The five words I hadn’t shared with Chase, or Harlen, or Wynston, or the detective on our case.
The five words I hadn’t shared with anyone because it was a promise I had tried to forget.
“Street cameras, Skinner?” Rusty asks.
And I shiver at the name.
Skinner says, “Down for maintenance.”
I watch Harlen reach for his beer bottle, his hand squeezing the neck so tight his knuckles turning bone-white. “Of course they were.”
There’s a rough exhale.
It comes in a whoosh from all four of them.
Skinner speaks low, a growl, “The fucking freak knocked out her teeth, overheard the coroner say he’d sodomized her fucking face.”
Harlen says, “He didn’t dothatto Jade.”
A clap of a door snaps the spoken violence in the room.
A woman's voice follows behind the sound.
“Ah…boys…”
It was a warning, from Kali, the woman I’d met on the way inside for my shower. The same one that got me a fresh towel and soap. The one that taught me how to navigate the faucet to reach the perfect showering temperature.
She stands at the door, her dark curls twirling in front of her eyes, catching between her long spidery eyelashes, holding a clear container filled with what looks like baked chocolate chip cookies.
But the warning had come too late. I’d heard everything I’d needed to hear. My stomach rolls over itself and the bile that had begun creeping up my throat explodes on my tongue. Curling over, I retch into the bin at my side, falling to my knees. My throat burns, my chest burns, everything fucking burns, and the numbness I felt no less than five minutes ago has vanished.
I’m caught on a live wire, and I think I might die.
A shattering sound hits my ears, then, “Fuck!” And I know it’s Chase.It’s always Chase.His temper had always been a mixture of fire and ice.
I spit the sickness from my tongue, throwing my dirty clothes on top of my mess when a soft and gentle palm presses to my back. Turning over my shoulder, I catch Kali’s bright green eyes and smattering of freckles, her thin brows turned in with worry. Wrapping her hand around my bicep, she helps me to my feet, and I begin stumbling toward the door. Each step feels like I’m walking through molasses.
When my vision cuts in and out, gray shutters blinking in front of my eyes, a set of arms wrap around me. I recognize them, know the tenderness of them, because they were the sethe’dlet me find safety in years ago, when my father took his life, but not when Jade had been murdered, not when I’d needed them most.
And today, I shove them away.
Tears prick the back of my eyes, and I work so hard to keep them from welling to the surface, though one slips through and drips down my face. I palm it away at my throat, and step back further.
Chase doesn’t move, and I don’t meet his eye.
I can’t look at him.
“Just…just…leave me alone, okay?” I whisper, my voice barely audible, my vision cutting in and out again as I lay my shoulder against the metal door, seeing myself out.
“Ah…boys…”
I hurl around to see Kali standing frozen at the door, and Laiken curling into the bin beside her.
“The fucking freak knocked out her teeth, overheard the coroner say he’d sodomized her fucking face.”
She’d heard it all.
My slick fingers stiffen around the neck of my beer bottle and before I can reel myself in, I haul it across the room. The glass bottle shatters against the brick wall.
