24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

James

R acing to leave Officer Dowler's home was a necessity that we weren't granted the ability to perform for there were too many questions.

Did the neighbors hear the commotion?

Will Randy have amnesia?

Did anyone nearby call for emergency services?

How much evidence, aside from Colton's blood, would we be leaving behind?

Those were only a handful of the concerns swirling around us now that we had managed to get Skylar downstairs, and though we all felt as though we needed to run and never look back…we couldn't. The metaphorical ice that we stood on was not only thin…it was already cracked beneath us—and if we weren't careful, our next steps could plunge us all into the depths below .

Standing among the wreck of a dining room, Cassie still had a hand comfortingly placed on Skylar's upper back as she sneered at us all:

"It's not too late to just fucking kill him."

Liam admonished her from the next room over, "Cassandra!"

Skylar simply wrapped her arms around her torso, and I couldn't decipher whether she truly believed Cassie's vicious suggestion or not.

I did, though, because the fury that had flared in her eyes when she tore the fabric off of my face was still there in all of its crazed, beautiful glory…and I could feel the anger that was boiling beneath her skin. Despite her clearly being relieved at finding me alive—and shock at realizing that Skylar was here—she was still all too genuine with the intention of her wrath.

"Cassie," I exhaled her name, "we aren't doing that, and you know it."

"Why the fuck not?" she hissed.

"Bad idea," Colton spoke from our left, still sitting in a pool of his own blood. His words were slow, as if he had to focus on forming them, and he heavily slurred, "A-Plus for enthusiasm, though. "

One of our most abundant concerns announced itself in Colton's ragged breathing, and I rapidly noted, "Shit, we need to get you out of here and to a hospital."

Cassie stated, "We can get him in my car, I'll—"

"It's snowing," Colton reminded her bluntly. "Red…white…"

The mention that his spilled blood would clearly be seen on the snow made us all take pause, and all that could be heard for a moment was Luke. Pacing behind us, he had been assuring both Claire and Zoey that everyone was alive with one of Colton's headphones secured in his ear. From what I could tell from his side of their conversation, no neighbors had left their houses to investigate, and it was still, simply, quiet. It was odd to me, truly, for we had all screamed at some point—hell, the single gunshot followed by Colton's reaction to it would be burned into my memory for quite a while—and I knew that any of those sounds would carry. But, that being said, it was midday in suburbia…and the snow was beginning to pick up once again. Even if there were individuals who weren't away from their homes, hard at work, they were most likely inside with all doors and windows closed, and it was highly plausible that they could have only heard a single bang!

Perhaps because the sound wasn't repeated, there was no cause for concern. Perhaps, if anyone heard, they attributed it to a car backfiring. Or, perhaps, no one heard at all.

None of us would know unless the police inevitably arrived, of course…and Skylar was the one to ask:

"Why has no one called 911?"

Cassie gestured to the other room, where Randy still remained unconscious. "He is the police, Sky…we can't call the authorities."

"They can't all be like him," she replied in a shaking tone that matched her shivering body. "He—he said he couldn't have the rest of the force getting the calls from the dancers who—who were worried about the other ones like…" Skylar paused, her voice growing quieter as she said, "Like me."

"He did say that," I agreed, "but we can't know for sure. Last thing we want is to be in more hot water because other people know that we're aware of horrible shit he's done—"

"So, we just…leave him here?" she asked in disbelief. "I—he'll find me again. He'll find you again. I—" Skylar's voice hitched in her throat, and she brought her hands to her eyes. "I can't believe this is happening. There's a man," she waved toward Colton, "bleeding out in the corner!"

I wasn't sure how long it had been since Colton had been shot—my best guess was five minutes, at the maximum—and though Cassie had tightly wrapped his knee with a towel, it appeared to have bled through. His breathing was turning heavier with each second passed, and when we all stopped talking to glance his way, the pause in conversation made Liam nervously call out from around the corner:

"Colton?!"

One side of Colton's lip pulled up in an exhausted smirk. "Present."

I heard Liam exhale a relieved, "Fuck."

"Not dead yet," he returned wearily. Rolling his head, his brow pinched together as he took in the damage done to Skylar's face. "Skylar, right?"

She watched him hesitantly. "Uh huh."

"You have your phone?"

Skylar shook her head. "He took it, I—"

"Is it blue?" Liam called out.

"Yes!"

