Page 77 of Veiled in Brick

Just as the door shut, Liam began, “She’s a little…”

“Detectivey?” I finished for him.

“Likes to question,” he noted with a cringe. “Sorry.”

I shrugged, for it somehow didn’t bother me in the least. “She’s nice.”

“Yeah,” he returned with a soft grin. “She is.”

“So…” I voiced, “you need a ride, then?”

“That cool?”

“You’re only a little further south than my parents; no big. Where will you stay?”

“Uh,” Liam pondered to himself, “I hadn’t gotten that far; I normally stay with Cas. Motel, probably.”

I raised a single eyebrow. “Can you afford a motel?”

“A cheap one for one night, maybe two,” he replied, “but yeah.”

“Mmkay—let me call Claire back.”

I returned to snag my phone from where it landed on the couch earlier. I found Claire’s name under Recent Calls and selected it. The ring barely even sounded.

“The fuck, Zoey?!” she berated me.

Being thoroughly exhausted with the stress of the now and the tense moods that surrounded me, I joked:

“I thought I told you to un-bunch your panties.”

Liam reluctantly chuckled, grabbing his mug once again.

“It feels like we’re at DEFCON 5 here since we can’t even sleep at our own apartment, and you tell me to un-bunch my panties. Sure. That makes a whole lot of fuckin’ sense!”

“DEFCON 5 actually is the lowest threat level,” I told her casually. “You’re thinking of DEFCON 1—”

She scoffed, “Oh, fucking bite me.”

I heard Luke’s voice behind her, “Breathe, baby, we’re all fine.”

Claire sighed, and I heard her mutter, “Fine.”

“Are you and Luke down for a road trip?”

“Um…we’re both off work for the next two days, but—”

“Want to come to my parents’ for dinner tonight? Stay the night, get outta here for a bit?”

“I’m sorry?”

“To my parents’ house,” I reiterated. “It would be a quick trip—”

“I fucking heard what you said, Zoey,” she snapped. “Talk about the worst timing in the world, though! We should be staying put. Y’know—figuring out who’s following you?”

“Yeah,” I replied in a breath, glancing at Liam as I spoke, “we may have a theory on that.”

It was clear that, regardless of how little he heard from the other end of the line, Liam understood Claire’s line of questioning. Though he was tense before, at my last sentence, his nostrils flared. His jaw clenched so tightly that I could see the muscles flex. He took a last sip of his coffee and stood.

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