When I turn back, he avoids my eyes, looking around the room instead. “What is this?”
“An office,” I say. “Maybe the one we’re looking for.”
Saint breaks the lock on the cabinet, and I pull out a drawer. It’s filled with files, each alphabetized. It’s almost too easy… Until we don’t find my sister’s name in the “S” section. I check the “E” section just in case, but she’s not there either.
“Maybe she gave them a fake name,” he says.
“Just like my sister,” I say. “Always making more work for us.”
Saint’s phone chimes, and he texts the others, who soon join us.
“We didn’t see her coming out of any of the rooms,” Mercy says, sounding dejected. “But it’s so wild out there it’s impossible to know if she’s here.”
I hand her a stack of files. “Dig in.”
What started out seeming too easy now looks like a herculean task. The sky outside has darkened further, making it nearly impossible to see the photo on the first page of each folder. Still, I’m beyond thankful they’re included. Otherwise we’d have to read through every single one, trying to guess by description and date which was Eternity. As it is, we still have to flip through every single file looking for her picture.
We pull stacks of files from the drawers, rifling through and leaving them strewn across the floor. Saint takes a pile to the window, closing it against the first fat raindrops pelting down. Dante takes a stack to the huge wooden desk, finds an old-fashioned candelabra with half-burned candles, and lights each one. We work by whatever light we can, ignored by the residents still rioting outside, stampeding back and forth, fighting the guards who try to subdue them. We’re on borrowed time, though, and we become increasingly desperate as we fail to find her.
I pull open the last cabinet, which has W-Z tabs. I’m about to pull out the first folder when the sections behind the Z catch my eye. They’re packed with folders with blank tabs. I pull out a handful and open one. The photo on the first page is stamped with one word in red ink.
My heart starts pounding, erratic and wild, as I frantically flip through one after another, each stamped with that same word. And then, at last, it stops beating altogether, unable to do anything but crumble. Because for the first time in four years, I’m staring at a new picture of my sister. And there, across her face in ink as red as the blood on their hands, is the same word stamped on the others: DISCARD.
seventeen
The Salvation
We’re all elbows deep in files when Heath suddenly shoots to his feet and bolts out the door without a word.
“That was weird,” Mercy says, crawling toward the file he left open.
For a moment, I’m too distracted by the sight of her round, plump ass raised toward me to register anything else. I can feel the softness of her hips in my hands even now, the trembling surrender in her body, the agonizing tightness of her heavenly cunt stretched around my cock to its furthest limit.
“Oh my god,” she gasps, snapping me back to our predicament.
“What?” Angel asks.
“Oh my god,” she says again, sinking onto her heels with a paper pinched between her fingers. “He found her. She’s really here.”
“She was here,” I say, after stepping over the folders strewn across the office floor to look over Mercy’s shoulder. “It would appear that’s no longer the case.”
“Fuck,” Saint says, turning on his heel. “I’ll go after him.”
“He won’t hurt anyone,” I say gently. “Let him get it out.”
“I’m not worried about him hurting anyone else,” Saint snaps. “Look what happened last time we left him alone. And that was before—” He gestures to the papers, unable to bring himself to speak the words, and stares at the rain-streaked windowpane instead of the files.
“I’ll go with,” Angel says. “No use staying here if we already know.”
I nod, and they leave the office. Mercy’s still sitting on the floor, staring at the paper as if unable to comprehend. I’ve never met the girl they’ve gone to all this trouble for, but she was enough to make them all fall in love with her, each in their own way. That alone tells me she was special, even if I can’t share in their grief. I’ve grieved my own losses, though, so even though I can never truly understand the anguish they feel in this moment, I understand enough. I feel for them, hurt for each of them, even if I can’t join them in the hurt. What I can do is be there to hold them together in this trying time.
I sink onto the floor on my knees beside Mercy. It seems fitting for the gravity of the situation, both an honoring of the girl who is gone and an acknowledgement of the insurmountable pain of the one who remains. She kneels there, as if in supplication to the indifferent God who caused so much suffering for so long, letting them keep the cruelest of all torments for four years.Hope.
“She can’t be gone,” Mercy whispers, talking to herself more than to me. “This can’t be the end. After all this time…”
“I’m sorry,” I say simply, my chest aching with her pain, with the pain of what’s to come for each member of the group.
“No,” she says fiercely. “Don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t say she’s gone. It doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say she’s dead. Maybe—Maybe—”
