Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(82)
Author: Erin McCarthy

He didn’t see anything he hadn’t noticed before. It was true, the one shot looked like it had been taken from the window, which was odd, but he supposed possible for the police to have done.

Sara was holding her hand out. “Let me see them.”

Wanting to delay the inevitable and hopefully preserve her feelings, Gabriel turned the stack over and shuffled through them looking at their backs. There was writing on the backside of the one picture. “Hold on.”

Lifting it up, he looked closely. The writing was small, in the upper left-hand corner. “ ‘Through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.’ ”

Holy shit. Gabriel gripped the picture, glancing over at Sara. “These go together. The words on the tomb and this. That’s all one quote. ‘In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.’ It’s Ephesians.”

Her face had gone completely white. She dropped his laptop on the couch and jumped up. “Where’s that bottle?”

“What bottle?” Gabriel jammed the pictures back into the envelope. “I’ve seen that quote before, Sara.”

“So have I. On the absinthe bottle. Where is that bottle? The one I found on the doorstep.”

“I don’t know. I think I put it in the kitchen.” He couldn’t even remember what he had done with it, and his mind was distracted, shocked by the knowledge of where he had seen that same quote. He should have known. He should have pursued it.

She was already in the kitchen, opening cabinets. A second later she reemerged with the green bottle in her hand. Yanking the label off the neck, she handed it to him. “See? It’s the same damn quote.”

Gabriel read the paper tag, obviously printed on a computer. He couldn’t believe he had shoved the bottle into a cabinet without even looking at the stupid label. “Sara, I saw this quote too. On Raphael’s will.”

Raphael had done it after all. The f**king bastard. Gabriel took deep breaths, trying to control the swell of anger, the disgust, the recrimination.

Sara shook her head, face pale, eyes wide. “Oh no . . . you’re not saying . . .”

Nodding his head once, he said quietly, “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Why? Why would he do that?”

The pain, the betrayal in her voice sliced through his heart. “I don’t know, babe, I just don’t know.” Gabriel wanted to soften the blow, wanted to take her suffering away, wanted to make everything okay for Sara forever and always, but he couldn’t do that. Sara surprised him though. She reached out, touched his arm briefly, and nodded.

“I know you don’t know. It was a rhetorical question, really. I’m sure we’ll never know, or understand, and that’s okay. Well, not exactly okay, but we’ll deal with it.”

Gabriel was impressed all over again. Sara had been dealt a bad hand most of her life, and yet she was an amazing, strong, and giving woman, and he loved her all the more for it.

“I still have that will.” He had shoved it in his back pocket, then tossed it in the backseat of his car. “It’s in my car.”

She followed him as he jogged down the steps, two at a time. He should have known not to trust Raphael, should have known that a killer was capable of lying.

He yanked open the back door to his car and found the papers on the floor. What he saw made his heart nearly stop. “Holy shit.”

“What?”

“He told me this was his will . . . It’s not his, it’s yours.” It had Sara’s name on the top, and it glared up at him, taunting and macabre.

“What?” She tried to yank it away from him, but he held on to it. “Gabriel . . . I didn’t make this will.”

“I know.” And he was going to kill Raphael for being sick enough to do such a thing.

“So what do we do now?” she asked, still gripping the neck of the absinthe bottle, her eyes wide.

He was going to track down Raphael, but he didn’t want to scare her. “First I want to go to Anne’s tomb. I don’t remember that writing being there, yet it showed in the picture. Which means there’s no doubt that Raphael wrote it. Only a demon could pull that trick. You don’t have to go with me. I’ll be fast. I just need to see for myself.”

He wanted absolute confirmation of the truth, wanted to know that for a hundred and fifty years the answer had never had anything to do with him. He wanted to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Raphael had killed Anne and Jessie and all those other women. Then he was going to find the bastard and figure out why. And punish him.

“No, I’ll go with you.” She took his hand. “We’re in this together. We’re together.”

Yes, they were. He crumpled up the papers into a ball and nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Sara followed Gabriel into the cemetery in the dark, realizing suddenly why it was so easy for him to break a lock and gain entrance. He had strength, powers she didn’t understand. She also now knew that he didn’t have to fear mortals the way she did, that he could protect himself, and her, from common criminals like muggers. It was reassuring at the same time it was unnerving. She didn’t, couldn’t, comprehend the full scope of who and what he was.

“Walk next to me,” he said, slowing down and gesturing for her to fall in beside him. “I don’t sense anything, but I want you close to me.”

No complaints from her. She wasn’t afraid, but she wasn’t entirely comfortable either. The cemetery was quiet, the tombs rising stark and cold against the darkness, the crunch of the shells beneath her feet loud and obvious.

She was sure that if the writing had been on Anne’s tomb that day they had visited, when Gabriel had taken the shots, they would have noticed it. In her mind, she could picture the day perfectly, the tomb crisp and clean, bright white, freshly painted, the heat crushing her as she leaned on the fleur-de-lis fence, staring at the blank spot where the nameplate had fallen off. She would have noticed graffiti.

Gabriel had a flashlight, and when they stopped at Anne’s tomb, he shone it all over the front surface. Sara didn’t see anything at all. No writing.

There was no explanation why, but it was obvious that Rafe, who she needed to think of as Raphael, had been involved in the murders, involved with Marguerite far beyond what Sara had understood. It made her angry, because enough was enough, damn it. She didn’t want to feel the sorrow, didn’t want to suffocate yet again under its crushing hopelessness, didn’t want to feel the sting of betrayal. But she surprised herself. The wash of pain when she had discovered the truth had been short and shallow, and as she stood staring into the darkness, at the tomb of a woman who had lost her life to the violence and insanity of a demon, Sara felt intact, whole, safe, strong.