Page 47 of Sinners Atone
Tic, tic, tic.
“My name is Wren Harlow,” I whisper. “I’m twenty-one years old, and I work as a bartender at The Rusty Anchor.” I glance to the haze on the horizon. “Well, I did. I’m not sure it’s still standing. I live at Number 1, Strawberry Farm, which is owned by my uncle Finn—he’s best friends with your cousin Castiel. You’ve probably seen him around; he’s the blond man with the glasses who pretends to be a carpenter.” The vein keeps ticking to an even beat. “I like fashion and makeup and ABBA. And helping people, of course. I help drunk people get home safely in Devil’s Cove on the weekends, and twice a week, I’m a candy striper at the Devil’s Hollow hospital. Um…” I scratch my nose, racking my brain for the rest of my redeeming qualities. “I’m going to school to study pre-law next September. You know,” I add, stealing a quick look at him, “because of the whole liking to help people thing.”
The vein in his temple has graduated from ticking to throbbing. Somehow, I don’t think my monologue is working.
I heard a similar one when I was younger, from my hiding place under the kitchen table. A man on his knees, calmly reciting his life story. Even at nine years old, I realized what he was doing: he was attempting to humanize himself, to appeal to the compassion that lives deep within even the most evil of people, in the hope it would change his fate.
It didn’t.
My gaze is drawn to his acidic expression. He runs his tongue over his teeth, and the light shifts over the sharp planes of his face as he tilts his chin up.
“Walk.”
It’s a decibel above a whisper, but as hard as a full stop:end of conversation.
Okay. So maybe compassion doesn’t live in everyone.
I let out a heavy sigh. Sothisis how I actually die. Not tongueless on my ABBA-themed doormat, but by being frog marched into the woods by a man whose life I saved.
Turns out, Tayce was right all along: being nice is thankless work. I’m sure she’ll be disappointed that I won’t be alive long enough to hear her say “I told you so.”
Gabriel steps aside, and jelly legs carry me from asphalt to soil. Running is so far off the cards now, it’s not even in the same deck, but I guess dying on my own two feet beats being folded into a trunk like a pretzel.
He falls in line behind me, his presence crackling like static down my back. Each of my steps are slow and tentative, seeking all the gnarled roots and ditches I can’t see in the dark.
If I have the patience of a saint, clearly, Gabriel has the temper of the Devil. He lasts all of ten feet before a cold growl touches my nape and he dips to lift me up again.
He doesn’t carry me like a surfboard this time, but sideways and at arm’s length, like I’m a sack of toxic waste he needs to dispose of as quickly as possible. Tension tightens where his forearms meet my shoulder blades and the backs of my knees, and I, too, grow rigid as my gaze lifts to his profile. Even in the dark, I can make out the hard set of his jaw beneath his beard. And even if I couldn’t, the disdain radiates off his body in a silent shockwave.
Without so much as a sideways glance, he dumps something into my lap.
It’s my clutch—I must have dropped it in the struggle. I’m surprised he bothered to pick it back up—a dead girl doesn’t need her lip gloss or her cellphone.
My cellphone.
The tiniest spark of hope ignites in my chest. I rummage among the discarded tissues to find it.
Gabriel steps over a fallen tree trunk. “No signal.”
A tap on my screen confirms it.
Frustration blows out that tiny ember of hope, and I resign to my fate. I flop against my kidnapper’s arms, my limbs bobbing and my hair swaying to the beat of his quick strides.
He navigates the forest with surprising ease, even while carrying me and my heavy heart. He dips under low-hanging branches, jumps over stumps, as though he’s committed every inch of terrain to memory. Like he knows the Reserve better than Rory, so maybe the rumors are true—hedoeslive in a cave somewhere within it.
Gah, Rory. I’ll never see her or Tayce again. Or anyone else, for that matter. I wonder if Rory will ever find out her psycho brother-in-law killed me.
A loud sigh leaves my lips in a curl of frost, and Gabriel’s chest tenses against my elbow.
“Stop,” he grits out.
“Stop what?”
“Breathing.”
Oh.
Having learned his commands hold weight, I hold my next breath at the base of my throat. When it starts to burn, I let it out in a shallow puff.
