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

by Logan Fox

  My heart starts beating a little faster when I lift a hand to open the study door.

  It’s unlocked, but that’s no surprise. I heard Gabriel moving around in the study when I was creeping out of the basement, and then he came running. Guessing there was no time for him to lock the door again.

  I step inside my father’s study and stare around. It’s a mess. All the furniture’s been shifted around. Books—mostly theological encyclopedias and leather-bound bibles—have been tossed off the bookshelf and lay scattered over the floor.

  How the hell am I supposed to find anything in this mess?

  And then I see it. It stands out like a beacon, and I don’t understand how he couldn’t have noticed it.

  There’s a large leather-bound bible still on the shelf, snuggled between two thick books. It’s white, and I already know the letters on front will be embossed in shiny gold.

  My mother’s bible.

  Except…it can’t be. Because I took it from her reading corner the night I left my home forever. But when I pick it up, it has the same weight. The same gold-trimmed pages.

  I open the cover. There’s a letter-sized safe inside, perhaps two inches thick.

  4-2-1-1

  There’s a soft beep.

  I go to my knees, laying the book on the carpet so I can open the little safe’s door so I can look inside.

  A floorboard out in the hallway creaks.

  I spin around, my heart climbing up my throat, and stare at the study door. But no one emerges from the hallway after a few ridiculously long seconds.

  Jumping at ghosts. Or is it shadows?

  I swear, if one of my men come in here because they think I can’t look after myself for one second…

  There will be hell to pay.

  I shake my head and go back to the safe. Open the door.

  A stack of hundred-dollar bills. Three sturdy envelopes.

  The first envelope has a small thumb drive in it. I take it out, tuck it between my breasts.

  Should have brought my purse, but I guess my bra will do for now.

  The second envelope has a passport and some folded papers inside.

  I open the passport.

  Frederick Dalton.

  I frown at the passport photo.

  Who the hell is—

  There’s another creak, louder, right behind me. I whirl around, a hand to my chest. My cheeks flush with anger. “I told you to wait in the…”

  But it’s not Reuben. It’s not Cass. It’s not Zach, or Apollo.

  It’s a middle-aged woman I’ve never seen before, and she’s smiling at me.

  Which is fucked up, because there’s nothing friendly about the gun she’s pointing at my face.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Trinity

  Scream, Trinity, scream!

  But my lungs are frozen with shock. I’ve never had a gun pointed at me before—not one I was aware of anyway. It’s more chilling than I’d ever imagined. So malicious. So…impersonal.

  The fact that it’s a woman holding it doesn’t matter. Her eyes are as cold and heartless as the gun’s gleaming exterior.

  She’s dressed in jeans and a faded suede jacket, boots up to her knees. With her auburn hair pulled into a tight ponytail and a large handbag hanging from her shoulder, she could have been just another person walking past on the street.

  Instantly forgettable.

  When my lungs thaw enough for me to consider yelling out for the Brotherhood, three men walk into the study.

  One has his gun aimed at me. The other two have theirs tucked in their belts.

  “Get up,” the woman says.

  I obey reluctantly, my mind churning with useless options. No way I can run past them. And the study only has one window—and it’s closed. Maybe if there’d been a gun in the safe…

  “Shoes.” The woman holds out her free hand and clicks her fingers.

  “You…want my shoes?”

  It’s like there’s a swarm of bees droning in my head. The woman tilts her head, as if daring me to say no, and I quickly slip off my shoes.

  “Toss them.”

  I’m so fucking confused, but I throw them in front of the man wearing a black hoody. The other two are wearing dark sweaters, one with the collar of a polo shirt neatly arranged around the neckline.

  Hoody picks up my shoes and tucks them under his arm. The man with the polo shirt sticking out of his sweater walks up to me.

  I stiffen, my hands going into fists. But he walks right past, crouches, and picks up everything I’ve left on the floor—the passport, the money, the bible-safe. Then he goes over to the woman and puts everything inside her handbag while she holds it open, her eyes not leaving mine for a second.

  “We’re going for a walk. If you make a sound, I guarantee you’ll need years of therapy to get over what they’ll do to you.” She cocks her head to the three men standing behind her. “Got it?”

  My skin slowly starts crawling off my body. I nod, swallow hard.

  I could still scream, of course. My men would be here in seconds. But they’d be walking into a gunfight with nothing but their fists. There’s no way in hell I’m letting any of them take another bullet for me. Not when it was my decision to come in here alone.

  And I’d joked the front door was booby trapped? Lord, the irony.

  The woman makes a show of sliding her gun inside her handbag, still pointing it at me but circumspect about it now.

  Hoody moves behind me and grabs the back of my neck. Pushes me forward.

  I don’t know what horrifies me more—the fact that his hand is cool and dry, or the considering look in his eyes when he passed me.

  This can’t be happening.

  Who the hell are these people?

  They’re obviously here on a mission—they didn’t act surprised to see me here, or at the stack of money. And judging from their weapons, they came prepared.

  Did Gabriel send them to search for the safe? Does that mean he’s not actually dead?

  The thought sends an internal shiver through me.

  I need to find out what’s going on.

  “Who are—”

  Polo Shirt moves so fast, I don’t have time to get my hands up to defend myself.

  If Hoody hadn’t still had a grip on the back of my neck, I’d be sprawled on the floor from the brutal backhand Polo gives me.

  My eyes water from the pain, and I lift an icy hand to my cheek, trying to soothe the heat.

  The woman is smiling now.

  Finally, something I recognize.

  It’s the same smile Zachary wore the morning he told me to leave Saint Amos. When he had a knife up my skirt ready to slice and stab.

  Enjoying my misery.

