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Wrinkles line his eyes as he tries to answer me with a lie. “Nah,” he shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.” He walks back over to me, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Noah’s good to you?” he asks, narrowing his eyes and changing the subject. He doesn’t want to talk about work, the people he works for, or the things he does. It’s soul sucking for him, I can tell.
I snort a laugh. “Yeah, Dad, he’s good.”
If he wasn’t, Dad wouldn’t do a damn thing about it. Not that he wouldn’t want to, he can’t.
“Good.” He pulls away, peeking into the living room where mom is still taking pictures of Auden in her princess costume. What seventeen year old dresses up as a princess for Halloween anyway?
He chuckles when he sees her, then stalks to the fridge to grab a beer. He’s been drinking more since we moved to Aspen Falls two years ago for this job. Before that, we lived in North Carolina where he still worked a mind-numbing job, just one that got him home on time for dinner.
I don’t say anything as he cracks the top and takes a chug from the can.
“You driving Auden to her party?”
“Unfortunately,” I mumble.
“Hey,” he comes closer to me again, resting a hand on my shoulder. “You know, I used to hate my brother. We were always on each other’s cases—”
“And now you’re best friends.” I cut him off with a smile. “I know, Dad. You tell me this story all the time.”
He grins. “And it’s still true. One day, you’ll regret that you weren’t close when you were young. Don’t push her away.”
He presses another kiss to my forehead, and then leaves me standing there in the kitchen, waiting on my little sister.
I don’t talk as we ride from the city into the suburbs in Vaughn’s Range Rover. They don’t talk to me either. Vaughn races the car down the highway and Beckett drums his fingertips on the passenger side door. The rhythm of it matches that of my anxiety. A steady drum in my heart saying this is a bad idea.
These boys are not my friends.
At least… not anymore.
“Where is he?” I ask, the sound leaves my lips with a squeak, giving away my fear. The thing with these guys is you can’t be afraid. They feed off the fear, it fills them. At the sound of mine, Beckett turns to face me with a grin.
“You worried?” he asks.
“No,” I try to shake it off.
“Aww, Mik.” His smirk only grows as he reaches back to pat my knee. I even hear Vaughn chuckle from the front seat. “Don’t worry, little girl,” he coos. “You're safe.” He starts to turn back to the front. “For now,” he adds over his shoulder.
I shudder.
My mom asks me every day why I’m moody.
Why I need a bottle of Xanax to go along with my anti-depressants?
Why my nightmares pull me from sleep every night?
These guys.
Noah. Vaughn. Beckett. Pax.
That night.
There’s an emptiness that swirls around in my mind, and at the edges I see them, all four of them. I don’t have the words to place them there, at the scene of the crime, but I know they were.
But feelings don’t count for anything. The only way to get a conviction is with evidence, and there's none of that.
Noah is waiting when we arrive at his house. A huge home tucked away in a private development filled with other rich assholes. Each of the guys have a house here, each designed specially for them, Noah’s is newer, a pristine prison of his creation. The development is made to look classy, sprawled out over multiple acres of land leaving plenty of room between each house. Enough that my screams will be drowned out. Not that it matters anyway, no one is going to call the cops on a Bancroft.
No one except… me, maybe.
