Page 52 of Bones

“It definitely looks suspicious.” Big zoomed in, giving us all a better view of his hands, and there was no doubt that he’d stuck something on the wall. “I think we found our guy.”

“So, who is he?”

“Pretty sure he goes to school with her.”

“We’re gonna need more than that.” Cotton walked over and opened the door, then called out, “Yo, Torch. Go get Elsie. We need a word with her.”

As soon as he closed the door, Stitch turned to me and asked, “You gonna be good with staying for this or ...”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Understood.”

We all knew Elsie had done nothing wrong. She’d just gone out on a date with the wrong fucking guy. But there were questions that had to be asked. Thankfully, I trusted my brothers to ask them in a way that wouldn’t scare Elsie or make her feel like she had wronged us in some way.

We hadn’t been waiting long when Torch opened the door and guided Elsie inside. She’d changed into a pair of sweats with the t-shirt I’d given her, and it got me right in the gut. Her eyes were wide with worry as she looked around the room and listened anxiously as Torch asked, “Need anything else?”

“No, we’re good.”

Torch nodded, then made his way out of the room. As soon as he was gone, Elsie turned to me and said, “Hey, guys. What’s going on?”

“We need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay. What about?”

Stitch kept his voice low and steady as he told her, “The guy you went out with... The one who came here to pick you up.”

“Ben? Why do you need to know about him?”

“It’s important, Else.” I stepped over to her. “We wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. Um... His name is Ben Bruton.”

“Bruton?”

“Yeah, I believe David Bruton is his grandfather.” Cotton turned to Stitch and cocked his brow. When Elsie saw his reaction, she added, “But I might be wrong about that. He never really mentioned him.”

“How’d the two of you meet?”

“At school.” Her eyes remained locked on mine as she said, “We have a few classes together. He seemed like a nice guy, so when he asked me out, I said yes.”

“You don’t know where he’s from or anything about his family?”

“I assumed he lives close, and he never really said much about his family, just that he had a sister. It sounded like they were pretty close.” Her face was marked with worry as she said, “We only went out twice, so there’s not much more to tell.”

“Did he ever ask about us?”

“Hmm, he was pretty curious about how I ended up living here. He also asked what you were into.” She glanced over at Stitch. “He wanted to know if you were running guns or selling drugs. That’s when I decided to end the date.”

I didn’t like this.

It was too much.

Every muscle in my body had grown tense, and my head had started to pound. I was quickly approaching my brink, so I clenched my fists at my sides and dug my nails into my palms. I took several deep breaths and tried to focus on the sound of the ceiling fan above me, hoping it would be enough to settle me.

It didn’t.

Hell, I was so worked up that I almost didn’t hear my phone when it chimed with a new text message. At first, I ignored it and kept my focus on Elsie, but when it chimed a second time, I grabbed it from my pocket and muted the ringer. I was about to put it back in my pocket when I happened to notice that I’d received another message. My blood ran cold when I read:

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