Keep Your Friends Close: A Gritty YA Crime Thriller by Niki Keith

Author:Niki Keith [Keith, Niki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2023-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

I slowly pulled up across the street from a hotel downtown. It was a little after nine when I got the urgent text from Mack to meet her there ASAP. Without pause, I jumped in the car and hurried right over. I wasn’t doing anything at home anyway, but hiding in my room, unable to face Dad. Lucky for me, he had to make a run back to his office, and that’s when I snuck out.

I peered out the window, clutching the steering wheel even though the car wasn’t running. What was going on? Was Mack inside?

I licked my dry lips. The silence was deafening. Perhaps I should text her. I reached for my phone when the passenger door snatched wide and Mack dashed into the seat. “What the hell?” I choked out, raising a hand to my heaving chest. “What are you doing?” Mack slumped farther into the seat, staring past me out the window at the hotel. She, too, panted for breath. She wore dark leggings and an oversized black hoodie with the hood up.

“You look like you’re on a stakeout,” I said, followed by a hard gasp, realizing we were.

She nodded. “My dad’s in there with somebody.”

“Is it Wesley? Wait—how do you know?”

She shut her eyes and sighed. “It’s a long story. But I heard my dad take a phone call, and he said, ‘I’ll meet you there’ and yada yada. Anyway, I hopped in the back of the car and hid on the floor. We drove here, and I saw him go inside Room 34. A woman answered the door.”

My eyes widened. “You hid in the back of your father’s car? Are you insane? What if he saw you?”

“I don’t give a damn,” she snapped, folding her arms stubbornly. “He would have some explaining to do.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, so would you.”

“Look. My father is clearly cheating on my dying mother, and I don’t have the heart to tell her.”

My brows creased. “What do you mean, dying?”

Mack wiped her face with the back of her sleeve and sniffled. “The doctors can’t say for sure how long my mom has left. They suggested we spend as much time with her as we can.” Her voice broke. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

“I’m so sorry, Mackenzie,” I whispered.

“What for? Sorry doesn’t cure cancer. It’s just a waste of a word.”

I blinked at the hotel. Sitting there spying on Coach Donahue wasn’t helping anything. I started up the car and got as far away as possible.

Mack gripped her coffee cup in both hands a short while later. We’d gone to a local diner and gotten hot cocoa. Mack shook her head. She’d taken off her hood, but it left her hair matted slick to her head. “This is all so fucked up,” she said. Her voice quivered as if she’d fall to pieces at any moment. “How could he do something like this? My mom needs him right now, and he’s in a hotel with some rando slut.

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