Page 3 of Sacrifice

He sighed, one hand rubbing his jaw. “Well, I suppose we shall see soon,” he said, voice dangerously soft. “At your Confession.”

“You’re really going to put me through that?” I asked, my voice turning shrill. “Your own daughter?”

“If you’re telling the truth, you won’t feel an ounce of pain, my darling. You know that.”

With that, he turned and left the cell, followed by the other elders. I begged and screamed as their footsteps clunked down the hall, but none of them returned.

Once again, I was alone in the dark.

2

Sebastian

I kickedthe car door shut, balancing two takeout boxes from my favorite Thai place in one hand while a paper bag stacked with sugary treats from the top-rated bakery in Manhattan dangled from my other hand. I figured Rose deserved to try every delicious treat the world had to offer, and seeing as I recently had access to a private plane going to and from the best city in the world, I had to take full advantage of it and bring the best of the best right to her.

It occurred to me that one of the main reasons she wasn’t free to experience the world was because ofme, but I couldn’t even begin to think too deeply about that right now. Not when I had so much other shit on my mind.

My investigation into Jesse’s findings at the hospital had been strangely illuminating while simultaneously keeping me in the dark. He was right about the IVF data—it was all messed up, with scores of fertilized embryos missing from the final data in patient files. There was just one thing he’d missed.

I’d checked the hospital archive sign-in sheets dating back as far as the eighties, and when I came to 2004, I found something interesting. Just four days before my mother’s murder, she’dsigned in to check out the archives, and she’d specifically requested to look at the IVF patient files.

Her request was denied, as she wasn’t a medical practitioner or lawyer, which meant she had no legal reason to view the files. But if I knew my mother at all… she’d found a way to check out those files anyway. She was willful and stubborn, always refusing to take no for an answer. Just like me.

The question was: why?

How did she know something was off with the data when she didn’t even work at the hospital, and why was she so interested in confirming it? Also: was it relevant to her death, or was the timing just a complete coincidence?

Right now, I was leaning toward the latter. It just didn’t seem likely that it was relevant. Whatever was happening up in Alderwood—specifically in that forbidden cave—probably had nothing to do with IVF treatments. But I had no way of knowing for sure until I got inside it, and that was exactly what I needed.Certainty.

I clenched my jaw, mind swirling with a mix of curiosity and irritation. I needed to find that fucking cave, sooner rather than later. Perhaps Rose would be more amenable to providing me with directions now that our relationship had improved.

When I reached the bottom step of the bunker, I instantly thought I was hallucinating. Rose was nowhere in sight. The door was closed and locked, but she was… gone.

“What the fuck?” I muttered, shock reverberating through me as I dropped the bags and boxes.

For a split-second, I wondered if the Entity was real all along, and in a moment of sympathy for his devotee, he’d beamed Rose right out of the cell in a ray of holy light.

Then I let out a brittle laugh and shook my head. “Oh, Rose…”

I should have fucking known. She’d hidden things from me before, right under that mattress, like the spoon she’d once planned on using to dig her way out of here. No doubt she’d kept my missing keycard under there too. The keycard that went missing right around the time I’d taken her up to the house for a bath.

Goddammit.

I should’ve never underestimated her, but I did, time and time again. I kept forgetting how smart she was, because I’d always viewed her as an innocent, naïve girl rather than the infuriatingly bright woman she truly was. It had almost been my downfall five days ago; that wily brain of hers. And yet, it kept slipping my mind because of my own hubris.

I was an idiot. An arrogant, egotistical fucking idiot. And now, because of that idiocy, I’d lost Rose.

I trudged back up to the house to confirm what I already knew on the computer I kept in the study. Because I’d been so busy in the city, it hadn’t even occurred to me to check the live stream of the cell. I sure as hell regretted that now.

I rewound the footage until I found what I was looking for. Almost twenty-four hours ago, Rose had slid the missing keycard from under her mattress, unlocked the door, and closed it behind her. She’d turned and looked back at the cell for a moment, as if she were trying to commit the image to memory, and then she left for good.

“Ah, fuck.” I sagged in the chair, scrubbing one hand over my face.

I knew Rose hadn’t been picked up by the cops while she wandered along the highway, because I hadn’t heard jack shit from them, and that meant one thing and one thing only: she’d found her way back to Alderwood.

I straightened my shoulders as something occurred to me. Rose had taken the keycardbeforeI left with her fake directionsto the cave. She was never going to starve to death down there like I feared when I was lying in that fucking spike pit. She could have left whenever the hell she wanted.

But then… if she could’ve escaped all along, why did she choose to stay?

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