Page 75 of Shattered Veil

It was a blunt reminder of her past, and I wondered how often she had been placed in a similar position to lead to this level of trust in him to skirt the law.

He glanced at her, and his frustration eased, if only slightly.

Colton shrugged with his unwounded shoulder. “Fire escape through the window outside of the kitchen. Just glad I found it quick enough.”

I nodded, and so did Claire and Zoey, for the Milkovich’s apartment was a reverse layout of 2A—their old apartment and my current abode—and we were more than familiar with it. We all knew that the building was dated, and the old metal fire escapes attached to the outside brick were still the only means of fleeing from a blaze within. The ladders were rusted—janky—and I could almost picture Colton hanging from the bottom step, dangling before he dropped to the snowy ground and sprinted off into the distance.

“Are we gonna talk about this shit?” Colton flicked a hand toward the computer.

I felt all of our bodies stiffen, and we looked at each other before Claire began to reply, “You agreed to not question—”

“Oh, we are so past that,” he chuckled sardonically to the ceiling. “Jesus Christ, guys. You had no sense—no goddamn sense—no fucking clue to. Warn. Me?!”

Luke sharply began, “Hey, we didn’t know about the alarm—”

“Oh no-no!” Colton exclaimed, waggling an index finger in the air. “That was an assumed risk—a shitty one, but still assumed. I didn’t give a second thought to you knowing about the alarm, and I still don’t think you did because I’m pretty damn good at sniffing out lies. But the room?” He paused. “The. Fucking. Room?”

We all fell silent for a beat, and I glanced to Zoey to find that the color had drained from her face. Liam placed a hand between her shoulder blades, tearing his eyes off of her to glare at Colton as if he had no right to mention it.

With a clenched jaw, he nearly spoke through his teeth, “Why does that even matter?”

Colton blinked several times over. “Why—why does that matter? Ya didn’t think to mention the empty torture chamber? It’s the one thing that y’all seemed to know about in the whole damn place.”

Zoey’s elbows hit the table, and she groaned as she held her head in her hands.

Liam snapped, “Watch it,” with such bite in his direction that Colton’s head flinched backward.

Claire consolingly murmured across the table, “Zoey?”

“I’m fine, Claire,” Zoey returned with significant grit in her voice.

While Cassie and Luke simply held their tongues, bleak expressions all around, I watched Colton. Head tilted to the side, his expression was slowly turning. His irritation—or, perhaps, anger—at our unforthcoming dispositions melted away as he first took in Claire’s concern for her friend. What seemed to be morbid curiosity came next, but I couldn’t have been certain of that, for it was remarkably fleeting. The final emotion that lingered was a dawning realization that seemed to punch him in the gut, and his face blanched.

“Fuck,” Colton whispered, his attention on Zoey as he softly spoke, “I thought that maybe you had, I dunno, beef with a neighbor or something…then, I saw the room…I—I figured you were just putting your nose somewhere it didn’t belong or something. I—”

“We aren’t telling you what happened,” Liam snapped.

“I connected the dots. You don’t need to tell me what happened,” he murmured, shaking his head as if he were sad to say it. “Listen…I told you that there are women going missing.”

“Yeah,” I took my turn to speak because I assumed his words meant a swift change in direction to the current threat at hand. A somber shift with an unnecessary reminder that he desired information from me. “Prostitutes, exotic dancers—”

Cassie squeezed my hand, and Colton interjected:

“Right—usually—but not everything in life is one hundred percent,” he replied quickly. “My point is that I told you guys all of that. That women are being taken—going missing—in and around this town. I told you that…and you had no thought to mention that Zoey could be one of them and that our shit could be related?”

A hollow pang hit my gut.

Cassie’s nails bit into my palm.

Luke’s arms hung limply by his side as the gears visibly cranked in his mind.

Claire pushed herself to sit up straight.

Liam simply squinted as if he weren’t sure of the insinuation of Colton’s words.

Zoey’s head whipped to Colt’s, her hands still upright as if she weren’t sure of where to place them.

Everything had occurred simultaneously, and we all stared at Colton with wide, dumbstruck eyes because, for whatever reason, none of us had considered that the hell we had endured could be entwined with his. I closed my eyes as my head swam with the notion, and I forced myself to focus on the aggressive thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump of Cassie’s pulse beating with mine against our palms as I waited for the inevitable chaos to unfold.

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