Page 4 of The Sin

Hindsight was a precious, useless thing.

He was a warden, but he sought power within the town walls and so he had to play by some of the rules. He couldn’t discard me, couldn’t just get rid of me, and now he didn’t need to—full incarceration would do it for him. When I came out—if I came out—I would be a shell of my former self and empty shells didn’t cause trouble.

Maybe turning me in hadn’t been an easy decision for him.

Maybe he’d thought long and hard over it on the ride back from Sector Five.

Maybe one day he’d look back on his choices and regret being such a cowardly bastard.

And maybe one day the earth beneath my feet would un-shatter and I’d once again feel like I could walk without bleeding pain.

But I wasn’t counting on it.

“Okay,” Mr. Stenner sighed. He picked up the pen. Opened the notepad. Looked me square in the eye. “Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you stow away on your husband’s truck in the first place?”

I’d had plenty of time to prepare this story. “My husband, Roman West, works all hours of the day and night. He has an important job, I know, but it seemed like he was gone a lot.”

Mr. Stenner scribbled as I spoke, and glanced up at my pause.

“I guess I just found it odd and I wanted to be sure he really worked all those hours.” A jealous wife was not considered a desirable trait in Capra, but adultery was a downright sin. “That he wasn’t, you know, looking for comfort elsewhere.”

He stilled, the pen poised. “You don’t think it’s wrong to question your husband’s movements and motivations?”

“I wasn’t questioning Roman,” I said, backpedaling furiously. “I questioned myself and whether I was doing all I could to be the wife he deserved. If I were lacking in any way, I wanted to know so I could set it right.”

He scribbled some more, detailing every horrid flaw of character I’d given him.Jealous. Pathetic. Desperate.

“So, you hid on your husband’s truck to see where he went and what he did.” No judgement in his monotonous tone, but it was all there, thickly layered in his words. “What did you find?”

Sector Five.

Outerlanders.

Lies.

I couldn’t give him any of that.

Roman had driven that point home hard. Lie, lie and lie some more.

Remember. You were locked inside this box. You never left the truck. You never saw outside this garage. You have no idea you were outside Capra.

Of course, then he’d turned me over to the Guard, but I was still inclined to trust that advice.

If anyone suspected how much I’d been exposed to, I’d never be allowed to walk the streets inside town again. I might not even get the option of rehab. The knowledge I had could honestly be considered treasonous.

That wasn’t just bad for me. A treasonous wife wasn’t exactly a good look for a warden, especially a warden as ambitious as Roman West. That’s how I knew Roman would be following his own advice. He’d handed me in, but he wouldn’t contradictourstory.

I gave Mr. Stenner another character flaw for his notes.Bumbling idiot.Roman’s version, actually, when his warden friend, Branson, had found us in the parking garage.

“I climbed into the lockbox on the truck without realizing that once the latch dropped, I’d be trapped inside. I couldn’t get out and eventually, when the truck stopped, I thumped on the lid for someone to help.”

“Who came to your aid?”

“My husband.”

“And then?”

“Excuse me?”

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