Page 18

Mask: Concealment to hide ones identity.

B ut how long can I truly stay hidden?

Voices echoed around the room before I opened my eyes. The warped sounds kept going in and out like a bad radio connection.

“Roe…Roe…” The garbled sounds became more and more clear. “You alive, you dumbass?”

Now, that voice I knew. It was my sister. She patted the heavy blankets on top of me. The warmth began seeping into my skin, and it hurt down to my bones, but slowly, my body felt less like a zombie.

My Little Voyeur certainly knew how to crash a party, but even her presence in that gorgeous dress couldn’t stop my water phobia from interrupting my focus. Hesitation hit me the minute I went on that damn boat. My fear of deep water was as intense as it was when I was a kid.

It all started when Taliah and I had been playing in a creek, and I thought getting the better crawdads from further up would be a great idea.

My sister was the smart one. She didn’t follow me, and I got my foot stuck in a fucking boggy patch of swamp seaweed, and down under the water, I went, like a ghoul from the lake had come to eat my ass.

I shook off the memories. The embarrassment that I couldn’t swim or even float was humiliating.

“No. I’m not alive,” I croaked in Tal’s direction.

Fuck, my voice was as scratchy as shit. Tal whacked me in the shoulder and adjusted some IV hooked into my other arm.

“Where’s….” My eyes shot toward the door.

Goliath’s big, burly body created a shadow by the entrance of the room. The light from the hallway blocked his massive build. He was getting softer around the belly since being with Ezello, which made me laugh.

Once upon a time, I used to be thicker, too.

When Ariah was pregnant with Xenia, she ate weird shit all the time, and I ended up eating it, too. Her baby book shit called it sympathy weight. I called it ‘being lazy’ and ‘needing to get my ass back to the gym.’

There was a gym at the prison, but it was held in the criminals’ wing of the unit, and there was nothing on the hospital’s side. I had bribed a few guards to use it regularly over the years and eventually got to the build I was now.

Goliath was never skinny, but seeing him now with bigger arms and a thick torso, I imagined his physique still deflated any numb nuts wanting to mess with his authority at the new hospital.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the drowned cat. What’s up, bro?”

I ignored him, sitting up and wincing at the way my body felt like tiny pinpricks were stabbing me.

“If you’re looking for your knight in red, she’s sleeping off saving your ass.”

I looked around, trying to find my red-headed hero, but there was a big ass curtain that blocked off a section of the room.

I reached for my IV and started to pull, the plastic applicator popping out and spraying a tiny bit of blood when it exited my arm. Goliath shook his head at me as I made a beeline for the curtain and nearly took it down as I swung the fucker open.

“Guess that makes you the damsel in distress then, huh, Roe?”

There was nothing there—no strawberry blonde beauty sleeping peacefully. Taliah sighed from across the room, picking up the plastic tube I had abandoned and shutting off the bag.

“She was taken to a different facility,” Tal said, reaching up and fixing the blankets I left spewed across the bed and half hanging on the ground.

“Other facility?” I raged, gripping the curtain for stability more than anything else.

“Yes.” Taliah nodded. “Her emergency contact checked her out and transferred her to a different hospital.”

I frowned, watching Goliath walk over to me and wag his finger like a scolding parent.

“Get back in the bed towels, Roe Roe,” he chastised me, using the name he did when we were shitting ourselves in diapers.

“Nah, man.” I threw my hand up, balancing my unsteady body on the wall, squishing the curtain between my legs to hide my naked ass from my siblings.

“How the fuck did you even know I was out there?”

Goliath chuckled like I had said some crazy joke. “The tracker, dumbass.”

When he didn’t throw in a ‘gotcha or anything else,’ I smacked him upside the head.

“The fuck…? You put a fucking tracker inside me like you put in a dog?”

Lith rubbed the spot on his head, looking quite irritated. He poked me in the chest. To my dismay, I nearly fell over.

“Yep, I sure did. When a fruitcake put you and Judie on his ‘menu of choice’ and nearly ate me for a late-night snack, I ensured that you and Judas were always traceable.”

I frowned. Who in the fuck put a tracker in their goddamn brothers?

“I know you didn’t stick anything in me,” Taliah said in a threatening stance as she came over from the bed.

Lith smiled dangerously. “Guess you’ll never know.”

Taliah shook with rage, her blue hair coiled In her dreads on her head like a snake.

“There one in you?” she said with a calculating smile on her face.

Goliath shook his head. “Nah, the last ones in Zee.”

Taliah walked out of the room without a word, a clear scheme up her sleeve.

“You know I’m digging it the fuck out now, right?” I said casually, pulling off the Johnny and poking my muscles for a bump.

Goliath snickered. “The only one likely to find it would be Judas. Sorry, Roe.”

I frowned. Why the fuck would Judas, of all people, find it?

“It’s up your ass,” he said with a grin.

I balked.

“Well, not up your ass, you’d just shit that out. So Dexy boy designed a special tag that goes into the asshole and embeds right on your taint skin.”

