The Sinners of Saint Amos: The Full 3-book Boxset Page 21

  I fumble it before opening it up and taking out a thin device barely longer than my thumb. “So I just plug this in,” I mumble, turning it over in my hands. “After I sneak into his room and track down his hidden laptop.”

  “You have until Wednesday.”

  I look up at Zachary. “Why Wednesday?”

  His smile is anything but merry. “Because by then, I would have lost my patience with you.”

  Chapter Eight

  Zach

  Trinity gets up to leave. I scan her body as she does, and she folds in on herself like an origami swan. “Where do you think you’re going?” I ask lightly, shaking out another cigarette.

  “I have the thing,” she says, holding up the thumb drive. “I know what do to. Surely I can…” She trails off before glancing at the exit.

  “Leave?” I finish for her, getting slowly to my feet as I drag at the cigarette. “Now why would we let you do that?”

  Her mouth opens, but she says nothing. Instead she grabs the blood-red crucifix around her neck.

  Reuben would have preferred to have his rosary back but he needs to learn to let go of things. The crucifix is a start. A good start. I could never get him to abandon it. But all it took was a desperate soul and he handed it over like it was nothing.

  Although I suppose he expected to get it back.

  We all have to learn some hard lessons if we’re to piece together the remnants of ourselves. Reuben has to understand that his past isn’t encompassed in that cheap trinket.

  We’re his past.

  Trinity flinches when I grab her wrist.

  I drag my eyes down her body again. She looks up and meets my eyes, but there’s uneasiness in those amber irises. “I think you should dance for us,” I tell her.

  “W-what?” she splutters out, her mouth lifting into an incredulous smile. “No.”

  “Fucking fantastic idea,” Cass says.

  “I can’t dance,” she says through a laugh. “And even if I could…” Her eyes dart around before she puts her hands on her hips and tries to look casual. “There’s no music.”

  “You don’t need music,” I say, drawing her closer.

  She steps back hurriedly, pulling her wrist free and letting out a huff. “I’m not dancing.” Her eyes flicker over my brothers. Then they flash back to me and narrow. “Not unless I get something in return.”

  Cass whistles through his teeth. Apollo even stops messing around with the laptop long enough to look up at her with wide eyes and a slack mouth. Reuben snorts and rubs his jaw like he’s trying to hide his faint smile.

  I tilt my head at her. “Do you really think you’re in a position to bargain with us?”

  “Hang on,” Cassius says through a chuckle. “Let’s hear her out. What’s your offer, Trin?”

  She replies without taking her eyes off me. “I want to know how you factor into all of this,” she says. An absent wave of her hand takes in my brothers, then the packages against the wall. “You’re older than them. And a teacher, which means you’ve studied at college, right?” She steps close, until the rose-scented wood of her rosary beads tickles my nose. “And you’re rich. So how did you wind up in that basement? How did you become a part of this?”

  My eyes narrow. She gasps when I grab her jaw and squeeze dimples into her soft flesh. That sound ripples through me like a stone tossed into a pond. My cock starts paying attention for the first time today. I want to force her to her knees and make her swallow every rock-hard inch of me until she passes out from lack of oxygen.

  I resort to fisting her hair instead, keeping her head in place. Fear turns her amber eyes a sullen bronze.

  “For a dance from someone who can’t even dance?” I sneer at her. “I don’t think so.”

  There’s utter silence from my brothers. Are they holding their breaths like she is?

  I force a smile. “How about you dance, and I’ll consider not giving you five lashes for being such a presumptuous little slut?”

  Cass snickers at the fact that I’m using his words, but I ignore him. Trinity is all I’m interested in right now.

  She would be pissing herself if she knew how deadly it was to attract my full attention.

  Her face pales. “Lashes? Just for asking—?”

  “Six.”

  Her lips begin to tremble.

  I shrug, tilting her head back another inch as I close the distance between us. “We could demand worse things from you,” I murmur. My hard-on presses into her stomach, and her eyes flare wide. She tries to arch away from me, but I release her jaw and press my hand into the small of her back. “Dirty, sick things.” I grind into her even harder.

