Jegudiel (Deadly Virtues 2)

Hearing their voices in the main section of the tunnels, she pushed through the old wooden door and blinked in the lights that illuminated the rooms.

“The wanderer returns,” Dinah said, getting up from the table she’d been sitting at, next to where Candace and Jo were working at their computers.

Noa reached into her pocket and tossed the USB stick at Dinah. Dinah’s rich dark skin and ebony eyes shone under the warm electric light they’d built into the tunnel’s ceiling as she caught it and smiled at Noa. “And she delivers again.”

“Was there any doubt?” Noa said, eyebrow raised, and walked to the refrigerator to get a bottle of water.

She took a long drink, soothing her dry throat, and Dinah said, “No. But I still like giving you shit for it anyway.” Noa held up her middle finger at her friend as Dinah passed the USB to Jo.

Jo brought up the many account details Noa had managed to steal. Dinah whistled when the screen filled with a mass of passwords and accounts and the stacks of money that would be in their hands in a matter of hours. “Rich fucking bastard, isn’t he?”

“Not for long.” Noa perched her ass on the table beside Jo.

Jo cracked her fingers then turned to Candace, her girlfriend. “Ready, babe? We’ve got some work to do.”

“Always,” Candace said. Dinah met Noa’s eyes and nudged her head to the side of the room. Noa left Candace and Jo to do their thing and steal an eye-watering amount of money from the piece of filth who pumped his wealth into keeping the Brethren steeped in funds.

As Noa reached a nook in the hollowed-out tunnel, Dinah stopped and said, “We’ve got five targets next. But they’re connected, so we’ll have to do all five in one night, or they’ll just shut down and move somewhere else.”

Noa nodded and glanced down the next tunnel. Naomi was at the bottom, carrying a couple of metal bowls of blood from Bethany’s room. Noa’s chest ached. “How is she?” she asked, reaching for an apple from the fruit bowl beside her.

Dinah sighed, pushing back her long box braids from her face. “Okay. She’s coming to the end of her recent episode.”

Noa dropped her head back against the cold stone of the tunnel. “Which doctor’s next?”

Dinah sat beside Noa on the ledge of rock she was perching on and watched Jo’s and Candace’s hands fly over the keyboards like furied machines made of flesh and bone. “No idea.” Dinah met Noa’s eyes. “How many times can we be told that there’s nothing actually wrong with her before we accept it’s all in her head?”

Noa felt the familiar rise of anger in her gut. She breathed, gritting her teeth to push it back down. It was an exhausting effort, to leash the fury that constantly threatened to spill over the airtight container she’d wrestled it into years ago. It was them. They’d done this. To her. To them all.

The motherfucking Brethren.

“We’ll fix her,” Noa said when she’d calmed down. “Someday, we’ll find a way to fix her.”

“Until then …” Dinah crossed the room to get the ledger they had stolen from the Brethren months ago. She turned to the page they would need. “There’s one or two in each home.”

Noa’s lip curled in disgust. “Let’s get this set up and get in there as quick as we can.” She looked at Candace, all dirty-blond hair and blue eyes, then Jo, with her deep brown skin and hair that spoke of her Indian heritage. They were focused and busy sucking funds from the Brethren benefactor Noa had stolen from that night. But the money she stole never lasted. They always needed more to clear up the shitshow that was the Brethren’s cruelty, more to help all the ever-growing line of Brethren victims. “Is Katie able to take on more?” she asked Dinah.

Dinah exhaled a slow breath. “There’s no more room, but we’ll have to make it work somehow. We can’t leave them with the priests. Anywhere will be better than being kept in their homes and put through fuck knows what.”

Noa closed her eyes, giving herself a few seconds to feel the devastation their work provoked—the anger, the hate, the pure assault of emotions that came with her and her sisters’ lives, that came with walking into the priests’ lairs and always finding more than they’d expected—and she always imagined the worst.

Opening her eyes, she pushed the gutting ache from her soul and shut everything down. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to function. She’d learned long ago to calm the anger within, the darkness that would take control if she didn’t bring it to heel.

“I’m going to shower, then I’ll be ready.” Noa made her way down the tunnel and toward the small caves that made up their bedrooms. Naomi almost ran into her as she came out of her room holding damp washcloths. Her redheaded sister looked exhausted.