up their threat. I say we play it by ear. See what they ask, and on the back end, we investigate everything on The Society. We’ll have to discover who they are and what dirty little secrets they have. We all know everyone has a skeleton or two hidden in their closet. We find out theirs, and then we’ll try to come to a compromise, exchanging their dirty little secret for ours.”
“And what if that doesn’t work? What if we can’t even find out who is behind this, let alone what shit they’ve done in the past? Or let’s say we do. Let’s say we get the names of every last fucker in The Society, and we tell them we got dirt on them, too. What’s to stop them from coming after us anyway?” Easton asks, concerned that Lincoln’s plan may not hold water to it.
Our grim brother just shakes his head and replies, “That won’t happen. They don’t want us, East. If they did, they would have outed all of us by now. No. We’re not their end game. We’re just the means they believe they can use to get whatever they want.”
“Are you sure?” I croak out, hoping Lincoln’s logic is on the money.
“Positive. They want something, so we’ll play along and pretend to give it to them,” he says, throwing us a sinister smile.
It makes me cringe, seeing it on his face. It reminds me too much of another smile I saw that horrific night. A grin that comes to me in my nightmares, taunting me how none of us will ever truly escape our fate. We sealed it that night with the pact we made out of blood, and this ominous letter might just be the beginning of our demise.
“What if what they want from us is a reenactment of what we did last spring?” Colt asks, making the shivers down my back more profound.
I don’t dare look away from Lincoln’s face, hoping the compassionate friend I grew up with still lives and breathes inside him.
“Then they’ve drawn a line we aren’t willing to cross. And if that’s the case, we’ll wait for them to show their hand. I don’t think they’ll go to the authorities. I’m positive it won’t come to that. Blackmailers never want justice. They are only in it to gain something in return.”
My lungs breathe a little easier, relieved that Lincoln still has his soul intact. But as his last words begin to take root inside me, it dawns on me exactly what this little letter means.
“So that’s it, huh? We’re being blackmailed.”
I know I’m stating the obvious, but saying the words out loud just cements the idea. It makes it easier for me to confront and deal with it better.
“Afraid so,” Lincoln adds coolly, erasing any doubt that there could be something more to this than just good old-fashioned blackmail.
“Fuck!” Easton shouts, falling to the bed while cursing the sky above him.
Colt gets up, leaving the whole bed for Easton to have his meltdown, and walks over to the window to scour the eerily remote scenery.
“You okay with this, Colt?” Lincoln asks his cousin, walking to stand beside him, as both take in the dark, green backdrop of Oakley woods.
“You want the truth? I’m not okay with anything as of late. But if you want us to play along, then that’s what we’ll do. At least for now,” he hushes at his side, and this time, it’s Lincoln who places his hand on his cousin’s shoulder, offering a light, consoling squeeze.
“Fuck it!” Easton exclaims, jumping off the bed. “I’m in too. Whatever it takes, Linc. We got you.”
“Finn?” Lincoln swings his head over his shoulder my way, waiting to see where I stand in all of this.
Is there really a choice? No, there isn’t. It’s not only Linc’s life at stake. We’re all in this. If one of us goes down, we all go.
“Yeah, I’m in.”
“Good.” He gives me a grateful, tight nod, but he knows as well as I do that my hands are tied like his.
“These assholes think they have us over a barrel, but they fucked up. They have no idea what kind of devastation we can bring,” Colt states, trying to uplift our spirits.
However, it does nothing for me. It only makes me feel even more uneasy.
The Society might not have an idea of what depths we are willing to go, but we sure do. We are capable of doing the most heinous things if one of