Page 40 of Shattered Veil

I knew that already. We all knew that already—the explanation for how we knew that was long and arduous, but during the attempt to figure out who the man was that was on Zoey’s tail, we did learn that he had placed what appeared to be nanny cams in several locations. One was in her apartment—my apartment, once she had left. Another was in the hallway in a similar position to where Liam had now placed his. I had taken these two cameras, and, at first, I had simply removed any footage that was recorded on them. It seemed like a solution that was easy enough…but the thought nagged me to the point that I essentially curb-stomped them to hell before tossing the leftover bits into a fire at a campsite in the woods.

Those cameras were fully taken care of. The ones left in 2D, however—the ones in which we had oh-so-briefly stumbled upon their live feed—one that was surveying the Milkovich’s living room, and the other looking over a very ominous room covered in what appeared to be soundproof padding—those remained. The knowledge that he could have been intending to use that empty, padded room for…only God knows what with Zoey was nausea inducing. That part of the nightmare was behind us, though. I reminded myself of that as I pushed the memory out of my mind.

“The cameras don’t have anything on them,” I replied. “Not with any of us. The other two I had are, um…” Destroyed? “Wiped, crushed, and burned in a fire.”

All heads whipped to mine, and Cassie asked, “You did all that?”

I twisted to look down into her wide, brown eyes, our shoulders touched with the motion, it was as if I were hooked up to an electrical current that set me on fucking fire, and because my yearning for the burn had never stopped since I left her house, I had to subdue the urge to lean into the sensation.

“I was a bit anxious at the time,” my reply came out in a breath, “so…yeah.”

It was a millisecond. A goddamn millisecond that, honestly, I shouldn’t have given a shit about because this exact second was akin to a shift in the tectonic plates beneath our entire group. I felt it regardless—felt our eyes lock how they have in the past and reveled in the sensation of lustful bliss, ragingly obvious mutual attraction, and plain old, straight to the point, need.

“The cameras are just the start of it,” Liam stated ominously, and both Cassie and I shifted our attention rapidly to him. “I mean, okay, there’s nothing of us on the cameras, but they’re still there, and one of them is in that creepy-ass padded room.”

Cassie replied as calmly as she could, “We knew that Mister Milkovich would see all that eventually. Nothing’s changed.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “The cameras and the room are creepy. I’m with you. But the guy was creepy, and there’s no avoiding that being found out. And seeing Mister Milkovich again gives me the heebies, but none of this points fingers anywhere…I don’t think any of this is a problem.”

Liam leaned forward, slid his finger across the screen to fast forward the video, and just as he tapped to play it once more, Cassie groaned:

“Fuck, there’s more.”

With a phone pressed against his ear, Mister Milkovich had exited 2D. He shrugged up his right shoulder to hold his cell in place as he locked the door and spoke:

“Soundproofed the guest room and added a lock on the outside of it—door was open, but the closet’s locked, and I can’t get in.” With a hand on his hip, Mister Milkovich was facing the camera as he let out a loud sigh and threw his head back. “There were handcuffs and a gag in the corner of the room, Artie. It looked like the beginnings of a torture chamber.”

I whispered, “What the fuck,” because we hadn’t seen those on the camera—of course, not all angles of the room were displayed when we had seen the live feed months ago.

Zoey cleared her throat beside me, and Liam gently placed a hand between her shoulder blades, grazing his way up and down her back in a gesture of comfort.

The video continued on with Mister Milkovich saying, “I can’t tell Barb about this—no—no, Artie, that would be horrible for her—she doesn’t need to know that her son was…could have been some sick freak.” He began to walk toward the camera, toward the staircase. “I have no idea. I’m sure Peter had plenty of enemies…I just didn’t expect this. Called a locksmith to open the closet—mhm, tomorrow afternoon—exactly—only Lord knows what’s in there.”

My guts metaphorically left me as he said it, dropping so hard and quick that the noise I made was as if the wind had been knocked from me. The room spun. My throat tightened. The instinctual sensation to fucking run struck me, but I knew that it would be no good.

All I could strangle out of my constricted throat was, “Oh. Fuck.”

Liam reached for his phone once again and tapped on the screen to stop the video.

Cassie whispered, “What’s in the closet?”

I voiced, “What was that, ‘Exactly,’ that he said? What—what’s exactly?”

Luke voiced timidly, “I don’t fuckin’—” We all glanced at him, he shook his head so hard that three bulky pieces of his hair fell over his forehead, and he quickly whipped them back with a swipe of his hand. “We don’t know, obviously. I—I don’t even want to say it, but what if he had, like, pictures of you or something, Zoey?”

Cassie stated bitterly, “I’m betting this fucker made a goddamn shrine or some shit—”

Liam scolded her sharply, “Cassandra!”

“Mmkay, sorry,” she returned to her brother with a high brow, “but do you really think I’m wrong on that?”

“That’s the conclusion I came to, anyway,” Zoey muttered. She pressed her palms to her eyes. “I think Mister Milkovich is gonna start digging around.”

Claire’s blue eyes were shockingly wide as she said to Zoey, “If there’s literally anything that has to do with you in that closet, you bet your ass that someone’s coming to ask you questions.”

“Hence,” Luke spoke, drawing my attention back to him, “what I said before—we have a problem.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s…assume the worst and say there’s shit that points to Zoey.”

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