15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

O ur voices all clashed together in a horrified cacophony, most of us in a state of denial, speaking our disagreements aloud with noncontextual stammering. Believing that the hell that brought Colton to Salem was linked to what we had all gone through months ago was a jagged pill—uncoated, bitter, and large. And the way that it was presented to us were as if it were angrily forced down our esophagi. There was no softening of the blow. No metaphorical water to drink and ease the scraping along the inside of our throats. It just…hit us…and the ramifications of the possibility being true were causing us to descend into bedlam.

Absolute, utter bedlam.

"Okay, okay— guys— guys!" Colton's exclamation rose above the noise just enough for our near panicked discussion to halt in its tracks. "Calm down. Ya gotta loop me in, here—"

Luke, now sitting next to Claire with his hair standing on all ends, interjected, "Jesus Christ— no, we don't."

"We don't have to loop him in on shit," Liam agreed with purpose, his freckled face pale and his dark eyes wide as he pointed at Luke across the table, "because none of this is related."

"Liam," Claire spoke to him gently, "now isn't the time to be purposefully ignorant."

Looking at her hands that were knit before her atop the table, Zoey grumbled, "He's not being ignorant."

"Zoey… connect the dots." I leaned slightly to my right, telling her in as vague of terms as possible, "2D did…all the shit that he did. The shit in his apartment—in that room—looked like it was prepped to keep someone captive."

"2D," Colton stated with disgust, "had needles and injectable meds in that closet."

He shifted to reach into the front pocket of his hoodie, pulled out a small, brown bottle that he gently held between his thumb and forefinger, and placed it on the bartop with a purposeful clunk.

My jaw hung open as I absorbed its appearance. Cassie dropped my hand beneath the table to spin in her seat and stared at it with wide eyes, and the remainder of the group groaned as Claire waved a hand before us all and asked :

"What the fuck is that?"

"Acepromazine," Colton replied as if it were the most obvious answer on Earth.

"What," Liam shook his head as if his eyes were deceiving him, "what is that?"

"Snagged it from the room. After a quick Google search, it turns out it's a sedative." Colton pointed to the bottom of the bottle, tracing the text on the white label with his index finger. "This here says that it's only intended for veterinary use. Regardless — the effects are the same. Sedation. Easy to find for someone who's—"

"A veterinarian," Luke choked out. "Mister Milkovich is a vet. Was a vet—thought he was retired by now, I don't—I dunno, maybe he isn't?"

"Who's Mister Milkovich?" Colton asked with narrowed eyes.

Claire rapidly asked, "Why, does the last name ring a bell to you?"

Colton shook his head. "Not even a little."

"It doesn't fucking matter!" Zoey shrieked, seemingly coming to a breaking point and honing in on Colton. "This shit is over and done with—"

Claire interrupted, "Zoey, if it has anything to do with what Colt's talking about, it might not be."

Zoey hissed, "They aren't related, Claire!"

"Tox reports on women who went missing showed sedatives in their systems," Colton pressed. "If it's—"

"Tox as in toxicology?" Cassie asked with an alarmed gaze, "As in they were dead?"

He replied in an exhale, "Yeah, as in they were found dead."

A lead weight dropped in my gut, and I voiced, "How do you even know all this?"

Luke murmured an anxious, "Thank you, Jay."

Colton pulled his focus from Cassie to me. "It's public record. I'm not saying it's plastered all over the news—it's not—but a quick search for articles with the keywords Virginia, young woman, and death pulls up enough."

Claire murmured, "No, no, no," and rapidly began to dig in her jeans pocket for her phone. Luke watched her over her shoulder as she tapped away at the glass face, his nostrils flaring with every seemingly shaking breath. She whispered, "How have we not seen this?"

"It'll be smaller media—it's not like the bigger ones are going to report a random woman dying here or there," Colton told her. "But add illegal substances, suspected prostitution, or exotic dancer to the search bar…they'll pop up."

Claire's voice quavering as she stared at the screen, "Jesus Christ," and Luke's Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he swallowed were all that we needed to see to know that Colton's accusations were true. She murmured disbelievingly, "These go as far back as May—Salem, Hanging Rock, Bennett Springs—"

"Did ya not fact check me the last time I was here?" Colton questioned her.

