Page 141 of Anchor

Now, to know that his mother had done the same to him when he was little just broke me. To know that those little touches weresmall I-love-yous to carry around when he wasn’t closefucking ruined me completely.

I had to turn my head to the side when the tears slid down my cheeks, and casually wipe them before Seth saw. In those moments, I wasn’t focused on him, didn’t mind his hands or his whispers, any of his movements as he ate and drank and talked.

No, I wasn’t focused on him at all, and he could have easily grabbed the wheel or attacked me or killed me—easily. I wouldn’t have been able to stop him on time, wouldn’t have even seen him at all.

But he didn’t.

Seth didn’t attack me.

We made it to Silver Spring safe and sound.

Seth knew exactly where the lair of the guy they called The Devil was—and it was an entire fucking neighborhood.

Tall apartment buildings, some with dark green bricks, some maroon, marked what he calledThe D Complex,where basically even the IDD didn’t really have any jurisdiction, not in reality. Everybody who lived and worked in there paid the Devil in one way or the other, and how he managed to keep a hold on these people, on the men that made sure things ran smoothly out here while he was in the Tomb, even Seth didn’t know.

“I doubt even Radock knows, and he hung out with the Devil all the time before they locked him in,” he said.

I looked at his profile, curious. We’d been in the car together for the last four hours, and he had rarely stopped talking all the while. I wasn’t sure whether he was always like this, always needed to fill silence with words so desperately, or if he was still trying to distract me. Still trying to attack me and get my bracelet.

It didn’t look like it, though. Never once had he done a single suspicious thing since he sat in that passenger seat. He’d complained an awful lot about pretty mucheverything,but that was it.

“Do you ever just…not speak?” I asked because I was genuinely curious.

Seth wasn’t offended, though. He shrugged. “You’re a really good listener.”

Except he hadn’t once stopped long enough for me tothinkof something I would want to talk about, had he?

Of course, I said no such thing.

“So, what’s the plan, agent? You’ve got a plan, right? You got weapons?” he then asked.

I pulled the glove compartment open and took out the 44 Taland had left here. “I have this.” I showed him the barrel. “And I’m not an agent.” Not anymore.

Strangely it didn’t feel like a loss to think that. It felt…relievinginstead. Like I’d been filling those shoes just becausethey’d been the only ones for me to wear for a long time, but now I could take them off.

“That thing is not going to do you any good,” Seth said, shaking his head as he ate my last pop tart. I wasn’t hungry anyway. “Do you have any idea how many people work for him, guard this place?”

“They’re not going toallbe with Taland, are they?” I mean, Radock said he’d turned himself in. That alone would tell the Devil that he wasn’t going to try to run away.

At least not until we went in there and took him out.

But Seth threw the wrapper in the backseat without looking, took the seatbelt off, and turned toward me with his whole body.

“I’m going to be very honest with you, Rosabel,” he said. “You seem to be under the impression that it will beeasyto get Taland out of there—it won’t. I say this with a heavy heart, but there’s a good chance that Taland is not even alive anymore. The Devil doesn’t play around. He kills first and asks questions later. Do you understand?”

His every word rang true. I couldn’t even breathe until he stopped speaking.

“That…that can’t be.” Taland—dead?

Now, when we finished the Iris Roe and made it out alive and made it out of Headquarters alive, too? Now, when we clearly knew where we stood and there were finally no more secrets between us about the past?

No, no, no, no…I refused to believe it. I refused to accept it. Taland wasnotdead.

“He’s the Devil.El Diablo. He didn’t get that name for nothing—he really is ruthless. And Taland didn’t deliver on whatever he promised the guy, so now…” Seth shook his head. “If he is alive and if we do find him, I really doubt we’ll be able to get him out.”

“He’ll be there, too. He’ll help us,” I said, and my cheeks felt like they might melt off me even though I was frozen inside, and my eyes felt teary, too, even though I wasdry. So fucking dry I could jump in the ocean and you’d still be able to see my cracks.

Seth sighed. For a moment there, I could have sworn that he actually feltsorryfor me. He wasn’t smiling, wasn’t talking, just sitting there and feeling sorry for me, which I hated with all my being, because if he was sorry, that meant he really believed that there was something to be sorry about. It meant he really believed that Taland might be dead.

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