Doubt (Sinners and Saints #4)

Chapter 1 Faith

FAITH

Oh my God, he’s dead, and I’m holding the knife that killed him.

Blood. Even in the darkness, that’s all I could see as it pooled on the earth like spilled wine. All I could smell, with its metallic tang coating the back of my throat.

Moonlight dappled through the trees, illuminating the crumpled figure on the forest floor.

What the hell happened?

Why was I holding this blade?

Why couldn’t I remember using it?

Why was I in the woods? At night? Alone with whoever this guy was?

Why did my head hurt so damn bad?

I touched my skull and hissed. Loss of blood makes thoughts fuzzy, Faith.

I wish I could say I’d never seen this much blood before, but that would be a lie.

My abusive foster father’s head had bled plenty after my brother, Blake, bashed it in with a bat to save my life.

That scene should have registered as more shocking, what with brain matter literally stuck to the walls.

But this felt different. More visceral.

I’d survived thirteen years of violence. Thirteen years of fists and fear and learning to make myself small. I’d clawed my way out of that hell, built something clean and safe and good. All that blood and pain was supposed to be behind me. I was supposed to be done with this.

But now here I was, my trembling hand holding a blood-soaked knife.

Making my thoughts echo the same question again: What the fuck happened?

What happened? another voice seemed to chime in. There’s a dead man lying on the ground in a lake of blood. Blood is dripping off the knife in your hand. Put two and two together, Faith. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist.

I stumbled back.

This can’t be happening.

Oh, it’s happening. You might not know why or how or what, but it’s definitely happening.

Even though he was face down, I could see that his torso wasn’t rising like it would if he was breathing. His body was too limp, lifeless.

This has to be a mistake. Maybe he fell or—

Tell you what. Why don’t you stand here, holding a bloody knife, and wait to see what the police say happened? You know how great law and order has worked for you in the past.

Still, I needed to call the police. That’s what you did when you found a dead body, right? But what would I even say? That I woke up, standing over a corpse, with no memory of how I got here? That I was covered in blood and holding a knife, but had no idea what happened?

The dark forest pressed in around me. Pine needles and damp earth. Even the owls had gone silent, like they couldn’t believe what had happened.

Tears pricked my eyes, but I swallowed them down, my gaze darting between the trees. Looking for what? An explanation? Help? A way out of this nightmare?

Through the darkness, amber light blurred in the distance.

That familiar orangey-neon hue I knew too well: the barbed wire perimeter of the penitentiary.

Which meant I was close to the mansion my brother, Blake, frequented with his friends.

The place he’d dubbed the Sinners and Saints Club.

The place he’d told me to come if I ever needed anything.

Anything at all.

I bet he never imagined this though. Maybe if I’d called him before this man’s lungs stopped moving, my brother, an emergency room doctor, could have helped him. But one glance at the lifeless form confirmed nothing could bring this guy back to life.

Still, Blake had insisted that if I were ever in trouble, he or his friends would do whatever they could to help me.

But what could any of them actually do for this?

Jace Lockwood was a billionaire who ran a corporation.

He solved problems with money and power, not blood-soaked mysteries in the woods.

Axel Pierce had his own business empire, which meant lawyers and press teams and a reputation to protect, and Knox was locked up in that very penitentiary whose lights I could see glowing through the trees.

None of them could help me. Not with this.

But Ryker … Ryker was a criminal defense attorney. He defended people who—

People who what? Stand over dead bodies, holding murder weapons?

The thought punched through my chest. Yes.

Exactly that. I was in a shit ton of trouble—that much I knew.

And Ryker would know what to do. He’d know whether I should call the police or run.

Whether this nightmare had any hope of an explanation that didn’t end with me in handcuffs.

He dealt with crime scenes and evidence and blood …

Even in the limited moonlight, I could see it painted across my skin. Blood coated my legs, my arms, my dress.

And my head … it was pounding and piercing, all at the same time.

