Page 39 of Shattered Veil

I heard an aggravated sigh, and the sound drew my attention to Liam, who was sat our usual table to my right. Claire and Zoey were with him, Claire watching Luke with a forlorn expression and Zoey’s gaze remaining peeled on a glass of water that sat before her and appeared to be untouched.

“Just leave the door open,” Liam told me with an altogether tired expression. “Cassie should be right behind you.”

“Okay,” I murmured. Luke began to pace in front of the table, running his hands through his hair, and I remarked lightly, “Brother, you do that anymore, and your hair’s gonna start to fall out. What’s going on? Why am I here?”

Luke finally took his seat on Claire’s right, but I could see that his leg continued to bounce underneath the table.

He exhaled heavily and looked across the table. “We didn’t want to be at the complex. Ah…Liam?”

Liam’s face pinched together. “Let’s wait for Cas, I don’t want to have to do this shit more than I have to.”

The way he said it made my stomach roll. The air around us all was fraught with a tension that caused the oxygen to strip from my lungs and a steady stream of anxiety to drip along my spine like cold water from an unfiltered, disease-ridden tap. I cringed away from the sensation and beelined to my chair on the right side of the table head.

Just as I began to sit, the bell chimed from the entrance, happy and upbeat—starkly contrasting to our collectively gaunt expressions—and we all turned to see Cassie stroll inside with a curious smile on her face. The only difference in her appearance from a mere few hours ago was that snow had flecked her messy bun, and despite my concern for whatever was troubling the remainder of our group, my mind still replayed the events from our night in quick flashes. The bench, the pizza, the kiss, the weight of her body on mine, the feel of her tongue in my mouth, the sound of my name on her lips after she told me that everything was forgotten—it was all there.

Cassie took one look at me, and I wondered, for but a moment, if the reel of events had played in her brain, too…but that all disappeared when she glanced to her brother and saw the expression on his face. The color drained from her cheeks, and she asked in a strained voice:

“Oh, Jesus Christ—what?”

She moved as quickly as she could to the empty chair beside me, sinking down into it with her back straight and her eyes wide.

Liam inhaled so deeply that I was certain his lungs had overinflated to the point of pain, let it out through his nose, closed his eyes to gather himself, and when he attempted to speak, nothing came out. He closed his mouth and looked to the ceiling, and Zoey’s focus snapped from her water up to Liam.

“Lee, if you don’t just show them the video, I am going to lose it.”

His dark eyes were soft on hers. “Zo’, I have to explain a little—”

“They’ll get it off of context clues. Just play the fucking video, Liam!” she whisper-hissed.

He mumbled, “Okay,” several times over as if it were a prayer while he reached for his phone, which was face down on the table between them. After tapping on the screen a handful of times, he set it between us all. It was obvious that everyone else had already seen whatever Liam had on his phone, for Cassie and I were the only ones to sit forward at attention. He tapped the white play button in the center of the screen, and I felt my head cock to the side in confusion.

“Is that the hallway at the complex?”

I saw Liam nod in my peripheral vision. “Put up a security camera after everything. It’s by the stairwell. Good angles.”

There was no need to elaborate—after everything was referencing what had happened months ago with Zoey’s stalker. I didn’t blame him in the least…and I agreed with what he said—where he had placed the camera did offer good angles. 2A and 2B, my apartment and Liam’s, respectively, were in plain sight. The two doors that followed them, 2C and 2D, weren’t obscured in the least…and after watching what seemed to be a still image for upwards of ten seconds, a man appeared that made both Cassie and I suck in a quick breath.

Grey-haired, short, and wearing a pea coat that covered most of his body, the remainder of his features were obscured due to him facing away from the camera. That didn’t matter, though. We knew who he was. And we hadn’t seen Mister Milkovich in months.

Unbeknownst to us, while Zoey was living in apartment 2A, he had generously subleased 2D to his nephew, Peter. Neither Peter’s presence nor his identity were clear until he began to stalk Zoey, the realization of who he was became known far too late, and, in an act of defense, Zoey inevitably murdered him. Struck him with a rock on the backside of his skull after he threatened all of our lives until he was no longer. The news had reported his death—declared it some sort of hiking accident to the public—and we had put it behind us. We knew that Mister Milkovich would return to his apartment at some point…that time had never come, though. Approximately four months had passed, it remained vacant, and his existence had simply evaded my thoughts…until now.

He most certainly was not evading my thoughts now.

My vision briefly clouded with the sight of Zoey’s stalker. His body infiltrated my mind, thin and pale, dead and maimed, as I clutched his ankles and assisted Liam with chucking him into an overflowing river, and I blinked rapidly to usher the memory away.

I watched the video play as Mister Milkovich slid a key into the knob, unlocked the door, and strolled on in. The door closed, the video once again looked like a still image, and Liam tapped the center of his phone with his index finger to stop the feed.

“When was this taken?” Cassie asked.

“Earlier tonight. Way earlier,” Liam told her. “I had no idea he had even come by the complex until I decided to check the feed ’cause I couldn’t sleep.”

“Okay, um…so he finally made his way back to his apartment,” I confirmed aloud, my voice shaking slightly at the mere sight of him. “That was bound to happen…he probably wants to clean it up and find another tenant.”

Zoey’s gaze snapped onto mine, and the alarmed look in her eyes harpooned me in the chest.

“And what will Mister Milkovich find in his apartment, Jay?”

“Cameras,” Liam answered for me.

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