Page 80 of Shattered Veil

Luke looked to both of them with buggish eyes while Claire cut in, “If it’s related, there could be others.”

Upon the last word, the void of the past loomed over the table, hanging low and holding a grim reaper’s scythe. Even though Peter was gone—even though the laptop inside of 2D that could potentially have evidence on it aside from the rampant search of missing and murdered women was in our hands—if this were, indeed, part of something bigger, it could mean that there were others that knew of his death. Others that he worked with. Others who knew of Zoey and could inevitably return.

Others who may have gotten their eye on Cassie, and the remainder of our found family were none the wiser.

“‘There could be others,’” Colton slowly repeated Claire’s previous sentence, pausing to ensure that he had our attention, and then quoted Liam, “‘I’m not going through this shit again.’” His icy gaze wandered to Zoey. “Something along the lines of, ‘This shit is over and done with.’” He deduced quietly, “You’re makin’ it sound like he stopped…that 2D went away.” Colton looked to all of us carefully—anxiously—until he finally inquired, “He went away, then? He stopped?” The air hung heavy, we all nodded, and Colton hesitated before he bluntly asked, “Why?” Our collective attention was kept either on the table, the laptop, or each other. “Okay, well, he’s obviously gone somewhere in a goddamn hurry if he left all of his shit and a computer behind. Where is he, then, if 2D’s unoccupied?” I felt Cassie begin to fidget with her hands beneath the table again, and found them shaking when I reached for her. Colton threw his head back, groaning to the ceiling before eyeing us all again and pleading, “Dammit, guys, we need to fuckin’ help each other here! If 2D is involved in this shit, gets back from a little vacay, and somehow figures out that I broke into his place and stole his computer with God-knows-what on it along with some of his drugs, fuck jail, he could find me, and I could be dead.” He breathed in once, and then out. “Very dead. And you’re right—there could be others, but we can’t figure out if that’s true if ya don’t talk to me—”

Zoey exclaimed, “He’s gone, okay?!”

None of us could argue the admission. Perhaps none of us wanted to argue the admission because it was clear that whatever knowledge Colton had on the situation that could be interwoven with our lives was desperately needed.

Our lines of sight all eventually made it to Colton to see that he had briefly frozen. Jaw slightly agape, Zoey’s words appeared to sink in for him, and Colton pushed himself to sit on the edge of the stool, his back ramrod straight.

“From the look on your faces…he’s dead?” We all took the sledgehammer to the chest of a question with grace, remaining silent until Colton pressed, “Yeah, I’m gonna need y’all to answer the question. Did you send me into a dead. Man’s. Apartment?” The space between us turned stagnant and dirty with our further nonresponses, and Colton seemed to take our reactions as a yes. After covering his eyes with a single hand, he dragged it down his face, clutching his lower lip and chin for a moment while he stared off into space. When his gaze refocused, he dropped his arm back down and asked gravely, “How long?”

It was Liam who finally muttered, “Four months.”

Colton’s eyebrows shot up. “Four months? And his shit’s still in 2D? Why’d you just now want in the apartment?” His head moved from side to side rapidly. “Not important. That’s not important. What is important is if you think there’s any loose ends.”

He leaned forward slightly, anticipating our inevitable reply with an alarmed expression.

We all looked to the laptop and then back to him. I saw Zoey shake her head in the corner of my vision, and Colton sighed, his body sagging so heavily with relief that he almost melted into the bar behind him.

“Oh, thank fuck.”

His reaction shouldn’t have struck me as odd. It was a relief that Peter Milkovich was no longer. That the only discernable evidence of the cause of his death was now sitting on the tabletop before us. To that, I agreed. What prevailed over my recognition of his relief, however, was an anger that simmered in the depths of my diaphragm. The means in which everything had occurred—the horror that it left burned in the back of all of our minds—it was, at times, almost too much to bear, and I often wished that I could remove the memory altogether. That I could swipe at my brain like an eraser on a chalkboard, leaving the remaining smudges entirely unrecognizable—gone.

It wouldn’t be gone, though. The residue from the white streaks would still prevail, and there was no metaphorical cleanser that I could dream of that would do the trick.

“Thank fuck,” I whispered bitterly. “Thank. Fuck?”

Cassie squeezed my hand.

“Yeah,” Colton returned, “thank fuck. Because it’s been long enough that if he was involved in everything else, he’s been considered collateral damage by now.”

My chest twinged with an unrealistic hope, and while everyone else seemed to be processing the possibility, Luke uttered:

“You can’t be so sure of that.”

“I can,” Colton told him.

Claire gritted out, “How?”

“This isn’t…” Colton looked upward, seeming to be figuring how to phrase it all, “it isn’t organized like a mob family or somethin’. They’re not vengeful. They aren’t operating under some Hammurabi eye-for-an-eye shit. They work up to one,” he held up an index finger with purpose, “head honcho. They work separate—sometimes alone, sometimes about two or three people a piece. If they provide, they’re rewarded. If they fuck up, they’re eliminated. That’s why they work separate—to allow room for error.” He paused, then turned to Zoey. “Four months? If no one’s come to find you within four months, my bet is that even if he was involved, he didn’t talk you up the line yet, and he was alone in this. And if y’all don’t think there are any other loose ends with evidence, then you’re…fine.”

The exhale that came out of Zoey was so long that I could hear it pull at her lungs, and she hoarsely questioned:

“What?”

“Even if he was involved, he’s collateral damage by now,” he repeated. “He was an error, Zoey. I think you’re safe.”

We all stared at him in disbelief. To each other with the unspoken reminder that we should by no means take what Colton says as fact, though the large chunk of salt that we were consistently taking with his words felt as though it were beginning to disintegrate. The way Colton said it with an uncharacteristic sympathy was such a weight off of our collective shoulders that I could feel the tension in the room ease. Even Luke’s guard seemed to have lowered with the way that his eyes fluttered closed and oxygen flowed through his nostrils.

There was little else to be said. We could go round and round until we were all blue in the face, devoid of air, but there was no use. Not with this, at least.

Zoey looked at the computer with a hardened stare as if she loathed its very presence, and I understood her itch to destroy it without a glance at the contents. For this to just be over. I knew that she wouldn’t, though. Even if she wanted to, I could picture Claire’s defensive, biting words—could see Liam holding her back with a single arm and gentle pleas spoken in her ear for we wanted answers. Regardless of the thought of Peter being collateral damage, we wanted to know if there was any reason for us to be looking back.

“I’ll, um, take this home and look through it,” Zoey murmured. “Just to see.”

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