Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 135958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
What I saw there doubled my shiver.
Death.
He was promising it to me.
“I will not gamble with the lives of those I care about, and you’re one of them now.” He stepped back, his hands leaving me, and I was suddenly chilled to the bone.
His head lowered, and his eyes locked with mine. “You are not coming with me.”
Got it? I felt the sentiment, but he didn’t say the words.
He didn’t say anything else as he went to the closet and pulled on a shirt, then a sweatshirt. He didn’t say a word as he finished dressing and picked up the phone by the bed.
“I’m ready,” he said into the phone.
He paused, looking at me.
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t fight him. He wasn’t going to budge on this matter.
The door clicked shut behind him, soft but final.
• • •
The door opened again ten minutes later, but it was Brooke who slipped through.
I tightened my hold on the sheets. “Wha—”
“We have one hour, literally one hour.”
“What are you talking about?”
She moved inside, and I was able to see her better—hair pulled into a low ponytail, dressed all in black, even her runners. Brooke always smelled of perfume, but today she smelled of nothing. Not even soap.
She pulled her backpack off and opened the front pocket. Dumping passports, phones, and money, she pointed at it. “Kai is leaving for Milwaukee, and whether Levi is going too or if he’s being shipped in a different vehicle, I don’t care. I just know my man is with him, and whatever move he’s making with the man I love, I’m going to be there.”
She looked at me. “You can make people disappear. It’s your turn to disappear, and you’re taking me with you.”
“But…” I was already looking through everything she’d dumped on the bed.
We had different IDs. Plenty of cash. I stopped counting after I saw ten rolls of hundreds. I picked up one of the phones. “Burners?”
“You got it.” She folded her arms over her chest, raising her chin.
My mind raced, but I wanted to go.
Something sparked inside of me.
This. This was right.
This was what I did.
“Your brother has people in the Network. We can’t call them.”
“Already on it.” She pulled out her phone and showed me a screen of text messages.
I recognized an alias Blade had used one time. Just once. It’d been him, Carol, and me, and we’d snuck out to a nightclub and didn’t want the Network to know. He was a goddamn genius.
I felt myself smiling.
“I’m in.”
She looked up and made a praying motion. “Thank God.” A quick squeal, and she was on her phone. “Okay, your friend is two miles from here to pick us up. We need to trek two miles through the woods in an hour.”
“Why an hour?”
I was off, running to the closet to change. There was no time for modesty. Brooke was about to see me naked, and I tore through the clothes, throwing them into the room.
“You have a bag for me too?” I called.
“Of course.”
“Put those in there.”
“Okay.”
I felt my heart in my throat. The clock had started ticking the second Brooke entered the room. I was wasting time, and we needed all the time we could get.
I pulled on a shirt. “You work out?”
“Yes…”
I held back a groan. She sounded hesitant. “What do you do for conditioning?”
“I swim. Sometimes.” She snorted. “Hardly ever.”
Fuck. If it was just me, I’d run there in under twenty minutes, give or take a few because of the foreign terrain.
Which reminded me, “Why an hour, Brooke?”
“Because that’s all the time we have before the next shift of guards switches at the security cameras.”
I wasn’t going to ask.
Shit.
I had to know. “What happened to the other guards?”
“I might’ve drugged ’em.”
I paused, one second, then yanked on my pants. Socks. Shoes. I had an extra set of clothes in the bag now.
“And I gave one an entire bottle of laxatives.”
“What?!” I popped my head out.
She cringed, standing with both bags over her shoulder. “I’m pretty sure he’ll have to go to the hospital.” She brightened up. “But bonus! That might help us.”
I glared. “No, it won’t. Protocol will be to check on both of us before they dispatch a team to the hospital. We have less than an hour now.”
“How long do you think?”
I led the way to the back patio. I paused before opening the door. “It depends on when someone finds him or he finally calls for help.”
“Oh.” She cringed.
“What?”
She dug inside her bag and pulled out a radio. “I figured we could use it to listen to them.”
Oh. My—I grabbed her face and kissed her on the cheek. “Sweet Jesus, you’re brilliant.”
She shrugged. “Just tried to think what you’d do. You helped me the first time, so I thought we could help each other this time.”