  She shudders against me.

  “Fine,” she says through her teeth. “One dance.”

  My eyes fall to her lips. When she licks them, I almost kiss her just to taste her mouth.

  Instead, I push her away and drag at my cigarette as I sink back into my seat. Then I click my fingers at her and again at the spot between us.

  “Get to it then.”

  She moves to the center of the room, and hesitates before looking over at Reuben. “Can I have another drink?”

  Reuben doesn’t bother confirming with me first. Now that our business is done, I’m not anyone’s boss anymore.

  We agreed a long time ago that we couldn’t all lead the charge and drew straws to determine our hierarchy.

  Just because I drew the short straw doesn’t mean I dominate them twenty-four-seven. By now I know when to step back and let them have their fun.

  Our blessed Keepers knew that too.

  It was their responsibility to feed us, shelter us, keep us hidden. And, most importantly, to make sure we didn’t escape.

  Keeping us tied up all the time damaged our young bodies.

  Bruises became welts.

  Welts turned into sores.

  I still have kinks in both my ankles where the constant ligature of a too-tight rope altered my bone structure.

  They were also instructed to keep our spirits up. Most of our Ghosts liked it when we fought back. But you stop fighting when you lose hope and our Keepers eventually figured that out.

  So they made sure there was always a sliver of hope. Just enough to cling onto until our Ghosts’ next visit.

  Once a day while we ate, they’d let us out of our bonds. In that hour we’d search every inch of our cage, just in case a Ghost had dropped something, or we’d missed something the thousand previous times we’d searched.

  Apollo found a rosary one day. Reuben recognized it as the one his Ghost would wear. We drew straws to see who would keep it.

  Rube lost.

  Trinity folds her hands in front of her as she waits, making an obvious effort not to look at any of us. Which is probably a good thing, because even Apollo’s put away his toys to watch. And if she can’t feel Cass’s hungry gaze already peeling off that flimsy layer of fabric…

  She takes the tumbler from Reuben and downs it in a rush. Her face scrunches up as she fights not to cough. She nods at him and hands back the glass.

  “No music,” she says softly, as if to herself.

  “You’re boring us,” I tell her, my chair creaking as I shift my weight.

  She throws me a panicked look and quickly starts swaying her hips.

  “Slower, little girl.”

  I love the way her eyes flare when I call her that. But as if she picks up on the fact, she smooths her expression and instead closes her eyes.

  A minute later, I bark out, “Enough.”

  She stops, her eyes fluttering open as she whirls to face me. “What?”

  “You’re terrible,” I tell her, shaking my head. “Cass, give me your belt.”

  Her eyes go wide. She holds up her arms, one palm facing me and the other to Cass as he stands and starts taking off his belt. “No. No! I can do better. I just have to—”

  “Here, I’ll show you,” Reuben says.

  My lips quirk up. God, he certainly took long en
ough. He’s a clever fucker, but he’s so damn cautious you’d think he was simple.

  I light another cigarette. Cass lights a joint. We pass them to each other as Rube gets up. Trinity takes a hurried step back when he looms over her, but then he grabs the back of her neck and hauls her back.

  He slides his hand down her shoulder, her arm, and over to her hip. Then he takes her waist in both hands and swivels her hips in a figure eight.

  “Loosen up,” he grumbles in his deep voice.

  “I’m trying,” she mutters back, staring up at him like she’s wondering when he plans on snapping her neck.

  “Close your eyes, if it helps,” he suggests calmly. “Pretend I’m one of those boy band idiots you girls are always crushing on.”

  I’m smiling full out now, and it has nothing to do with the whiskey-and-weed concoction wreaking havoc on my brain.

  Reuben and Cass were the only two of us that had something resembling a normal childhood after we escaped the Ghost House. I’d fought to keep us together, but we were all from different states. Rube and Cass went to foster homes in West Virginia and Georgia, Apollo back to North Carolina, and I stayed behind in Virginia.

