Page 124 of Hostile Saint

His lying scared me because lying wasn’t part of his nature. He’d tell you to fuck off, but he never lied. What had him uncharacteristically unable to tell me to mind my own business?

He couldn’t because it was my business.

Since his hands were tied by club rules, I had to find the missing clue that he had figured out. With him lying twice, I knew it had to be a doozy.

Like a hound, my mind raced through all the details I had learned so far. There was my dad, my mom, the kidnapping—

“Lynx, why do you think the facility wanted my mother back but not Lacey’s?”

Lynx’s eyes widened with alarm before he tried to disguise it. “Huh? Not sure.”

Huh was clearly Lynx’s word to buy him time to think of another lie.

I was onto something. “Lynx, you appreciate me because I’m not stupid, right?”

He smirked. “And other reasons, but yeah, you’re right. I happen to think you’re very intelligent.”

“Thank you.” I dipped my chin. “Being somewhat intelligent, I can’t help but wonder why these people—who murder others without a second thought—bothered to kidnap my mom at all, and not just kill her.”

“Huh?”

Getting bored with his time buying bullshit, I flat out asked, “Why did my mom’s kidnappers bother to hide that she was still alive, able to hold my wife as a child and hum to her when she was supposed to be dead? They’re the ones who created my mom’s death certificate, right?”

My Prez sucked on his teeth.

My nostrils flared. “At least you stopped lying.”

“Watch it, Pup.”

Okay, so I now knew my mom had value, but why? She had been a kid at that school, but now was an adult—a mother. Why did they still want her? For that matter, hadn’t my dad and Lace’s mom been at that facility? Why did those two hold no value? What detail had I not given much thought to…Wait. “The men who owned the homes before Lace and I did.” As if someone had unlocked certain compartments in my mind, I was suddenly seeing things I had never considered. “Ed and Ted. The scientists.”

Lynx’s eyes widened again, then squinted as if I was now pissing him off.

I must be super close now.

Suddenly wanting distance from the truth I was starting to unravel, I leaned back. “W-What the hell would scientists have to do with satanic fanatics?”

As grey eyes bore into me, a muscle in his jaw ticks.

“Jesus, Lynx, what are you saying?”

“Not a damn thing.”

This can’t be! “W-What, they experimented on the kids or something?”

Now, his nostrils flared, reminding me where I got it from.

I leaned back further, picturing a kid strapped to a table in a cold white surgical room, while mad scientists poked and prodded—

Unexpectedly, I remembered Doctor Landon’s hypnosis on Lacey, how she had spoken of enduring something eerily similar when a child. Our brothers had Lacey on a table in the garage, forcibly restraining her, right before her father found them torturing her.

“No.” I cringed, somehow finding ‘experiments’ worse than all the horror that had already happened to my Pretty Girl, because, if I was right, then there was a possibility that the brothers had been mimicking things they had witnessed. “You’re wrong, Lynx.” There had been rape, asphyxiation, cuts, burns, stabbings… “You have to be wrong.”

Lynx’s eyes slid shut as if begging for mercy, for my sake, his, and poor Lacey’s.

Wishing there wasn’t yet another fucking grim element to my wife’s life, my head lolled over my shoulders, losing its strength. “You lied to me earlier. Please, do it again, right now.”

With the courage I needed him to exude, Lynx slowly shook his head.