Claire tossed her phone to the table, signifying that she had seen enough. Cassie's focus remained locked on Claire's cell, no doubt considering what she had just seen, and while everyone continued to speak, she reached for her own phone. A single glance downward confirmed that she was, indeed, searching what Claire had—her search bar read:

Virginia exotic dancer death.

"We were a little busy with our own shit, Colt," Claire stated in a groan.

"So," Zoey spoke with an edge, and I glanced down at her, "women have gone missing. So, they had sedatives—or drugs, or whatever—in their system when their bodies were found. So, 2D had sedatives and that room. Coincidental? Yes. Related? No."

Liam quietly uttered, "Zo'."

She looked up to him and snapped, "No, Lee."

His eyes landed on Colton. "Why are the women being taken? "

"Liam," she admonished him, and he gave her a quick shake of his head.

Colton replied somberly. "Lots of reasons. Forced work, mostly. Drug ring shit. Sex shit."

Claire asked, "If they're being forced to work, why are they being found dead?"

His unhurt shoulder bobbed up and down. "Repeated sedation would take a toll on a body, right? That or they're just, ah," Colton's tone turned meek, "not of use anymore."

The noise that came out of me, unbidden, was gravelly and rough, and I reached up to rub at my eyes while Zoey nervously trilled:

"Well, good news there! I don't think I was going to be forced into slavery; I'm pretty sure the guy just wanted to take me and fucking rape me. He tried plenty of times to make his message crystal clear."

Liam miserably groaned, "God, Zo'."

She continued to rattle off, "The sedatives don't shock me. I don't give a shit how he got them. This shit is heavy enough. 2D was just—just fucking crazy. I'm refusing to believe that—"

Colton told her with purpose, "He knew about the women going missing, Zoey."

Our collective gasp was audible, and Zoey squeaked, "What?"

As if he were sorry to be confirming it for us, Colton's torso sagged with an exhale, his expression pinched as he said, "It's in the laptop. Old search history…he looked up those articles. Repeatedly, actually." Colton muttered, "Obsessively…and then, he stopped," before grabbing the computer and extending it to the table. Being the nearest person to it, Luke grasped it in his hands, hesitating for a beat before quickly setting it on the table in front of Zoey. We all stared at it as Colton near-apologetically remarked, "Listen, I wasn't trying to get in your shit. I just—that room felt wrong, and then I saw the closet, I just—I felt like I needed to know. All I did was charge it and look at the search history."

Green eyes large, Zoey blinked at the laptop several times and finally murmured, "Oh. That, um—that doesn't mean—"

"Oh my God."

Cassie's voice was just above a whisper, wavering from her pretty mouth as if her chest were being rattled from the inside. My attention snapped to her; everyone else followed, and I looked at Cassie's cell to see that she was slowly scrolling through a news article. The header of the local news outlet, ‘The Salem Pulse,' remained at the top of her screen in dysfunctional, clashing greens and reds. The colors grated on my eyes, but not so much as the content that was displayed beneath Cassie's trembling fingers.

The woman in question was named Delaney Pierce. Her face was smiling up at us—eyes full of life, deep dimples in each cheek, and a head of short, black hair so curly that it stood up on end. Though it was clear that she was surrounded by friends, the image was cropped to the point that no other person was shown, and she was gone as quickly as she had appeared when Cassie scrolled downward.

"Ah," Colton spoke, having peeked at Cassie's phone from over her shoulder, "Delaney, she's a recent one. It's fucking disturbing, right? Stripper with no close loved ones, no next of kin—it's targets like that that get swept under the rug…I mean, they all have been, but—"

"Um—I— fuck," Cassie stammered, "e-excuse me."

She stood from her chair so quickly that everyone flinched, and she all but ran toward the bathroom.

"Shit." I didn't think—I just went after her. In the midst of standing and striding my way across the bar, I quickly told the group, "I got it; I got her."

It didn't matter if they thought anything of my racing to Cassie. Perhaps they wouldn't, because the situation was dire enough that we were all dancing on eggshells…and that was what we did as a family, after all. Through the craziness, trials and tribulations, murder and all, we inevitably leaned on each other. Ran toward each other rather than away.

But, like I said, it didn't matter.

All I knew was that my heart was lodged in my throat as I approached the women's. I half-jogged down the dim hallway, tore around the corner, and when I yanked at the knob to find it locked, I exhaled a string of profanity before calling quietly against the door:

"It's me, Cas—open up."

