Bughead 🔥❤️

Chapter 17

Once Betty settled into slumber beside him, Jughead eased out of the bed. He looked down at his sleeping girlfriend, her wet hair spread across his pillowcase. She was naked beneath the sheets, and normally the idea of her lithe frame and bare breasts would have made him hard, but he was too worried to be aroused, too preoccupied by the reopened wounds on her palms and now the new cut on her thigh.

He grabbed his phone from the nightstand. He owed Alice Cooper a call. They both had been out all day and night looking for Betty.

Before dawn this morning, he'd been awakened at the Andrews' home by someone talking in the kitchen. Before the voices had woken him up, he'd spent the night staring at his phone, waiting for a text from Betty. After hours of not receiving one, he'd fallen asleep, phone in hand, but he jolted awake when the kitchen door slammed and Mary Andrews had walked in. He sneaked down the stairs and listened, hidden in the shadows of the foyer.

"What?" Mary said into the receiver of her cell phone. "You were wrong about the man who shot Fred? You arrested the wrong person? The guy had an airtight alibi and you let him go? I don't understand. How could you let this happen, Keller?"

She waited a beat, listening to whatever excuses Sheriff Keller was giving her. The sounds of her heels, pacing in the wooden kitchen floors, echoed through the house.

"This is unacceptable! It's been almost forty-eight hours since Fred was shot. You know the first forty-eight are the most crucial. The shooter could be in Bali by now for all we know. You might never be able to catch him." She stopped pacing, shouldered off her suit jacket, and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair. "Yeah. Yeah. At least Fred is alive. But, Keller, do you think. . . Do you think this has anything to do with Goldhead?"

What the hell was Goldhead?

"I know. I know. We're not supposed to talk about it, but I can't help but wonder. We're coming up on the twenty-fifth anniversary of that horrible night. What if?" Her voice trailed off while she waited for the sheriff to give his opinion.

Twenty-five years? Jughead did the math. That would have put them all in high school. Their senior year maybe? What had happened to them?

While Mary continued to listen to Keller, Jughead did a quick Google search on Goldhead. Michael Roess Goldhead. He clicked the article, but only learned that Michael Goldhead had a state park in northern Florida, nothing else. Nothing of any importance. No news articles and no police files.

"Yeah, I know. All seven of us promised to take it to the grave," Mary said. "Don't worry. I won't say anything to anyone." Then she hung up her cell.

Jughead processed what he'd heard-Fred's shooter hadn't really been caught and Sheriff Keller, Mary, Fred, and four others were keeping an incriminating secret that they swore to take to their deaths, a secret that might have gotten Fred shot. A secret that could be threatening Mary still. Jughead was so deep in thought that he startled when Mary came around the corner and almost ran into him.

"Juggie!" Mary said, her hand over her heart, her eyes wide with surprise. "You scared me. What are you doing here? I thought you'd be with your foster family?"

Jughead had met the family this morning, a kind older couple who had never been able to conceive a child of their own. They lived in the trailer park at the center of the Southside. Phil and Jane Cummings had a small bedroom for him, an endless supply of baked goods, and all the Jeopardy he could handle. Staying with them wouldn't be that bad, but he wasn't ready to move in yet. And they had given him the freedom to decide when would join them.

"Not yet. I wanted to stay here in case Archie needed anything," Jughead said.

Mary touched his shoulder. "You've always been such a good friend to him, maybe better than he deserves. Are you hungry? I can fix you something to eat."