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“What’s up with you?” Corvus asked, his jaw working as he picked at the label on his beer, eyes boring a hole into me. Looking like he knew exactly what I’d been thinking about and didn’t fucking approve.
“Bri,” I lied. “She’s still in a fit about homeroom.”
Corvus rolled his eyes but visibly relaxed, smirking. I got the sense he was glad Bri decided she didn’t like Ava. Less work for him if he wanted to get rid of her, which seemed like exactly what he wanted to do.
Stooping to helpingBri—a bitch he’d made no secret of disliking—set the girl up for theft? Since when did Corvus need help getting rid of a body? If he wanted her gone so damn bad, then why was she still here? I had a feeling there was more to it than I thought. He must’ve seen something in her, or knew something about her that we didn’t. I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if he’d already nicked her file from the office and used our contacts to dig into her past. He didn’t like wild cards.
“What is it about the new chick that’s got you all twisted?” I asked, regretting the question almost as soon as it left my lips. His cheekbones flared, and I was narrowly saved by Diesel coming to the table.
He slapped his hand down onto Corvus’ shoulder and gave a squeeze. “I’m going to need you this weekend,” our adoptive father said, slipping into the chair next to Corv, the mask he wore for the others slipping around the edges.
His exhaustion was apparent in the heaviness of his shoulders and the flare of red veins in his eyes.
Diesel rubbed the edge of his mouth, thinking, before wiping his palm down his short blond beard. Barely forty, but in this moment he could’ve passed for closer to fifty with all the hard lines creasing his forehead.
“Recon?” Corvus asked, running his tongue over his teeth as he turned his mind from the banality of Briar Hall back to business.
Diesel nodded.
“I don’t think it was the Aces,” Corvus said. “Doesn’t sit right.”
“We can’t assume anything. Not until we have something concrete to base it on.”
Corvus clearly disagreed, but said nothing else.
“Good?” Diesel asked, his gaze resting on each of us briefly before he stood again.
“Good,” he said when none of us rebuked his order. We rarely did. “Now go pay your respects and get out of here. It’s late. Grey, I’ll get Cook to wrap you up a plate.”
My stomach pinched at the mention of food even though I’d just eaten before we left home. “Thanks, Dies.”
Corvus was the first to get up, abandoning his half-drank beer to head to the bar.
Rook stared on, his leg bouncing rapidly beneath the table as he twisted his lip ring around and around with his teeth between drags of his cigarette.
Corv was right. He had the itch. If we didn’t get him some action soon, he’d go catatonic. “Hey, man,” I said, nudging him. “Let’s go get some whiskey, yeah?”
He rolled his shoulders and tipped back the rest of his beer before getting up, stomping out his smoke, and looking bored. A dangerous thing for Rook Clayton to be.
“Want to rally on the way home?” I offered and his lips twitched into a grin. We owned a good-sized patch of dirt just outside Thorn Valley with a few buildings on it. The Saints mostly used it for storing shit and taking apart stolen cars. We used it as a racecourse to destroy old junkers for kicks.
“No pussy shit,” he said, framing it like a question even though he already knew what my answer would be.
“No pussy shit,” I agreed. “We’ll bust out that old Subaru SVX Corv found. I might even let you drive.”
“You want to die?” Corvus said, reappearing like a fucking ghost out of thin air. “Because that’s how you die. You want to rally at one in the morning, fine. But Grey drives.”
“Suits me,” Rook said as though he didn’t care. We both knew he’d drown himself in whiskey before we left, anyway.
A familiar beat poured out from the speakers overhead and my throat went dry at the sound, all movement stilling as the first lyric dropped.
Corvus’ face slackened as he registered what it was and calmly crossed the room to change the radio station.
Rook’s black eyes scanned the room with unease before finding Corvus again, his analytic stare changing to a pained sort of pride.
I lowered my voice as Corv returned, still reeling but doing a good job of hiding it. “Man, was that just playing on The Edge—”
“Shut the fuck up,” he hissed. “Not here.”