I heard her flip the lock, but it was me who opened the door. Phone still in hand, Cassie was pacing away from me toward the toilet. She spun ninety degrees on her heel to face the mirror above the sink, briefly looking at her own horrified face before meeting my eyes. Her usually tanned skin tone ashen and her breathing progressing to hyperventilation; she was the picture-perfect expression of panic.

Just as the latch on the door clicked shut behind me, she whimpered, "Jay."

The way her face contorted as she nearly cried my name gutted me, and I closed the distance between us in two short steps .

"Shhh," I consoled her, one grip on her nape and the other hooked around her waist. Her arms remained between us, curled into her chest, and her body vibrated as if she had caught a chill. "It's a lot to take in. I know—"

"I knew her," she murmured into my neck.

My entire being stilled. "What?"

"Delaney. The woman in the article I found. I knew her."

Relaxing my hold on her as quickly as I had pulled her in, I took only half a step backward to look into Cassie's frantic gaze. I rested my hands on her biceps, shaking my head as if that knowledge couldn't possibly be true.

"Knew her?" I asked as gently as I could.

"She was one of the dancers when I started working at Gas Lamp," Cassie admitted, and a sledgehammer struck my chest. "I didn't talk to her much…wouldn't have even noticed that she stopped coming in if my schedule didn't get moved around because of it."

My mouth hung open for a beat, and I replied, raw and ragged, "Fuck. No. No. What else did the article say?"

"Reported as a drug overdose," she said. "It didn't list what kind. Mostly talked about the rising drug problem in the city. She was found in some random back-alley close to Roanoke, I—I didn't know her that well, but I'm pretty damn sure she didn't use. And this article's only from two weeks ago…it would have been a long time between when she stopped coming to Gas Lamp and when she was found. I—I feel like this could check out, Jay, and…I don't know. I had to get out of there to take a breath." Cassie inhaled, long and slow, but it was anything but calm as it hitched in her throat several times over. She exhaled, "Figure out what I need to do here."

My usual verbose nature was stripped from me as my throat went dry. My eyes burned as I forgot to so much as blink. I attempted to swallow, but my saliva seemed to have escaped me along with any words, and all I could let out was an anguished, "Angh."

"I, um," Cassie began, "well, I don't feel comfortable being anywhere near Gas Lamp, now. I have enough saved up to get by for, um, a while…my mortgage is low, at least."

"Quit," I managed to say. "You'll quit. That's good."

"Call Sky after this, tell her about Delaney, keep," she paused to steady herself, "keep the details to a minimum, obviously, but she's skittish. She'll probably quit, too."

"Good." I nodded. "Good."

"And we can have Colton meet with us later for anything he wants to know—"

Her intention hit me, and my arms fell to my sides. "Wait. You're—you're telling the group…right? "

Cassie's face twisted as if she had tasted something bitter. "What? No, I can't. You know that."

"Cassie," I spoke her name disbelievingly. "You cannot be serious. This is bigger than your brother finding out what you do for a living—"

"I'm quitting, so that point is moot—"

"Moot?!" I loudly exclaimed.

Cassie held up both of her hands, palm facing out. "Shhh!"

I rambled, "It is not moot, Cas. Quitting doesn't just—just remove you from existence entirely if someone had their eye on you. Nothing about this entire fucking shitshow is moot. We just got more evidence that dancers from. Your. Work. Could be getting used, abused, and fucking murdered…and you think it's a good idea to keep up the fa?ade?"

"Jay."

"I'd normally be right behind ya on the decisions you make with your own life, but this is bigger than…than everything!" Cassie opened her mouth, and I held up an index finger to stop her. My voice went low as I said, "I. Will. Be. Damned. If something like keeping your ex-work-life in the dark ends up getting you hurt or worse because we don't all have our guard up." Her face fell, her defense seemed to abate, and I added, "I'm sorry, Darlin', but they need to know."

She groaned, "I so don't want you to be right about this."

A bitter smile tugged at the corner of my lip. "Are you saying that I am?"

Her face pulled into a grimace. "Liam's gonna freak."

"To be fair, he'd freak more if you somehow still went missing, and I end up having to tell him everything myself."

I phrased it—and spoke it—as gently as possible, but she still squirmed as if I had snarled the words.

