"I just might."

Bridget rolled her eyes and pushed herself up, but Matt grabbed her on either side of her waist. Before she could protest, he yanked her back down on top of him.

His kiss was stronger this time, less like he was afraid of breaking her.

She kissed him back. Deep and hungry. She wanted to feel his lips and his tongue against hers. Needed them.

She'd been afraid last time: afraid of what she might feel, afraid that she was doing it wrong. But something deep inside her ignited as Matt's hand snaked up into her curly mess of hair, his fingers twirling her strands until they felt hopelessly entangled. With a sound somewhere between a growl and a groan, she pressed her body into his, feeling every angle and crevice of his frame. The soft spots and the hard spots.

Matt slid his free hand under her T-shirt just at the small of her back, pulling her even closer. His lips moved down to her chin, then to the soft skin between her jaw and her neck. Bridget closed her eyes and moaned, a deep, aching sound that started as a dull rumbling in her belly before it escaped her lips. Her breaths came shallow and fast as she threw her head back. He took her hint and ran his lips over the sensitive flesh of her neck. It was like a million tiny explosions going off in her body all once, beginning at her lips and neck and extending downward, warming every inch of her body. Downward, until they mingled with something even more explosive deep within her.

The familiar tingling ignited in the pit of her stomach. It spread faster this time, swamping her mind with its electricity, its power. It felt exactly like . . .

Bridget rolled off Matt and scrambled to her feet. She felt like she was going to be sick.

"What's wrong?" Matt asked, his voice thick and raspy.

"We, uh, we don't have much time," Bridget said. She turned her back and pretended to straighten her shirt so he couldn't see her panic.

She heard him sit up and clear his throat. "Bridge, are you sure you're okay? I hope you're not-"

"I'm fine." She turned to him with a faint smile. "Really." Yeah, perfectly fine except apparently banishing demons and making out with you give me the same sick thrill. PERFECTLY FINE, MATT, THANK YOU!

"Oh. Okay." Matt got to his knees and looked around. "Where are we?"

"My dad's study."

"I thought his office was downstairs?"

"It is." Bridget stepped over a pile of books and hit the light switch near the other door that led into her parents' bedroom. It was a small space overshadowed by a large window looking out on the backyard. Furnishings were minimal: a leather chair like you'd see in a coffeehouse, a low table, and a wardrobe knocked askew by the closet door. And books, piles and piles of books.

"Downstairs is the office where he saw his private clients, the ones he had before he joined Darlington's clinic. The police searched it after the murder, but no one thought about coming up here. This was his favorite room in the house, and after he died my mom couldn't handle looking at it from her bedroom."

Matt ran a finger over the coffee table and held it up, covered in a layer of dust. "So no one's been in here in months?"

Bridget nodded. "Since about two weeks after the murder."

"And if your dad was hiding something, something important-"

"This is where it would be."

"Okay then." Matt headed for the wardrobe while Bridget tackled the book piles. There were none of the professional volumes and medical journals that filled the bookcases in both of her dad's offices; these were his favorite reads. Mysteries and thrillers, a biography of Willie Mays, some pictorial histories of San Francisco.

"Seems to be mostly old stuff," Matt said. He had a leather box balanced on his knee. "Yearbooks, old letters, photos."

"Keep looking." Though for what, she wasn't sure. Would her dad have kept the missing Undermeyer files hidden or just piled among the books?

The books were a bust, so Bridget moved on to the coffee table. Old Sports Illustrateds and some half-finished crossword puzzles from the Sunday paper, both frozen in time to that horrible afternoon so long ago.

No, not so long. With everything that was happening, her father's death seemed close again, tangible like it was all happening anew. Only this time she didn't feel as helpless as she had before. This time she could do something so her father's death wouldn't be in vain.

"Oh my God," Matt exclaimed.

Bridget bolted to his side. "What? What did you find?"

"Is this you?" he said, holding up an old snapshot.

Bridget snatched the photo from his hands. It was a picture of a seven-year-old Bridget in a pink Sleeping Beauty princess gown, complete with tiara, plastic light-up princess shoes, and glitter wand, which she was dabbing on the head of her infant brother like she was granting him a wish. "Holy crap."

Matt was trying desperately to hold back his laughter. "I've never seen you in so much . . . pink."

"Shut it."

"Please tell me," he said with a smirk, "that you still have the dress."

Bridget shoved the photo back into the wardrobe. "I hate you. A lot."

"I know." Matt winked and he closed the wardrobe door. "There's nothing else here, though."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. I checked and double-checked. Nothing."

Bridget sat down on the floor. Come on, think! Where would he have hidden it?

"Bridget?" Her mom's voice drifted in through the open closet door. "Bridget, Sergeant Quinn is leaving, and I think Matt should probably go too."

