I blink, slowly, stunned. “Your family has a church…that feels aggressively off-brand.”
Sterling shrugs one shoulder. “Older generations bought the land, slapped a cross on it, and forgot it existed. My mother used to talk about going there when she needed to think.” He air-quotes the last word. “Which, in hindsight, should’ve been a red flag.”
“So this is one of her little nostalgia spots,” I groan. “Great. Love that for us.”
“Maybe, or maybe she just liked having somewhere no one else paid attention. Either way, I doubt anyone’s touched it since she disappeared.”
“And why do we care now?”
“Because when people like her say they need a place to think, what they really mean is a place to stash things they don’t want anyone to find,” he says. “If she kept anything off the record- notes, photos, a clue where she crawled off to next- it’ll be there.”
“So you’ve been sitting on a secret creepy chapel your mom used to escape to,” I say, “and decided now is the moment to go play in it?”
“I’ve been actively forgetting it existed,” he corrects. “Reyes jogged my memory. Congratulations to her, I guess.”
“In other words,” I say, “you want to take me to your family’s dark little church because it’s the only place she ever mentioned that isn’t in someone else’s files.”
“Pretty much,” he says. “Don’t make it weird.”
“Opening with St. Jude’s already made it weird,” I point out, arching a brow.
Sterling gives me a flat look that doesn’t quite hide the spark in his eyes. “Are you coming or are you scared of some ghosts?”
“Obviously, I’m coming.” I set my mug down. “I’m not letting you walk into a gothic nightmare alone. I’ve seen how that movie ends.”
“Ground rules,” he says. “If I say sit, you sit. If I say we leave, we leave.”
“Oh wow,” I fake a swoon, voice dripping in sarcasm. “Bossy and controlling before nine in the morning. Be still, my heart.”
“You’re barely able to stand for long periods,” he says. “I’m making sure you don’t fall apart out of spite while I’m reading Angelina’s old mail.”
“Spite holds stuff together well,” I argue. “Now grab the keys. We’ve got a church to haunt.”
The road to St. Jude’s is nothing but bad decisions and blind corners. Trees lean over the cracked asphalt, bare branches knitting together overhead until the truck’s headlights carve a narrow tunnel of skeletal limbs.Someone should have repaved this stretch a decade ago. Sterling handles the wheel like it’s a dance—loose and precise. The truck is almost like an extension of whatever storm is brewing inside him. One hand rests on the steering wheel, the other on his thigh, fingers drumming out a silent rhythm only he can hear. It’s been quiet for the last twenty minutes. “You’re brooding,” I finally say.
He doesn’t look over. “You’re projecting.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But your jaw is doing that clench thing. That seems to be either you’re about to do something reckless or thinking about murder.”
Sterling flashes that slow, melting grin, the one that should come with a warning label. “Newsflash,” he drawls, voice low and velvet rough. “I’m always thinking about murder.”
A blush creeps up my neck, heat stinging my cheeks. “Hot. Which one is it now?”
Sterling exhales a deep breath. “Little of both.”
“You ever think about therapy?”
“Nope,” he shakes his head. “I’d rather not be psychoanalyzed…unless you’re going to be my therapist.”
I smile slightly, “Only in your nightmares.”
Sterling takes the next curve a little too fast, gravel spitting from under the tires. My body slides toward him, the seatbelt cutting into the bruise high on my hip. I bite back a hiss. His hand is instantly off his thigh and on my knee, steadying. “You good?”
“Define good,” I say through my teeth. “I’m not dead. And I didn’t bleed on your seats.”
“High bar,” he mutters. He eases off the gas as the trees thin out. “Is this it?” I ask.
The truck crests a small rise, and there it is. St. Jude’s sits just off the road on a low hill, hunched against a slate-colored sky. The stone is dark with age and damp, ivy crawling up one side. The stained glass is shattered in most of the windows, jagged edges of red and blue shards clinging to the frames. The steeple leans just enough to look drunk. The sign out front is half-rotted, one chain broken, so it hangs lopsided. Whatever name was painted on it has been worn down, no longer legible. “Subtle,” I say. Sterling pulls the truck onto the patch of weed-riddled gravel that might once have been a parking lot. Killing the engine, silence rushes in. For a second, neither of us moves. “This is where she used to come?” I ask quietly.