"God— fuck, okay. Okay," she acquiesced.

My shoulders slouched, my knees nearly going weak with relief, and I sighed out, "Thank you. Out we go?"

Cassie nodded, albeit hesitantly, and I ushered her out the bathroom door with a hand on her lower back. It gave me comfort, somehow, to allow my fingers to linger there until we rounded the corner to the public, and forcing myself to keep my hands by my side near after was damn near impossible.

Conversation rang through my ears as I trailed behind Cassie:

"Look, I work in retail," Zoey told Colton with purpose. "I don't exactly see why I would have been a target—I'm pretty far separated from anything that you're talking about."

"It doesn't matter why you would have been a target at this point, Zoey," Claire interjected softly.

Colton thought aloud, "Just proximity, maybe? I'm assuming you live in the same complex as 2D, too?"

Zoey waved his comment away. "Yeah, yeah—that's not—it wasn't like I was being slowly tailed, waiting to be taken. Guy was crazy. He tried to assault me in the street. Broke into my apartment. Followed us all to North Carolina—"

"Fucker," Colton murmured. "He wasn't subtle about it, but he could'a been high. That would explain a lot."

Zoey nodded, muttering something that was too quiet for me to hear.

Almost back to our seats, Liam finally managed to yank his attention away from Zoey and was now watching his sister with curiosity. His dark eyes were already filled with anxious worry due to the topic at hand, and it most certainly remained that way as he squinted at Cassie, mouthing:

‘You okay?'

Her response was nonverbal, but it was clear from his reaction that she had, more or less, implied no. He traced her from foot to head as if he were searching for signs of injury, and then voiced aloud a concerned, questioning:

"Cas?"

She gently sat in her chair, and I followed. The gears visibly cranked in her mind as she stared at the tabletop, the conversation around us dwindling to nothing with Liam's call of her name. All eyes on her, Cassie took a deep breath through her nose, let it out in a sharp huff, and uttered:

"Well, don't stop for me. By all means, continue."

I whispered, "Cas."

"I'll get to it," she replied.

"You're sheet-white," Zoey noted quietly, scanning her similarly to how Liam had moments ago.

"Circle back, Zo'," Cassie insisted.

"'Kay," Zoey quickly spoke, placing a hand on the laptop before her. "I'm done with this, anyway— I am going to go at this thing with a goddamn baseball bat and burn it. Cas? You got news?"

"You're jumping ahead," Claire told her. "Yes, of course, fucking burn it. But take the time to look through it first to see if there's any more connection to him and the missing women near us."

"Everything with him," Zoey leaned forward in her seat, flexing her fingers that laid on the computer, "is over!" She spoke to the entire room with an exhausted whine, "Let's move on. Why does it even matter if 2D was related to the missing women?"

Colton shook his head. "If that ain't the worst question I've ever heard—"

"Zoey," Liam croaked, her inquiry seemingly hitting him like the crack of a whip. "I'm not going through this shit again."

Luke looked to both of them with buggish eyes while Claire cut in, "If it's related, there could be others."

Upon the last word, the void of the past loomed over the table, hanging low and holding a grim reaper's scythe. Even though Peter was gone—even though the laptop inside of 2D that could potentially have evidence on it aside from the rampant search of missing and murdered women was in our hands—if this were, indeed, part of something bigger, it could mean that there were others that knew of his death. Others that he worked with. Others who knew of Zoey and could inevitably return.

Others who may have gotten their eye on Cassie, and the remainder of our found family were none the wiser.

"‘There could be others,'" Colton slowly repeated Claire's previous sentence, pausing to ensure that he had our attention, and then quoted Liam, "‘I'm not going through this shit again.'" His icy gaze wandered to Zoey. "Something along the lines of, ‘This shit is over and done with.'" He deduced quietly, "You're makin' it sound like he stopped…that 2D went away." Colton looked to all of us carefully—anxiously—until he finally inquired, "He went away, then? He stopped?" The air hung heavy, we all nodded, and Colton hesitated before he bluntly asked, "Why?" Our collective attention was kept either on the table, the laptop, or each other. "Okay, well, he's obviously gone somewhere in a goddamn hurry if he left all of his shit and a computer behind. Where is he, then, if 2D's unoccupied?" I felt Cassie begin to fidget with her hands beneath the table again, and found them shaking when I reached for her. Colton threw his head back, groaning to the ceiling before eyeing us all again and pleading, "Dammit, guys, we need to fuckin' help each other here! If 2D is involved in this shit, gets back from a little vacay, and somehow figures out that I broke into his place and stole his computer with God-knows-what on it along with some of his drugs, fuck jail, he could find me, and I could be dead." He breathed in once, and then out. "Very dead. And you're right—there could be others, but we can't figure out if that's true if ya don't talk to me—"

Zoey exclaimed, "He's gone, okay?!"

