I pull out my phone. “Do you remember what it was?”
Cass stares into the distance, chewing ponderously. “Luke…something.”
I give him a deadpan stare. “Really? Could you try harder?”
“Why?” Cass crumples up the burrito’s packaging and overarm tosses it into a nearby trash can. “It worked.”
“It’s significant.”
“Everything in that book’s significant to bible belters,” Cass says. “Literal needle in a haystack.”
“That’s not—” I cut off with a sigh. “Screw it.”
I start searching.
inspiring bible verse luke…
Google autocompletes on that, so I give the first search term a try.
I tap on the first result, and it takes me to a bible website. I read the first verse of Luke chapter eleven.
It’s a prayer. A common one because even I’ve heard it before.
I guess Luke’s the forty-second book in the bible. Forty-two-eleven.
It was the combination to the safe, which is now missing, and the basement. What’s the chance it’s also the password used to encrypt the file on Gabriel’s computer?
But it’s not a pin number like the basement door…
“Library. Now.” I call over my shoulder, already headed in that direction.
“I haven’t had a smoke yet!”
“Save it!”
I have a feeling he’s going to need one when we’re done, anyway.
We race back to the library. I remote access my PC back in California and quickly add the entire prayer to my cracking program.
It takes milliseconds to parse.
The file pops open on the library’s computer.
I’m wrong, though.
Cass won’t need a smoke.
Neither of us will.
We need someone with a stronger stomach.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Zach
“You ever wish you could wipe out your memories?” Rube asks.
We’re in our Ghost’s bedroom. Neither of us would even consider sitting on the mattress, so we’re squeezed in beside each other on the blanket box at the foot of the bed.
I don’t even have to think about it. “No.”
“Not at all?”
We’re smoking a cigarette. It’s our third in a row—we’ve been putting them out on the carpet in a blatant show of disrespect.
It should feel petty, but instead it feels amazing. Like we’re extinguishing each and every one on the Ghost’s bare skin.
“No, because then they’d get away with it. All of them.”
“So revenge is better than forgiveness?”
I turn to him, narrowing my eyes. “I’m sorry, did I miss something? The last time I checked you were going to gouge out his eyeballs with your thumbs and then piss in the sockets.”
He looks away. “If we hadn’t come back here…”
I inhale deep.
Oh.
That’s what this is about.
“Rube, it’s not our fault. It’s not her fault. It’s theirs. Whoever took her. They initiated it, not us.”
“Would have had a hard time initiating anything if—”
I bang my fist on his thigh. “We’re going to find her. And we’re going to kill whoever took her, like we should have Gabriel.”
Rube is silent for more than a beat, so I look up at him. He’s frowning. “You don’t think it was Gabriel?”
I spread my hands like a prophet. “You really think it was?”
“Everything points to—”
“Exactly. Everything always points to him.”
Rube’s frown grows deeper. When he speaks, it’s slowly and carefully. “Yes, because he was the Guardian, and—”
He cuts off when I shake my head. “You know what. You’re right. Maybe it would be better if our memories were erased because we always storm in without thinking things through. We’re so consumed with rage, and hate, and revenge, we don’t ever stop to just…think.”
“You believe Gabriel was set up?”
I lay my hands in my lap, palms up, one on top of the other. I’ve been trying to meditate and shit—my therapist recommended it—but the only thing that happens when I close my eyes is that I’m immediately transported back to the basement.
It’s always been the case.
Which is why I get so little sleep. It takes a lot of effort to convince myself that I won’t wake up with some guy’s hand down my fucking pants.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I tell him. “And I don’t know where Trinity is. And I don’t know if we’ll ever find her.”
I see Rube’s shoulders sag in my peripheral view.
“Maybe they’ll find something,” Rube says. “Apollo’s good with that shit.”
“It’ll have to be a fucking miracle they find.” I shake my head again. “I don’t think anything less is going to cut it. Not this—”
There’s a shriek of tires outside.
We’re up in an instant, storming to the bedroom window. It looks out on the street, to our SUV that’s just pulled up into the driveway.
Guess there’s no reason to be circumspect anymore. If anything, I hope