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He snorted. “Noted. What is it you think I’m trying to get out of this?”

“On a good day I assume human trafficking. When I’m feeling a little bit more suspicious, I’m inclined toward ritual sacrifice.”

“Well shit, and I thought my cover was going to be blown when you saw the pentagram and the altar in the backyard.”

“I’m just warning you, whatever deity you try to send me to is probably going to send me back.”

She wrinkled her nose. And said nothing about the fact that she would at least be a virgin sacrifice. He didn’t need to know that. Nobody did. It wasn’tlike she thought it made her good or anything.Nothingmade her good.

It was only that it was something that belonged to her. Something that the wretched dregs of the world hadn’t managed to steal. No shitty guy in a tiny apartment, or a dilapidated trailer, had talked her into letting him in her pants for five minutes in exchange for weed or shelter or whatever. She had decided a long time ago she’d rather sleep rough if need be. Again, not because of any kind of moral high ground. It was stubbornness.

The need to have some say over her own life. Her own body.

She’d had a couple guys try to get handsy, and one of them had ended up with a pocketknife through the fleshy part of his hand. Little bitch had cried. And couldn’t do a thing about it. Because if he’d tried to go whining to the police it wouldn’t have gone well for him either.

She wasn’t lying to Daughtry, though. She really didn’t believe anyone did a damn thing out of the goodness of their heart. It was all to serve some greater good for themselves. Or to feed demons inside of them. She wondered which it was for him.

Demons. That was what her gut told her.

She didn’t know why.

“Am I your grand atonement for something?” she asked.

He turned to look at her, one eyebrow raised. “If you were?”

“Lousy pick, dude. But it doesn’t matter to me. I just like things to make sense.”

“Come on now, you can’t be under the impression that the world is actually inclined to make sense.”

She huffed. “Well no. Not really. I know better than that. But I would like to know what manner of sacrifice I actually am. And on what altar? Because that’s the bottom line, Sheriff. There’s always something.”

“My dad was a piece of shit,” he said. “And the truth is, if you had rolled up on the ranch back when he was in charge? I don’t know what he would’ve done. But it wouldn’t have been helping you. Sometimes living in opposition to what you were raised to be is the best you can do.”

Those words settled down beneath her skin. Twisted around inside of her. She didn’t like them. Not especially. They made her uncomfortable. Because she hadn’t done that. Not even a little. She had lived exactly along the lines of what you would expect somebody with her background to live.

She had followed in her dad’s footsteps.

But right and wrong were pretty elastic concepts as long as you weren’t hurting anybody. That was what she’d always been raised to believe.

You had to look out for yourself because nobody else was going to.

They just weren’t.

She couldn’t have any kind of sympathy for another person if she didn’t have her own survival sorted out.

“Well. That makes me feel better,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t trust in random acts of kindness. They just aren’t real. Not to me. Not in my life.”

He made a noncommittal grunting sound, and just then they pulled up to the front of that farmhouse.

At least now she felt human, even if she did look like a small child dressed in clothes that were too big for her.

“My oldest brother is Denver, then there’s Justice. Landry will be there with his wife, Fia. They have a daughter named Lila. My sister, Arizona, is there with her husband, Micah, and their son, Daniel. Rue is my brother Justice’s best friend. And that’s the crew.”

“I’m not going to be able to remember that,” she said.