Jake: The Sinner Saints #3 by Adrienne Bell

side of the truck.
    Hold what thought ? The one where, for a brief second, she’d dared to believe that the man she had a massive crush on was about to kiss her senseless on the shore of a lake?
    Yeah, she was fine holding on to that one as long as she needed to.
    A moment later, Jake came back with the binoculars he’d used at the farmhouse. He trained them on one of the cars. And then the other.
    “Shit,” he muttered under his breath.
    “What is it?” Verity asked as tension slowly started to creep up her spine.
    Jake slowly lowered his arms. His expression had gone as hard as stone. “We need to go.”
    “Why? What’s going on?” she demanded. There was something that he wasn’t telling her.
    Jake stared down at the binoculars in his hand as if debating with himself how much to tell her. After a long second, he handed them over.
    “Look in that car over there and tell me what you see,” he said, pointing to the black car that was just cresting the hill.
    Verity held the eyepiece up to her face.
    “Three guys,” she said, as the passengers came into focus. “All of them wearing red bandanas.”
    “Norteños,” Jake said. “They run the Central Valley drug trade.”
    Verity swallowed down past the lump that was quickly growing in her throat. “And you don’t think they’re just out here to enjoy the sunshine?”
    “I doubt it,” Jake said. “And so will you when you see who’s riding shotgun in the other car.”
    Verity scanned the road until she found the second sedan. She had to wait until the car came around the bend before she could get a good look inside the passenger side window.
    Then all the air left her lungs in a rush.
    “Roman,” she said. She let the binoculars fall and turned to Jake. “Do you think he saw me back at the house?”
    Do you think that he knew it was me he was shooting at?
    That was the real question…and the one she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
    “More likely he put it together once he heard it was me that kicked his friend down the hillside,” Jake said.
    “So why the hell is he the one out here now?”
    “Only two reasons I can think of,” Jake said, his voice hard. “Either he doesn’t trust anyone else to capture you, or he wants to be the one to put the bullet in you himself.”
    A chill swept up Verity’s spine. On any other day she would have laughed off the suggestion that Roman would ever want to kill her, but today wasn’t like any day she’d ever known.
    “Do you think they’ve spotted us?” she asked, cursing the quiver that had snuck into her voice.
    “If they had they’d already be hightailing it over here,” Jake said. “But we shouldn’t stick around until they do.”
    Verity gave a shaky nod. “Good idea.”
    She didn’t waste any time hopping back inside the truck. Jake slowly backed up and headed back to the main road that had brought them in, taking care not to gun the engine, or kick up too much dust.
    A familiar silence fell over the cab of Jake’s truck as they made their way back down the road that brought them in. She retook her usual position of staring out the window at the passing scenery. The only difference was now not a single thought that tumbled through her mind brought her a lick of solace.
    She’d failed on every conceivable level. She wasn’t going to save the art. There was no way she could help her brother. Hell, Fate had even stepped in to make sure she blew her one chance to be thoroughly kissed.
    Jake must have sensed her despair, because about a half mile down the road he clasped his hand around her knee.
    “I’m so sorry it had to end this way, Verity,” he said, sounding heartbreakingly sincere.
    “I know,” she said, fighting back the tears and giving her bravest smile. “At least, things can’t get any worse, right?”

Chapter Seven
     
     
    Verity, what the holy hell is going on? Are you all right? Screw that. Are you even still alive?
    Verity’s brows pulled together as she looked down