Page 79 of Shattered Veil

She groaned, “I so don’t want you to be right about this.”

A bitter smile tugged at the corner of my lip. “Are you saying that I am?”

Her face pulled into a grimace. “Liam’s gonna freak.”

“To be fair, he’d freak more if you somehow still went missing, and I end up having to tell him everything myself.”

I phrased it—and spoke it—as gently as possible, but she still squirmed as if I had snarled the words.

“God—fuck, okay. Okay,” she acquiesced.

My shoulders slouched, my knees nearly going weak with relief, and I sighed out, “Thank you. Out we go?”

Cassie nodded, albeit hesitantly, and I ushered her out the bathroom door with a hand on her lower back. It gave me comfort, somehow, to allow my fingers to linger there until we rounded the corner to the public, and forcing myself to keep my hands by my side near after was damn near impossible.

Conversation rang through my ears as I trailed behind Cassie:

“Look, I work in retail,” Zoey told Colton with purpose. “I don’t exactly see why I would have been a target—I’m pretty far separated from anything that you’re talking about.”

“It doesn’t matter why you would have been a target at this point, Zoey,” Claire interjected softly.

Colton thought aloud, “Just proximity, maybe? I’m assuming you live in the same complex as 2D, too?”

Zoey waved his comment away. “Yeah, yeah—that’s not—it wasn’t like I was being slowly tailed, waiting to be taken. Guy was crazy. He tried to assault me in the street. Broke into my apartment. Followed us all to North Carolina—”

“Fucker,” Colton murmured. “He wasn’t subtle about it, but he could’a been high. That would explain a lot.”

Zoey nodded, muttering something that was too quiet for me to hear.

Almost back to our seats, Liam finally managed to yank his attention away from Zoey and was now watching his sister with curiosity. His dark eyes were already filled with anxious worry due to the topic at hand, and it most certainly remained that way as he squinted at Cassie, mouthing:

‘You okay?’

Her response was nonverbal, but it was clear from his reaction that she had, more or less, implied no. He traced her from foot to head as if he were searching for signs of injury, and then voiced aloud a concerned, questioning:

“Cas?”

She gently sat in her chair, and I followed. The gears visibly cranked in her mind as she stared at the tabletop, the conversation around us dwindling to nothing with Liam’s call of her name. All eyes on her, Cassie took a deep breath through her nose, let it out in a sharp huff, and uttered:

“Well, don’t stop for me. By all means, continue.”

I whispered, “Cas.”

“I’ll get to it,” she replied.

“You’re sheet-white,” Zoey noted quietly, scanning her similarly to how Liam had moments ago.

“Circle back, Zo’,” Cassie insisted.

“’Kay,” Zoey quickly spoke, placing a hand on the laptop before her. “I’m done with this, anyway—I am going to go at this thing with a goddamn baseball bat and burn it. Cas? You got news?”

“You’re jumping ahead,” Claire told her. “Yes, of course, fucking burn it. But take the time to look through it first to see if there’s any more connection to him and the missing women near us.”

“Everything with him,” Zoey leaned forward in her seat, flexing her fingers that laid on the computer, “is over!” She spoke to the entire room with an exhausted whine, “Let’s move on. Why does it even matter if 2D was related to the missing women?”

Colton shook his head. “If that ain’t the worst question I’ve ever heard—”

“Zoey,” Liam croaked, her inquiry seemingly hitting him like the crack of a whip. “I’m not going through this shit again.”

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