Page 83 of Shattered Veil

“I don’t—I don’t remember all of them. There’s probably a girl or two each month that no-call-no-shows. I—it’s been like that since I moved here in the summer. It’s not like I kept track,” she rattled back.

“Okay, okay.” He held up a hand to stop her. “Anyone recent?”

“Yeah, um—Lacey Rhone? Harper Phillips. That’s, ah…that’s all I can remember for now.”

“’Kay. What about them? Did you know them well?”

“Er…no.”

Colton squinted. “Okay. What about…I dunno, rumors? Did they use?”

“No,” she told him quickly.

“Spend a little too much time with clientele?”

“No.”

“Ya sure about that?”

“Yeah!” she bit back. “I’m sure. Just because we’re strippers doesn’t mean we’re prostitutes.” Liam coughed loudly as she snapped, “The fuck kind of a question is that?”

“Easy,” Colton replied. “That’s not what I meant. Even if I did, I’m not gonna judge. Just asking if there was something common between them. Same people that come in to see them? Maybe those people are extra chatty? Maybe they frequent champagne rooms for privacy? Shit like that.”

Cassie pondered that for a beat, appearing mildly downtrodden, until she said, “Not sure. Faces blend together, y’know? I normally just keep my head down and work.”

Colton exhaled loudly. “Okay, let me make sure I have this straight. You moved here in the summer, so…you’ve been working there for upward of half a year?”

“Uh huh.”

His face twisted. “And you don’t know more? Nothing seemed off?”

“Look, I focus on my own shit at Gas Lamp,” Cassie returned, exasperated. “You have some names. I can tell you what they look like, too. What—what exactly do you want from me?”

“What, do you think I have a magical database to search? Oh, here, let me pull this laptop outta my ass.” Colton threw her vexed attitude right back and mimed reaching for his backside. Claire sighed heavily as he went through the motions of placing a very invisible computer on his lap and cracking it open. With either of his index fingers, he pretended to click on a keypad several times, mocking, “Beep-boop-bahp. Ah, yes. Thank goodness I had those dancers’ names and absolutely nothing else! With my handy-dandy system here, I now know every person those women interacted with before they went missing, cross-checked them, and found the culprit!” He then gave us all an enthusiastic representation of jazz hands. “Yaaay!”

Claire whined, “Don’t be an ass, Colt.”

“I’m not—” Colton caught Claire’s narrowed gaze, and he shifted his tone to one that was less grating. “I’m not trying to be. I just wanted more, that’s all. I could’a gotten that from another quick trip to Gas Lamp myself.”

She returned, “Didn’t you kinda know who’s responsible already? Friends of friends that you heard shit about?”

“First of all, none of them are friends. They were hardly even acquaintances, and they’re nothing to me now. Fuckers.” Colton spoke the last word under his breath with disgust, and he added, “And no. I don’t. Remember—I said that they work separately. I knew one. I don’t know other names ’cause he didn’t know other names. I know trends. Vague locations. Cause and effect.”

Claire’s eyebrows rose. “You knew one?”

Colton went quiet, his gaze locked with Claire’s, and he calmly stated, “He and the guy he teamed up with turned on each other.”

Her jaw went slack. “You say that as if it was convenient.”

“It was,” he told her. “They’re both dead.”

We all blinked several times in succession, absorbing his words. He didn’t elaborate further, and none of us pressed him to do so. There was no question, to me, that he was involved in their inevitable demise. However, whether he simply planted the seed or performed the act himself was left a mystery, for the brief veering of conversation was one that we didn’t need to venture down.

Cassie questioned, “Can’t you do a lot with a description of the two women I gave you?”

“Do what? Go to the police?” he replied with disbelieving eyes. “My dirty-ass record will get pulled up in no time, and then they’ll really have questions for me.”

Claire suggested, “You could call them anonymously?”

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