8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

T he night just…passed. I drove home in silence. I went straight to bed. I dozed off in a state of teenage-like angst, but the dreams that I sank into stripped me of the feeling completely. The blur of darkness had the occasional glimpse of light, but it still pulled me into the gloom as I slept. Images played before me like an old Hollywood reel, one short clip following the next:

Zoey, shaking from sheer shock, cradled in Liam's lap as he sat on the grass, mere feet away from a corpse with a mangled skull.

Thin, pale ankles clasped in my hands.

Cassie's body—mostly naked, sweaty, and writhing above mine, colored in sepia tones—hedonism incarnate.

An unknown woman, bloodied and bruised.

Cassie, once again, this time fully clothed and giving me a soft, somber smile as I held her face in my hands.

Claire, shrieking from the depths of her guts as a knife was thrust in her thigh.

Luke in a hospital setting, shirtless with streaks of iodine across a long gash on his ribs as he watched a doctor stitch the wound closed.

Save for those of Cassie and the woman who looked to have been beaten, they were all memories. Horrible memories. They weaved in and out of each other with the daunting fluidity of a rushing river encapsulated in ice—quiet, deadly, and cold… very cold.

I woke with the foreboding feeling that typically lingers after nightmares, staring at the ceiling with eyes wide open. It was only a few seconds of trying to make sense of the visions that were leaving me like condensated breath on a winter's day when I realized why I had woken in the first place.

My phone was vibrating on my bedside table, the screen alight with not only the time of— fuck me— 2:09 A.M., but also with Luke's face. Wearing an amused yet annoyed gaze, I had taken the shot with quick fingers while he was wearing a Santa hat—it was a picture I took nearly a year ago at our Christmas visit to our parents' house. I reached for my cell and swiped to answer his call.

"'S'late."

Luke spoke through the speaker and into my ear. "Are you alone? Are—are you home? Are you home and alone? "

I was certain that I could hear him pacing while he said it—the pitter patter of his quick feet was hollow upon what could have been hardwood, and his tone was inherently anxious.

My chest squeezed. "Um, yeah. It's two in the morning, what do you think I'm doing? What's up?"

He rushed out, "We have a problem."

I sat up quickly. "What is it?"

"Can you come down to Henry's?"

"Yeah, I, ah—just give me a few?"

He exhaled heavily. "Yeah, okay. See you soo—"

"Wait, wait, what's wrong?" I asked. "You sound nervous."

"Not over the phone, Jay—just get here." His voice went faint, as if he were pulling the speaker away from his ear, and I heard him speak rapidly, "Did anyone call Cas—"

The line clicked, my head swam, and I looked at my phone in my palm, perplexed. I could have hypothesized endlessly about why he desperately needed me to meet him after closing time at Henry's or why he was asking if anyone had called Cassie, but I didn't. I couldn't because the panic in his voice was all too clear, and it was all I could do to spring out of bed, yank on whatever clothes I could find, and half-jog my way down the street .

I was careful to mind my steps as I moved. The ground was covered in at least an inch of powder, and thick flakes were clinging to my hair by the time I had made it. My hands were already throbbing with cold, and when I went to allow myself inside the bar, the front door wouldn't budge.

"The fuck?"

I pushed and pulled with more force in case it was somehow jammed, and by the time I was considering reaching into my pocket to call Luke and question it, he was opening the door for me from the inside.

He stood in the entry, his hair sticking up on all ends and his eyes wild.

"Get in."

I followed his instruction and crossed the threshold. "Jesus, you look like hell."

The music was off. As he strode away from me, Luke's steps echoed much like they had minutes ago through the speaker of my phone.

He ran his hands through his hair in agitation and insisted, "Lock the door behind you."

I glanced to the door and back to him. "Um—"

I heard an aggravated sigh, and the sound drew my attention to Liam, who was sat our usual table to my right. Claire and Zoey were with him, Claire watching Luke with a forlorn expression and Zoey's gaze remaining peeled on a glass of water that sat before her and appeared to be untouched.

