Page 78 of Shattered Veil

But, like I said, it didn’t matter.

All I knew was that my heart was lodged in my throat as I approached the women’s. I half-jogged down the dim hallway, tore around the corner, and when I yanked at the knob to find it locked, I exhaled a string of profanity before calling quietly against the door:

“It’s me, Cas—open up.”

I heard her flip the lock, but it was me who opened the door. Phone still in hand, Cassie was pacing away from me toward the toilet. She spun ninety degrees on her heel to face the mirror above the sink, briefly looking at her own horrified face before meeting my eyes. Her usually tanned skin tone ashen and her breathing progressing to hyperventilation; she was the picture-perfect expression of panic.

Just as the latch on the door clicked shut behind me, she whimpered, “Jay.”

The way her face contorted as she nearly cried my name gutted me, and I closed the distance between us in two short steps.

“Shhh,” I consoled her, one grip on her nape and the other hooked around her waist. Her arms remained between us, curled into her chest, and her body vibrated as if she had caught a chill. “It’s a lot to take in. I know—”

“I knew her,” she murmured into my neck.

My entire being stilled. “What?”

“Delaney. The woman in the article I found. I knew her.”

Relaxing my hold on her as quickly as I had pulled her in, I took only half a step backward to look into Cassie’s frantic gaze. I rested my hands on her biceps, shaking my head as if that knowledge couldn’t possibly be true.

“Knew her?” I asked as gently as I could.

“She was one of the dancers when I started working at Gas Lamp,” Cassie admitted, and a sledgehammer struck my chest. “I didn’t talk to her much…wouldn’t have even noticed that she stopped coming in if my schedule didn’t get moved around because of it.”

My mouth hung open for a beat, and I replied, raw and ragged, “Fuck. No. No. What else did the article say?”

“Reported as a drug overdose,” she said. “It didn’t list what kind. Mostly talked about the rising drug problem in the city. She was found in some random back-alley close to Roanoke, I—I didn’t know her that well, but I’m pretty damn sure she didn’t use. And this article’s only from two weeks ago…it would have been a long time between when she stopped coming to Gas Lamp and when she was found. I—I feel like this could check out, Jay, and…I don’t know. I had to get out of there to take a breath.” Cassie inhaled, long and slow, but it was anything but calm as it hitched in her throat several times over. She exhaled, “Figure out what I need to do here.”

My usual verbose nature was stripped from me as my throat went dry. My eyes burned as I forgot to so much as blink. I attempted to swallow, but my saliva seemed to have escaped me along with any words, and all I could let out was an anguished, “Angh.”

“I, um,” Cassie began, “well, I don’t feel comfortable being anywhere near Gas Lamp, now. I have enough saved up to get by for, um, a while…my mortgage is low, at least.”

“Quit,” I managed to say. “You’ll quit. That’s good.”

“Call Sky after this, tell her about Delaney, keep,” she paused to steady herself, “keep the details to a minimum, obviously, but she’s skittish. She’ll probably quit, too.”

“Good.” I nodded. “Good.”

“And we can have Colton meet with us later for anything he wants to know—”

Her intention hit me, and my arms fell to my sides. “Wait. You’re—you’re telling the group…right?”

Cassie’s face twisted as if she had tasted something bitter. “What? No, I can’t. You know that.”

“Cassie,” I spoke her name disbelievingly. “You cannot be serious. This is bigger than your brother finding out what you do for a living—”

“I’m quitting, so that point is moot—”

“Moot?!” I loudly exclaimed.

Cassie held up both of her hands, palm facing out. “Shhh!”

I rambled, “It is not moot, Cas. Quitting doesn’t just—just remove you from existence entirely if someone had their eye on you. Nothing about this entire fucking shitshow is moot. We just got more evidence that dancers from. Your. Work. Could be getting used, abused, and fucking murdered…and you think it’s a good idea to keep up the façade?”

“Jay.”

“I’d normally be right behind ya on the decisions you make with your own life, but this is bigger than…than everything!” Cassie opened her mouth, and I held up an index finger to stop her. My voice went low as I said, “I. Will. Be. Damned. If something like keeping your ex-work-life in the dark ends up getting you hurt or worse because we don’t all have our guard up.” Her face fell, her defense seemed to abate, and I added, “I’m sorry, Darlin’, but they need to know.”

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