Page 129 of Burn Like An Angel

Something has really gone wrong if I’m sitting here, trapped in a safe house, discussing how best to cover up a grisly murder one of my best friends committed. It’s a far cry from my old life.

“We aided and abetted the experimental program by selling contraband.” Ripley changes the topic. “I doubt the law will look upon that leniently.”

“Then we have a bargaining chip.” Lennox snaps his fingers. “Our inside information will fast-track years of investigative work. We can tell them everything. We sell them on that.”

Someone drums on the table’s surface. I can taste the boiling tension. We’ve sided with the good guys, but that doesn’t mean we’re off the hook. The world doesn’t work that way.

“And if it’s not enough?” Xander eventually asks. “Lennox, we both have criminal convictions. Who’s to say we won’t be sent to an actual prison this time?”

“They wouldn’t do that, surely?”

Just the thought has anxiety vibrating beneath my skin.

“This will turn into a blame game. Throwing us in jail with a nice guilty label will be an easy win.”

The thought of them being ripped away from us is too much to bear. While a violent episode landed Ripley in Harrowdean Manor, I know she was never charged. Like me, she was among the percentage incarcerated without a criminal conviction.

The rest—patients like Lennox and Xander—took their rehabilitative sentence to avoid prison. That’s not to say theirmental health wasn’t a deciding factor. Ultimately, no one in the institute was altogether sane.

I rub my aching temples, a headache forming. “Why does it sound like we’re screwed either way?”

“No.” Ripley’s leg presses harder into mine. “We just have to play this smart until the investigation concludes with Bancroft and his associates behind bars.”

“Or six feet under,” Xander adds.

Lennox makes an agreeing sound. I trace circles on Ripley’s loose sweats, the cotton rough and cheap. No matter what role he’s played, Jonathan is her last living relative. She has to be struggling.

“I know he’s your uncle, but…”

“He won’t stop,” she finishes for me. “Jonathan is relentless. Focused. If he wants something, he’ll pull every trick in the book to get it.”

“In business,” I point out. “This is different.”

“I was always a business transaction to him. It’s no different now. He’s a core investor in Incendia Corporation, and we’re a threat to that. To his entire livelihood and reputation.”

Her words hang ominously. She’s right. To him, we are a threat. An erasable one. That’s why he sent those men to capture or kill us. Jonathan is far more than the heartless bastard we all took him to be.

He’s dangerous.

And we’re on his hit list.

CHAPTER 20

RIPLEY

ANOTHER ONE – TOBY MAI

Tappinga ballpoint pen against his notebook, Enzo Montpellier stares me down. His attention is a precisely-aimed blowtorch, intending to incinerate any lies he detects. He’s terrifyingly perceptive.

I’m holding my own against his harsh glare, even after several hours of his carefully worded questions. The others were removed from the apartment under protest to be interviewed separately.

Xander had to be threatened several times to get him to leave for his own interview. It took a lot of pleading for him to eventually relent for the sake of getting this done.

“Why do I feel like you don’t trust me?” Enzo deadpans.

Shifting, I fold my legs. “Because I don’t.”

“We’re on the same side.”

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