Page 5 of Perfect Sin

After a long and very awkward pause, I give him a jerky nod. Tomorrow the charade begins.

The Charade

Raven

I cradlemy phone to my chest after Sin says goodbye the way I’d like to be holding on to him. “Distract me,” I beg my brother.

He looks up from his phone, but his blank stare shows me he’s only physically here. “I don’t know if I can,” he mumbles.

“Do you want me to try and call Ford?”

He nods. I take my phone and dial, but there’s a busy signal. Still better than the unanswered ringing we’d gotten earlier. A few minutes later, Ford’s name flashes on my screen and I eagerly take the call.

“I just spoke to Sin. Are you all right?” he demands instead of greeting me.

I exhale. “I’m hanging in. I think, oddly, I’ve got it better than Sin. He doesn’t know the Whitmores and he’s all alone there. At least I’ve got Lucien to watch my back.”

“I’ve left a message for Holbrook. Hopefully we’ll have a plan soon to get the three of you back.”

There’s a lump in my throat. “Why did you have to call Holbrook? Surely Teddy has more contacts in Illinois to help get us out.”

He’s quiet, and that lump drops to the pit of my stomach. “Ted was shot.”

My hand flies up to cover my mouth. I can see from the dour expression on my brother’s face he already knows. He must have heard the news before I was taken from Ford’s mangled truck and he raced to get to me.

“He’s had surgery. Luckily the bullet missed all his vital organs. They stopped the internal bleeding, but he’s developed an infection. He’s on IV antibiotics, so we’ll know better tomorrow how he’s going to do long-term.”

I’m nodding along with what he’s saying, then stop, realizing he can’t see me. “Okay,” I say out loud instead. “What about Amber and Jen?”

“Amber has already gone home. She’s got a very mild concussion that won’t even last as long as the nasty bump and bruises on her head. Jen was unconscious for about twelve hours. There was swelling on her brain that looks like it is starting to go down. We won’t know yet if she’s sustained any lasting brain damage. She hasn’t spoken yet, but the doctor said since she’s already awake there’s no reason we can’t expect a full recovery.”

Lucien is watching me, and I realize I haven’t shared the information with him. He’s desperately trying to intuit from my words what Ford is telling me. I put my hand on the mouthpiece. “Teddy had surgery to remove the bullet, he’s recovering.” I go through all the details and watch as he visibly relaxes.

“What are we going to do?” I ask him.

He puts his finger over his lips and motions with his head toward the door. I say goodbye to Ford and promise to call him later, then follow him out the door. I’m shocked when no one tries to stop us. Together we stroll through the grounds and into the woods to the ramshackle old farmhouse he and Sin used to find peace. Lucien takes a device from his pocket and scans the entire house for something.

“There’s no way this place wasn’t searched. Now that at least the two of us are back, there has to be–“ he pulls a small listening device from behind a mirror. “Bugs, and not the good kind.”

“There are no good kind of bugs,” I protest.

“C’mon, lightning bugs, lady bugs, butterflies, roly polies?”

“Okay, fine, but roly polies aren’t bugs, they’re crustaceans,” I say as I watch him stick the small electronic devices into a foil bag of chips.

“Crustaceans, you say?” He continues the nonsense conversation while he locates a few more bugs. Only then does he turn on another device he retrieves from his pocket.

He holds it up and shows it to me before setting it on a small table off on the side of the room. “That is a jamming device. It should kill any signal within thirty feet of us. Which means our phones won’t work until I turn it off.”

Luce dusts off a chair and sits down. “We have nowhere to run. If we leave, he’ll go after Sin. The only way escaping works is if we know he’s out and secure before we even try. For now the best thing we can do is wait for Sin to ingratiate himself with his parents enough to start joining them at functions. I’m not sure why Damien wants to use him to link himself to the governor, but for now we roll with it. Once we are all back together we need to be ready to run.”

“So, we just sit around here waiting for Sin?” I don’t like waiting on others, not even the man I impulsively married yesterday.

Lucien smirks. “I bet you’re as willing to rely on others as I am.”

“If by that you mean not at all, then you’d be correct.”

“Good, because we are going to try and find all the evidence we can as long as we’re here. If that doesn’t work, then I need to get close enough to him to put a bullet in his head. If we get caught snooping he will kill us. He doesn’t give a shit if we’re his kids or not.”

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