Page 75 of Veiled in Brick

“Morning,” Claire spoke in my ear.

I groaned. “Let me call you back.”

“Er—you called me.” She returned quickly, “Is everything okay?”

“Yes, yes, everything’s fine—”

“Zoey.”

My name came out of the speaker in a rigid fashion. It was laced with stress and anxiety, and it further proved why I needed to leave town, even if it was just for a day or so. Everyone who surrounded me had begun to walk on eggshells at the mention of anything out of the ordinary due to the threat that was now looming over my head. I thought of it again as a dark cloud—a building storm that was currently off in the distance—and, unfortunately, we didn’t have a meteorologist on hand to determine when the thunder would boom and the lightning would strike. It was natural that we were all anxious. I was anxious. However, I needed to be anything but…and that was why I wanted to announce a loud fuck you to the current situation that I had at hand and bound off to my hometown. Perhaps it would give us all some breathing room.

“Un-bunch your panties, Claire, I’m fine. I’ll call you back in five.”

I clicked the red x on my phone’s screen to end the call and lobbed it onto the couch.

“I’m going to see my parents.”

The finality in my voice made Liam press his lips together tightly, clearly unsure of an immediate response as he was well aware of the tone that I had used. It was the one that I utilized when my foot was down, and there was little, if anything, that could be done to convince me otherwise. I crossed my arms over my chest, and he huffed out a breath.

Liam stated quietly, “I should go, too.”

“To—to my parents’ house?” I returned, incredulous.

I had not added bringing a boy home to meet the ’rents on my list of to-do items for the upcoming days, and I didn’t intend to—even if that boy was Liam. My parents had met a grand total of zero men who have been involved in my life directly, and though my icy heart had begun to thaw as of late, the idea of a man being integrated into my immediate family made me want to chuck my melting heart directly into a deep freezer for it to live the remainder of its days.

“No,” Liam responded as quickly as humanly possible. “Uh—no.” Cassie’s eyes bounced between the two of us rapidly as Liam continued, “I mean that I should go to North Carolina, too. I, um—think I need to pay Carter a visit.”

“Liam,” Cassie tried to argue that notion, but Liam held up a hand to stop her words.

“He had you followed,” Liam retorted sharply, and Cassie sighed as he stated, “Zoey is being followed—well—a hell of a lot more than just being followed. I can’t just fuckin’ sit here knowing that he could be involved, I have to talk to him.”

“These seem like different situations, Lee,” I told him gently.

“Yeah,” Cassie added insistently, “I’ve had zero creepers. Really.”

“Well, thank fuck for that,” Liam muttered. He asked me with raised brows. “What if Carter knows who the guy could be? Randy,” Liam said the police officer’s name with a sneer, “may have been almost useless but he was right, there’s gotta be a connection somewhere and we may have just found one.”

Cassie held up a hand. “Wait, wait, what other suspects are you considering here?”

She looked between us, and I shrugged. “We don’t really have any—”

“Which is why I need to go talk to Carter—”

“Neither of you have pissed anyone off lately?” Cassie inquired.

“Yeah,” I spoke slowly, “the guy doesn’t seem pissed, it seems like he wants to forcibly make his way into my pants, so…”

“That could be a scare tactic,” Cassie quipped. “Roses and notes—creepy scare tactic. Attacking you in the street—creepy scare tactic. He could just be getting back at you for something. Or someone else is putting him up to it.” She paused. “Or the whole thing is just making him hard—”

“Cassandra,” Liam admonished her with an angry interjection.

“Er,” she glanced at her brother apologetically, “either way—like I asked…piss anyone off recently?” Her reiteration of the question made my gaze snap to Liam’s, and she murmured, “Feeling like I’m missing out on something here.”

I let out a nervous laugh. “Um—just a woman who slapped me—”

“A woman slapped you?” Cassie leaned forward as she spoke. “Why?”

“That’s a long story we don’t need to get into,” Liam told her quietly.

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