What Sinners Love (Sinners of Hawthorne University 3)

I want to shout the words in his face. I want to grab him and shake him until he stops acting so bland and bored by all of this. Instead, I answer calmly, “I’m absolutely sure about what I saw. I’m sure about what Alan said to me. I wouldn’t just make shit up like this.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” Detective Banning says. He glances down at his notes. “You’ve got a solid accusation here. Your report is detailed, your stories line up, and you haven’t contradicted yourself at all.”

Then why don’t I feel like you believe me?

“We’ll look into it when we get the chance,” he concludes, picking up my folder and standing up.

What? No!

I don’t have to turn around to see Gray square his shoulders, straightening up to his full height. He doesn’t like it any more than I do, and he’s not going to let this shit fly.

“No, you’ll check it out right now,” he says, leaning forward. “If you believe Sophie, then you’ll check it out right now. I don’t care about bullshit excuses, I don’t care about the well-connected people who get priority.”

The ones who make bargains or payoffs to ensure that officers turn a blind eye or misplace evidence. The ones who use their massive wealth and power to amass more wealth and power, making sure that people like me are ignored no matter what we say. The system here is screwed, and unfortunately, I know that without Gray’s help, I’d probably make no progress.

“Fine,” the officer says, but he says it almost in a monotone, almost like he doesn’t really care. Turning to me, he asks, “Do you think you could lead us to the bunker?”

Locating the area where Reagan kidnapped me is easy.

Locating the vent isn’t. Luckily, the burnt ring of ground is good for our story’s credibility, and the group of us and a few cops spend nearly an hour searching the ground for the vent I crawled out of. I was so fucking dazed and terrified when I ran from Alan that I didn’t register much of my surroundings, and that fact comes back to bite me in the ass now.

Just as I’m about to give up hope, we find it. My stomach turns as I look at the metal grate that I dislodged to break free, remembering the dawn light appearing in my vision as I made my way through the dark tunnels.

“This it?” Banning asks.

I nod.

“Do you think you could find your way back through the tunnels?” he asks, referencing my story.

“Maybe.”

God, I don’t want to go back down there. But I know I have to.

One of the smaller officers crouches down next to the vent, peering inside. He shines his flashlight around the small tunnel I escaped through. It was barely big enough for him, and I’m really not sure he’ll be able to fit, but he gestures for me to follow him as he crawls into the vent.

“Are you going to be okay?” Elias murmurs, brushing his hand up against my arm before I can take another step. The touch is comforting, and I do my best to swallow back my fear. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Yeah. I do.”

The words bolster me a little, and I step forward and crawl into the forbidding, terrifying hole.

With the cops shining their flashlights behind me, and the one in front of me occasionally grunting as he makes his way through the duct, it takes less time going in than it did escaping. Maybe it’s just because I know I have armed officers in front and behind me this time and I’m not alone. Still, I don’t like it one bit.

And as it turns out, all the effort of getting down into the bunker proves useless.

As we crawl out of the vent in the dim light of the corridor I ran through earlier, my skin chills.

The bunker is completely empty.

I know I ran past things stacked in the hallway when I was making a run for it, but the corridors are completely empty now.

I lead the men to the room I was kept in, and it’s empty too. There isn’t even a sliver of the cracked chair, no sign of the rope that was used to bind me. Anything that could have placed me in this chamber—a blood splatter from my dripping cuts, a scuff mark from my shoe—is gone. Anything that could have placed Alan in here is gone too.

It’s like it never even happened.

So this is what he’s been doing over the past several hours instead of trying to capture me or kill me.

“Fuck,” the shorter officer mutters, his voice echoing through the chamber. “This is creepy as shit.”