Page 79 of Sin With Me

Without waiting for her reply, I lifted her off me and peeked out of the confessional. Mateo Cortez and his son, Aaron, were standing in the doorway with their backs turned to us. I looked back at Kate and put my finger to my lips. Still half-shocked, she nodded. We tiptoed to the back door, but stopped at the familiar voices when we reached Father John’s office.

Fuck!

“Do you know when she’ll be back?” Pablo Cortez asked FatherJohn.

He was standing there with another one of his thugs I remembered from the night that put me in this mess and ultimately sent me on my quest to find Cortez.

“No. I don’t keep track of everyone’s whereabouts.”

Cortez took a threatening step toward Father John, and I felt Kate recoil. It made me cringe. It made me realize how afraid she must have been all these months, while searching for answers about her family and finding that her mother’s enemy was none other than Mateo Cortez.

“We had a deal, FatherJohn.”

“And it looks like you broke it. The deal was that you stay away fromtown.”

“Our sources say that someone is digging through old family papers.”

“We’re organizing the parish. That’sall.”

“What you’re doing is digging your own grave, Father.”

“They can’t talk to him like that,” she loud whispered. Despite her knees clattering together, she appeared to be brave. And as much as she tried to persuade me to help Father John, her body was set on high alert, as if it wanted to runaway.

“If I go in there, we’re both dead,” Isaid.

“I don’t understand. They don’t know you. You can go. I don’t want you to be in trouble because of me. But we have to help FatherJohn.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Kate. They do know me. They know me very well. Wait, how do you think they knowyou?”

She stilled, and suddenly the trust we’d build over the past few months wasgone.

Poof.

She tilted her head to the side. “Who areyou?”

“If you want to stay alive, you’ll come with me, Kate.”

She ripped her arm away from me. I grabbed her by her waist before she reached the door and pulled her into the hall closet.

“You have to trust me, Kate. If there is anything you could ever do for me, please, trust me.” I whispered in her ear, fighting the urge to nip at the tiny diamond earring she had pierced through the upper cartilage. “I’ll help you leave through the back, and then I’ll help Father John. You’re going to go straight to Lola’s and tell her that you’re in trouble and Cam sentyou.”

If my gut was right, Lola would know exactly what todo.

“Fath—“

“Not Father today. Just Cameron. Can you say it exactly thatway?”

She nodded. I reached to the single hanging jacket in the closet and removed my piece from the inside pocket.

Kate gasped. “Why do you have agun?”

“Shh.”

“You have a gun,” she repeated, her voice even louder.

“You said you’d trustme.”

“Yeah, but a gun?” Kate was no longer caring to whisper. I had to stop her before she revealed our hiding spot to the entiretown.

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