"Just leave the door open," Liam told me with an altogether tired expression. "Cassie should be right behind you."

"Okay," I murmured. Luke began to pace in front of the table, running his hands through his hair, and I remarked lightly, "Brother, you do that anymore, and your hair's gonna start to fall out. What's going on? Why am I here?"

Luke finally took his seat on Claire's right, but I could see that his leg continued to bounce underneath the table.

He exhaled heavily and looked across the table. "We didn't want to be at the complex. Ah…Liam?"

Liam's face pinched together. "Let's wait for Cas, I don't want to have to do this shit more than I have to."

The way he said it made my stomach roll. The air around us all was fraught with a tension that caused the oxygen to strip from my lungs and a steady stream of anxiety to drip along my spine like cold water from an unfiltered, disease-ridden tap. I cringed away from the sensation and beelined to my chair on the right side of the table head.

Just as I began to sit, the bell chimed from the entrance, happy and upbeat—starkly contrasting to our collectively gaunt expressions—and we all turned to see Cassie stroll inside with a curious smile on her face. The only difference in her appearance from a mere few hours ago was that snow had flecked her messy bun, and despite my concern for whatever was troubling the remainder of our group, my mind still replayed the events from our night in quick flashes. The bench, the pizza, the kiss, the weight of her body on mine, the feel of her tongue in my mouth, the sound of my name on her lips after she told me that everything was forgotten— it was all there.

Cassie took one look at me, and I wondered, for but a moment, if the reel of events had played in her brain, too…but that all disappeared when she glanced to her brother and saw the expression on his face. The color drained from her cheeks, and she asked in a strained voice:

"Oh, Jesus Christ— what?"

She moved as quickly as she could to the empty chair beside me, sinking down into it with her back straight and her eyes wide.

Liam inhaled so deeply that I was certain his lungs had overinflated to the point of pain, let it out through his nose, closed his eyes to gather himself, and when he attempted to speak, nothing came out. He closed his mouth and looked to the ceiling, and Zoey's focus snapped from her water up to Liam .

"Lee, if you don't just show them the video, I am going to lose it."

His dark eyes were soft on hers. "Zo', I have to explain a little—"

"They'll get it off of context clues. Just play the fucking video, Liam!" she whisper-hissed.

He mumbled, "Okay," several times over as if it were a prayer while he reached for his phone, which was face down on the table between them. After tapping on the screen a handful of times, he set it between us all. It was obvious that everyone else had already seen whatever Liam had on his phone, for Cassie and I were the only ones to sit forward at attention. He tapped the white play button in the center of the screen, and I felt my head cock to the side in confusion.

"Is that the hallway at the complex?"

I saw Liam nod in my peripheral vision. "Put up a security camera after everything. It's by the stairwell. Good angles."

There was no need to elaborate— after everything was referencing what had happened months ago with Zoey's stalker. I didn't blame him in the least…and I agreed with what he said—where he had placed the camera did offer good angles. 2A and 2B, my apartment and Liam's, respectively, were in plain sight. The two doors that followed them, 2C and 2D, weren't obscured in the least…and after watching what seemed to be a still image for upwards of ten seconds, a man appeared that made both Cassie and I suck in a quick breath.

Grey-haired, short, and wearing a pea coat that covered most of his body, the remainder of his features were obscured due to him facing away from the camera. That didn't matter, though. We knew who he was. And we hadn't seen Mister Milkovich in months.

Unbeknownst to us, while Zoey was living in apartment 2A, he had generously subleased 2D to his nephew, Peter. Neither Peter's presence nor his identity were clear until he began to stalk Zoey, the realization of who he was became known far too late, and, in an act of defense, Zoey inevitably murdered him. Struck him with a rock on the backside of his skull after he threatened all of our lives until he was no longer. The news had reported his death—declared it some sort of hiking accident to the public—and we had put it behind us. We knew that Mister Milkovich would return to his apartment at some point…that time had never come, though. Approximately four months had passed, it remained vacant, and his existence had simply evaded my thoughts…until now.

