Page 75 of Sin

Hellen—still shrieking—ran into the house, leaving me stranded with her dying husband. I didn’t know what to do, so I settled on talking softly to him while I heard his wife in the house calling for an ambulance.

His gasping stopped, and he went limp in my arms. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Did I just scare a man to death?

“Sin!” someone hissed from behind me, and I looked back to find Mare taking in the scene in front of her with utter confusion. “What in the world are you doing?”

“Mare, do you have my stuff?” I asked instead of answering, turning back to Harry and checking his throat for a pulse. It was weak, but there.

“I… I can go get—”

“Go!” I said, not letting her even finish her sentence. I didn’t look to see if she’d done what I asked, too distracted by the dying man in my arms.

Fuck, what was I supposed to do now? What did you do for a heart attack?

In my panic, I did the only thing I could think of. I ripped my eye holes larger in the bag until my face was exposed. Then I gently laid Harry on the ground and proceeded to give him chest compressions, humming the song Staying Alive because I’d heard that was a good rhythm for this. Then I switched to blowing air into his mouth. I did this only a few times before I heard the ambulance sirens coming down the street.

Hellen returned to the porch, a landline phone clutched to her chest. “Oh, heavens! Where are you? The trash assassin is molesting my husband!”

Harry started to groan, my life-saving CPR apparently doing its trick, and I held him as flashing red lights got brighter and brighter. Mare rounded the house then, the bag of my belongings in her arms. She tossed it to me, and I ripped it open, searching for…

Aha! I retrieved the small safe out of the bag and entered the code. It opened, letting out a hiss of cold air. I snatched out the syringe from within, and Mare let out a grunt of surprise.

“It’s okay,” I promised the man, ripping open the top few buttons of his shirt and positioning the needle over his chest. “You’re going to be okay, I promise.”

And then I plunged it in. Harry didn’t even show any sign of pain as I administered Mend’s blood to him, but almost immediately, his breathing evened out, the color returned to his skin, and he opened his eyes.

Harry blinked up at me, looking confused for several moments. “You saved my life.”

I decided against pointing out that I’d been the reason he almost died to begin with. “I’m sorry.”

“Come on!” Mare hissed, dragging me away from the man. “We need to go. He’s fine.”

And she was right. Harry was already sitting up, looking like a man waking up from a nice nap, not a heart attack. He turned his arms this way and that, staring at his flexing fingers in awe.

I snatched up my bag and let Mare pull me away since he really did seem fine now, deciding she was right and now was our time to get the hell out of here. I wasn’t President Osborne’s favorite person, and the last thing I wanted to do was end up back in prison all because I almost scared a man to death while pretending to be a trash bag.

I’d never live it down.

I streaked across the yard like a thief in the night, Mare sticking right by my side. There was a gathering crowd on the sidewalk across the street now that the ambulance and a police car were pulling into Hellen and Harry’s driveway, and several bystanders gave us wary glances but none tried to stop us as we sprinted down the street to where the others still waited.

London, Eva, and Bennett waited in the bed of the truck, their eyes wide as they spotted us sprinting straight for them. I barely slowed as I reached the truck, using my momentum to leap into the truck bed with Mare doing the same.

“Go! Go! Go!” I shouted, twisting to look behind me and seeing Hellen pointing in our direction, and two police officers paused on their way to the house and rushed after us.

“Shit, Sin,” Bennett said with a bright grin of delight. Of course he was enjoying this. “What did you do?”

“I think I almost just killed a man,” I panted.

London went on high alert. “What?”

Charlie turned on his blinker, his fucking blinker, and pulled out onto the street. Cautiously, he started down the street, and I watched with growing horror as the cops from before neared closer.

“Che, can you hurry it up a little?” I asked through the open window into the cab of the truck.

“The speed limit is twenty-five miles per hour,” Charlie said matter-of-factly.

I eyed his speedometer. “And you’re going ten!”

“Excuse me,” London cut in, grabbing my wrist to gain my attention. I noted the Band-aid he’d chosen earlier looked like the spine of a Jane Austen book. Because of course he had book-themed Band-aids. “Did you say you almost killed someone?”

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