I looked at my brother like he was fucking mad.

“Jude’s dudes may find his, I don’t know, or your little swimmer star if you fly that w—”

I cut him off by smacking him upside the head again.

He dodged the second blow and danced out of the way.

“By the way, since when are you buying weed? That was an interesting conversation with one of my favorite serial killers.”

It didn’t surprise me that he was friends with a serial killer and even less that he was likely talking about the Russian man on the phone.

But fuck, did that mean I now owed a serial killer a fucking favor?

Greeeeat.

“Who’s the girl, Pharaoh?”

Goliath linked my arm on top of his and walked me back to bed like an old man.

“None of your damn business,” I said, plopping down and rolling over to turn away from him.

He sat down silently, but I didn’t look at him. He could shove his tracker up his own ass, thank you very much.

“Man…are you with…” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Her?”

The tone of my big ass triplet made me pause my silent treatment. He looked uncomfortable but also hopeful?

“No,” I said flatly. “I don’t need any fucking distractions.”

Goliath rubbed his beard, the thick black layers bushier than usual.

“I know, bro. I do, but sometimes these women just latch on and take control of your fucking soul. And you’re happy to let ‘em.”

I thought about that. No one ever took control of my soul.

Ariah and I were happy. I loved and respected her, but it was based on being good for one another.

She was smart and didn’t need anyone bothering her.

Hell, I didn’t even see her most days because her job kept her away.

Her real love was her clients. My real love was… my daughter.

The shadow of Xeny’s bouncy curls appeared on the blank white wall. Xeny was running and playing with shadows of flowers flowing around her.

“I wanna see you happy, Roe,” he said, his voice losing all the playful edges it usually had. “You deserve it more than me, and that kills me. I don’t know how to—fuck…shit. I don’t know how to make it right.”

I sighed and watched the shadow dissipate, her laughter fading to the hum of the ceiling fan above us.

“Because you can’t. Nothing makes it better. Nothing brings Xenia back.”

Goliath went silent.

“The only thing I live for now, Lith, is finding the bastard who took her from me and ripping out his fucking heart with my bare hands. I won’t stop until I do. I’m too stubborn to die.”

Goliath clipped his arm over my shoulder, giving me a side whack that was his version of a hug.

He stood up and wiped his eyes.

“Listen, I wanted you to come by because we need to chat about Judie.”

My ears perked up. The sudden change in his demeanor told me nothing good was coming next.

“Did you find a way to free him?” A feeling of hope hit my system like a bitter drug that went down hard.

“Nah,” he admitted. “I found something worse, man.”

I frowned, unsure what could be worse than Judas not being freed from those prison bars.

“I did some searching into his crime,” he said, picking at the blanket. “There was a shit ton of evidence in the start. I followed a bunch of leads with Zee to talk to witnesses and shit. Like the woman who owned the diner.”

I waited, holding my breath and forcing myself to let it out.

“The witness said that Judas was at the diner talking to a red-haired woman, and they got into an argument.”

I knew very little about Judas’s case, but it was said to be a crime of passion, so an argument made sense.

“He jumped over the divider to the kitchen, grabbed a cleaver, and left.”

“A cleaver is what was said to be the murder weapon, yeah?”

Goliath nodded. “Yeah. Two days later, he went back to the diner and stabbed the woman over sixteen times. The diner owner said he was laughing and singing some nursery rhyme.”

I blinked, Judas was out there, but he had never even let us kill spiders. He said everything had a purpose, regardless of whether it scared or grossed us out.

“I asked the company to email the CCTV footage of the restaurant that day. They’re getting it to me, but it’ll take a while.”

I sighed. Of course, it would, but maybe once we saw the footage, we could finally clear Judas’s name because we could identify the real killer. Fuck, we needed proof to show it was not our brother who committed the crime. Judas didn’t do that. I know he didn’t.

“We need to go talk to the owner. Maybe see if we can find the original waitress on the clock that night…” I said.

Goliath fiddled with the blanket more. In fact, I was getting annoyed.

“Stop.” I smacked his damn hand, the tugging driving me nuts.

“There’s more,” he said, reaching forward and picking at that damn blanket even harder. “I commissioned a private investigator to look into Ariah’s death.” I started to speak, but he put his hand over my mouth. “And Xenia’s.”

I was fuming now, the heat in my body chasing away any chill I had.

“They’re connected, man,” he said, and for some reason, I felt like a plug was pulled out of my heart, a slow shutdown happening in my brain and body.

“The guy I hired is a man who knows his shit. He used to live on the streets and worked his way up. It’s hard not to respect his hustle. Hell, he’s not much different than us.”

I didn’t give a fuck, who the man was or how honorable he was. I stayed silent, stiff as a damn board. Finally, I felt his big tattooed hand lockdown on my shoulder as if he was afraid the information he was about to speak would have me on the floor without some stability.

“Ariah, Tiffany, and Xenia were all killed by the same person.”