Page 37 of By Sin To Atone

“What do you want from me?”

“Truth. Your past. Your present. All of it. I want all of it.”

“Why?” I’m confused, I don’t understand why he cares to know so much. Something slips off the bed and my gaze automatically turns to it. It’s the electric bill. Followed by something else.

A postcard.

My heart drops to my stomach as it floats down, landing face-up. I stare at it. Run Rabbit Run. The word Blue scrawled in barely visible tiny letters between the first Run and Rabbit.

“Are you listening to me?”

I blink, shift my gaze up to Zeke’s. I guess he was talking. Probably still insulting my mother. I’m glad I didn’t hear him.

“Where was this?” I ask, bending to pick it up. I turn it over and the words on the back make my blood run cold. “Happy Birthday, Wren. See you soon.”

He found us.

Shit.

He found us.

No. I stop myself. He hasn’t found her. Just me. He doesn’t know where Wren is. He can’t.

I turn it back over, see how the ink is smudged. I can almost make out the print from the pad of his hand. Where did he get the postcard? How does he get his hands on them? They don’t sell those at the prison commissary, surely. My head spins. Did someone send it to him? He has contacts outside of prison. He always warned me about them.

“The gun. The serial number is filed off. Doesn’t usually mean anything good,” Zeke says.

I glance at it in its Ziploc, then at the postcard again. The little rabbit hopping. All the happy colors.

Zeke pulls the chair up to sit in front of me, close enough our knees are almost touching. My phone alerts me to a message. Well, the sound comes from his pocket, but I recognize the tone. It’s Wren’s.

He stops, takes it out of his pocket. Hits the button to play the audio.

Beet who? Wren asks and I can hear how she is enjoying the joke. My once brilliant sister who was going to be a doctor, a pediatrician because she loved kids. Backup plan was veterinarian because she also loved animals. She now finds entertainment in knock-knock jokes.

I want to cry.

“I hear she was accepted to medical school,” he says, and I drag my gaze to his.

“How do you know all this?”

“I’m not like those other two you blackmailed. But I guess you’ve figured that out.”

“Let me answer her.” I hold out my hand.

“Answer me first. Is that gun yours?”

I shake my head.

“Who does it belong to?”

I look at his hand resting on his lap, study the colorful scales of the tattoo on one arm. “What is it?” I ask, not entirely sure why.

“What is what?”

I gesture to the tattoo.

He looks at it, like he forgot it was there. “Dragons.”

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