Page 136 of Shattered Veil

“I got to you upstairs,” he told her.

Skylar confirmed, “You got to me upstairs.”

“I tried to get you out…he saw us…he shot me…you hit him with the lamp…when he came after you.”

“I-I,” Skylar stammered, “okay. Okay. H-how did you know I was here?”

“Your phone’s GPS,” he clarified, “was on…I had your location.”

“I—how do I even—”

Cassie interrupted Skylar, “Go get your phone from Liam. I’ll show you how to share your location and give you Colton’s number.”

“Not the number you have,” Colton instructed. “That’s a burner…share to…colton-dot-langdon-at-icloud-dot-com.”

Cassie nodded and began to lead Skylar toward the living area, her voice turning quieter as she began, “This is my brother…”

“Okay,” my brain scrambled to keep up with his plan. “You’re saying that we’re all leaving and pretending that I was never even here?”

Colton gritted out, “Mhm.”

Luke, still holding Colton’s headphone pinched between his fingers, questioned:

“And if he was working with another cop? They’ll know Jay was here, he’s got a goddamn target on his back!”

I said, “If that’s the case, then don’t I have one on my back regardless?”

Colton remarked, “If there are any clean cops in this town…this is too big to bury. Kidnapping…assault…attempted murder at most, without anyone knowing…about the other dancers. Better to at least…try to get him…behind bars…without y’all involved.”

Luke watched him with a slack jaw, the picture of disbelief, but none of us questioned this…this plan any further for it was the only one that allowed us to leave, Colton to not die from blood loss, and Randy to potentially be arrested.

Colton began to shiver, his teeth chattering loudly from what I presumed was shock.

“Shit,” I hissed, “911 now, Skylar!”

She appeared to be already dialing, and just as she was greeting the dispatcher, Colton began to grimace and groan. Twisting his body as he retrieved the flip phone that he had described as a burner from his hoodie pocket, he looked to me as I was the person nearest to him. He extended his hand with his cell to me, and I quickly closed the distance between us to retrieve it from him.

Colton whispered, “Lose this.” I nodded in response, pocketing it for future disposal, and he tipped his head toward the kitchen. A wave of shivers hit him as he muttered, “W-w-window.”

My brow pinched together as I mouthed back, ‘What?’

Cassie came up from behind me, silently finding my wrist as she led me along to a window that had already been opened. The wind blew through it, the cold shockingly pleasant on my wounds, and I followed her out the way that I presumed they had all come in.

Though the palpable threat had gone, the minutes that passed after climbing through that window were ones that set my soul on edge. Not because of the unknown state of Office Dowler’s comeuppance and whatever his memory retained, Skylar’s questioning by the emergency services, or Colton’s inevitable well-being—though those were certainly on all of our minds. No, it was because every living second was dragging by due to the need to repress our collective emotions.

Arriving back at our cars was horrid.

To mask the outward appearance to any onlooking neighbors, though I had begun to doubt that there were any at all, none of us could appropriately reunite.

Claire was unable to sprint to Luke mid-street, sobbing loudly as she threw her arms around his neck as I imagined she would, and he couldn’t lovingly speak to her that he was okay.

Zoey couldn’t go to Liam, embracing him with such velocity that he would have to sputter and cough, for I could imagine that her shoulder would hit him square in the diaphragm, and he couldn’t wrap his arms around her in a bear-like fashion, picking her up and continuing to walk her to the car.

Instead, they remained sat in the two vehicles—invisible to us due to the falling snow, though I was certain that we were thoroughly visible to them.

Luke shot me a glance that I could have sworn was teary-eyed as I followed Cassie to her car, but he nodded in understanding as I tipped my head toward the Jeep to tell him that I was riding with them.

Liam didn’t even ask—he just took the responsibility to drive—and when we were off, we were just…off. I sat in the back on Cassie’s left while Zoey remained in the passenger seat, and because we felt as though we were being watched by some unknown force, none of us dared to so much as look at each other before we were long on the highway.

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