"It was on the cop," he replied. "Jay, yours is here, too."

"Oh," I muttered, for I hadn't exactly been thinking about my cell. "Thanks."

"Skylar," Colton tried to speak to her, but his tone was too soft, and her head had ping-ponged from Liam to me, and then back to Liam. "Skylar? Skylar." Her mirror eyes danced around the room, finally landed on Colton, and he instructed her, "Call 911. "

"We—" Luke paused, taking the headphone out of his ear to focus on us all rather than the conversation he had been plugged into. "No. We can get you out of here with us, there's gotta be a blanket or something to wrap you up better here, we can—"

"Carry me out?" Colton suggested in a wry rasp.

Liam interjected, "His blood's everywhere, Luke—"

"Have the whole gang…drop me at a hospital…with a gunshot wound?" Colton continued.

"Well, we can't be here when an ambulance shows!" Luke bit back. "We will be interrogated. Immediately—"

"You'll be interrogated eventually…if you drop me off, too." Colton announced, "Y'all can't…stay here."

"I don't," Luke rapidly shook his head, "I don't understand."

Colton looked to Skylar. "You were kidnapped."

She nodded, her voice small as she replied, "Yes."

"No one else was here…but you and the cop," he told her slowly—purposefully. "That is what you tell the police …no one else was here but you two…until I came in."

Her wide, guileless eyes simply blinked in his direction, and she asked with a weak wave to us all, "They can't be here?" Colton shook his head in a silent no, and she pressed, "Why?"

"If he's with another cop…if someone else is dirty…they can't be involved."

Realization of what he was attempting to do sank in for me—presumably for all of us, as we stared at him, stunned—and I argued:

"You'll be questioned."

"And… unlike you… I have no connections…my DNA is everywhere here…I'll be brought in…no matter what," he explained his train of thought, and we all listened. "Skylar…do you understand why you're here?"

Confusion written on her face, Skylar's eyes watered as she said, "No…not—not really."

"Look at me," he spoke to her consolingly through deep breathing. "For this to work…you need to listen… you were kidnapped."

Skylar kept her gaze on him, and she nodded, repeating his telling of the story for emergency services. "I was kidnapped."

"You have no idea why he took you."

"I—I don't, I have no idea—"

"He did. Not. Tell you. Anything. About other…missing dancers."

"Wha—" Skylar looked around the room once more. "Why, I—I don't— "

Seemingly understanding, Cassie told her, "If there are other dirty cops, they can't know that you know."

Her palms flew to her eyes again. "I— um— okay, okay-okay—"

"We're friends," Colton spoke to her.

Skylar's hands fell away, tears trailed down her cheeks, and she cried, "We are?"

"Close friends." Colton nodded, and I even saw a sympathetic smile peek through his pain. "You went missing…and I noticed… I came to find you."

"Y-you came to find me."

"I got to you upstairs," he told her.

Skylar confirmed, "You got to me upstairs."

"I tried to get you out…he saw us…he shot me…you hit him with the lamp…when he came after you."

"I-I," Skylar stammered, "okay. Okay. H-how did you know I was here?"

"Your phone's GPS," he clarified, "was on…I had your location."

"I—how do I even—"

Cassie interrupted Skylar, "Go get your phone from Liam. I'll show you how to share your location and give you Colton's number. "

"Not the number you have," Colton instructed. "That's a burner…share to…colton-dot-langdon-at-icloud-dot-com."

Cassie nodded and began to lead Skylar toward the living area, her voice turning quieter as she began, "This is my brother…"

"Okay," my brain scrambled to keep up with his plan. "You're saying that we're all leaving and pretending that I was never even here?"

Colton gritted out, "Mhm."

Luke, still holding Colton's headphone pinched between his fingers, questioned:

"And if he was working with another cop? They'll know Jay was here, he's got a goddamn target on his back!"

I said, "If that's the case, then don't I have one on my back regardless?"

Colton remarked, "If there are any clean cops in this town…this is too big to bury. Kidnapping…assault…attempted murder at most, without anyone knowing…about the other dancers. Better to at least… try to get him…behind bars…without y'all involved."

Luke watched him with a slack jaw, the picture of disbelief, but none of us questioned this…this plan any further for it was the only one that allowed us to leave, Colton to not die from blood loss, and Randy to potentially be arrested.

Colton began to shiver, his teeth chattering loudly from what I presumed was shock.