  Just like she is.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Zach

  “She’s taking too long,” I tell Reuben. “She should have been out already.”

  “I think she’s just saying goodbye,” Apollo says. He looks like one of those birds who prance around in front of the mirrors their owners hang in their cages. Constantly ducking down and then lifting his head as if he’s trying to check out his own reflection.

  He’s trying to spot movement in one of the windows, just like us. Trying to stare through that dark slit of the front door Trinity left ajar, down into the passage.

  We’re playing a game: the first one to spot Trinity wins.

  “I’m going in.” I grab the door handle, but all it takes is a sigh from Rube to stop me.

  “We should give her space.”

  “Last time we did that, she got herself kidnapped,” Cass mutters.

  “No, last time Zach chased her away with a knife, she went crying to Gabriel, and then he kidnapped her,” Apollo says. “Get your facts straight.”

  My eyebrows aren’t the only ones to quirk up at that statement. Apollo’s usually the last to challenge any of us, but I guess he’s just as concerned.

  “Time?”

  “Five minutes,
thirty-nine seconds since she set foot inside,” Cass says, twisting in his seat and giving me a long-suffering stare. “Forty…Forty-one…”

  I grimace at him, and he straightens with a faint grin on his face, but I see it slide off in the rear-view mirror a second later.

  “So…I have to use the bathroom,” Apollo announces. “I mean, when nature calls…?”

  We’re silent for all of a second before we pile out the car like a bunch of clowns exiting a VW bug. Except we’re driving an SUV, none of us have a big red nose, and I doubt any clown has ever looked as grim as us.

  I’m through the door first, expecting a whole shit show of things…but not the sudden paralysis that hits me.

  My body grows heavy. Time slows. I’m filled with the visceral sensation of my heart pounding in my chest.

  Rube grabs my elbow, steers me inside with him. But my eyes have already locked onto the stain on the living room carpet.

  Blood.

  Not something I’m ever affected by, 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 as blood rushes back into them. I have to fight back a sudden influx of thoughts about what would have happened if I’d sat here and waited until my feet turned blue, and then black.

  I push up, swaying on the mattress, and then hurriedly step onto the floor. I test the knots around my wrists again, but they’re still tight, and my hands are aching from untying my ankles.

  I give one last violent tug, growling with frustration behind my gag, and somehow lose my balance.

  If it hadn’t been for the mattress, I’d have cracked my elbow against the concrete floor. But thankfully I land on something soft instead. I lie there for a second, wondering how the hell I ended up here, and then start to push up to my feet again.

  But then I realize my hands are by my hips. Still bound, but…maybe, just maybe…

  I roll onto my back, lift my knees to my chest, and loop my bound hands under my butt. It takes time—wriggling and swearing and sweating—but eventually I get my hands out in front of me.

  I’ve chafed my wrists so much I smell blood in the air, but now that my hands are in front of me, I can take off my gag and my blindfold.

  Shouldn’t have wasted those precious seconds, though. It’s so dark in here that it doesn’t matter if I have a blindfold on or not. I can’t even tell the difference between opening and closing my eyes.

  But with the gag out, I have access to my teeth. And they can grip the nylon ropes a hell of a lot better than my fingers.

  I’m shaking with cold by the time I get my hands free, but I’m so giddy with relief I barely notice.

  I slowly turn around, blinking hard as I take in my surroundings. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think I’m starting to see faint shapes in the dark. Maybe there is a little bit of light down here after all.

  I go slow at first as I start to explore. I don’t want to bump my bare toes into anything, or knock over something that could make a noise.

  But the more I explore, the more frantic my movements become.

  Especially once I hit the first wall of the small basement I’m in.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Rube

  “I need to get gas,” Cass says.

  I point. “Go down there.”

  “Oh my God, Rube, seriously. Do you want to push this thing? Because I—”

  “Go down the fucking road.”

  An edgy silence fills the SUV’s cabin. We’re all staring out the windows, trying to spot a white van, a head of dark curls, the slightest thing out of place.

  We’ve been driving around for almost an hour.

/>   I don’t want to call it—refuse to—but we all know she’s gone.

  Cass goes down the road I pointed out, but as soon as he reaches the next intersection he doubles back and heads for the gas station we passed about a mile back. He does it without a word, but making sure he doesn’t catch my eye in the rear-view mirror either.

  Guess I wouldn’t be surprised if this got physical.

  If the tension eating away at my insides is anything compared with my brothers, then there’ll be nothing left of us come dusk.

  We have to find her before then.

  If the sun goes down before then, she’ll be lost forever. That’s all I can think. We have to find her before dark. Have to find her before dark.

  I should be figuring out how to find her, not what will happen if we don’t.

  The moment Cass stops the car at a pump, I’m out of the door. I go inside the convenience store, buy a packet of cigarettes, a soda. Zach comes in behind me. He grabs some chips, a six-pack of ginger beer, and another packet of cigarettes. We don’t look at each, don’t speak. The clerk ringing us up keeps sending us a wary look through her lashes as if she’s considering triggering the alarm behind the counter.

  Cass is still pumping gas when we get back. Zach tosses his bag into the back seat and climbs up without missing a beat.

  I head for a picnic table a few yards away, lighting a cigarette en route.

  Grit crunches under shoes behind me, but I don’t turn around. “It’s Gabriel, isn’t it?” Apollo says.

  I grunt non-committally, and then turn to face him as I pass him my cigarette.

  He shrugs before taking it. “I’m thinking he paid someone to put up that article online. Paid that lawyer chick to handle everything as if he was dead.”

  “No,” I murmur, taking back the smoke. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “He wanted her back. Couldn’t find her. Knew this would get her attention. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”