Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
It was late fall.
The days were shorter.
So it was sometime between noon and four-thirty or five. That wasn’t exactly a narrow window, but it was something.
Had I been gone long enough for Brock to worry?
Had he tracked down the car yet? Was he on his way to save me?
“If you think that new investigator of yours is going to find you,” Ritchie said, making my head loll over to find him sitting in a papasan chair near a wall of windows that were painted in different colors, making the world outside impossible to see, “you’re mistaken. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I left the car in that lot,” he said, making my heart feel constricted in my chest.
Because in that car was literally the only thing that made it possible for Brock to find me.
I mean, if I hadn’t thought to suspect Ritchie, what were the chances that Brock would?
“Cmmll,” I mumbled, brows pinching at the slurred sound of my voice. “Cmmlltll,” I tried again.
Cam will tell him was what I was trying to say. Cam will tell him that we didn’t have a lunch date.
When Brock got home and didn’t see me there, when he couldn’t get a hold of me via my phone, he would absolutely reach out to Cam, since he believed I was with him.
Cam would clear things up.
Brock would find some way to circle back to Ritchie. I didn’t doubt him for a moment.
The problem was if he would be able to locate me quickly enough. Before Ritchie did something crazy.
I understood my role here.
What woman hadn’t heard about how she was supposed to handle a situation where she was taken?
You were supposed to try to humanize yourself to them while you also tried to sympathize with them and their motivations for wanting to hurt you.
But my damn voice wasn’t working.
How was I supposed to try to distract him and drag all of this out if my tongue was fat and useless in my mouth?
Maybe if I focused more, my brain would fire right, and then my lips and tongue and voice box would work in unison.
Okay.
Focus.
The room.
It was slightly unfinished with its brick walls and cement floors. But they weren’t the typical gray. Or, rather, they weren’t only the typical gray. They were splattered in shades of pink, yellow, green, and blue.
Paint?
Yes, paint.
That was the smell that I’d noticed earlier.
The other scent, the strong, headache-inducing one, that was paint thinner for the brushes.
My gaze lifted, finding easel and large canvases all scattered around.
They were just… splotches. Abstract.
They weren’t my style, so I immediately thought they weren’t great.
But had they been done by Ritchie?
Was this his… studio?
I did vaguely remember Cam mentioning trying to encourage Ritchie’s hobbies since he still hadn’t “found his path in life” like Cam thought he personally had.
Was this how he’d encouraged it? By renting him out a studio to tinker in?
Even partially-finished studio space in the city had to be expensive. Which was a testament to how much Cam cared for his boyfriend.
I couldn’t help it.
My heart cracked a bit for Cam, for this truth he was going to need to face, whether I lived or not. How he would blame himself. Especially because I was taking the heat for a decision he had ultimately made. A dream he had crushed.
If not for Cam insisting on putting an end to it, I probably would have gone through with the process, but only put the bare minimum amount of money into, so no one ever really saw the ad. Just to appease a man who meant a lot to the man who meant a lot to me.
“Cam,” I murmured, not really intending to, but at least it came out clearly.
“What about him?” Ritchie asked, twirling something around in his hand, and it took me all of a second to realize what it was.
A knife.
Could it be the same one that had cut me?
Had he held onto it like a souvenir?
How was he going to use it on me this time?
Surely, he wasn’t just going to quickly slit my wrist again. He wouldn’t have bothered to drug and bind me if that was the case.
Did that speak to his sanity slipping?
Was that better or worse for me when it came to stalling for time?
“I…I… is he okay?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” Ritchie asked, shrugging it off.
I wasn’t really conscious of thinking the thoughts before they were spilling out of my lips.
“Because he was the one to tell me to fire you.”
There was no taking it back once it was out.
The best I could do was try to use it to my advantage.
Maybe it would confuse him, split his rage.
It was possible I just put Cam in danger too. But if Ritchie left to try to get Cam and bring him back as well, it gave me a chance to get up and get away, get help for myself and for Cam.