He most certainly was not evading my thoughts now .

My vision briefly clouded with the sight of Zoey's stalker. His body infiltrated my mind, thin and pale, dead and maimed, as I clutched his ankles and assisted Liam with chucking him into an overflowing river, and I blinked rapidly to usher the memory away.

I watched the video play as Mister Milkovich slid a key into the knob, unlocked the door, and strolled on in. The door closed, the video once again looked like a still image, and Liam tapped the center of his phone with his index finger to stop the feed.

"When was this taken?" Cassie asked.

"Earlier tonight. Way earlier," Liam told her. "I had no idea he had even come by the complex until I decided to check the feed 'cause I couldn't sleep."

"Okay, um…so he finally made his way back to his apartment," I confirmed aloud, my voice shaking slightly at the mere sight of him. "That was bound to happen…he probably wants to clean it up and find another tenant."

Zoey's gaze snapped onto mine, and the alarmed look in her eyes harpooned me in the chest.

"And what will Mister Milkovich find in his apartment, Jay?"

"Cameras," Liam answered for me.

I knew that already. We all knew that already—the explanation for how we knew that was long and arduous, but during the attempt to figure out who the man was that was on Zoey's tail, we did learn that he had placed what appeared to be nanny cams in several locations. One was in her apartment— my apartment, once she had left. Another was in the hallway in a similar position to where Liam had now placed his. I had taken these two cameras, and, at first, I had simply removed any footage that was recorded on them. It seemed like a solution that was easy enough…but the thought nagged me to the point that I essentially curb-stomped them to hell before tossing the leftover bits into a fire at a campsite in the woods.

Those cameras were fully taken care of. The ones left in 2D, however—the ones in which we had oh-so-briefly stumbled upon their live feed—one that was surveying the Milkovich's living room, and the other looking over a very ominous room covered in what appeared to be soundproof padding—those remained. The knowledge that he could have been intending to use that empty, padded room for…only God knows what with Zoey was nausea inducing. That part of the nightmare was behind us, though. I reminded myself of that as I pushed the memory out of my mind.

"The cameras don't have anything on them," I replied. "Not with any of us. The other two I had are, um…" Destroyed? "Wiped, crushed, and burned in a fire."

All heads whipped to mine, and Cassie asked, "You did all that?"

I twisted to look down into her wide, brown eyes, our shoulders touched with the motion, it was as if I were hooked up to an electrical current that set me on fucking fire, and because my yearning for the burn had never stopped since I left her house, I had to subdue the urge to lean into the sensation.

"I was a bit anxious at the time," my reply came out in a breath, "so… yeah."

It was a millisecond. A goddamn millisecond that, honestly, I shouldn't have given a shit about because this exact second was akin to a shift in the tectonic plates beneath our entire group. I felt it regardless—felt our eyes lock how they have in the past and reveled in the sensation of lustful bliss, ragingly obvious mutual attraction, and plain old, straight to the point, need.

"The cameras are just the start of it," Liam stated ominously, and both Cassie and I shifted our attention rapidly to him. "I mean, okay, there's nothing of us on the cameras, but they're still there, and one of them is in that creepy-ass padded room."

Cassie replied as calmly as she could, "We knew that Mister Milkovich would see all that eventually. Nothing's changed. "

"Yeah," I agreed. "The cameras and the room are creepy. I'm with you. But the guy was creepy, and there's no avoiding that being found out. And seeing Mister Milkovich again gives me the heebies, but none of this points fingers anywhere…I don't think any of this is a problem."

Liam leaned forward, slid his finger across the screen to fast forward the video, and just as he tapped to play it once more, Cassie groaned:

"Fuck, there's more."

