I’m grateful they’re both wearing shirts—Sylvan in white, Faust black—because I trust my best friend with my life, but I don’t want to share any part of them just yet.
“Thank you, Fausty,” I say in a singsong, sickly sweet voice.
He glances over one shoulder, his back muscles shifting beneath his shirt as his dark eyes meet mine. There’s no smile on his face, but I watch him watch me drink from the delicious iced coffee, and something like satisfaction glides over the planes of his cheekbones.
Then he gets back to the bacon.
“You all right over there, baby?” I call out to Sylvan, who is staring at an avocado with its skin on like he wants to smash it.
He cuts his icy eyes to me and grins. “I can think of better things to do, but you need your energy.”
“Damn right,” Cyn mutters into her coffee, but doesn’t address me directly, which despite the innuendo, makes me laugh.
But after a moment, silence—aside from the sounds of cooking—falls between us.
I take another long and slow sip.
“Have you heard anything?” I can’t help but ask, and I’m not even sure who I’m asking, but it’s Faust who responds to me when the other two stay quiet.
“No. But you don’t need to worry.”
Sylvan slices through an avocado with the same type of knife I was going to use to defend me and Cynthia the night I fell asleep outside of her door.
“No,” he repeats softly, staring at me as he cuts another wedge. “You’re not going anywhere without us until they find him.”
I hold his gaze.
Tasia’s phone is still missing. Nolan’s is off with no service, and Detective Lincoln reckons my brother ran over it or threwit in a lake. The camera footage from Blackwell’s doesn’t show where he went; when I didn’t open the door for him, he ran.
Nolan Devine is, still, a wanted man.
And until he’s found, we won’t have answers.
“You need to look after Cynthia too,” I say quietly. “I’m not leaving her.”
“You think Tylone won’t fight for me?” Cynthia tosses her hair over one shoulder and takes another sip of coffee. “No offense, but Tye will snap that boy in half.” She ducks her head in her mug. “I mean, when he wakes up.”
I laugh at that, but it’s hollow.
Cyn asked me last night after Tye had gone to bed and she and I sat in front of the living room fire if I ever thought Nolan was capable of committing a crime. I told her honestly no, I didn’t. She pressed for signs, or strange behaviors, and the only ones I could come up with were the ones I’d already admitted to myself: He was more overprotective and invasive than a brother had a right to be, and maybe Mom cut us off because of something he did rather than solely for my stepdad.
Working in law, being as successful as he is, Nolan just didn’t fit my idea of a murderer.
And he still doesn’t.
I wonder if something made him snap, but I’m also scared to know.
“Still,” Faust says quietly, his back to us as he plates the bacon carefully, the burner off now. “Neither of you need to go anywhere alone.”
“Yes sir,” Cynthia says, giving him a mock salute which he doesn’t see, but Sylvan does, and he smiles slyly at me.
SIXTY-TWO
SYLVAN
Ihave her on her back, a blade pressed to her throat.
She grins up at me, then grabs my wrist, the one holding the weapon. She arcs her hips, bridging beneath me, and I shift my knees over her. She takes the momentary breath of destabilization to jerk my arm toward her shoulder, missing her throat.