  It took years for me to find them again.

  Reuben ended up in a foster home with three other girls, which we’ll never let him live down, especially seeing as he never fucked any of them. Although I doubt it ever crossed his mind. He became their big brother, and that’s the persona he stuck with. And he did such a good job, that foster family almost ended up adopting him.

  It was practically a done deal until something triggered an episode of psychosis. He destroyed that family’s home and badly injured two of his foster sisters before the police arrived to restrain him. He landed in juvie for a year before being spat back into the foster system. Months went by before I could track him down. A lot of money exchanged hands before I finally got him relocated to Saint Amos.

  Times like that, I honestly wished I’d had parents I could turn to. Having legal guardians to sign off on legit paperwork would have been so much easier than all the palm-greasing I did. But my parents were long dead, and after we escaped from the Ghost House, I no longer trusted anyone except my brothers.

  Luckily, money can buy just about anything.

  “Good,” Reuben says. “Now your shoulders. You have to dance with your whole body.”

  “It’s really hard without music.”

  “You don’t need music,” Rube says.

  On cue, I tap my thumb against the back of the seat.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Rube glances up at me, and gives me a ghostly smile. “All you need is a rhythm.”

  Cass and Apollo pick up the beat, Apollo with one of his rings against his glass, Cass tapping the back of the tin he keeps his weed in.

  And Trinity starts to dance.

  Her hips sway, and her shoulders undulate to the slow, steady beat we create.

  “That’s it,” Rube murmurs. His head hangs low, his lips brushing the top of her head. “Do you feel it?”

  I expect Cass to make a snide comment—he’s got a fifth-grader’s sense of humor—but when I look over at them all I see is a most familiar hunger.

  That’s how our Ghosts would look at us, a sinister voice hisses.

  My jaw clenches.

  No. This isn’t the same. That was a sick, contaminated lust. This is pure and natural.

  That’s what he said about us. That’s what we were.

  Pure. Innocent. We were the cure for our Ghost’s perversions. Our lot in life was to ease their suffering—a sacrificial offering to appease their depraved hedonism.

  And they accepted us time and time again.

  I falter on the beat, but Cass and Apollo don’t even notice. Taking my cigarette with me, I stalk into the bedroom.

  There the darkness swallows me, shields me, comforts me.

  But my respite is brief and bittersweet.

  That’s what she is. Pure. Innocent. Is she our cure?

  I try to block the voice, but clapping my hands over my ears does nothing.

  You know what you have to do, don’t you? To her, to them.

  I go to the back of the room and lift up the corner of a mattress.

  Killing Gabriel won’t make the pain go away, Mason.

  Not for you, not for them, not for her.

  When I don’t find what I’m looking for, I clamp my lips over the filter of my cigarette and shove both hands into that cool dark as smoke burns my eyes.

  “Looking for something?” Cass asks, sinuous as a fucking serpent.

  I rock back on my heels and snatch my cigarette from between dry lips. “Where is it?” I grate out.

  “If I can’t have my smack, then you can’t have your—”

  I spin around and grab him by the throat, pressing him into the solid wall. He chokes, and then chuckles into my face. “That shit’s unhygienic as fuck,” he says hoarsely.

  “Where. Is. It?”

  “You don’t scare me, Boss. Never have, never will.”

  I can barely see anything in the dark, but there’s a glimmer of light where his eyes are.

  I bring my cigarette up, instantly mesmerized by the red glow on his wet corneas. He blinks, but he doesn’t close his eyes.

  “She’s messing with all of our heads,” Cass whispers. “Let’s get her out of here. We don’t need her.”

  “You need her,” I counter, bringing that glowing ember closer to his eye. His cheek lights up faintly but he doesn’t even bat a fucking eyelid.

  “Do we?” He shrugs and lays his hand casually over the stiff arm pinning him against the wall. “I thought we didn’t need anyone.”

