Convict (Sin City Salvation 2)

“I wanted you to see this.” Trouble gazed down the street in the direction of my own personal hell, a place I’d never planned to return to.

“What the fuck is going on?” I demanded, my fingers inching toward the door handle. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Just watch,” she murmured.

“Fuck you,” I snarled, trying unsuccessfully to open the door. I needed to get out of here. Already, my throat felt like it was closing up. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think straight. Why would she bring me here?

“Child lock.” Trouble offered me an apologetic glance. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Birdie.”

I couldn’t understand her motive for bringing me back to this place. Had Ace told her to do this? Had he decided the best thing for both of us was to dump me back in the hell I’d crawled out of?

“There.” She pointed, and against my better judgment, my gaze followed her finger. What I saw coated my lips with the familiar taste of acid. The hands of time had reached out and pulled me back to the past, and in the reflection of that young girl standing on the rickety porch, I saw myself. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Yet she was a professional, welcoming a man in a suit before he quickly ushered her into his car. Her head disappeared while he reclined his seat, and she didn’t come back out for another fifteen minutes.

I hadn’t eaten anything all day, but I wanted to vomit. I begged Trouble to leave, but the car never moved. The girl exited the vehicle up ahead and walked back to the stairs, sitting down to wait for the next guy to come along. And they did. They came one by one in their slick suits and luxury cars. Some slipped inside the house, others preferred the sanctuary of their own vehicles, where they could drive away at a moment’s notice.

I didn’t want to believe it was real. In my mind, this house and everything inside it had imploded the day Gypsy and I ran from here. There was nothing left. It was an empty shell with no discernible heartbeat. A broken slab of wood in a concrete ghetto. But it was evident that time had not changed anything. Even Ricky’s death had not changed a thing. Monsters still lurked on these streets. Young girls still had their innocence ripped away. And everything I had done was for naught.

“It’s still happening,” Trouble said. “Every day, girls like you are still tortured here.”

“Why are you doing this?” My voice was little more than a whisper. “Do you hate me that much?”

“There’s only one way to fix this.” She turned to me, her expression a cocktail of shame and self-preservation. “You can make this all go away. You can still save Ace.”

“Ace?” I blinked through my cloudy eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Joe Crocker was pulled out of a dumpster behind Ace’s shop this morning,” she said. “Does that name sound familiar at all?”

My chest squeezed, and I blurted out a response before I could stop myself. “That’s impossible. I just talked to him last week.”

Jumbled thoughts ping-ponged around my brain as I tried to make sense of what she said. How did she even know who Joe was? And if it was true, how did he end up in a dumpster behind Ace’s shop? None of it seemed plausible. But then the worst of it hit me. The cops. Would they think Ace had done this?

Once Trouble saw that I was on the same page as her, she continued. “This looks really fucking bad, Birdie. Ace is an ex-felon with a history of murder that some people still believe he committed. He could go down for this.”

“How the fuck did this happen?” I rocked forward and tried to drag in a breath. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know,” Trouble answered. “But whoever dumped him there wanted this to come back on Ace. Someone who knows both of you, if I had to guess.”

My throat burned with the truth I was too ashamed to admit. My past was ruining everything, just as I’d always known it would. It was staining my future, pulling Ace into its poisonous grasp.

“What can we do?” I stared down the street at the rickety little shack I used to call home, hopelessness the only void in sight.

Trouble took a breath, her voice marked with regret for the only answer she had to give me. “I think you already know.”

I did know. No matter how many times I’d tried to avoid it, history kept catching up with me. I couldn’t outrun it. And now, I refused to let it ruin Huck’s life too. All I ever wanted to do was protect my sister. But I needed to protect him too. More than I needed air to breathe. There was only one way out of this nightmare, and it was through hellfire.