Page 147 of What We Burn

I grin quietly to myself. Why, that’d be me and my wonderful friend, Micah, you dickless piece of shit. Want a demonstration?

“Did he say who jumped him?” Holden asks.

Chris shrugs. “If he knows, he’s not telling. He just came back looking like he’d been through a meat grinder and suddenly Sage Adams was a no-go zone. Said we weren’t to go near her.”

Holden nods slowly, writing in his notebook. “And none of you have had any contact with Ms. Adams since? Directly or otherwise?”

“No,” all three say. Almost in unison.

“What about online? Texts? Social media?”

“No.”

“Tell me about the group chats.”

Chris hesitates. Half a beat. Nothing a normal person would catch. But Holden isn’t a normal person and neither am I, and we both clock it at the same time.

“What group chat?”

Holden gestures at them with the end of his pen. “The one you’re all in together.”

“Sure. Yeah. We’ve got a group chat,” Chris says, recovering. “Everyone does. It’s nothing. Memes. Sports. Bullshit.”

“Brock in it?”

“He was. Before he left.”

“Anyone else? Anyone I might not know about?”

“Like who?”

“Tyler. Other friends who were at that party—anyone the police haven’t questioned.”

Chris leans forward. His arms uncross and his palms hit the table, beer sloshing. “Look, you want to find Brock? Talk to that girl. Sage. She was all over him the night he disappeared. He goes with her then disappears immediately after? You can’t tell me that’s not suspicious.”

Holden doesn’t blink. “I’m not trying to find Brock. We already know he’s in Santa Cruz with some girl he met at a bar. I’m here to talk about Brock’s associates and why they’re so interested in some girl he walked home from a party.”

Chris opens his mouth. Darren puts a hand on his arm. Chris shuts up.

Good boy, Darren. Keep your attack dog on its leash.

“Who’s Stephen?” Holden asks, smooth as a lane change. “That name ring a bell for any of you?”

The name hits different for each of them. Chris frowns. Darren’s face goes blank. Jake finally looks up from his beer, and for one second his eyes flash to Chris before snapping back to the wall.

The same itch I got at Pinecrest when Tyler’s thumbs moved and Stephen lit up Brock’s cloned phone. We never proved that connection, but I never believed it was coincidence.

“Don’t know a Stephen,” Chris says.

“Me either,” Darren adds.

Jake says nothing. He picks up his beer and drinks.

Holden lets the silence stretch. I can hear the clatter of glasses being washed behind the bar, the muffled bass of whatever sports channel is playing on the screens, the tap of condensation dripping from Chris’s untouched glass onto the table.

“All right,” Holden says. He closes the notebook with strong nothing-to-see-here energy. “Thanks for your time. If anything comes to mind, here’s my card.” He drops three cards on the table, one in front of each of them. “And I mean anything. Sometimes the small details are the ones that matter.”

Chris takes the card. Darren takes the card. Jake doesn’t touch his.