Page 111 of Veiled in Brick

“You got a better one?” James asked skeptically.

“I’m not that concussed,” Liam retorted, holding up a finger. “One sec.” He planted his feet on the ground, lifting his hips briefly with a quiet, “Ow,” as he dug in his pocket for his phone. I watched him swipe at the ever-present cracks on the screen, tap to find his recently missed calls, and select one that read: Cas. He started to hold the phone up to his ear, winced, and then set it to speaker instead.

“Are you sure you want to get your sister involved in this?” I asked gently.

The ringing persisted as he held his phone in front of his face, and he laughed. “She’d probably kill me if I didn’t.”

James questioned, “You have a sister?”

“You are lucky that I work graveyard shifts and I just got home,” Cassie’s husky, mocking voice spoke to us through the speaker. “4:30 in the morning? What gives?”

“Remember how you said to call you if I needed you?” Liam asked with a high pitch.

“Oh, Jesus, what?” she returned quickly.

“Long story, but we could use a place to stay for a few hours.”

“Did ya kill Carter and you’re lookin’ for a place to bury him?” she inquired casually. “I got a spot.”

James laughed out a disbelieving, “What the fuck?”

“Kidding.” She remarked, “To whoever is in the background questioning the need for our father to be six feet under,” Cassie unnecessarily raised her voice, “trust me, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world!”

“I can explain when we’re there,” Liam told her. “Where’s your new place?”

“Butt-fuck nowhere north of town,” she replied.

“Good, good,” Liam replied in a forcedly casual tone. “You mind if we all come by?”

“You’re back in Salem already?”

“Uh huh.”

“Talk about a short trip—and come by or hide from the law?” Cassie asked jokingly, though none of us saw the humor in it. “And who is we?”

Liam clarified hesitantly, “Ah—not the law—and me, Zoey, and a few others.”

“Yeah, sure,” she responded instantly, and it was apparent in her tone of voice that there was little Liam could have said that would have caused her to refuse our visit. “I’ll send you the address now. See you in a bit?”

“As soon as we can get there,” Liam remarked.

“Mmkay—bye everyone,” she dismissed us in a sing-song tone, and I looked to Liam with a single eyebrow raised as he ended the call.

“You didn’t wanna clue her in on what’s going on?”

“She’d just freak until we get there, no point in that,” he told me. Liam’s phone pinged in his hand, he glanced at it, and then looked to the rest of us as he asked, “A place that we can get cleaned up and have some more privacy before we talk to the cops—better than a motel?”

We all hummed out generic mhm’s, and Luke stepped forward to extend a hand to help Liam to his feet. He gently—very gently—pulled Liam up. He held him with a hand on either of his biceps for a moment, ensuring that he wouldn’t fall backwards, and only when he was certain that Liam was steady on his own two feet, he let go. Claire took a single step, arm outreached in a similar gesture for me, and I waved her away.

I pushed myself to my feet, brushed off my bare legs needlessly as they were too dirty to remedy with a slap of my hands, and glanced to her as she eyed me warily.

I mouthed back, ‘I’m fine.’ She pressed her lips together tightly, silently telling me that she knew I wasn’t, and I returned the gesture, mild guilt creeping into my chest for ushering her away because she was right. I nodded at her, she nodded back, and I hoped with everything in me that the word fine could soon become more than just a meaningless phrase—that it could become an ideal.

We all filed into the car, set out for the quick drive ahead of us, and I closed my eyelids tightly in an attempt to drown out the murderous noise of my internal thoughts. All of the doors closed, we began to make our way, and my eyes snapped open for with the lack of a conversation among us, the silence was loud. Very loud.

Chapter 19

We were only ten minutes away from Cassie’s house, which was directly north and deep into the trees. The road that we followed for the majority of the trip was so slim that if another car were to face us head-on, we would have been forced to veer into the grass to avoid a collision. The forest was overgrown around us, the trees so large that they were threatening to obscure the stars above. Halfway through the drive, we hit gravel. Potholes scattered throughout the road, James carefully steered around the divots and downright craters until we were making a blind left-hand turn directly into the greenery. We drove through an open metal gate, the rocky path dwindled down to nothing, and we had arrived.

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