None of us could argue the admission. Perhaps none of us wanted to argue the admission because it was clear that whatever knowledge Colton had on the situation that could be interwoven with our lives was desperately needed.

Our lines of sight all eventually made it to Colton to see that he had briefly frozen. Jaw slightly agape, Zoey's words appeared to sink in for him, and Colton pushed himself to sit on the edge of the stool, his back ramrod straight.

"From the look on your faces…he's dead?" We all took the sledgehammer to the chest of a question with grace, remaining silent until Colton pressed, "Yeah, I'm gonna need y'all to answer the question. Did you send me into a dead. Man's. Apartment?" The space between us turned stagnant and dirty with our further nonresponses, and Colton seemed to take our reactions as a yes. After covering his eyes with a single hand, he dragged it down his face, clutching his lower lip and chin for a moment while he stared off into space. When his gaze refocused, he dropped his arm back down and asked gravely, "How long?"

It was Liam who finally muttered, "Four months."

Colton's eyebrows shot up. "Four months? And his shit's still in 2D? Why'd you just now want in the apartment?" His head moved from side to side rapidly. "Not important. That's not important. What is important is if you think there's any loose ends."

He leaned forward slightly, anticipating our inevitable reply with an alarmed expression .

We all looked to the laptop and then back to him. I saw Zoey shake her head in the corner of my vision, and Colton sighed, his body sagging so heavily with relief that he almost melted into the bar behind him.

"Oh, thank fuck."

His reaction shouldn't have struck me as odd. It was a relief that Peter Milkovich was no longer. That the only discernable evidence of the cause of his death was now sitting on the tabletop before us. To that, I agreed. What prevailed over my recognition of his relief, however, was an anger that simmered in the depths of my diaphragm. The means in which everything had occurred—the horror that it left burned in the back of all of our minds—it was, at times, almost too much to bear, and I often wished that I could remove the memory altogether. That I could swipe at my brain like an eraser on a chalkboard, leaving the remaining smudges entirely unrecognizable— gone.

It wouldn't be gone, though. The residue from the white streaks would still prevail, and there was no metaphorical cleanser that I could dream of that would do the trick.

"Thank fuck," I whispered bitterly. "Thank. Fuck?"

Cassie squeezed my hand .

"Yeah," Colton returned, "thank fuck. Because it's been long enough that if he was involved in everything else, he's been considered collateral damage by now."

My chest twinged with an unrealistic hope, and while everyone else seemed to be processing the possibility, Luke uttered:

"You can't be so sure of that."

"I can," Colton told him.

Claire gritted out, "How?"

"This isn't…" Colton looked upward, seeming to be figuring how to phrase it all, "it isn't organized like a mob family or somethin'. They're not vengeful. They aren't operating under some Hammurabi eye-for-an-eye shit. They work up to one," he held up an index finger with purpose, "head honcho . They work separate—sometimes alone, sometimes about two or three people a piece. If they provide, they're rewarded. If they fuck up, they're eliminated. That's why they work separate— to allow room for error." He paused, then turned to Zoey. "Four months? If no one's come to find you within four months , my bet is that even if he was involved, he didn't talk you up the line yet, and he was alone in this. And if y'all don't think there are any other loose ends with evidence, then you're…fine."

The exhale that came out of Zoey was so long that I could hear it pull at her lungs, and she hoarsely questioned:

"What?"

"Even if he was involved, he's collateral damage by now," he repeated. "He was an error, Zoey. I think you're safe."

We all stared at him in disbelief. To each other with the unspoken reminder that we should by no means take what Colton says as fact, though the large chunk of salt that we were consistently taking with his words felt as though it were beginning to disintegrate. The way Colton said it with an uncharacteristic sympathy was such a weight off of our collective shoulders that I could feel the tension in the room ease. Even Luke's guard seemed to have lowered with the way that his eyes fluttered closed and oxygen flowed through his nostrils.

