I am no longer one of them, and my pain is nothing to them.
They pull a dress over my head that feels like canvas and itches like fleas are running over me.
My head slams against the boot of the truck. It pounds, and it throbs as an engine purrs.
The acolytes drive me deep into the New Mexico desert, where there are no trees or people or any living thing I can see. And they drag me from the back, toss me into the red dirt, climb into the truck, and leave me alone.
To die.
To them, I am already dead.
Because the leprosy is in my heart, and there is no saving me.
Chapter 3
Nash
“There has to be some way to find her,” Nance says, frowning as she smooths down the front of her white half-apron.
“Hard to do when the whole town hates us, and we have no clue where she came from.” Makhi leans against the wall of my office beside the patio doors.
“Becauseyouforced her out.” Vonn hasn’t stopped glaring at Makhi in the three days since Makhi fired Byrdie and slammed a door in her face.
That doesn’t seem likely to change soon.
“Ithoughtshe was a thief,” Makhi grinds out, avoiding Vonn’s gaze.
“Because you never stop to use your fucking?—”
“Nance, maybe you can get back to whatever you were doing before,” I cut in, trying to save my housekeeper from this next round of arguments. She’s been with me since I was a baby. I’m twenty-four now, and at this point, Nance is more family than my housekeeper.
“I’ll stay,” Nance says from her seat on the other side of the antique walnut desk. “I might be able to help, Mr. Gabriel.”
“Nash,” I quietly correct her. “You arefamily. Please start calling me Nash.”
She gives me a long, thoughtful look and nods once. “If you insist… Nash.”
Nance doesn’t seem to notice Vonn’s dark glare pointed at Makhi, or she doesn’t care. I have my money on the latter. Nance is observant. She sees everything. Just because she’s choosing not to respond to Makhi and Vonn, who can’t go an hour without fighting like two cats in a bag, doesn’t mean she’s not aware of it.
On my desk is the bag that Byrdie left behind when Makhi told her to leave. I’m just as angry at him as Vonn, but Vonn was in the army; he's wanted to be a hero since before he joined. He has stronger protective instincts than I do, and he growls louder when someone he protects is threatened.
There’s not much in the bag.
A change of clothes. A stolen driving license that belongs to Jessica Bradley, aged twenty-three. The young woman has shoulder-length brown hair and blue-gray eyes. Byrdie is only eighteen, though looking into her eyes, you’d think she were older, probably a result of the trauma she ran to Massey looking to hide from.
The owner of the ID bears a slight resemblance to Byrdie if you don’t look too closely at the picture. Byrdie’s natural hair was white-blonde before she dyed it dark brown, and her eyes are dark blue.
Vonn said Byrdie stole the ID at a bus station. And there’s an envelope of money. I counted it out days ago. $1,000. It was her pay for working these past two weeks as our maid.
There’s no bus ticket stub or anything that might tell us where she came from.
When I look at Vonn, he’s scowling at Makhi.
Makhi has peeled his back from the wall and sits slumped in one of the office chairs across from my desk. He’s taking a riskputting himself so close to Vonn’s right fist, but maybe he’s tired of the scowling and growling over the last three days, and has decided to do something about it.
It wouldn’t surprise me.
I pull my attention from Makhi to focus on a still-scowling Vonn. “What else did she tell you other than her name?”
