Page 16 of Say It Slowly

Lucas shakes his head. “Tyler is—”

I hold up my hand to stop him. “I know, a pussy. But I don’t want to take any chances. Maybe I should just go back to the police. Let them handle this.”

“Whoa!” Lucas says, standing up. When he moves toward me, Roman steps in front of me. Lucas notices and backs off a little. But I can see he’s pissed about what I just said. “Did you saygo backto the police?

I’m confused by his anger, and I’m sure my face shows it. “Um, yeah,” I say slowly.

He looks around Roman’s shoulder, so he can talk to me. “And what the fuck did you tell them, exactly?”

I blink, trying to understand why Lucas is so bent up about me going to the police. It had nothing to do with him or eventhe Burning Crown. “I just…talked to them about Bree. I didn’t mention you guys at all.”

Jackson sighs. “So you didn’t tell them you were here the night before, at the Preference Ceremony?”

What, now he’s pissed too?Jesus.

“Well…maybe I did mention that.” I lift my hands. “But they don’t even believe she’s missing anyway, so I don’t know what you guys are worried about.”

That seems to anger Lucas even more. “We’re worried about them digging around in our fucking lives,” he says angrily.

“Dude, chill,” Roman says. “Jackson’s uncle can smooth things over if it comes to that.”

“Hopefully,” Lucas spits back. “But there’s no guarantee about that, is there, with the new Chief of Police running things? And those guys tend to point fingers at innocent-ass-people.” Lucas looks directly at me. “So, yeah, we’re not thrilled that you’re involving them.”

Lucas’s over-the-top reaction to the police makes me wonder what dark secrets they’re so desperate to protect.

And I don’t know how to explain it, but I have a sickening feeling that whatever is happening it’s only the tip of a very large iceberg that’s buried deep in the dark, frigid waters of the Society of the Burning Crown. An iceberg the Sacred Sons would like to keep hidden.

And if I’m being real, Lucas’ reaction is more than just a red flag. It’s a whole damn parade of red flags that are blowing in the breeze, and whipping me in my face.

“Okay, but what the fuck do you want me to do?” I ask. “My friend is missing, and no one will help me look for her!”

“Guys,” Roman interjects. “We take care of this Tyler shit, and we help her find her friend, then there’s no problem, right? No reason for the police to look into anything.”

The guys grumble collectively as Jackson shoves his hand into his front pocket, and pulls out a scrap of paper. He tosses at me, and if I’d registered what he was doing quickly enough, then I could have caught it. Instead, I watch as the tiny paper floats to the floor. Picking it up, I flip it over and see a crude sketch on the backside of the torn scrap paper.

“What’s this?” I ask, looking up at Jackson.

He points to the sketch. “This is us helping. We’ve been asking around about your friend, and someone at the bonfire saw the guy she was talking to. She didn’t see his face, but he had that mark on his forearm.”

I glance back down at the crude drawing. “Is it a tattoo?”

Jackson shrugs. “Appears so. She said it looked fresh like it was new. Still had some scabbing on it.”

I turn the paper a little, trying to make out what the image is. “Is this a snake?”

“Yup. And we talked to the tattoo parlors around here, and none of them remember doing a tattoo like that recently, so it must have been done somewhere else.”

Now that I have the paper oriented correctly, I can see it's a viper with its mouth open in a vicious smile, a single drop of venom dripping from it’s fang. It’s hard to tell if the tattoo is stylized, or if the person is just shit at drawing.

I glance up at Jackson. “A million guys probably have snake tattoos.”

“I guess,” Jackson says with a shrug. “But it certainly narrows the pool of suspects, doesn't it?”

Roman walks over to Christian, takes a hit from his joint, then holds it out to me. I shake my head and shove the piece of paper into my pocket. “Thanks for this,” I say. It’s something at least. One more piece of the puzzle that I didn’t have yesterday. “So what are we going to do about this Tyler business?”

They’re the ones who dragged me into the tribunal, convinced it would solve everything. But now that it’s made things 1000% worse, so it’s only fair they fix the situation.

Roman pushes out a breath and glances at the guys. “See who you can talk to about patrolling the campus. We can put a couple circle members on it. A few of them really hate Tyler. I can get them out of their classes and assignments if need be.” Then he turns those pale blue eyes on me. “As for you…you come with me.”

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