"Shit," I hissed, "911 now, Skylar!"

She appeared to be already dialing, and just as she was greeting the dispatcher, Colton began to grimace and groan. Twisting his body as he retrieved the flip phone that he had described as a burner from his hoodie pocket, he looked to me as I was the person nearest to him. He extended his hand with his cell to me, and I quickly closed the distance between us to retrieve it from him.

Colton whispered, "Lose this." I nodded in response, pocketing it for future disposal, and he tipped his head toward the kitchen. A wave of shivers hit him as he muttered, "W-w-window."

My brow pinched together as I mouthed back, ‘What?'

Cassie came up from behind me, silently finding my wrist as she led me along to a window that had already been opened. The wind blew through it, the cold shockingly pleasant on my wounds, and I followed her out the way that I presumed they had all come in.

Though the palpable threat had gone, the minutes that passed after climbing through that window were ones that set my soul on edge. Not because of the unknown state of Office Dowler's comeuppance and whatever his memory retained, Skylar's questioning by the emergency services, or Colton's inevitable well-being—though those were certainly on all of our minds. No, it was because every living second was dragging by due to the need to repress our collective emotions.

Arriving back at our cars was horrid.

To mask the outward appearance to any onlooking neighbors, though I had begun to doubt that there were any at all, none of us could appropriately reunite.

Claire was unable to sprint to Luke mid-street, sobbing loudly as she threw her arms around his neck as I imagined she would, and he couldn't lovingly speak to her that he was okay.

Zoey couldn't go to Liam, embracing him with such velocity that he would have to sputter and cough, for I could imagine that her shoulder would hit him square in the diaphragm, and he couldn't wrap his arms around her in a bear-like fashion, picking her up and continuing to walk her to the car .

Instead, they remained sat in the two vehicles—invisible to us due to the falling snow, though I was certain that we were thoroughly visible to them.

Luke shot me a glance that I could have sworn was teary-eyed as I followed Cassie to her car, but he nodded in understanding as I tipped my head toward the Jeep to tell him that I was riding with them.

Liam didn't even ask—he just took the responsibility to drive—and when we were off, we were just… off. I sat in the back on Cassie's left while Zoey remained in the passenger seat, and because we felt as though we were being watched by some unknown force, none of us dared to so much as look at each other before we were long on the highway.

When Liam finally broke his stiff posture by reaching across the center console for Zoey, she let out all the air in her lungs as if she had been holding it in. Clasping onto his forearm so tightly that I knew her nails would make indentations in his skin through his sweatshirt, she rested her head against his bicep, cursing softly under her breath before placing a kiss there. Zoey cleared her throat as if her display of emotion were an embarrassment, rapidly pulling away from him, but he muttered a quiet, "Come back," and she returned without hesitation.

I felt her, then .

Cassie's hand tentatively touched the top of mine, and my eyelids fluttered closed at the feel of her comfort, even if it were only from her fingertips. Heat swelled in my chest, and I looked to her to see that she breathed in deep alongside me as her warm eyes locked on mine. The moment that she whispered, "Jay," I was quickly removing my seat belt. If I were being honest, I didn't even remember latching it in the first place…but that thought was neither here nor there. Cassie did the same, and the instant that we were both free, present company be damned, I pulled her onto my lap.

She cradled into me, her legs off to my left, her arms around my neck, and her head tucked into my shoulder…and the weight of her, along with the relieved breath that she let out against me, saved me from the repressive hell that we all had been momentarily bound to.

I held her to me as if she were sand running through my fingers—desperately and haphazardly—and I didn't relax my frantic, white-knuckled grip on her until she voiced in my ear, "Shhhh."

Neither of us moved until we arrived back at the complex, and when we did, there was no communication with the group regarding where we were all planning to go, nor were there any quietly spoken goodbyes. We all just walked straight into my apartment, shut the door behind us, and allowed ourselves to feel.

Holing up for the remainder of the day, there were occasional moments when we voiced aloud questions regarding the events past. They were mostly mutterings that we all wondered about but couldn't answer—like asking of the possibilities of Randy being charged or other police officers being dirty. The inquiries would fall away as quickly as they were spoken, but no one seemed to mind, for it was necessary that we aired out our worries.

