Page 58 of Surface Scratch
Shit, I can fit through there, but can they? It’s too narrow.He glanced at the door handle to make sure it was locked, but a part of him knew that a simple push-in lock wouldn’t stop them for long if they figured out where they were. He looked back at the window, watching as Matteo slid himself outside.
Vincent grabbed his arm, just a little too hard, and pushed him toward the window. “You’re up, buttercup,” he said in a hushed voice and slapped his ass. “Hurry up, I don’t feel like being immolated today.”
“Kitchen is clear!” a voice called from just beyond the door.
“Keep checking. The blood on the carpet is still fresh. V said there were two people here in his text,” another voice rasped.
Caleb took an unsteady step up onto the lid of the toilet and leaned out the window, the cold winter air stinging his face and bare arms. He leaned back inside. The window was higher off the ground than he’d initially thought. He shoved aside the dingy blue towel hanging over the towel bar and gripped it with his uninjured hand, using the leverage to swing his leg through first.
The handle on the door of the bathroom rattled. Both Caleb and Vincent watched it jiggle back and forth a few times then go still.
Shit.
He let himself fall through the window, hitting the snow-covered gravel hip first. He could worry about the pain and inevitable bruise later. Matteo grabbed his forearm and yanked him to his feet as though he were weightless.
“Vincent, come on,” Caleb whispered, peering back into the bathroom.
The blond was patting the pockets on his coat and pants, his black-and-blue eyes wide. “Shit. My mask. It’s back in the living room.” He paused and gritted his teeth. “Fuck it.”
Boom.The thin door flexed inward as something struck it from the other side. Caleb’s heart leaped into his throat. Vincent squeezed his upper body through the window, his shoulder catching on the outer edge.
Caleb grabbed the collar of his jacket, his jaw clenched against the pain in his hand as he did so, and braced one foot against the siding of the house, pulling back with all his might.Boom.The door’s hinges groaned with the next strike.
Matteo caught Vincent as he tumbled out of the window, half on his side. Vincent’s gloved hands came over his face, a pained growl escaping him as what looked like steam began to rise from his exposed face.
Caleb’s eyes widened. The forest-green pickup truck he and Ophelia had arrived in was rumbling up the gravel driveway, but the skin Vincent hadn’t been able to cover was beginning to blister and peel back, the exposed layer beneath somehow appearing both dry and bloody. As if on autopilot, he leaned back into the bathroom, grabbing hold of the blue towel from inside. Vincent could use it to shield himself.
The door burst open in a shower of splintered wood. A man with a raised crossbow stepped through, his angular face etched into a scowl, his brown eyes full of rage. Caleb began to push himself back out of the window as the sound of Ophelia and Tariq yelling at him over the rumbling engine was drowned out by the familiar high-pitched whine of his tinnitus. The man wasn’t wearing sunglasses this time, or a mask.
All the sound around him vanished as the man lowered the crossbow, locking eyes with him. Time froze, only the ringing in his ears growing louder and louder until it felt as though knives were being pushed into his eardrums.
Hands gripped him from behind and yanked him back toward the truck, but he couldn’t even blink.
It wasn’t possible.
It couldn’t be.
“Nick?”
Chapter Eighteen
Caleb’s ears didn’t stop ringing the entire drive back. Not even as Vincent pulled him from the truck and dragged him up to Marcus’s apartment.
Nick is alive. He’s alive, and he’s with the same people that attacked me. He attacked me. But he’s alive.
Caleb couldn’t figure it out. Why was Nick with them? Had he gotten clean? Why did his face look so… scary? Even on the night Nick left for good, high and malnourished, he hadn’t looked like that.
He’d spent so many nights right after Nick left worrying that the police would show up at his door to tell him his brother was in jail or dead. He had cried. Mourned. Even accepted the fact that he would never see Nick again, because why would he? Life had never been merciful to him, and it only made sense that his awful life would be made worse by the death of his brother.
But now it seemed like this was worse. Way worse.
He couldn’t tell if he wanted to cry or scream or hit something. It was every feeling at once, freezing his muscles and awareness of his surroundings.
A stinging pain snapped through his face and neck, knocking the ringing from his ears and making his vision come into focus. He was sitting on the leather couch in Marcus’s penthouse. Vincent loomed over him, his hand drawn back as though he was ready to slap him again. The skin on his forehead was still tinged pink where it had blistered from the sun.
“You back, buttercup?” he asked, sounding annoyed.
Caleb nodded slowly, looking past him to see Tariq and Matteo stripping off their outwear in the kitchen.
