Bad Influencer by Kenzie Reed

Chapter Thirty

Jillian

Our quest takes us to a large red-brick house in a suburban subdivision. Thank God it’s not a gated subdivision; we look like an aging girl gang who just barely survived a rumble. We’d never have made it past security.

It’s a quiet Friday afternoon, and it looks like most of the residents are at work. The streets are empty except for a man pushing a lawnmower across an immaculate lawn a few houses down.

We park in the wide driveway, in front of the two-car garage on the side of the house, just as a large SUV pulls in. The driver is a pretty blonde woman, and I’m hoping that it’s the former Amber Davidson, now Amber Contreras.

Still, I hesitate. This is pretty crazy, isn’t it? Even for me, and I’ve been known to dress up as a seal and chain myself to fences. All of this is based on a vague hunch, a feeling that Elliott’s too awesome to have had more than one woman betray him in the exact same way. It seems too coincidental, but I’m not even sure what I think really happened.

And is this woman even going to talk to us? She has no reason to. She’s sitting in her SUV, engine still running in case she needs to make a quick getaway, squinting at us suspiciously as if we’re going to carjack her. And who can blame her?

“She’s staring at us,” my mother says through her puffy split lip. “Why is she looking at us like that?”

“We’re in a nice neighborhood and she’s driving a seventy thousand dollar SUV. I’m driving a car that’s basically held together with band-aids and hope, and also have you looked at yourself this morning?” I ask.

“It’s now or never,” Pansy says. “As in, go talk to her before she calls the cops.”

“Why don’t you all stay here in the car and I’ll go talk to her,” I suggest. “Less scary that way.”

“Nonsense,” my mother chirps. “We’re on a quest and nobody goes alone.”

I groan, knowing now there’s no way around this… they’re going to follow this through to the end. This is likely the highlight of my mother and Pansy’s month… if not year.

Excitement is not something that comes around often in any of the Fletcher homes.

“Fine. Let’s do this.”

We all pile out and head toward our target. She rolls her window down about three inches. She’s a pretty woman about Elliott’s age, with artfully highlighted blonde and brown hair pulled back into a neat chignon.

“Hello. You’re in my driveway. How do I know you?” Amber asks.

“Oh, you don’t. I’m here because we have a mutual friend,” I explain.

She quirks an eyebrow, as if to say, doubt that.

“Elliott Bradford.”

She snorts in contempt. “Elliott Bradford? That Rumpleforeskin? What made you think we were friends?’

Bronwyn grins. “Rumpleforeskin. That’s a good one. I’m stealing that.”

“Why do you say that?” I press, wanting to get to the topic at hand.

She scowls at me. “Well, it’s ancient history, but when he dumped me, it was via the rudest text message I’ve ever received. He was accusing me of all kinds of crazy stuff. He went from the world’s nicest, sweetest guy to some total psycho.”

I frown. “He said that you dumped him via text. He said you hurt him, and I have to say, Amber, he seems genuinely hurt by the experience all these years later.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she scoffs.

“Hmm. Well, even his closest friend, Cameron, said you did.”

Her eyes narrow. “Cameron? That snake’s still around? He was such a weasel. I never understood why Elliott hung out with him, except I guess Cameron’s really good at putting on whatever face he wants you to see.”

Interesting observation.

Things are starting to click into place. With all the problems that Elliott has with women, I feel like Cameron’s always hovering around in the background.

She huffs an impatient sigh. “The thing is, that happened ages ago. Why are you here now?”

I choose my words carefully. “Elliott’s… going through something. We used to date, but now we’re not. It’s a long story. He thinks I had an affair with his friend, because it happened to him a few times before, and…”

Her eyebrows are climbing higher and higher. Any minute now she’s going to back her vehicle out of the driveway.

I start speaking faster. “When Elliott left for college, he says he got a text from you breaking it off with him, telling him you’d slept with other guys behind his back, and he was incredibly boring and you only put up with him for his family name and his money, but even the money wasn’t enough reason to be with him, and you were glad he’d left so you didn’t have to tell him to his face that you were through with him.” It all comes out in a rush.

“That lying shitheel!” she sputters.

Bronwyn nods approvingly. “Shitheel,” she echoes. I can see her mentally jotting that down in her book of quotable insults.

“My goodness,” Pansy says.

“He sent me a totally foul text calling me a liar and a cheater and…” She trails off. “Okay, I never sent that text to Elliott. Are you saying that he also never sent that text to me?”

“No, I’m sure he did. But only because he thought you’d text-dumped him in a particularly brutal and malicious fashion, totally out of the blue, in a way that seemed totally out of character.”

“Cameron,” she says, frowning. “Cameron was behind this somehow.”

I nod. “I think so too.”

She sighs and rolls down her window a little more. “I’d like to figure this out.”

“Can we come in?”

She flashes a calculating glance at me, my mother, my sister-in-law, and my best friend. “I don’t think that’s the best idea,” she says.