I barely have time to register what that means—they must have been keeping track of me for a while, if they know I was mute—before Aaron yanks me roughly out of the trunk.
“Damien made things easy for us,” he snickers. “Leaving you in that open trunk while he hunted for the keys that he’d left lying right on the fucking lawn. Must be getting soft with old age… or withlove.”
He pretends to gag on the last word, and I grit my teeth in anger.
Aaron roughly clasps a hand around my hair and pushes me forward. For the first time, I notice my surroundings. We’re in the midst of a thick forest of pine trees, lost in the rolling hills of Vermont that I’ve seen from the windows of our new home. But Damien can trace me here, I try to reassure myself. Damien will follow the tracks of the car. He’ll find me.
But soon, I’m not so sure. We plunge deeper into the forest, Aaron continuing to clutch my hair, guiding me forward, punishing each of my hesitations with a firmer tug on my hair. Iknow I should refuse to budge, should make them kill me right here, near the car, so that Damien can at least find my body. But that damn survival instinct won’t let me alone. If there’s even the tiniest sliver of a chance that I can survive, my body automatically seizes it, no matter what my brain has to say about it.
We continue to walk for what feels like an eternity, my mind grappling first with my impending fate, then with Damien’s probable reaction, then with Gabriel being alive after all. Damien had assured me he was dead, yet here he is, standing and breathing in front of me. How is that possible? How could Damien have gotten it so wrong? How could he have let Gabriel live?
Resentment battles it out with worry at his reaction when he finds me gone. But fear wins out when we arrive at a small shack. Gabriel unlocks the door and Aaron pushes me forward.
For the first time, in the dim glow of the lightbulb that flickers on, I notice Gabriel’s appearance. He looks positively haggard. His eyes are set deeply back in his skull, and with the purple shadows around them, he looks like a skeleton.
It doesn’t help that he appears to have lost about half of his body weight. And one of his arms is missing.
I swallow hard and face my captors, unwilling to be the quiet girl of my past.
“What are you going to do to me?” I question defiantly.
“Shut up,” grunts Aaron.
“Why? Why do you need me to shut up? We’re in the middle of the woods. Are you going to kill me?”
“Not yet,” smirks Gabriel. “Aaron, get out your phone.”
The other Angel fumbles in his jacket and finds the cell phone, which he passes to Gabriel.
“What are you going to do with that?” I ask.
He ignores me, turning it on, which strikes me as weird. Whywould Aaron carry around a turned-off cell phone? Unless it’s being tracked by Devil? Hope bubbles up as I wonder whether the phone could allow Damien to find me.
But that makes no sense. If Aaron knows Damien is tracking that cell phone, the last thing he would do is turn it on now.
I’m probably reading far too much into things. Which I guess is logical, since I’m hanging onto any detail that might save me.
“Relax,” comments Gabriel, lighting up a cigarette. “You won’t die. That is, as long you play your cards right.”
I stare at him, shocked. “I won’t die?”
“I’m kind of over the whole burying you in the ground thing,” he says smoothly, taking a long drag. “Especially since you have a tendency to justnot stay buried.You’re like a fucking bed bug or something. You infest everything, and you’re impossible to get rid of. Anybody ever tell you that before?”
I shrug. I don’t know if he thinks he’s hurting my feelings, but I’m long past caring about that kind of thing. I’ve been through far too much to allow playground taunts to faze me.
So I wait patiently for the part where he tells me how Iwon’tdie. I expect there’s some sort of catch.
There is.
He takes another drag of his cigarette. “You know, I’ve had a lot of time to think about how I was going to get my revenge. Ten fucking months holed up in a Columbian prison. Not the kind of place I’m used to. The kind they send plebs to. I haven’t forgiven Aaron for sending me to it.”
“I hardly had a choice,” protests Aaron. “You were bleeding out…”
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway. One of my arms is gone, and I want to keep the other one. Which means I’ve changed my mind about hurting Damien the way he hurt me. Corny as fuck, wasn’t that, to kill his girl because he killed my brother? Who fucking cares, right? Losing your arm and getting five fucking bloodtransfusions in a Columbian prison has a way of changing your perspective. So anyway, now, I’m done with the whole grief thing, and I’ve decided I’m going to cut the bullshit that is Devil right at the source. I’m going to kill your little boyfriend.” His eyes fall on my wedding ring. “Your littlehusband, that is.”
“In that case,” I ask, my mouth dry, “why did you kidnap me?”
“Why do you think?” he shrugs.