I brought my free hand to my throbbing skull again and pulled it back, slick with fresh crimson. My blood. The realization hit like ice water: my blood was mixing with his, creating a trail that would lead investigators straight from his body to me.

Oh my God, what was wrong with me? I was thinking about evidence right now? Seriously? How twisted was that?

As if trying to answer my question, my skull throbbed with fresh crushing pain, and my vision began to blur.

You cannot pass out. Run, Faith. Now. Before it’s too late!

I took off sprinting toward my brother’s mansion.

My breath came in ragged gasps as I pounded across the cold, damp earth.

My bare feet slapped against roots and stones (why were my feet bare?), but I barely felt the pain.

All I could think about was reaching that mansion, praying my brother and his friends would be there tonight.

Praying that Ryker could save me from whatever the hell I’d stumbled into.

But suddenly, I froze.

Maybe running was a terrible idea? I mean, you don’t flee a scene unless you’re guilty, right?

And with this splitting headache, I had no idea what had just happened in these darkened woods.

Plus, I reminded myself that with my head bleeding, I was leaving a DNA trail, clear as breadcrumbs, leading from the guy to me.

Maybe I should just stay. Or find someone to call the police after all.

Without Ryker there to protect you? Come on, Faith. You’ve learned the hard way police have never had your back! Why would they start now?

Plus, protecting myself from this didn’t just affect me.

I ran a program for aged-out foster teens.

I’d opened my own safe house, literally saving kids from the system that had failed me.

Kids like Brooklyn, who’d been bounced through seven homes before landing on my doorstep with cigarette burns on her arms and terror in her eyes.

Kids like Todd, who hadn’t spoken for three months after his last placement until I sat with him every night, reading until he finally whispered, “Thank you.”

Just last week, Todd had laughed. Actually laughed at something stupid I’d said while making dinner. It had taken eight months to get there. Eight months of patience and consistency and proving I wouldn’t leave.

If I went down, what would happen to them?

They’d be homeless, unprotected. Thrown back into the hell on earth they’d been in before they’d found me.

I couldn’t let that happen.

So, I turned and ran toward the only man I trusted to help me.

Ryker.

The man whose silvery-blue eyes had been finding mine across crowded rooms for months now, holding just a beat too long before we both looked away.

The man who’d planted both palms against that bastard’s chest in Axel’s penthouse lobby and shoved him backward when the guy wouldn’t stop crowding me.

The same day we’d kissed for the first time, his mouth hungry and his hands in my hair.

The man I’d been trying so damn hard not to want.

But racing through the woods, I felt the truth crack wide open in my chest: I didn’t just need his help.

I needed him. That quiet intensity he carried like a weapon, the one that made me feel safer and more exposed, all at once.

The mansion loomed ahead, all stone and shadows. The front door was unlocked, and I burst through it and into the warmth of the living room.

Four men shot out of their chairs at the poker table, cards scattering. My brother, Blake. Jace. Axel.

And Ryker.

For a beat, he looked at me like he was thrilled to see me.

That same relieved expression he always wore when he found me at our friend get-togethers, like maybe I had been on his mind all night.

His thoughts preoccupied with the chemistry we’d been failing to fight off for weeks now.

The same way I felt when I finally saw him after days apart.

That bone-deep ease, like my body had been holding itself rigid until he was near again.

But in the blink of an eye, his expression hardened. His beautiful eyes, which were normally so blue, they reminded me of a sapphire sparkling under museum lights, darkened to a midnight cobalt and widened in horror as they scanned my body head to toe.

Taking in my appearance. My disheveled clothes. My trembling body. But most of all, the blood coating my skin and hair.

For an instant, he seemed terrified that this blood must mean I’d been hurt. His gaze caught on my face, my arms, searching for the source with an urgency that made me want to run to him.

Until the blade in my hand dropped to the ground with a sickening clank.

His eyes snapped to the knife. Then back to my face. The horror in his expression shifted into something else. Something that looked almost like devastation. Something that looked like a man watching his worst nightmare come to life.

“I need a lawyer.”