  “Just tell me where it is,” I say through my teeth. I hate how my voice shakes, but I’m past the point of being able to control it.

  “That shit’s like slapping a fucking Hello Kitty band-aid on a gunshot wound,” he says. His voice drops low. “Come on, Zach.”

  He’s right, and that makes me feel even more pathetic for allowing myself to be caught between shame and guilt and utter desperation. “I just need—”

  “I know what you need,” Cass cuts in quietly. “And I told you before, all you gotta do is ask.”

  His hand slips off my arm. Fabric rustles. Then he grabs hold of the hand holding my glowing cigarette. “Just not the face, bro. That’s my moneymaker.”

  I clamp down on a near-hysterical bark of a laugh as I let him guide my hand down.

  “We should try for a smiley face. Nirvana style. What do you say?” His voice is tight, light, steady.

  I don’t know how the fuck he so easily accepts my breakdowns.

  “Fuck,” I grate, squeezing my eyes shut so I can’t see that tempting glowing ash. “Cass, no.”

  “Come on, you pussy. I’ve had worse.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Jesus, the tension’s killing me,” he says through a grin I can hear but not see.

  So fucking easy for him. For them. I should never have drawn the short straw. Rube would have made a better leader than me any day. Any of them would have. But it was me. So I had to man-up and fucking lead them.

  “You know it’s the worst part, right? The waiting? You fucking know it, Zach. So just do it, you cunt.”

  He guides my hand lower and closer, until my knuckles graze his bare skin where he’s hiking up his shirt. I trail his skin with the pad of my thumb. My chest is so tight I can barely breathe, and what little air does come in feels like I’m sucking it from a fucking chimney.

  Hot. Full of ash.

  “Fuck,” I say again, trying to ignore the erection straining against my jeans. Pain and pleasure—I’ve never had one without the other.

  “Cass—”

  “Just fucking do it,” he grates.

  My thumb skims over a puckered burn mark. Then another. Another.

  “There.” He sounds as breathless as I feel. “Right there.”

  “Chri
st.”

  My lungs fill with powdered brimstone as I press the tip of the cigarette into his flesh.

  He stiffens, letting out a short, soft gasp. Then he shoves me so hard I fall back and land on my ass. I’m anticipating the boot heading for my stomach, but that just makes the impact ten times worse.

  My breath rushes out in a pained grunt I can’t possibly keep quiet. I roll onto my side, curling up as he kicks me again. Then he’s gone, orange light blooming against the back of my eyelids before the room goes dark again.

  I open my fingers and let the crumpled cigarette fall out. Then I bring my hand close and lick off the streak of ash smeared over my palm.

  The almost constant ache in my wrists and ankles fades away as I lie there listening to Apollo tapping out a beat for Trinity as she dances for Reuben.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Sounds like the leaking pipe in the back of the basement, doesn’t it, Mason?

  The pain makes it easier to push away the voice.

  And that’s always been the case, even back then.

  Tap.

  Tap.

  Tap.

  Chapter Nine

  Trinity

  It has to be the weed. Or the booze. Something’s doing weird, weird shit to my brain. That bit in a Disney movie where a magical light zooms around the heroine and lifts her up? That’s me right now. It feels like I’m suspended inches from the floor, a glittering aura whirling around me.

  In my wildest dreams I would never have imagined anything could feel this good. This…right.

  Reuben’s got one hand around the back of my neck, the other at the small of my back. Using his hands and body, he guides me.

  Moments later, faint noises in the background clamor for my attention but they sound wrong and violent so I push them out of my mind.

  This…this is the complete opposite.

  “See?” Reuben murmurs into my ear. “And you thought you couldn’t do it.”

  I wasn’t about to tell him I’d danced before. A lot. My mirror had been my only audience, and my worst critic. For all I know, I probably looked a right idiot back then as I swayed to my own quiet humming.

  I’d really hoped to use my feminine wiles to strike a deal with these men, but I guess I still have a lot to learn about the art of seduction.