PARADISE | JOHN B ROUTLEDGE |

05 can't look this good without my beauty sleep

"Oh, you mean after your boyfriend beat the shit out of him and tried to kill him?" Talia retorted. She couldn't help herself, her protectiveness over John B coming out. Sarah scoffed and rolled her eyes.

"Oh please, Topper would never have seriously hurt him, and you know that." Sarah told the girl, who returned the eye roll.

"Whatever. Oh, and if you see my brother, tell him that he can stop waiting up for me to come home every night. It's kind of sad, honestly." She informed Sarah, before throwing her skateboard onto the road and riding off, away from her Kook life into the Cut.

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  When Talia arrived at the Chateau, she could hear the voice of JJ sounding from the screened in porch. She ditched her skateboard in the tall grass and climbed the steps, swinging open the door.

"And then we were right outside, like this. And all we hear is 'Bam, bam, bam!' Knocking paint off the wall, from the inside." She heard JJ describe as she walked in, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

"Nice if you to show up, Tal." Kiara joked, opening her arm for her best friend to sit next to her. Talia flopped onto the couch, leaning into the shoulder of her best friend.

"Yeah, I can't look this good without my beauty sleep. What they hell are you so dramatically acting out?" She asked JJ, who rolled his eyes at the comment.

"John B and JJ went to Miss Lana's house to get some answers about the compass and the guys that shot at us yesterday were there, trashing the place." Kiara explained, and Talia nodded in understanding.

"And look at this." JJ interjected, running his hands through his hair and leaving a mix of what looked like paint and dandruff of the table.

"That's disgusting." Kiara said, as Pope ran his hands over his head. "Okay, thank you." Pope told JJ, pushing him away from the table that he, Talia, and Kiara sat around. John B stood behind the furniture they were sitting on silently agreeing with what JJ said.

"Look at that, that's paint. And at that point, I was just waiting for death." JJ said dramatically, walking back over to the brick wall, leaning against it and pulling a Juul out of his pocket.

"Okay, so you saw the guys that shot at us, right? Did you get a good description of them? Anything that we could bring to a police report, maybe?" Pope asked desperately as JJ took a hit of the device.

"Burly." Was all he said, making the rest of the group sigh in distress.

"That's not really helpful." Talia muttered as Kiara sat up and ran a hand through her hair, unwrapping her arm from around Talia's shoulders.

"Okay, well, like the type of guy at my dad's garage. I mean, you guys know he made cargo hides for drug smugglers." JJ said, Talia remembering JJ telling them the wild stories of what he witnessed at his dad's workplace. The group muttered a "we know, we get it", trying to make JJ get to his point faster.

"I can tell you with full confidence, these boys, these killers... they're square groupers." He told him, taking another hit of his Juul.

"They're square groupers, like narco square groupers? Like Pablo Escobar square grouper?" Pope asked, trying to make sure JJ knew what he was talking about.

"Guys, not everything is a kingpin movie." Kiara assured the boys, who only shook their heads at her comment.

"So what did the square grouper look like specifically?" Pope asked JJ, his frustration rising to the surface, trying to get all the information out of JJ that he could.