Page 45 of Deliver us from Evil

He doesn’t even bother to scowl at me. “He knows we’re here.”

“Impossible.”

“He could have seen the car.”

“Then he would be out the back door already, no pun intended.”

“That wasn’t a pun.”

I grind my teeth at Mr. Cautiously Careful AKA Sir Correct-me-if-I’m-Wrong. Which I never could, because he never was.

“That thing you’re feeling?” I tell him. “It’s the earth revolving on its fucking axis. She could be—”

I stop.

I’d been about to say dead, and I don’t know why. Gabriel wouldn’t kill her—she’s too valuable. She’s what led us here in the first place. And he had to have known that, right?

That’s why he took her. Why he’s using her. Maybe that shit about him being her father was purposefully planted on his laptop for us to find. He knew we’d assume the worst.

But fuck. You start going down that rabbit hole, and you end up as knotted as a pair of horny dogs.

“We do this now, or we don’t,” I say, glancing at Apollo. “The longer we stand out here, the—”

“You’re right,” Rube says.

And thank fuck for that, because I was close to smacking him upside the head. I start forward, but his voice stops me. “Get back in the car. We’ll circle the block. Maybe we get in the back way, or through a window.”

I turn to him and stare him down. He’s about the same height as me, but I know I’ll be the first to kiss dirt in a fight.

But that doesn’t matter.

Because he’swrong. We can’t wait anymore.

She’s in there, and she’s in danger. Fuck, Trinity being within a foot of Gabriel is more than I can stand thinking about. Even if she is his daughter, I know a perverted prick like him wouldn’t think twice about sticking it in her.

They’ve been alone so long already, I’m sure he’s done it a couple of times.

Usually I can control myself. I don’t get angry, I get snarky.

But this? The thought that right now he could be—?

“Fuck this,” I snarl.

“Cass. Please.”

I stop, but only because it’s Apollo and the poor guy honestly wants to help. It kinda sucks that he’s always so nice about it. Always seeing every side of the argument. He should have been born a few years earlier where he could have run free with his hippie friends, protesting the Vietnam war and getting fucked on acid all the time.

“Just…wait. Would you?”

So I wait.

I wait for hours, days. A fucking eternity.

I wait while Reuben and Apollo start discussing what they’d do if they couldn’t find an open window. Should they break it, hope no one hears?

Oh wait, Rube thinks he saw someone. What’s that? Another person walking down a street in Suburbia? The fucking horror. But no, he was mistaken, it was just some old lady pruning her rose bush.

And then I wait some more, because now they’ve moved onto conflict resolution. What if Gabriel has a gun? Nah, Rube doesn’t think so. Not all bad guys have guns or some shit. But Apollo’s not sure. Nowhe’sMr. Fucking Careful.

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