There was little else to be said. We could go round and round until we were all blue in the face, devoid of air, but there was no use. Not with this, at least.

Zoey looked at the computer with a hardened stare as if she loathed its very presence, and I understood her itch to destroy it without a glance at the contents. For this to just be over. I knew that she wouldn't, though. Even if she wanted to, I could picture Claire's defensive, biting words—could see Liam holding her back with a single arm and gentle pleas spoken in her ear for we wanted answers. Regardless of the thought of Peter being collateral damage, we wanted to know if there was any reason for us to be looking back.

"I'll, um, take this home and look through it," Zoey murmured. "Just to see."

Everyone nodded, and there was a semblance of relief that surrounded us. Unbeknownst to everyone else, though, there was very little of the emotion for me and Cassie…and the time to address that was now.

"Cassie."

I spoke to her with a heaping amount of compassion. She looked at me for the briefest of moments, recognized the purpose of my call of her name, and closed her eyes tightly as if she were biting a metaphorical bullet.

Cassie twisted on her sit bones rapidly to speak to Colton.

"I knew Delaney."

The short sentence fell out of her mouth as if the words were resting on the tip of her tongue, ripe and ready to tumble from her lips.

Quiet, somber mutterings were shared around the table, all blending together as Liam's voice rose above them with a more pointed:

"Delaney? Delaney who?"

Zoey whispered to him, "Delaney stripper with no next of kin from the article she found earlier, Delaney. "

Liam sadly murmured, "Oh."

Cassie paid her brother's comments no mind. She was simply waiting for Colton to respond.

His surprise at the admission quickly gone, Colton was investigating her expression as if he could read it—as if the picture of her life's story were painted on her cheeks. He nodded slowly, and then asked:

"Knew her from where?"

Cassie timidly returned, "My work."

For Zoey, the realization was immediate. Though I wasn't looking at her, I felt her shoulders sag with her exhaled, "Oh, fuck." Her elbows hit the table with a thud as she rested her head in her hands, and Liam voiced:

"She worked at your accounting firm and a strip club?"

I pressed my lips together tightly at his immediate assumption, and no one answered him, for Colton was now leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs, questioning Cassie:

"Gas Lamp?"

Cassie's pitch raised to an uncharacteristic squeak. "Yuh huh."

Under his breath so quietly that I wondered who was able to hear it, Colton uttered, "Knew I recognized you from somewhere. "

Luke and Claire simultaneously groaned, and Zoey muttered to me, "Is that why you've been so fucking weird lately?"

It was obvious that comprehension had dawned on all of them. The fact that I had gone to Gas Lamp. The fact that I was, as Zoey had phrased, fucking weird about it. The fact that Cassie had just admitted to her means of work. It was all clear for them. That side of the puzzle was built—Cassie was, very obviously, the dancer that I had alluded to. The other side, however—the one where Cassie and I were romantically involved—was yet to be assembled. I was grateful for the lack of additional drama in the moment, but at the notion that we could still maintain a granule of finesse while easing our relationship into the group, I attempted to halt any potential questioning with a hiss of a reply to Zoey:

"Is now the time for this?"

"I don't—I don't understand." Liam shook his head, face twisted in confusion as he finally looked at me and assumed, "Oh… oh, shit — Jay, did you see this Delaney chick when you went to Gas Lamp?"

I let out a quiet, uncomfortable noise, pinching the area between my eyes as Liam's lack of understanding yanked at my insides.

Zoey sympathetically muttered, "Oh, Lee. "

He murmured an altogether innocent, "What?"

There was a moment of silence in which we all looked at him. Cassie slowly turned in her chair to peek at her brother, and his head bobbled as he attempted to take us all in at once.

Colton bluntly said, "Your sister's a stripper, dude."

Claire yelled, "Colton!"

"What?" he returned with the slightest of smiles. "Didn't seem like y'all were gonna say it. Big guy needs to know."

Liam's mop of blonde hair cocked to the side, and he incredulously laughed out, "No-no…Cas, um…" He hesitated as he looked to his sister, saw that she had the face of someone who was bracing for an upcoming impact, and deflated as he groaned, "Are you fucking kidding me, Cassandra?"