Page 46 of Stolen Faith

The door behind Juliette opened.

She spun around on her butt, chin raised, though she was still hunched forward.

For a moment, the light from the hallway, bright compared to their dim prison room, blinded her. She closed her eyes, turning her face away.

Footsteps pounded on the wood floor. Juliette braced herself, but the footsteps passed her. She opened her eyes, watching as three men approached Devon. They wore woodland camo, and unlike the man from the ambulance, they weren’t covering their faces. That struck her as a bad sign.

“Hello, perverts.” The speaker had a massive cast on one arm, and despite the plural, he was looking only at Devon. The cast was…camo print?

“Pervert? That feels a little judgmental.” Devon raised a brow. Shirtless, wounded, and bound to a chair, he still had more authority in both his posture and tone than the idiot with the cast and three guns strapped to his limbs.

“I bet you think your gang of sinners is looking for you. They are. We made sure of it.”

Juliette leaned to the side, watching Devon between the other men’s bodies. His expression was unconcerned, as if he knew exactly what the man was talking about.

“You did, did you?”

“We left your secretary alive so he can tell the other sinners we have you,” Cast Man said.

Devon’s secretary? Juliette’s breath caught. Devon’s gaze met hers for a split second and she saw the same desperate relief in his gaze that she felt flooding her own body.

Franco. He had to be talking about Franco.

Franco was alive.

She hadn’t let herself think about her other husband after that first wash of grief when she’d been all but sure he was dead.

“Now you’re going to tell us the name of your other wife,” the man with the cast declared.

Other wife?

Did these morons know they were in a trinity? No. They couldn’t. Because if they did, they’d know Franco was their third.

Devon raised a brow. “My wife? I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I’m not married.”

Legally, Devon wasn’t married. Neither was she nor Franco.

“No, you’re not.” Cast Man puffed up his chest. “Marriage is for one man and one woman, a union made in God’s own image!” Cast Man was yelling with some sort of righteous anger.

“God is married? I was unaware,” Devon murmured.

“You think I can’t break you? We already know all about you.”

“No, you don’t, otherwise you’d know I’m not married.”

Cast Man turned to one of the others. “Get her up.”

Juliette’s body flushed hot, then cold, as a wave of fear broke over her.

Cast Man’s associates unlinked her wrists from her ankles then grabbed her by the arms, yanking her up. Her feet had gone numb, and she almost fell over.

One of them caught her around the waist as she fell. Her face pressed into his shirt, which smelled like BO and something metallic. Maybe gun oil.

“Enough,” Devon snapped, as if he were rebuking a subordinate. “You talk to me, not her.”

“Oh, I’m not planning to talk to her,” Cast Man said. “And for this to work, you’ll need to see it, so no water.”

Water?

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