The Sinners of Saint Amos - Logan Fox Page 0,224

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.

Right before he stroked my hair and told me what a pretty little girl I was.

I couldn’t answer him, obviously. But I didn’t want to. Because I think the woman left him in the back of the van with me on purpose. To remind me what would happen if I tried anything.

Now that I’m alone, now that my terror is starting to go stale, I can’t keep kneeling here indefinitely.

I’m on a mattress placed on the floor. Its fabric is damp, and the air has a clingy chill to it.

There’s a smell down here. One I don’t like one bit. It’s so foul that I start breathing around my gag instead of pulling air through my nose.

The sounds coming from upstairs aren’t the only ones I hear. There are things in here with me. Small things. Scurrying things. Rats or mice. Their sharp little claws catch against the concrete floor.

It’s hard to tell how long I’ve been down here. It feels like an hour or more, but I think I would have been a lot colder if that were the case.

Hoody tied my hands behind my back. When I fold down onto my heels, that puts my hands in reach of the knots around my ankles. I’ve already tried to undo the ropes around my wrists—they’re much too tight. But if I got the ropes off my feet, I could at least walk around. Maybe find something sharp for the ropes around my wrists.

It feels like another quarter-hour goes by as I work at the knots. Blind, all I have to go on is a vague idea in my head. Eventually I start tugging as hard as I can on anything that feels like it might give way.

Sometimes I forget to breathe through my mouth, and then I have to fight down nausea when that smell hits my nose.

But finally—finally—something gives.

The knot loosens.

With a hard tug, I slip free. The soles of my feet prickle