Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(30)

I bear down on her. “But what makes you think I—”

“B-Because you lied to Cesara.” Sabine cuts in, and she flinches as if she expects me to hit her again. “And b-because you can’t fool me; you may be fooling everyone else, but I know a good person when I see one. Y-You lied to protect her.”

Giving up the act—because the same way Sabine knows I’m lying to her, I know she’s telling me the truth—my shoulders fall into a slump as I let the breath out I’ve been holding for three weeks.

“Please,” I say quietly, “tell me everything you know.”

Sabine smiles softly, and she no longer stutters when she speaks. “It’s not much, I’m sorry, but I thought you’d at least want to know that she’s still alive.”

“How did she look?”

“Like the rest of us: unblemished and ready to be sold. I think she’s being put up for auction tonight. She talked about how she knew she’d be sold; but what I thought was strange about it, was that she didn’t seem worried, or afraid. She seemed…eager.”

Leo Moreno. He’s going to be her buyer. I don’t know how Naeva did it, but I’m impressed.

“What else did she say?”

“Not much. She was careful, like you.” She curls her small fingers around my wrist, and it prompts me to look right at her. “I don’t know who you are,” she says, “and I’m not asking you to tell me, but I do know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“God sent you here,” she says. “I’ve prayed every night since they kidnapped me, and I knew, almost the first time you spoke to me, that He sent you.”

I scoff, shaking my head. “Sorry, but God definitely didn’t send me.”

“No, He did, I just know it”—I feel her hand tighten around my wrist—"I see it in you, what you’re doing in His name, without knowing it.”

Oh great—a bible-thumper.

“You want to help us out of here,” she goes on, “and you will, because God wills it.”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why God didn’t stop them from kidnapping you in the first place?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she says, and I already know that no matter what I say, nothing will convince her otherwise.

Voices funnel down the hallway beyond the door; I grab Sabine’s arm and pull her against me. “Shh!”

The voices become more distinct as they get closer, and my stomach swims in a sea of anxiety as I realize that one of the men is Joaquin. Footsteps approach, and then the light from the hallway blinks on and off as they walk past the door. Ten seconds feels like forever as we stand unmoving, barely breathing, in the utility closet surrounded by bath towels and bed sheets and shelves chock full of toilet paper rolls and boxes of tiny soaps and shampoos.

Finally, I release her and turn her around, my hands braced on her small shoulders. “This conversation never happened,” I warn. “When we go back out there, you can’t act even slightly different—do you understand?”

She nods.

“I can’t promise I’ll be able to get you, or anyone else out of here; so please, I’m begging you, not to rely on hope.”

She smiles, and everything in it tells me that Sabine is filled with enough hope for the both of us. And that’s unfortunate.

I open the door slowly, and look through the crack, peering down the hallway toward where Joaquin went. Confident enough to move on, I open the door the rest of the way and step out into the hall, pulling Sabine with my hand clasped around her elbow.

“He got the doors mixed up,” I hear Joaquin say behind me, and I turn swiftly. “Thought it was the utility closet around the corner; apparently, the idiot who watches the cameras has been working in this mansion for five years, and still gets the hallways mixed up.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the man, presumably the idiot who watches the cameras says. “All of the halls look the same.”

Joaquin waves him off, and the man leaves us standing here. Alone. In the predicament I have been trying to avoid all damn day—but now it’s much worse. Much, much worse.

“What do you want, Joaquin?” I round my chin, channeling fearless Izel, and hoping like hell it’s enough he buys it.

Joaquin cocks his head, and he steps right up to me, his eyes studying me curiously and with hunger—but mostly he wants to know what I was doing in a utility closet with my slave girl.

And I have an answer for him.

“What exactly were you—”

“Privacy doesn’t seem to exist in this place,” I tell him. “Haven’t you ever taken a girl into a closet before?”

Joaquin’s smile is as slippery as he is. “Of course,” he says, glances at Sabine without moving his head, and looks back at me. “But I didn’t expect it of you”—he shrugs smugly—“y’know, having Cesara at your fingertips anytime you want her.”

“What Cesara and I have is different.” I glare into his eyes, daring him to threaten me. “Cesara and I have an understanding.”

“Then Cesara won’t mind if she”—he twirls a hand at the wrist—“just somehow happens to find out that you’ve been getting pleasure from someone other than her.”