Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94686 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94686 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
I bet that was Dawn’s idea. Not even Chase is that narcissistic. Or is he?
But the first level, Lucy explained, was where Chase and Dawn hosted events together. The rest of his girlfriends sat upstairs, hidden like good little women until they finished.
I guess they can hold emergency meetings downstairs too.
“What time are they coming?” Wendy chugged some of the brown liquid in her glass.
“Chase said he’ll let her know immediately that the date is canceled and that they should go to the house to discuss something with us.” Dawn twisted a gold pen between her fingers.
“I’m really nervous about this.” Lucy held a bushel of green stuff. “Why won’t you let me burn this?”
Dawn sighed. “Because every time you burn sage it just fills the whole place up with smoke and irritates my allergies. Stop being worried. Yancy’s bullying of you is over.”
Lucy still held on to the bushel. “I bet Chase won’t give her up.”
“He’s tired of her,” Wendy slurred. “We all are.”
Dawn took away Wendy’s glass. “Why don’t you stop drinking until after we all meet?”
Instead of bursting out with anger like I’d seen Wendy do with Chase, she nodded and set the glass on the table.
“Dawn’s got those chicks trained,” Troy said.
“All of them except the fourth girlfriends,“ I added.
“Which is why they’re dead.”
“Definitely, but Dawn is too easy of a solution. She’s the ultimate bad guy. Wouldn’t she have made herself less suspicious?”
“Yeah.” He paused the screen. Dawn’s face froze on his laptop. Her lips were curved into a devilish smile. Troy leaned so close to the screen, until his nose was barely two inches away. “It’s not her.”
“Excuse me?”
“She doesn’t look like a killer. Every time I get a good pan on her face, I just can’t see it.”
Oh, please.
“What the hell is a killer supposed to look like?” I snorted.
“It’s hard to describe, but you should know. You walk around them all the time.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Chase, Benny, me, Sherman, Mike—”
I raised my hands. “Okay. Okay. I got it.”
“Think of what all those people I just said have.”
“Hard heads and overconfident swagger.”
“You’re not taking me serious, Jazz.”
I shrugged. “Clearly.”
“Dawn didn’t do it. It’s not in her eyes.”
“Okay. Let’s say that’s true, but she’s not completely innocent.” I considered how she’d given Chase the loaded gun that night when they witnessed Lucy getting raped on the beach. “She might’ve played a part. At least, it wasn’t Dawn’s hands that did the murders, but I bet she orchestrated them.”
Troy exhaled and sat back against the wall, shaking his head the whole time. “Maybe, but that’s too strategic. Dawn can’t act. Killers like the one murdering these girls, they perform. They would have to act normal. Dawn’s emotions are always all over her face. She hides nothing. Anytime she sees Chase with another female, you can see the hate and jealousy. Anytime she’s annoyed, I can guess what she’ll say and how she’ll say it, right before the words even leave her lips. She’s too much of a predictable bitch. Dawn looks and acts like the bad guy, but she can’t scheme like one, at least not a good one. If she did the murders, she would’ve already been caught.”
“So then it’s Lucy or Wendy?” I huffed.
It was his turn to shrug. “Or maybe it is Dawn.”
“I hate you.”
“I’m just stating the facts, sis.”
“No, you’re confusing the shit out of me.”
“You know what you should do, right?”
“Yes, I know. Leave Chase.”
“Yeah, but I got a feeling neither Chase nor this crazy bitch who shot you will leave you alone.” He scratched his head. Dread filled me. My nerves rattled. Beads of sweat appeared around my forehead. Troy checked my face and cursed under his breath as he embraced me in his huge arms. “I forgot you get anxiety attacks.”
My teeth chattered against themselves. “No. This isn’t anxiety. It’s just fear.”
“Just relax. Your big bro is on the case.” He released me and turned back on the video.
“Here, Lucy. Put this up for us.” Dawn handed over Wendy’s drink.
Like a dutiful servant, Lucy dropped her sage on the chair next to her and grabbed the glass. I focused on Wendy and Dawn, straining to hear their whispers.
“What the fuck?” Troy stopped the tape and stared at the screen.
Wendy and Dawn froze in mid conversation. Dawn’s gaze remained on Wendy’s breasts. Wendy’s hands hung in the air in front of her. In the background, Lucy sniffed the glass behind her with an odd expression on her face.
“What’s weird about this picture?” Troy grinned.
“Um. . .I don’t get it.”
He rewound and played the last twenty seconds over again.
“Dawn and Wendy are flirting,” I said.
“Look at Lucy.” He pointed her way. “You see how she’s smelling that glass?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s crazy about that?”
“Man, I don’t know. Just tell me.”
“Lucy doesn’t drink, right?”
I thought back to when Lucy, Wendy, and even Viv hung out at Junior’s, one of my favorite bars in Oshane. We’d all done shots, though Lucy only one. She’d ended up vomiting in the back of the car.