The Devil's Daughter (Hidden Sins #1)(36)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“You’re not supposed to be here.” Abram’s voice, so cold and detached, had the years of memories surging, threatening to drown Eden in fear. So she fought back the only way she’d ever known.
With rage.
She slammed her foot into Abram’s instep, but he didn’t budge. “Get off me!”
“Breaking and entering is a crime. You of all people should know that.”
He knows. She pushed back, which he allowed only to slam her back against the house. Her breath left her in a rush, and black dots temporarily danced across her vision. She blinked once and then again, things finally falling back into place. “So is assaulting an FBI agent.”
“According to code 45-3-102, I am fully entitled to defend myself and my property.”
He would start quoting Montana law at her. Martha and Abram had no use for the law except when it benefited them. In this case, he might actually be right, since she was breaking and entering. She huffed out a breath, changing tactics. “Martha invited me here.”
“You’re lying.” His grip tightened on her arm, wrenching it higher between her shoulder blades. “Your mother didn’t invite you into her home. I would know.”
She couldn’t bluff him on that, because he was right. When Eden was a teenager, nothing went on with Martha that Abram didn’t know about, and she didn’t think that fact had changed much in the intervening years. “You know why I’m here.”
It was a calculated bet, but she couldn’t have Abram dragging her out to face the firing squad and potentially shut down anyone who’d be willing to gossip with her. The Elysians were already going to be reserved because she’d been gone for so long, and one thing these people didn’t abide was outsiders. Eden didn’t quite fit into that category because she’d been born and raised here, but she wasn’t one of them, either. If Abram publicly set her apart, she’d have no hope of talking to anyone.
“You think someone here had something to do with the killing of Elouise Perkins.” He finally let her go, and she paused for a full second to get her game face on. It didn’t matter how much being around Abram made her want to curl up into a ball and rock until the monster went away. It flat out wasn’t an option to show weakness. It would be like cutting her wrists and then going swimming with sharks.
A death sentence.
He stared at her with those cold blue eyes. “It wasn’t one of our people.” He said it with no more inflection than he’d said anything else since he’d caught her. Abram could be commenting on what a warm fall day they were having and his tone would be exactly the same. It was possible he was lying. It was equally possible he was telling the truth. She just couldn’t tell.
“Then help me prove it.” It didn’t matter if he believed she was in Elysia to prove the cult’s innocence or if she was here to prove otherwise—if Abram truly thought the people here were innocent, he wouldn’t stand in her way. She hoped. It was a gamble. God, everything she’d done since catching the flight back into Montana had been a gamble. She didn’t think Martha believed she was considering coming back into the fold any more than Abram did, but both of them were willing to play along for their own reasons.
He jerked his chin in the direction of the chapel. “Talk to Lee. The sooner you satisfy your curiosity, the sooner you are gone and the less pain you’ll deal your mother.”
Everyone was so goddamn concerned about Martha’s pain. No one really cared that Eden had been walking around feeling like an exposed nerve for the last few days. No one made me come back here. I chose this. The problem was that it was getting harder and harder to remember that the longer she was around these people.
She couldn’t shake the feeling she’d been drawn back here.
It sounded paranoid. Hell, it felt paranoid in the extreme, but that suspicion sat in the back of her mind all the while.
She frowned, trying to get herself back on track. “Lee. Why does that name sound familiar?”
“He joined our number a few months before you left.”
Ah, now she remembered. He’d wandered through the gates one day, which wasn’t abnormal exactly, but most people were bused in with the recruiters after a carefully intricate vetting process. She’d been surprised at the time that they’d let him stay, but Eden had been too consumed with her plans to get out to pay him too much attention. All she remembered was a black guy with sad eyes.
She raised her chin, fighting back a flinch when the move pulled at her back. “I’m going to tell him you sent me his way.”
“Do that.”
There was nothing more to say. She took a careful step back and then another, uncomfortable with the thought of presenting her back to him. How her mother went to bed with this man was beyond her. If Abram had a softer side, Eden hadn’t seen it in all the years she’d known him.
But she couldn’t scoot all the way to the edge of the house without looking like a damn fool, so she turned and walked away, the skin on the back of her neck prickling the entire time. She could feel his eyes on her, and it made her want to take the hottest shower she could stand.
Later.
Right now you have to focus.
Easier said than done.
Though chapel had let out a good fifteen minutes earlier, people still gathered around the entrance, chatting in small groups. Martha liked to crow that everyone was welcome and then some, but the group’s skin tones definitely tended toward the lighter end of the spectrum. It was child’s play to pick out the tall, attractive man with dark skin in the midst of the others.