Sins & Secrets (Sins #1)(25)
Author: Jessica Sorensen

“Of course I’m being serious—I’m always serious Layton.” She shakes her head and then rolls her eyes again. “Would you relax? Like you said, Lola’s my sister. I won’t let anything happen to her, something I think I proved when I didn’t kill her today like I was hired to do.” She opens the door. “Beside, I need her alive.”

“Yeah, but I don’t get why since you won’t explain it to me.”

“It’s better if you don’t know,” she says. “Now lets get her inside and you can tell her what’s going on and hopefully after the initial rage of wanting to kill you wears off, she’ll be smart enough to run away with you.”

“Wait a minute,” I say before she gets out of the car. “I thought she had to do this alone. That was the deal when you shot me. That I had to stay dead to everyone, including Lolita.”

She pauses, contemplating something. “Lets just say I’ve had a change of heart.”

“But what if I get caught?” I ask, grabbing the door handle. “It’ll fall back on you.”

“Then it falls back on me. Don’t pretend like you care, Layton. No one cares about me. That’s the whole point of being what I am. I’m dispensable so no one will miss me when I’m gone—No one will notice.” She steps out of the car and starts to shut the door, but pauses, lowering her head and looking at me. “Look, I’m giving you a get out of jail free card right now, which I never give. Take it or leave it. Your choice. But you need to tell Lola the truth first before you take off with her.” Then she shuts the door.

She’s never showed any signs of humanity since the day she let me off the hook for getting killed, something she proposed to me for reasons she’s never explained to me. She did seem to get some sort of weird satisfaction off shooting me to near death, though. I’m sure it has something to do with being sent to that God-awful place she went to… the one that my f**king family helps run.

I shake the thought from my mind, not wanting to think about the disgusting things I learned about my family over the last few years, and get out of the car. I open the back door to get Lola out, brush my fingers across her cheek, listen to the soft sound of her breathing. That night she killed one of the Dellefontes men, I saw a part of her die inside. And now… well, she looked so hollow, so numb, so broken when I first saw her. She doesn’t even know who she is anymore. But she’ll never admit it. No, her father made sure of that, telling her over and over again to never show weakness. It’s one of the many things we have in common—shitty parents who have zero parenting skills.

I scoop Lola up in my arms, kick the door shut, then hike up the shallow hill toward the cabin. I take my time, not just because I’m worried about going in, but because I know that this might be the last time I’ll ever get to touch Lola depending on how she reacts to what I have to tell her.

“Fuck, I hate my family,” I mutter under my breath as I open the cabin door.

When I step inside, my first instinct is to set Lola down and pull out my gun. The entire place is dark and empty. I can barely see anything, but then Solana appears in front of me with her knife drawn out.

“I checked it out and we’re safe,” she says, putting the knife away in the pouch attached to her belt. “There’s no one else here.”

“How long do we have to stay here?” I ask as we make our way to the back of the cabin.

“Honestly, I say you two should sleep the night, get some supplies from here and then hit the road. You’re not going to be able to go to an airport or bus station near here—they’ll be keeping an eye on that,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at me then at Lola. “That is if she’ll go with you after you tell her.”

“She will. But I’m unsure myself. “But what are you going to do? You can’t just go back empty handed. You were hired you to track her down and kill her and he’s going to want proof.”

“That’s for me to deal with,” she says indifferently as we reach the back of the house. “Don’t worry. I have a plan. Big, huge, plans.” The last part she says more to herself.

Saying nothing more, we make a turn down a hallway and then duck behind a curtain where we proceed down a set of steps toward a lighted area, going further and further into the house. At the bottom, it opens up into a massive room that looks like a shelter, which I guess is what it is—shelter from being hunted. I’ve been in a couple of them already, over the last couple of year while I was pretending to be dead. This one looks similar; cots, boxes of food, jugs of water, weapons, supplies, and the light is coming from a lantern in the middle of the room, which I’m assuming Solana lit. I set Lola in one of the cots while Solana strolls over and starts looking around at the cans of food on the shelf while slipping off her leather jacket.

“It looks like it’s been a long time since someone’s been down here,” she remarks, running her fingers along the layer of dust covering everything.

“That’s a good thing… it means more people no about it.” I smooth my hand over Lola’s head, wishing things could stay exactly this way, but deep down know that she’s going to wake up and eventually I’m going to have to tell her the whole truth, not just about our pasts, but about my family’s, Frankie’s, her mother’s. And I’m worried that she’s never going to talk to me again. And I’m not sure if I can handle her out of my life again. It nearly killed me the first time.

Chapter 12

Lola

When I open my eyes, I have no idea where I am. In a bed, yes, but where I have no idea. There are people talking someone so I don’t dare move, lying there stirring in my own panic. It feels warm around me, like I have a blanket over me and the air smells like wood and damp earth.

Finally, after lying there for an eternity, I open my eyes. The light stings my eyes and I blink several times until my vision comes into focus. I’m in some kind of storage room with no windows and a lot of shelves with can goods on then. I make out Layton and Solana sitting in fold up chairs not too far away from me, their guns on their laps, having an intense conversation with each other.

I discretely reach around to get my gun out of my jeans but it’s not there. As slowly as I can, I move my arm downward to my boot and draw out my knife, knowing it’s going to be useless against their guns. Then I take a deep breath and before I can back out, I throw the blanket off me and spring up from the bed.