My face is wet with tears. I think I’ve chewed a hole in the side of my cheek, but after what feels like eons of struggling and trying to ignore the red-hot pain in my hand, both shoulders thump onto the mattress.
Time’s slipping away, but I allow myself a few minutes to just lie there. Regaining my strength. Trying to get back my composure.
When I sit up and start working on my legs, there’s a burning conviction inside me.
I don’t care what it takes—Gabriel’s going to pay for this.
Chapter Seventeen
Cass
“I got a bad feeling about this,” Rube murmurs. “Something isn’t right.”
“Like the fact we’re still in the fucking car when we should be in there?” I say, rapping on the window with a knuckle. “Yeah, bud, I feel you. All sorts of fucking wrong.”
Rube throws me a glare. “We can’t just barge in there—”
“Guys, come on. This isn’t helping.” Apollo grabs my headrest and pulls himself closer, nestling between the sedan’s front seats.
We swapped out the liquor store’s truck for a silver VW someone left unlocked in a driveway. That was about an hour ago—whether it’s been reported stolen yet is anyone’s guess.
“What’s not helping is us sitting here like fucking spectators. I’m getting out.”
“Wait. Just fucking wait.” Rube opens his door and climbs out of the car. It’s a testament to how big he is when the shocks let out a creak of relief.
I’m relieved too, because I was itching on the inside like a fucking junkie.
My love affair with heroin is an on-again-off-again thing. I’ve always been careful with my dosages after getting out of the basement—I started chipping straight away without even knowing it was a thing—but I’ve been through stages in my life where I’ve used religiously enough to get strung out.
That’s how I feel right now.
Strung out.
Long overdue.
Except my drug of choice isn’t black tar.
It’s her.
Trinity fucking Malone.
And she’s in that house. I can feel it. Right there, close enough to see if she was standing at a window, while we’re over here in this piece of shit car, sitting around like we’re scoping out the place for a fucking home invasion sometime next week.
I’ve been patient. We went with Rube’s plan at the church when I was all for locking whatever nun was creeping around the place in the bathroom while we rooted around in their files.
From what Rube tells us, that would have been futile. No trace of Trinity was left in that place.
But now?
Now we’re sitting here with our thumbs up our asses while Mr. Cautiously Careful out there triple-checks God knows what.
I climb out the car, ignoring Apollo’s bleated, “Wait, Cass!”
He climbs out a second later anyway, so what the fuck?
“Counting the tiles on the fucking roof?” I ask Reuben.
He doesn’t even bother to scowl at me. “He knows we’re here.”
“Impossible.”
“He could have seen the car.”
“Then he would be out the back door already, no pun intended.”
“That wasn’t a pun.”
I grind my teeth at Mr. Cautiously Careful AKA Sir Correct-me-if-I’m-Wrong. Which I never could, because he never was.
“That thing you’re feeling?” I tell him. “It’s the earth revolving on its fucking axis. She could be—”
I stop.
I’d been about to say dead, and I don’t know why. Gabriel wouldn’t kill her—she’s too valuable. She’s what led us here in the first place. And he had to have known that, right?
That’s why he took her. Why he’s using her. Maybe that shit about him being her father was purposefully planted on his laptop for us to find. He knew we’d assume the worst.
But fuck. You start going down that rabbit hole, and you end up as knotted as a pair of horny dogs.
“We do this now, or we don’t,” I say, glancing at Apollo. “The longer we stand out here, the—”
“You’re right,” Rube says.
And thank fuck for that, because I was close to smacking him upside the head. I start forward, but his voice stops me. “Get back in the car. We’ll circle the block. Maybe we get in the back way, or through a window.”
I turn to him and stare him down. He’s about the same height as me, but I know I’ll be the first to kiss dirt in a fight.
But that doesn’t matter.
Because he’s wrong. We can’t wait anymore.
She’s in there, and she’s in danger. Fuck, Trinity being within a foot of Gabriel is more than I can stand thinking about. Even if she is his daughter, I know a perverted prick like him wouldn’t think twice about sticking it in her.
They’ve been alone so long already, I’m sure he’s done it a couple of times.
Usually I can control myself. I don’t get angry, I get snarky.
But this? The thought that right now he could be—?
“Fuck this,” I snarl.
“Cass. Please.”
I stop, but only because it’s Apollo and the poor guy honestly wants to help. It kinda sucks that he’s always so nice about it. Always seeing every side of the argument. He should have been born a few years earlier where he could have run free with his hippie friends, protesting the Vietnam war and getting fucked on acid all the time.
“Just…wait. Would you?”
So I wait.
I wait for hours, days. A fucking eternity.
I wait while Reuben and Apollo start discussing what they’d do if they couldn’t find an open window. Should they break it, hope no one hears?
Oh wait, Rube thinks he saw someone. What’s that? Another person walking down a street in Suburbia? The fucking horror. But no, he was mistaken, it was just some old lady pruning her rose bush.
And then I wait some more, because now they’ve moved onto conflict resolution. What if Gabriel has a gun? Nah, Rube doesn’t think so. Not all bad guys have guns or some shit. But Apollo’s not sure. Now he’s Mr. Fucking Careful.
I can’t.
I can’t take it.
This waiting. This supposing and assuming and fuck ton of maybes. Not while Gabriel’s doing God only knows what to my blasphemous little slut.
This time I don’t warn them. I just turn and walk away.
Apollo makes to grab me, but I dodge him. And then I storm the fucking castle gates like I have an army at my back.
Because I do.
They’ll come. Rube and Apollo will be right behind me.
And we’re going to rip Gabriel a new asshole. And then shove foreign objects up it until he bleeds. And then give him a blood transfusion so he can cling to life…only to suffocate him with a pillow made from his own skin.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. A lot.
Maybe I’m not that calm after all.
But fuck me, I’m good at hiding it.
I stalk up to the door, and I lift a hand to try the handle.
A grin tugs at my mouth when it turns and the door swings open.
But that smile dissolves a second later when I see Trinity standing in front of me. Wide-eyed, face bruised, clothes rumpled, hair disheveled, mouth peeling open like she’s about to scream.