Page 49 of Surface Scratch
“Christ, I have no idea how your dad puts up with you,” Vincent said with another laugh. “What do you need?”
“I need the address of that guy,” she said.
“That’s it? You couldn’t just text me?” Vincent sighed.
“I just wanted to make sure you would get it to me right away,” Ophelia said, popping another spoonful of cereal into her mouth.
There was a long pause before Ophelia’s phone buzzed in her hand. “I just sent it. Be careful, okay? That one seems shady,” Vincent said, his voice softening. “I don’t need your dad on my doorstep because you get hurt.”
“I’ll be fine.” She rolled her eyes again, looking at Caleb like he was in on the joke.
“I’m serious, ’Phelia, take the gun,” Vincent replied.
“Maybe,” she said, tapping her fingers on her knee again. “I’ll talk to you later, Uncle Vinny.” She ended the call and stood up. “Ready to go?”
Caleb just stared at her. She almost sounded like she felt affection for him. “Uncle Vinny?” he asked, his mouth twisting awkwardly as he tried not to laugh. The absurdity of his own fear hit him like a ton of bricks. He’d had literal wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat nightmares for days about Vincent and spent weeks terrified that he would show back up. But he had seen the sadness in those cold blue eyes when Adam essentially rejected him and gave him the silent treatment, and now that he knew what had been taken from him, the thought of Vincent didn’t make him worry for his own safety.
“You breathe a word of this to anyone, I will find a way to thoroughly ruin your day,” she grumbled. “Get your shoes on and meet me outside.”
* * *
Ophelia looked like she was drowning in her oversized puffy coat as she tapped her foot impatiently in the alley. “Jesus Christ, were you putting on makeup or something in there?” she asked as Caleb stepped outside. She wasted no time, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the front of the building.
“Wait a second!” Caleb yanked his arm back. Her eyes widened, just for a moment, before she glared at him. “We’re going to the ID maker, right?” He tried to keep his voice lower, realizing that he had both shouted at her and touched her. She had threatened people at her bar for doing less with her lime-cutting knife.
He couldn’t tell if it was his increased interactions with her or just him being overly sentimental, but he felt a pang of sadness as he looked at her blank face. She seemed to have three emotions, and none of them were particularly pleasant. Even when she did smile—no, it was more of a smirk—she was doing something mischievous, as though it was the only thing that brought her joy. Maybe it was having been raised around people like Marcus and Vincent.
“Yes, congrats, you figured it out,” she said. “Can we go now? I have shit to do tonight.”
Caleb followed her as she walked around the front of the building. “I thought we were going to wait for Marcus and Tariq before we made a move?” he asked.
They hadn’t really had a chance to discuss how they were going to convince the guy to give them the information of the five people who’d hired him to make the IDs, but he assumed it couldn’t be as easy as just knocking on his door and asking nicely.
“Marcus and Tariq can’t go right now, duh,” she said, pointing at the sun through the overcast sky. “It’s better to go now, during the day. If he is making IDs for the Sunshine Brigade, he’ll probably be on high alert at night, but during the day he’ll have his guard down.”
Caleb stomach knotted. “Do we know if he’s with them?”
She shrugged. “No clue, but I’m not taking any chances. I’m not fond of people trying to kill my dad,” she said. She pulled a key fob out of her pocket and clicked it in the direction of a forest-green pickup truck parked in front of the club. The headlights flashed, and she practically skipped to the passenger side to open the door for Caleb, looking even smaller next to the oversized vehicle.
Caleb’s stomach bottomed out. He held up his hand, intending to say something to her, but his voice was gone. The sound in both of his ears hollowed out for a moment before the ringing began piercing his skull. A shiver took control of his body.
She wanted to drive.
His knees turned to jelly, his legs shaking as he tried to keep himself upright as a waft of gasoline took over his sense of smell. “No,” he croaked, frozen in place as he fought back the tears beginning to gather in his eyes. “I can’t.”
Caleb buried his face in his hands, his heart pounding in his throat. The smell of gas burned his nostrils and filled his mouth with its acrid taste. The pinched flesh of his scar burned and tingled, his face on fire and freezing at the same time. He could hear Ophelia’s heavy boots coming toward him, but he kept his hands in place, feeling faint as his chest heaved up and down, the skin of his burned shoulder and upper arm tingling with pins and needles.
She wrenched his hands away from his face. “Look at me,” she said, the edge in her voice somehow cutting through the ringing in his ears. She dug her nails into his wrist, her brow furrowing as she looked up into his eyes. “Can you feel that?”
Caleb blinked away his tears and nodded, wincing as she dug them in deeper.
“This is real. This is happening to you right now,” she said, her tone softening. “Wherever you are in your head is not real. Not anymore. Now breathe in through your nose and hold your breath for three seconds.”
He clenched his jaw shut and held his breath, counting as slow as he could in his head.
“Again.”
Caleb did as she instructed, over and over until she released his wrists. His legs solidified beneath him. He could still vaguely smell the gas and hear the ringing in his ears, but other than a flood of embarrassment, the phantom sensations had vanished. He tried to think of something to say to explain himself, but she poked him in the chest before any words could form.
