Page 63 of Bend & Break
“Think it’s them?” Blake whispers.
“It has to be,” I murmur, watching the recording tick by. “If we can figure out who’s behind them, we’ll be one step closer.”
We stay quiet, crouched in the shadow of the SUV. Everything about them screams that they’re who we’re looking for. The masks, the way they lumber around, seemingly half-drunk. Too loud, too careless.
One of them shoves a smaller guy—someone definitely not with them—face-first into the gravel.
He hits hard, rocks scattering, and when he tries to get up, they close in on him like fucking hyenas.
Another shove drops him again; boots find ribs. His jaw.
My insides knot tight.
He wipes at his mouth and comes away with blood on his hand. Their laughter echoes across the lot.
One grabs him by the collar and hauls him up. He lifts his mask just enough to spit in his face, then shoves him so hard he nearly eats gravel again.
He takes off running this time, stumbling into the dark while the masked trio howl and high-five each other, eating it up.
Blake’s fingers dig into my bicep. I don’t look at her. I keep the camera steady, catching as much as I can.
Then, finally, one yanks his mask off, shaking sweaty blond hair out of his eyes.
Fucking Jonah. I guess we have a definitive answer.
The other two rip their masks up as well, still laughing, but their faces aren’t familiar.
Doesn’t matter. Having a clear picture of them is enough to figure out who they are.
Blake swallows hard, gaze still pinned on them as Jonah slings an arm around one of the others, mask dangling from his fingers. “Better than nothing. I just wish we had that freaking drive now.”
By the timewe get back to the flat, it’s close to one in the morning, and every muscle in my body feels like it’s made of wet cement. Blake drops her bag by the bedroom door and disappears into the bathroom without a word, the shuffle of her feet giving her away. She’s just as drained.
The mental weight of all this is exhausting, enough to siphon a person dry.
I peel off my hoodie, kick my shoes into the corner, and collapse onto the mattress.
We’ve got faces now. At least one name. A recording of Jonah and his friends acting like complete psychos in masks that match the ones from the video.
But it’s not enough.
The drive was our smoking gun, and the second it wiped itself clean really fucked anything else we might have been able to do.Which leaves us with scraps. Our word against nothing, and a bloody basement floor that might as well not exist.
If we go to the cops now, what do we really have? Suspicion. A half-drunk recording of a few assholes hazing some random kid in a parking lot. Empty claims about a drive that doesn’t exist anymore.
They’d laugh us out of the station.
I rake a hand down my face, staring up at the ceiling. One wrong move, and this whole thing folds in on us.
Kind of feels like it already has.
My eyes catch on the sliver of light spilling from the bathroom. Blake left the door mostly open, steam still curling out into the room.
The shadow of her body stretches against the fogged glass, soft curves and long lines.
Every thought about Jonah, the drive, the cops—all of it drowns under the weight of her. The way she drags a towel through her damp hair, the shape of her shoulders, the tug of shorts over bare legs. My chest tightens, hungry and irrational, because I’ve been in her already, I’ve had her mouth, her gasps, her pretty little moans—but it’s never enough.
It will never be enough.