With a phone pressed against his ear, Mister Milkovich had exited 2D. He shrugged up his right shoulder to hold his cell in place as he locked the door and spoke:

"Soundproofed the guest room and added a lock on the outside of it—door was open, but the closet's locked, and I can't get in." With a hand on his hip, Mister Milkovich was facing the camera as he let out a loud sigh and threw his head back. "There were handcuffs and a gag in the corner of the room, Artie. It looked like the beginnings of a torture chamber."

I whispered, "What the fuck," because we hadn't seen those on the camera—of course, not all angles of the room were displayed when we had seen the live feed months ago.

Zoey cleared her throat beside me, and Liam gently placed a hand between her shoulder blades, grazing his way up and down her back in a gesture of comfort .

The video continued on with Mister Milkovich saying, "I can't tell Barb about this—no— no, Artie, that would be horrible for her—she doesn't need to know that her son was…could have been some sick freak." He began to walk toward the camera, toward the staircase. "I have no idea. I'm sure Peter had plenty of enemies…I just didn't expect this. Called a locksmith to open the closet—mhm, tomorrow afternoon— exactly —only Lord knows what's in there."

My guts metaphorically left me as he said it, dropping so hard and quick that the noise I made was as if the wind had been knocked from me. The room spun. My throat tightened. The instinctual sensation to fucking run struck me, but I knew that it would be no good.

All I could strangle out of my constricted throat was, "Oh. Fuck."

Liam reached for his phone once again and tapped on the screen to stop the video.

Cassie whispered, "What's in the closet?"

I voiced, "What was that, ‘Exactly,' that he said? What—what's exactly?"

Luke voiced timidly, "I don't fuckin'—" We all glanced at him, he shook his head so hard that three bulky pieces of his hair fell over his forehead, and he quickly whipped them back with a swipe of his hand. "We don't know, obviously. I—I don't even want to say it, but what if he had, like, pictures of you or something, Zoey?"

Cassie stated bitterly, "I'm betting this fucker made a goddamn shrine or some shit—"

Liam scolded her sharply, "Cassandra!"

"Mmkay, sorry," she returned to her brother with a high brow, "but do you really think I'm wrong on that?"

"That's the conclusion I came to, anyway," Zoey muttered. She pressed her palms to her eyes. "I think Mister Milkovich is gonna start digging around."

Claire's blue eyes were shockingly wide as she said to Zoey, "If there's literally anything that has to do with you in that closet, you bet your ass that someone's coming to ask you questions."

"Hence," Luke spoke, drawing my attention back to him, "what I said before—we have a problem."

"Okay." I took a deep breath. "Let's…assume the worst and say there's shit that points to Zoey."

"Shrine," Cassie piped up somberly, and Liam shot her a quick glare.

"Even if someone…I dunno, brings it to your attention, comes by to ask you questions, whatever…what else are they gonna do?" I questioned the entire group. "There's no evidence. The rock is gone, the cameras are gone, he is gone."

Zoey appeared to be chewing on the inside of her cheek, and then she asked me quietly, "Do you know what they do during autopsies, Jay?"

"Uh," I hesitated, "decide on a cause of death?"

She hummed. "Mhm. Evaluate any obvious wounds, determine when and how death could have occurred, check out their teeth," Zoey swallowed, "potentially scrape their fingernails for DNA."

It was the briefest of pauses—brief, but the potential gravity of the situation had sunken in for us all, nonetheless.

"He had me by the hair," Liam stated gravely, and nausea bloomed in my gut. "Had his hand in Zoey's mouth."

"We…we have no idea what they found. What they have." Zoey added in a rapid run-on sentence, "If they did find anything, it would've been tested against potential criminal records, and they turned up with nothing because we're not in the system, but if he has anything in that fucking closet that leads to me, they could bring me in, I could be a suspect, they could question Liam too, they could match both of our DNA's from that scraping, and then we're both…" She took a rattling breath. "We're both fucked."

Claire's voice shook. "He—he was in a river, that all had to have washed away— "

"Probably not dried blood underneath his nails, Claire. I had that cut on my head. He had me right," Liam reached a hand up to grip his mop of blonde hair by the roots, "right here."

