Hoody picks up my shoes and tucks them under his arm. The man with the polo shirt sticking out of his sweater walks up to me.
I stiffen, my hands going into fists. But he walks right past, crouches, and picks up everything I’ve left on the floor—the passport, the money, the bible-safe. Then he goes over to the woman and puts everything inside her handbag while she holds it open, her eyes not leaving mine for a second.
“We’re going for a walk. If you make a sound, I guarantee you’ll need years of therapy to get over what they’ll do to you.” She cocks her head to the three men standing behind her. “Got it?”
My skin slowly starts crawling off my body. I nod, swallow hard.
I could still scream, of course. My men would be here in seconds. But they’d be walking into a gunfight with nothing but their fists. There’s no way in hell I’m letting any of them take another bullet for me. Not when it was my decision to come in here alone.
And I’d joked the front door was booby trapped? Lord, the irony.
The woman makes a show of sliding her gun inside her handbag, still pointing it at me but circumspect about it now.
Hoody moves behind me and grabs the back of my neck. Pushes me forward.
I don’t know what horrifies me more—the fact that his hand is cool and dry, or the considering look in his eyes when he passed me.
This can’t be happening.
Who the hell are these people?
They’re obviously here on a mission—they didn’t act surprised to see me here, or at the stack of money. And judging from their weapons, they came prepared.
Did Gabriel send them to search for the safe? Does that mean he’s not actually dead?
The thought sends an internal shiver through me.
I need to find out what’s going on.
“Who are—”
Polo Shirt moves so fast, I don’t have time to get my hands up to defend myself.
If Hoody hadn’t still had a grip on the back of my neck, I’d be sprawled on the floor from the brutal backhand Polo gives me.
My eyes water from the pain, and I lift an icy hand to my cheek, trying to soothe the heat.
The woman is smiling now.
Finally, something I recognize.
It’s the same smile Zachary wore the morning he told me to leave Saint Amos. When he had a knife up my skirt ready to slice and stab.
Enjoying my misery.
Just like she is.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Zach
“She’s taking too long,” I tell Reuben. “She should have been out already.”
“I think she’s just saying goodbye,” Apollo says. He looks like one of those birds who prance around in front of the mirrors their owners hang in their cages. Constantly ducking down and then lifting his head as if he’s trying to check out his own reflection.
He’s trying to spot movement in one of the windows, just like us. Trying to stare through that dark slit of the front door Trinity left ajar, down into the passage.
We’re playing a game: the first one to spot Trinity wins.
“I’m going in.” I grab the door handle, but all it takes is a sigh from Rube to stop me.
“We should give her space.”
“Last time we did that, she got herself kidnapped,” Cass mutters.
“No, last time Zach chased her away with a knife, she went crying to Gabriel, and then he kidnapped her,” Apollo says. “Get your facts straight.”
My eyebrows aren’t the only ones to quirk up at that statement. Apollo’s usually the last to challenge any of us, but I guess he’s just as concerned.
“Time?”
“Five minutes, thirty-nine seconds since she set foot inside,” Cass says, twisting in his seat and giving me a long-suffering stare. “Forty…Forty-one…”
I grimace at him, and he straightens with a faint grin on his face, but I see it slide off in the rear-view mirror a second later.
“So…I have to use the bathroom,” Apollo announces. “I mean, when nature calls…?”
We’re silent for all of a second before we pile out the car like a bunch of clowns exiting a VW bug. Except we’re driving an SUV, none of us have a big red nose, and I doubt any clown has ever looked as grim as us.
I’m through the door first, expecting a whole shit show of things…but not the sudden paralysis that hits me.
My body grows heavy. Time slows. I’m filled with the visceral sensation of my heart pounding in my chest.
Rube grabs my elbow, steers me inside with him. But my eyes have already locked onto the stain on the living room carpet.
Blood.
Not something I’m ever affected by, not like Apollo. I’m not squeamish in the slightest. But this is different.
It’s my blood.
And Christ, there’s so much of it. How did I survive? But I almost didn’t, and that’s what’s rooting my feet in place. I’m dimly aware of Cass and Apollo streaming past me, heading down a side passage that leads deeper into the house.
“No. Shit! She’s gone!” comes Cass’s voice from down the hall. “I fucking knew we shouldn’t have let her come in alone.”
“Check upstairs,” Rube says, his voice tight, too loud.
All while my mind slowly disintegrates into white noise. Rube shakes me, and then I’m up against the wall. He grabs my shoulders, his thumbs forcing my head up.
“No time for this,” he tells me, and for once his words are fast, close together. “Need you to focus. Need you here. Not in the past. Got it?”
His voice centers me. Reigns me in. It gathers what’s left of my mind and somehow contains it.
I lick my lips. Squeeze closed my eyes. “I’m here,” I manage.
The pat he gives my cheek is more like a slap. Then he grabs the front of my shirt and hauls me after him. “We’re checking the back!” he yells, aiming his voice up the stairs where I assume Cass and Apollo disappeared to.
Then he drags me after him.
The back door is standing open. We run through it. There’s a wooden fence behind Trinity’s house, but a section of it is gone. We go through it. We cut across someone’s yard, dodging unruly bushes and low hanging tree branches, some of which are still swaying as if disturbed seconds before we arrived.
“There!” I slam a hand against Rube’s chest as he turns to run in a different direction. I point.
His eyes go wide when he sees the van. But all he gets is a glimpse.
We run toward it, but we’re too late.
The van pulls away with a screech of tires, and by the time we reach the road, it crests a small rise before vanishing behind it.
Unmarked.
No plates.
One in a million.
I already know we’ll never find it.
Which means we’ll never find Trinity again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Trinity
I flinch every time I hear a sound. Just for that second, I stop shivering. But then the cold leaks back, and I start trembling again.
Most of the sounds come from above.
Faint voices. Muffled footsteps. The scrape of furniture.
Hoody brought me down here, shoved me to my knees, and then abandoned me. I’m still wearing the gag he pushed between my lips the second the back door of the van closed behind us.