The one that carried the most weight, though, came long after I had washed the blood from my face and intermittently iced my cheek for what felt like an appropriate amount of time. We all were attempting to eat ordered Chinese food. Gathered around the living area rather than the dining room, we hadn't even bothered to grab plates. Utilizing only the provided chopsticks, we silently passed around various paper containers. Sat on the opposite end of the couch from me, Luke appeared pensive as he stared forward at the coffee table.

Cross-legged and on the floor, for he didn't bother pulling up an additional chair, Liam had just impaled a piece of chicken on a chopstick and tossed it in his mouth when Luke spoke slowly:

"How…um…how do we know if Colton's alive?"

Liam' s eyes widened as he coughed through his bite, and Zoey quickly pushed herself up into a kneeling position beside him to smack between his shoulders as he croaked, "'M'fine."

From my right, Claire cleared her throat heavily, placing her head in her hands and miserably groaning a gritty, "Oh, God."

"Shit," Luke whispered, rapidly sitting up to stroke her back. "I—that's not what I meant, baby, I think he's alive— I meant we can't just…show up at the hospital. We've already been over this."

We had. And though we had thoroughly considered checking on Colton at the nearest emergency room, we all decided that it was far too risky for us to drop in for a wellness check. We knew that we needed to present as staunchly uninvolved with everything.

"I can call Skylar," Cassie quietly offered. "Just…just not yet, right?" I glanced her way to see her legs folded just as her brother's were, though she was in the green chair rather than on the floor. "I know it's been a little while, but I don't—I don't know if she's getting interrogated or something, and the timing feels…"

Claire murmured, "Yeah." She pulled her head from her hands and repeated once more, "Yeah."

"I'll call her in the morning," Cassie assured her .

I nodded, as did everyone else. Our appetites—which were scant to begin with—looked to wither down to nothing, and the leftovers were inevitably put in the fridge. And though it had been several hours since I had crawled out of the window at Officer Dowler's home, it seemed that none of us could bear to separate…so we shifted our seating, and everyone remained for several hours more.

Claire scooted to nestle under Luke's arm. I took the middle seat. Cassie wordlessly sat on my left, so closely that her arm brushed with mine, while Liam took her chair, and Zoey rested on the floor between his legs. Reruns of a sitcom played at a dull murmur on the television, and as every episode ended only for another to start in a marathon-like fashion, we all sank further into our seats—further into comfort.

On the first roll of the credits, I traced the backside of her hand with my fingertips. Having changed into a short-sleeved t-shirt and sweatpants, Cassie's arms were exposed, and I watched as goosebumps rose to her skin.

On the second, our fingers had begun to interlace, every slight movement causing the quietest intakes of breath from her or me, and I was sure that despite our eyes being on the screen, neither of us were watching it.

By the third, Zoey had wandered to the kitchen only to return with a glass of water. She set it on the side table next to Liam, glanced to me and Cassie to see our hands woven together, and silently walked to the light switch. Flipping off the one that glowed overhead while the kitchen lighting remained, our motions turned more private, and her grip squeezed mine.

The fourth played through, and at the fifth iteration of the theme song, Cassie looked my way.

"Hi."

It was a whisper, and I returned it. "Hi."

"You okay?"

"Mhm," I mumbled. "You?"

Her lips twitched in a barely-there smile, soft and somber. "Yeah." Slipping her hand from mine, she reached to brush my hair away from the left side of my face, lingering along the outside of my bruising. "Does it hurt?"

I exhaled bitterly through my nose because it did, and my previously taken ibuprofen had done little to take the edge off the aches.

"Mhm."

"Sorry." Her nails traced up to my scalp, gently scratching tiny circles and figures of eight. "This alright?"

The comforting gesture made my heart jump. I hummed quietly and contentedly, and as I moved to lovingly touch her cheek with the tips of my fingers, my actions felt predetermined, for I had seen this before. I had seen this look on her face while my palm cradled her with an emotional purpose that didn't need to be spoken.

It was another one from my dreams.

But instead of the usual feelings of horror and dread that came with my other visions coming true, I felt… complete. All of the sights—those from the past that occurred in a non-historical order, those with Cassie, those of Skylar, and the sensation of drowning—they had all come to fruition. The past had met the future, and all that haunted me had come to life as if it were inevitable. Now that I was here, holding her face in my hand, I felt that it was all over.

Dropping my hand back down to my lap, my eyelids fluttered closed as I relished in the sensation of her soft stroking through my hair, and I was at peace.