Page 115 of Sin With Me

Chapter29

Cameron

“You’re not goingin those, are you?” Lola pointed to my cut-off sweats and I gripped the steering wheel harder. The pants might have looked funny and crooked, because all I had at the time was a butter knife to cut off the bottoms with, but I didn’tcare.

“It’s almost a hundred degrees in the shade. I sure can and I will,” I replied, focusing on the road ahead. We’d already stopped at a local store in Tucson to pick up supplies, including knives. In hindsight I should have bought a pair of cargo pants as well, but we couldn’t waste time. Since we’d left the store almost two and a half hours ago, Lola wouldn’t stop talking. She was sitting in the front seat, popping her annoying bubble gum while I glanced at my brother’s smirk in the rear view mirror. Since the moment Lola called shotgun, she wouldn’t stop yapping. It was as if she was trying to find out everything about us, in a weird kind of way. I could see why my brother was so intrigued by this woman, which solidified that hopeful feeling I had for the two ofthem.

“So listen to this. I get a message from this girl named Barbie, and she’s babbling something about me stealing herman.”

I saw Brook sit upright in the back. He leaned in with a keenear.

“And what did you do?” I asked.

“I deleted the message.”

“She didn’t mention who the guy was?” I asked.

“Didn’t you hear me? I deleted the message. If a girl calls herself a Barbie, that’s an instant red flag for drama, and the last thing I need in my life is drama. I just say it like it is. I don’t put sparkles and rainbows on shit. It’s still gonna stink, right? So why bother making shit look all pretty? I just don’t like wastingtime.”

I found it interesting that my brother was smitten with someone real for a change, yet I could also see the source of his frustration. Lola was funny, but too much funny could be annoying after a while, especially when you didn’t realize you were the annoying party.

“Okay, so what’s the plan?” she asked.

Or maybe I haven’t given her a fair chance.

“You’re going to stay outside the chapel,” I said to her. “If anything goes wrong, one of us needs to escape.”

“Cameron, I’m not going into this thinking I won’t get out. We’ve gotthis.”

My brother grinned. Yeah, she was definitely right forhim.

“There’s one problem,” she continued. “Brook is afraid of scorpions.”

“I’m not, Lola.” He rolled his eyes, and I chuckled.

“Tarantulas? Snakes?” she asked.

“Nope. Sorry, hun. Not afraid of those either.”

“Well, neither am I. In fact, there’s not much that scaresme.”

Everyone had an Achilles’s heel, though, and from what my brother had said, I had a feeling that Lola’s came in the form of small children. As they chatted some more, I parked behind a hedge of dried shrubbery about a mile away from the chapel. We grabbed the gear from the trunk and, wearing our night-vision goggles, we walked the rest of the way there. I zoomed in toward town, where a group of people were heading ourway.

“It’s them,” I said. “Kate, Anna, and Father John. They must be hurt – Mike is carryingKate.”

I recognized him from a google search. Whatever the reason for him touching her at all, I didn’t like it. She looked frail even from the distance.

“Aaron and Mateo Cortez are with them. We don’t have a lot of time. If Anna doesn’t spill the beans about the money, we need to find a way to lure them inside the crypt.”

“Leave that to me,” Lolasaid.

“What are you going todo?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll think of something. Just be ready.”

My brother grabbed Lola by her waist, dipped her back, and kissed her hard. Her arms fell limp to her sides as she relaxed her guard. I felt a sudden need to hold Kate in myarms.

When he pulled away with a loud smooch and she found her footing again, she pointed to her night-vision goggles. “You could have warned me. These aren’t too comfortable to kissin.”

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