"Dammit." Bridget ducked back through her closet door, Matt close behind. "Okay, Mom," she called out, trying to sound normal.

Matt pulled the door closed behind him and stepped out of the closet. "I guess that means I need to go."

Bridget cast a glance at her closet door, trying not to look disappointed. "Yeah, I guess so."

He placed a hand on her shoulder. "You'll call me? If you need anything?"

Bridget nodded.

"You'll call me even if you don't?"

Bridget tried to keep the corners of her mouth from bending up into a goofy smile, but she couldn't. What had happened to her? A few kisses and she was completely under Matt Quinn's spell. Where was badass Bridget who didn't need anyone?

Matt took a step closer. "Will you?"

Bridget melted. "Yes."

"Good." Matt leaned down and kissed her lightly, then opened the bedroom door and, with one last flash of his smile, slipped into the hall.

Thirty.

THEY SAT IN THE SAME seats-Bridget, Hector, and Brad-at the last cafeteria table on the left. Their trays held the same familiar lunches: Brad's piled high with a precarious tower of sandwiches, Bridget's grilled cheese and Diet 7Up, Hector's weight-conscious bag lunch. It was the same, and yet everything was different because of the empty seat to Bridget's left. Peter's seat.

"I can't believe he's gone," Brad said at last, breaking the silence. His sandwiches lay untouched.

Hector stared at the empty seat. "Yeah."

"I mean, I was just tutoring with him on Friday. I can't believe it."

"Um . . ." Hector fidgeted with the zipper on his hoodie. "Brad, you know, if you still need help with algebra . . . I mean, I could totally, you know, help."

Bridget did a double take. Hector just volunteered to tutor his secret crush? That was the ballsiest thing he'd ever done.

"Yeah, man," Brad said with a smile. "That'd be awesome. Thanks."

"No problem."

Bridget was about to say something when she felt Hector's shoe nudge her under the table. She let it drop. Now wasn't the time to tease Hector about Brad.

"I just don't get what he was doing at school that night," Brad said.

"Duh," Hector said, nodding his head in Bridget's direction.

"It's not Liu's fault," Brad said.

"I'm not saying it is. But how many text messages did you get from Peter Saturday night?"

Bridget's eyes dashed between Brad and Hector's faces. "You too?"

"A dozen, at least," Hector said. "Before I turned my phone off."

"I got, like, eight from him," Brad said. "But I was at the dance so I didn't notice till the next day."

Hector raised his eyebrows. "Bridge?"

"Thirty-seven." Bridget pushed her tray away and sank her forehead onto crossed arms.

Hector dropped his diet shake onto the metal table. "Thirty-seven?"

"Damn," Brad said under his breath.

Bridget didn't raise her head. "Yeah, I know."

"What were they like?" Hector asked.

"Like he was going through the five stages of grief," Bridget said, sitting up. "But then near the end they got really . . ." Bridget remembered the threats Peter had texted her, the ones she didn't get until after he was dead. "Ugly."

Hector held out his hand. "Gimme."

With a sigh, Bridget handed over her cell phone. She guessed Hector and Brad deserved to see them, even though those thirty-seven text messages weren't from the Peter Kim she'd known most of her life. They were from someone else, someone whose jealousy had turned into a rage so violent it had gotten him killed.

She wasn't going to mention that part.

"Damn," Hector said as they scrolled through the texts.

Brad whistled. "I can't believe Peter wrote these."

"Believe it," Bridget said.

"I've just never heard him swear like this. Ever."

"I know."

Bridget's phone buzzed. Incoming text. "Give it."

A sly smile appeared on Hector's face. "Douchebag Quinn?" he said, reading the sender's name. "You changed his name in your phone to Douchebag Quinn?"

Ouch. She forgot she'd changed it after he got her grounded. She was going to have to fix that. "Just give it."

"'R U OK?'" Brad read aloud. "'Worried. Call me ASAP.'"

"Give it!" Bridget shot her hand across the table to grab the phone, but Brad held it out of her reach.

The phone buzzed again, and Brad leaned back on the bench to read it. "'Miss U.'"

Bridget dropped her forehead to the table with a thud. "Kill me."

"Oh. My. GOD!" Hector said. "You're dating him, aren't you?"

"Um . . ." Bridget thought of the brief make-out session on the floor of her dad's study, of Matt's sweet good-bye when he left. "We haven't really talked about-"

"You totally made out with him," Brad said, tossing her phone onto the table.

Bridget raised her head. "Um . . ."

"Oh. My. GOD!" Hector repeated, and kicked her under the table. "I can't believe you didn't tell me!"

"I, er, was a little busy this weekend."

"Yeah," Brad laughed. "Busy."

Bridget yawned. The strain of the last few days had caught up with her, and all she wanted to do was climb into bed and go to sleep.