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She, Vivi, Lexie, Gidget and Elise had made up half of the residents in a ten-person bunkhouse They wore unifors, and went to classes in the afternoons and evenings That was boring and tough, but not the kind of thing to send three students to their self-inflicted deaths No, that had happened because of the administrators who saw St B’s as their own little dictatorship and enforced corporeal punishs to keep the population subot an anonyood

If it hadn’t been for her girls, Bianca easily could have been one of the three students found hanging froym She looked around at the women who’d saved her sanity at St B’s Sure, their senses of hue and their ability to trust seriously impaired, but they’d earned every one of their personality quirks the hard way

Noas her turn to pull on her cast iron big girl panties, ignore her shredded insides and do whatever it took to get Gidget home

“I appreciate it, but we have oing,” Bianca said, girding herself for the uys still out in the hall?”

Vivi cracked open the door “Yoo-hoo, big badto hide out forto do”

“We’re not hiding” Six-foot-three, heavily tattooed with a too-pretty-for-words, male model face and the kind of muscles that ered into the room He always maintained his so-confident-he-left-cocky-in-the-dust vibe, but the worry was there, as visible as the gold flecks in his brown eyes “It was a tactical retreat”

“You were scared by sweet little ol’ us?” More than a foot shorter, Vivi made up for the inches in attitude

“Said the spider to the fly,” Keir muttered

The rest of the guys filed in behind him, each as tall and muscular as the one who caruff, one-syllable answers, was the s up or bash heads in Fast-talking Lash Finch, with his dark good looks and killer brains, could take out a target with a sniper rifle from an obscene distance or use his hands up close and personal without a twinge of conscience Duke Trino, the resident ginger, had enough sex appeal and devious charathered secrets about people like squirrels collected acorns in the fall, which made him the perfect infiltration operative

Their Roh in their unique names and their tawny brown skin Trained on the street and in elite units of the erous, skilled and strutted down the skinny gray line between legal and not with a don’t-give-a-fuck shrug They were not the kind of men you wanted to lad they were all on the same side

Lash stopped in front of the chair she sat in and stared down at her The fact she was sitting down made him look even taller than his six feet, four inches She knehat he was going to say before he even opened hisshe needed—or wanted—to hear

She held up her hand “Not now, Lash”

“Look, it’s none of my business—really none of any of our business—but I’ve known Tazas she’s been in Taz’s,” he said in a rush “There has to be more to this than it appears”

“Doesn’t er than she’d thought possible “We have ht now”

Bianca turned her attention to the ence Resort on the wall opposite her desk Lash didn’t fidget at her side, trying to figure out what to say next Men like hilowered at her