Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
“What did I make you do?” I asked cautiously, watching as Cora and Luca started to back farther down the hallway.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Frankie move. With Beatrice where she was, she couldn’t see the movement.
“You made me use my body,” she hissed, leaning forward. “Do you know how degrading it is to sleep with men who are with you because you need money?”
No. No, I couldn’t say I did.
“No,” I murmured. “I don’t.”
And never would. I’d work myself into the grave, so my family could have money, but I sure as fuck wouldn’t give my body to someone just to get a little bit of money.
“No, that’s right. You have no idea what it’s like,” she sneered. “I have a father who hates me but loves you. I have no skill sets. I get paid half of what I’m worth, and I still don’t have a job because my father refuses to hire me.”
Amadea looked spooked, and she was blinking rapidly as if she was trying to make sense of what was going on.
Good luck with that, Amadea. We didn’t know, either.
“So, then I have this bright idea to borrow some money from a man,” she kept rambling. “But I couldn’t pay it back fast enough, and I had to get money quick…or else.”
Beatrice looked at Frankie then, and her eyes narrowed.
“I really do love you, baby. But he said he’d forgive the debt if I allowed him to borrow you for a few days,” Beatrice continued.
Then Beatrice lifted a crude looking bomb out of her purse with a timer already counting down.
It read 4:09.
Four minutes and nine seconds.
I sucked in an audible breath.
Then all hell broke loose.
Chapter 26
That moment when you realize that they weren’t waving at you…
-Text from Cora to Coke
Cora
“Did she say she had a bomb?” I whispered to Luca.
Luca grunted. “Yes.”
No bullshitting for my brother. Just a straightforward yes that made my stomach drop to my knees.
“What do we do?” I breathed. “Do we get out? Do we tell other people to get out?”
Then some movement out of the corner of my eye had me turning to see a dog sitting on his haunches, his entire body quivering with expectation.
His eyes were fixed solely on Tyler, and he was slobbering up a storm.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Is that Brutus?”
Luca’s eyes scrunched as he started letting his eyes roam around the hospital, and then he froze with his gaze on who I thought was Brutus.
Luca shook his head. “Brutus is dead, sis. That’s not Brutus.”
The dog that looked remarkably like Reagan’s old dog, that I did now remember had died a few years ago, was sitting in the hallway, slobbering away, quivering with excitement.
Now that I studied the dog, he was a little different than Brutus, though not by much.
“What’s the dog doing here?” Luca whispered. “That dog has to be Reagan’s. Do you see her?”
I looked around but didn’t see her anywhere. “I don’t see her.”
“Fuck, this is the biggest clusterfuck ever,” he whispered. “Oh shit.”
That ‘oh shit’ was because the dog was done with his sitting.
He took two slow steps in the direction of Tyler, the police chief, and then stopped when Beatrice started to really lose it.
What happened next was comical, to say the least.
Beatrice started to scream, Brutus’s ears went back, and Coke lost his patience.
Tyler, the poor man, finally realizing that the dog was in the hospital with everyone, tripped over the dog as he and the big fluff of fur both lunged at Beatrice.
The dog stayed on his feet. Tyler didn’t.
Coke reached forward and ripped both Beatrice’s phone and her purse out of her hands.
The phone fell to the floor, and the dog bent over and…ate it.
Coke, unsure what to do, started to run with the purse in his hands—and my heart leapt into my throat.
Luca finally left his spot at my side and moved to help hold Beatrice down as she started to thrash.
I watched in stunned horror at the intensity with which she was fighting not just Luca but also now my father.
Tyler hurried out in Coke’s wake, and I was left standing there, staring at the spectacle before me.
Frankie was up on her knees, staring at her mother in horror, as was Amadea from an almost identical position in the opposite corner of the nurses’ station.
Doctors and nurses flooded the area, temporarily cutting off my view of everyone—and that was when the man that I hadn’t realized was there struck.
A hand went around my mouth, and another went around my throat.
“Move and you die.” I felt something shoved up underneath my chin.
A gun.
I swallowed thickly.
“I’m going to let you go, but if you scream, I’m going to shoot you in the head. I’ll get away. Trust me. Everyone in the ER is down there right now instead of right here. And if they’re not down there, they’re outside because the stupid, crazy bitch decided to bring a bomb into the hospital.” He chuckled. “Nice touch, though. Would’ve been a perfect distraction.”