,” I said to Aidan through my stress-wound jaw.
    We were run-walking, hats lowered, sunglasses back on, not wanting to call more attention to ourselves by fully sprinting, yet trying to get away from Bubba’s as quickly as possible. Not like it really mattered much. At this point, I felt like I might as well have been wearing one of those house-arrest anklets, blaring an alarm for everyone to hear.
    Aidan, to his credit, was working hard to keep my rising panic at bay. “So they saw us. Big deal. We’re not murderers. We’re hardly on the Most Wanted list.”
    Not that I was letting him off the hook. “The big deal is that they know we’re in St. Louis. And that narrows down the field considerably. You were careless, Aidan, and selfish. You were showing off with those computer guys.”
    “I wasn’t being selfish when I found your mom’s police report, was I? Or when I gave up my life to come with you on this trip. Besides you loved the attention from those guys. Or should I say guy . It was obvious he had a thing for you.”
    That made me furious. “Are you kidding me? All I could think about was how weird the whole thing was. I did not want the attention, from him or anyone else, Aidan. You were the one encouraging them.”
    “Well, without him we’d never have gotten into the police database. I thought it was only fair that we let them take one harmless photo. . . .” He threw out his hands. “Okay, maybe I made a mistake.”
    “A mistake is leaving the house without your sunglasses. A mistake is texting the wrong person. This is way more than a mistake.”
    “But we know how to hide. We’ll dye your hair again. I’ll dye mine, too. We can find new clothes.”
    Yes, we could do those things. But that wasn’t the point. Didn’t he get it? We shouldn’t have been in this situation, and now that we were, time was of the essence. “We can’t waste any more time playing dress-up. I just want to find out about my mom so we can get out of here.”
    “We will. Trust me. But you have to stop blaming me—”
    “I want to know about Sheila,” I said quietly.
    His eyes flickered so that he was looking everywhere at once. Everywhere but at me. Aidan Murphy, always too cool for school, was finally losing his calm. “Sheila? I don’t—”
    I broke in. “It was her, wasn’t it? On your phone? Don’t tell me you’re protecting me, okay? I deserve to know.” He owed me that much, didn’t he?
    He sighed, letting his eyes close. When he opened them again, he began talking. “Okay. You want to know? Fine. Here it is. She only came to Prep last year. I signed up for Latin because I’d heard it was a blowoff. I liked the class in the beginning. I thought she was really friendly and nice, and I actually liked all the conjugations and things.”
    “Yeah, okay,” I said, urging him to cut to the chase.
    “Anyway, Sheila started inviting me to her classroom after school to do these”—and here he curled his fingers up in air quotes—“special projects.”
    “What kind of special projects?” I asked cautiously.
    “They were stupid at first, like watching Clash of the