Page 113 of Veiled in Brick

“How’s it look?” Liam asked.

A quiet breath left my nostrils. “Like a massacre in the sink.”

I gently moved my fingers through the locks that were still stained red, allowing the stream to run through them as I rubbed the strands together to loosen the hold of coagulated blood.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

He was genuine as per usual, and I felt my lips twitch upward—my cheeks warm at how oddly intimate the moment felt.

I whispered back, “You’re welcome.”

Everyone else sat at the circular dining table to our right. Thoroughly exhausted, Claire, Luke, and James all sat their seats—the same type of wicker that Liam sat in—in their own respective slumps. Claire had her arms laid across her lower stomach, ginger head back as she stared at the ceiling. Luke had an elbow on the table, hunched over with his head resting on his fist, and Claire would occasionally reach for his shoulder to shake him as he was fighting sleep. James had one of his brown booted feet resting over a knee. Every so often, he would glance at me, taking in my actions as I tended to Liam. He would quickly shift his gaze away, his jaw clearly clenched beneath his beard, his self-proclaimed jealousy appearing to be proclaiming itself, and each time it would hit me in a nasty blow to my gut.

He did so just now while I gently swiped at the dried blood that had dripped down Liam’s left cheek. I pressed my lips together tightly, for I didn’t find jealousy to be a becoming trait. However, I still felt the need to swallow the remorse over our short-lived rendezvous, knowing that I had caused it to end. Knowing that we couldn’t simply reverse out of the non-platonic care that had been beginning to blossom for us—knowing that we simply had to wait for it to die. It was the waiting that was the worst. I was certain that was the case for many things in life.

Cassie was standing before them all, hands on her hips and looking upward as she continued to absorb the information that had been bestowed upon her. After everyone’s brief introductions, we had explained it all—the visit with Carter, the camera in the hallway at the complex, the almost-kidnapping, the crash and subsequent shots fired, and our upcoming plans to speak to the police. She knew everything, yet she still fought for more questions—for more potential solutions. Just as when I had met her in Liam’s apartment the day before, she had an inquisitive nature that was unable to be suppressed. She began to speak to the room once more, and Liam rolled his eyes in a way that only a brother could.

“Okay, um…” She hesitated before saying, “Forgive me if I’m prying too much, but…why are you all waiting? You can’t just…call the cops to talk to them?” She looked at me. “Why’d you even drive all the way back here?”

Liam waved a hand blindly in James’ direction. “Jay found the guy on camera…there’s an open case in Salem already, so—”

“Yeah, with the shitty cop, I remember you telling me,” she interrupted. “You have to bring physical evidence in and they open at eight o’clock, got it, I’m with you—annoying as all shit that a police department isn’t open to the public twenty-four-seven, but I digress.”

Liam warned, “Don’t get me started on fuckin’ Randy.”

“I know, I know,” Cassie dismissed his complaint. “He’s a dipshit, I get it—that aside, you have the guy on camera. You have tangible proof that he’s been living across the hall—”

“Mister Milkovich,” Claire groaned.

Luke grumbled a sleepy, “He’s not dead, baby.”

“None of us know that,” she returned.

Cassie held up a finger. “We can circle back to Mister Milkovich—”

“Cool your jets, Nancy Drew!” James exclaimed. “We don’t need to circle back to Mister Milkovich. If he’s dead, he’s dead—”

“Sensitive,” Cassie quipped in his direction. “Nice.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” James retorted in a gripe as he threw back his head. “I just meant let’s solve one crisis at a time.”

“And your way of solving this crisis is going to the police department,” she challenged, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Uh huh,” James responded. “This isn’t a fantasy world; that’s what adults do when shit goes south—you contact the authorities. I get that you’re young and you seem to have a bit of a boner for justice—”

“I’m not that young,” Cassie argued with narrowed eyes, “I’m twenty-two.”

James’ jaw nearly dropped. “For the love of—you’re a fucking fetus, no wonder you’re all rah-rah, the cops ain’t shit.”

“I have no idea what my age has to do with any of this,” she complained to James, but he ignored her with a shake of his head.

I turned my attention back to Liam, found that the lock of hair I had been massaging had finally been rinsed clean, and I murmured, “Sit up, Lee, let me check this out.”

He obliged, I hopped down from the counter, and Cassie bustled her way to the stove on our right. She opened the drawer to the left with a rough yank as it appeared to have been stuck, and she grabbed a green hand towel that almost matched the color of the counter. She returned quickly, offered it to me, and I began to dry Liam’s hair with gentle scrunches. I investigated his scalp, laying a lock of his hair across the top of his head to expose a laceration that had long stopped bleeding. Neither terribly long nor deep, I thought to myself that stitches may not have been necessary.

I murmured to Liam, “Found it.”

“How bad?” he asked.

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