There Are No Saints (Sinners Duet #1)(16)

It baffles me that she’s back at work. That she’s chatting and laughing.

She’s acting like nothing happened. Like the night in the woods was a fever dream. Like she knows I’m watching right now and she’s taunting me.

That can’t be true.

But I’m fixated on her, trying to find evidence of what the fuck happened.





6





Mara





I woke up strapped to a bed in a hospital in Hollister.

The nurse informed me that I’d been given four units of blood and that she couldn’t unlock the restraints for twenty-four hours, because that was hospital policy after a suicide attempt.

I was exhausted and drugged. It took much longer than twenty-four hours before I finally had a cop in front of me, taking down a statement.

I could tell from the start he didn’t believe a word I said. The nurses had shown him the outfit I was wearing when I came in, and he couldn’t seem to grasp the concept that it wasn’t something I ordered off Amazon.

“I know you kids get into some kinky shit,” he said, notebook open on his knee, not a thing written down inside it. “What happened? The guy took it too far?”

“Well he tried to murder me,” I snapped. “So yeah, that was a bit far for my tastes.”

The officer stared at me impassively, the pouches under his eyes deep enough to store handfuls of loose change.

“You’re saying he did that?” he said, nodding toward my bandaged wrists.

It took forty-nine stitches to close up the gashes.

“Yes,” I hissed.

“What about those?” He pointed his pen to the other scars farther up my arm, above the bandages. Thin white slashes, a dozen in a row. “He do those, too?”

I was boiling with rage, incandescent with it. I wanted to rip that pen out of his hand and jam it through his iris.

“No,” I said, through gritted teeth. “He didn’t do those.”

“Uh-huh,” Officer Fuckhead said. This time he did scribble something down, and in that moment I hated him almost more than the man who put me in the hospital bed.

“So where did you meet this guy?” the cop asked me. “Tinder?”

“I DIDN’T FUCKING MEET HIM!” I screamed. “HE KIDNAPPED ME OFF THE STREET!”

The fact that I never saw his face, that I couldn’t describe anything about him, also sounded like bullshit. I thought he might be tall. Strong enough to lift and carry me.

When he removed the hood over my head—when I squirmed and struggled and finally rolled over—he was already gone.

The one thing I didn’t tell Officer Fuckhead was what I saw next. The figure who came and stood over me. The one with the face of an angel and the eyes of a black hole.

I was afraid it would only make me sound more insane.

I wasn’t sure if he was the same person who kidnapped me. Certain details didn’t match, though it was so muddled in my head it was hard to be sure.

Truth be told, I wasn’t sure he existed at all. The way he watched me so long with that strange, cold curiosity. The way he finally stepped over me and walked away, as if he had seen all he needed to see—it didn’t make any sense.

I had already lost so much blood. I heard my mother talking in my ear, for fuck’s sake.

It didn’t help that the college student who picked me up was most likely drunk. I scared him half out of his mind, appearing in the middle of the road like an apparition out of a horror film. He swerved and almost ran off the road, the car doing a full 360 before it stopped. I hobbled over and wrenched his passenger door open, collapsing into the front seat. He could barely look at me as I bled all over his parents’ Accord. Not that I was in a state to care.

After a brief and mumbled explanation to the emergency room nurses, he sped away. By the time the cops tracked him down, all he could tell them was that he picked me up somewhere off the 101.

It seemed inconceivable to me that the state of my body, the deep marks on my wrists and ankles, the cuts all over my feet, the fucking slashes down my arms weren’t enough evidence.

“HE PIERCED MY FUCKING NIPPLES!” I howled at the cop.

Officer Fuckhead sucked on his teeth, a sound that enrages me. Then he wrote a single word in his notepad that probably said Liar.





At least Erin was worried about me.

“Where the fuck have you been!” she cried when I stumbled through the door four days later. “I called your phone like a million times!”

“I don’t have my phone anymore,” I mumbled, remembering that was another thing I was going to have to replace.

I gave her a brief and emotionless description of what occurred, again omitting any mention of a second psychopath.

“You can’t be serious,” Erin said, her pretty face crumpled up, mouth open in horror.

I knew she was feeling guilty that she hadn’t called the cops herself. I didn’t blame her for that—it wouldn’t be the first time one of our roommates disappeared on a four-day bender.

“Yeah, it’s insane,” I agreed. “Don’t know if I should buy a lottery ticket or watch out for lightning strikes.”

“Are you okay?” Erin asked, wincing like she knew how stupid the question was.