Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Rez grabbed the door knob and braced for whatever they were going to find. On one hand, he hoped Sadie was in the room, on the other… he didn’t.
Because if she was inside this room…
When he pushed the door open, even the bandana wasn’t any kind of barrier to the smell. “Holy fucking shit.” His stomach did a somersault.
“Turn on the light,” Nox said behind him.
Rez didn’t want to turn on the light. He wanted to back up, close the door and go home.
“I don’t know if I can,” he whispered.
The lights turning on blinded him for a second and as soon as his eyes adjusted, he closed them and swallowed hard.
He heard a rush of air from behind him and didn’t open his eyes until he turned to see Nox frozen in the doorway.
Shit.
Fuck.
Shit.
With his face ghost white, Nox’s eyes were glued to whatever he was staring at.
Rez swallowed the bile rising up his throat. “I don’t want to look, do I?”
That got Nox moving. Not into the motel room, but out of it.
He disappeared from view, leaving Rez standing there with his back to the room.
Rez did the sign of the cross, set his jaw and turned. His brain had a hard time wrapping itself around what he was seeing.
Holy fucking shit.
He swallowed the spit flooding his mouth.
He would not puke.
He would not puke.
He. Would. Not. Puke.
It was simply mind over matter.
Pretend this is a crime scene you’re investigating and you don’t have any connections to this person. Pretend you don’t personally know the people that this will affect.
He glanced around, skipping over the bed, until he had no choice but to focus on it. He nodded to himself, trying to get the courage to step closer.
He didn’t bother to check for a pulse. There hadn’t been one for a while.
What remained of Sloane’s sister was nothing but a skeleton with skin like leather stretched over the bones. It wasn’t because she was a decomposing corpse, which she was, it was because nothing had been left of Sadie before she took her final breath.
Rez paced back and forth in the middle of the parking lot, grinding his hand back and forth against the back of his neck.
When he backed out of the room earlier, he had closed the door behind him out of respect for Sloane’s sister. But more important than respect, he needed to prepare Decker when he arrived before his brother saw what was in that room for himself.
He had warned him Sadie was deceased and that what was left of her wasn’t in good shape, but he skipped a lot of the details.
Because, one, he had a hard time saying them until he could compartmentalize everything he saw in his own head.
And two, there were things Decker would need to see for himself. Because if someone told him what it was over the phone, he might not believe them. Decker needed to see the reality and decide what to tell Sloane.
Besides the obvious fact that her sister was dead.
That would be the easiest part of the difficult news.
While her death wouldn’t be a surprise—realistically, it had been somewhat expected—what happened to her after her death would be.
And should be.
Because no one in their right mind could be so… depraved.
But Decker wasn’t the only person he was worried about.
He hadn’t seen Nox since the man walked out of the motel room.
He wasn’t sitting in the car. He wasn’t waiting in the office.
He went completely ghost.
Rez was an asshole. He never considered how Nox would react after seeing what they did.
And his worry was, all the steps Nox had made to break free of the depression caused by the loss of his wife had been completely erased.
That scared Rez. A fucking lot.
Right after his wife died, all of them were concerned that he might off himself. They were finally to the point where they no longer worried that he’d take it that far.
But now…
“Fuck!” he shouted toward the early morning sky.
It had been stupid to bring him along. Rez had been trying to get him out of his self-made cocoon and get him more involved, like with going undercover for the construction, and it just bit him in the ass.
God-fucking-damn it.
Headlights cut across the parking lot, blinding him for a split second before Decker pulled up into one of the empty spots.
Parking was plentiful since only a few rooms were rented. Luckily, most of them closer to the office. The low vacancy meant there wouldn’t be a shitload of lookie-loos once the local cops and the coroner showed up.
And that might happen shortly since he’d already called 911 and talked to the county dispatch center to report what was going on and what they discovered. He also requested they not come code three, barreling into the motel with lights flashing and sirens blaring.