"And I felt his nails in my gums," Zoey clarified. "I—I don't remember if I bled."

"Okay," Cassie spoke with purpose, "we need to get in that apartment before he comes back."

"Uh huh," Zoey replied quickly, "ya think?"

Claire straightened her spine. "I know how to pick a lock."

Cassie's disbelieving gaze whipped to her. "When the hell did you learn how to do that?"

She sighed loudly. "Long story."

Hands now over his face, Luke blurted out, "No."

"Luke."

"No, Claire," he retorted, letting his hands fall. "Not you, not any of us. What if we—what if there are other cameras we don't know about? What if someone catches us in the act of tampering with what could be evidence? Fucking none of us are going."

The silence was heavy as we absorbed his words because he was right. He was right, but none of us wanted him to be. I suspected that we all were pondering the same thing as we wordlessly deflated into our seats :

Do we have to risk it all, anyway?

I had wracked my brain with the question for upward of a minute when the front door to the bar opened once more, the metallic sound of the bell overhead happy and light.

Luke damn near growled, "We needed to lock the goddamn door," before he sharply called, "We're closed!" to the entrance.

I looked at whoever had strolled into Henry's. He wasn't large by any means—perhaps Cassie's height, wearing a black hoodie with dark jeans. I'd place him at about Luke's age. Though appearing to be in his mid to late twenties, his expression screamed that life had run him over. His hair, which was as dark as his hoodie, was scruffy and hanging down to his cheeks, damp from snow. He pushed it off of his forehead, the bar lighting cast shadows across his face that almost made him appear gaunt, and when his line of sight met ours, he began to reply in an irritated tone:

"Ya don't look close—" His words stopped, and his eyes widened when he seemed to actually see us all. His jaw fell open, and he murmured a mystified, "Oh my God."

"Closing time's at two!" Claire called out. "We can't legally serve—"

She finally looked at the man and gasped—I mean, really gasped—and I, along with everyone else at the table, glanced at her with a silent, questioning concern. The whites were visible around her blue irises as she took him in, and I swear the color drained from her face to the point that her freckles were the only feature on her skin with notable color.

Luke gave her the quickest of appraisals, scanning her expression for but a moment until he looked back to the man standing with his arms hanging by his sides at the entrance to the bar. He cocked his head, his gaze suddenly alight with an alarmed understanding, and he placed both of his hands flat on the table, pushing himself upward with a significant gumption. His chair shot backward and fell to the floor, and the rest of us, save for Claire, flinched at the sound. Luke took three rapid steps in the man's direction, and he stabbed his index finger toward him as he gritted out:

"Get the fuck out of my bar!"

I don't know why it took me so long to realize who he was.

Maybe it was because his hair had grown out, and he had a hint of stubble that was absent the last time I had seen him .

Maybe it was because it had been almost a year since I had been graced with his presence.

Or maybe …maybe I had tried to stuff everything that had occurred back then as far into the back of my brain as I possibly could. So far that I was initially dumbstruck as to why my brother was storming toward this man with an obvious, harmful intent.

It was only when the man hissed out, "Shit," as Luke made his way that I was able to connect the dots because he was so shocked that I could see the color of his eyes. It was remarkable that I was able to do so from this distance, but that could have been because they were unsettlingly familiar. The icy blue was so light in color that I distinguished it from where I sat, and the realization felt like a sledgehammer to the chest.

Cassie was barely able to voice, "Um…" before Zoey screeched:

"What the fuck?!"

I shot out of my chair, and Liam cursed as he did the same—I was certain that it was both of our intentions to stop Luke in his tracks.

We didn't.

Our respective hesitation while we both came to regarding the identity of the man before us, as short as it was, was too long. Instead, Liam clambered behind me, I took two running steps in their direction, and Luke's fist managed to hit the left side of Colton Langdon's face with a loud, skin-on-skin smack that resonated throughout the bar.