Page 41 of Shattered Veil

“Shrine,” Cassie piped up somberly, and Liam shot her a quick glare.

“Even if someone…I dunno, brings it to your attention, comes by to ask you questions, whatever…what else are they gonna do?” I questioned the entire group. “There’s no evidence. The rock is gone, the cameras are gone, he is gone.”

Zoey appeared to be chewing on the inside of her cheek, and then she asked me quietly, “Do you know what they do during autopsies, Jay?”

“Uh,” I hesitated, “decide on a cause of death?”

She hummed. “Mhm. Evaluate any obvious wounds, determine when and how death could have occurred, check out their teeth,” Zoey swallowed, “potentially scrape their fingernails for DNA.”

It was the briefest of pauses—brief, but the potential gravity of the situation had sunken in for us all, nonetheless.

“He had me by the hair,” Liam stated gravely, and nausea bloomed in my gut. “Had his hand in Zoey’s mouth.”

“We…we have no idea what they found. What they have.” Zoey added in a rapid run-on sentence, “If they did find anything, it would’ve been tested against potential criminal records, and they turned up with nothing because we’re not in the system, but if he has anything in that fucking closet that leads to me, they could bring me in, I could be a suspect, they could question Liam too, they could match both of our DNA’s from that scraping, and then we’re both…” She took a rattling breath. “We’re both fucked.”

Claire’s voice shook. “He—he was in a river, that all had to have washed away—”

“Probably not dried blood underneath his nails, Claire. I had that cut on my head. He had me right,” Liam reached a hand up to grip his mop of blonde hair by the roots, “right here.”

“And I felt his nails in my gums,” Zoey clarified. “I—I don’t remember if I bled.”

“Okay,” Cassie spoke with purpose, “we need to get in that apartment before he comes back.”

“Uh huh,” Zoey replied quickly, “ya think?”

Claire straightened her spine. “I know how to pick a lock.”

Cassie’s disbelieving gaze whipped to her. “When the hell did you learn how to do that?”

She sighed loudly. “Long story.”

Hands now over his face, Luke blurted out, “No.”

“Luke.”

“No, Claire,” he retorted, letting his hands fall. “Not you, not any of us. What if we—what if there are other cameras we don’t know about? What if someone catches us in the act of tampering with what could be evidence? Fucking none of us are going.”

The silence was heavy as we absorbed his words because he was right. He was right, but none of us wanted him to be. I suspected that we all were pondering the same thing as we wordlessly deflated into our seats:

Do we have to risk it all, anyway?

I had wracked my brain with the question for upward of a minute when the front door to the bar opened once more, the metallic sound of the bell overhead happy and light.

Luke damn near growled, “We needed to lock the goddamn door,” before he sharply called, “We’re closed!” to the entrance.

I looked at whoever had strolled into Henry’s. He wasn’t large by any means—perhaps Cassie’s height, wearing a black hoodie with dark jeans. I’d place him at about Luke’s age. Though appearing to be in his mid to late twenties, his expression screamed that life had run him over. His hair, which was as dark as his hoodie, was scruffy and hanging down to his cheeks, damp from snow. He pushed it off of his forehead, the bar lighting cast shadows across his face that almost made him appear gaunt, and when his line of sight met ours, he began to reply in an irritated tone:

“Ya don’t look close—” His words stopped, and his eyes widened when he seemed to actually see us all. His jaw fell open, and he murmured a mystified, “Oh my God.”

“Closing time’s at two!” Claire called out. “We can’t legally serve—”

She finally looked at the man and gasped—I mean, really gasped—and I, along with everyone else at the table, glanced at her with a silent, questioning concern. The whites were visible around her blue irises as she took him in, and I swear the color drained from her face to the point that her freckles were the only feature on her skin with notable color.

Luke gave her the quickest of appraisals, scanning her expression for but a moment until he looked back to the man standing with his arms hanging by his sides at the entrance to the bar. He cocked his head, his gaze suddenly alight with an alarmed understanding, and he placed both of his hands flat on the table, pushing himself upward with a significant gumption. His chair shot backward and fell to the floor, and the rest of us, save for Claire, flinched at the sound. Luke took three rapid steps in the man’s direction, and he stabbed his index finger toward him as he gritted out:

“Get the fuck out of my bar!”

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize who he was.

---