Page 43 of The Secrets We Bury

Juliet is quiet. Quiet for a girl like her is never good. She doesn’t get quiet. She gets even. She gets mad. She makes noise. That’s what I fucking love about her—she doesn’t shy away. She doesn’t always do what’s expected. She fights. She screams.

It’s clear she didn’t do what she was supposed to. I didn’t have to ask Cory if she ever even showed up because she’s over ten minutes late to the meetup. When we try to ask her where the hell she was, all she does is get out of the driver’s seat of Lex’s SUV and climb into the back. It takes us a moment to realize she’s waiting for us to take her home and no amount of pressure or demand will get her to tell us what she did in the time between when she left school and now.

Lex drops both her and me off at my house and just as quietly as she shifted into the back seat, she crawls out and heads inside.

“Something’s up with her,” Lex says, watching her go, his brows drawn low over his face.

“Where was she?” I ask him. “You’ve got that tracking on her—I should’ve asked before.”

Lex pulls out his cell. A moment later, he answers me. “She was at The Dionysus Lounge.”

“The whole time?”

He nods and then lifts his head to stare after her. I can tell he wants to be the one taking her home tonight, but he’s got Scorpion work to do. It’s been over a week since we talked to Viks and we’re no closer to finding out who’s after her and who might be behind Donovan’s embezzlement fraud case.

I blow out a long breath. “I’ll talk to her.”

How much good talking to her will do when she’s in one of these moods, though, I don’t know. Lex is quiet for a long moment, long enough that I start to get an antsy feeling on the back of my neck like when I saw those coffins in Eastpoint.

Biting out a curse, I let my skull sink back against the headrest. “Just say it, man,” I order.

Lex doesn’t prevaricate. “She needs to be brought in.”

I look at the man like he’s lost his fucking mind. “No.”

“Fullyin,” he continues as if I haven’t spoken.

“Are you out of your mind?” I hold up a hand when he opens his mouth. “No, don’t answer that. I already know—you are.” I drop my hand again. “There is no way in hell we are bringing Juliet fucking Donovaninon our plans.”

“She’s already halfway there,” he points out.

“Not by choice.”

“Not hers or not yours?” he prompts.

Fuck.He has me there. I scrub a hand up over my face, feeling the stubble of my jaw tug at the skin of my palm. “This is a fucked-up mess,” I admit. “I know you want her with us all of the way, but she’s not ready for it. If she can’t tell us where she went then what makes you think she can handle what we’re doing? What we’re planning?”

“Jules wants out of this shithole town as much as we do.”

I glance back over my shoulder at the empty back seat. The person in question is no longer there, but I can still smellher telltale scent. Soft, feminine, fragrant. There’s another body that’s not there.

“I don’t like this,” I say. “But even if we do bring her in, we can’t be the only ones to vote to make the decision.”

“Gio will agree.”

Lex’s ready statement has me arching a brow. “You sound confident in that.”

“You saw the way he defended her at Trail’s End,” Lex replies. “He’s in this for her too. He hasn’t fucked anyone else since he’s had her.”

“And you think that makes him primed for her?” I punch the dashboard. “Fuck, Lex. This is more important than who he’s fucking and or not fucking. This is our life!”

“She’s part of that,” he argues.

“For how fucking long?” As soon as the question bursts out of me, I regret it. There’s no taking it back now. I close my eyes and refuse to look at the man next to me. Lex is one of my best friends, but he doesn’t know—it’s always been Juliet for him. There’s never been another. If she walks away from us, I don’t know that there ever will be.

“You think she’d leave us?”

Slow and even, I suck in a shallow breath before releasing it. “I think it’s a possibility we need to plan for.”