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)
“I don’t envy you having to tell her,” Finn muttered.
“Not just tell her but she’ll insist on seeing Sadie one last time. She might even have to ID her body. For fuck’s sake. I’m not sure how to tell her. I fucking have no clue. Jesus fucking Christ!”
“The identification doesn’t have to be done by Sloane. Will her parents do it instead of her?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered, dropping his head and shaking it. “Honestly, they might not give a shit. Hopefully, the locals and the coroner will take my word that the,” he glanced at the closed motel door, “woman in there is Sadie.”
“It is her for sure, right? I shouldn’t have assumed since she looks so,” Rez grimaced, “different from her photos.”
“It’s her. Goddamnit! I was hoping for a better outcome.”
“All of us know it’s the reality of addiction. You know better than anyone because of Amelia. But it’s why we’re working on this task force, brother. We’ll never completely stop the flow of drugs, but we can hope to reduce it.”
Decker sighed. “It’s an uphill battle, for fucking sure. Sometimes it seems like a waste of time. We stop this pipeline and another one will open up because of greed. Pure fucking greed. The mighty dollar is worth more than human life.”
“That applies to more than drugs,” Finn muttered.
Wasn’t that the fucking truth?
With his hands on his hips, Decker turned toward the room and stared at it for a few moments, most likely coming to terms with what was behind the door. Both Finn and Rez waited the man out until he said, “Her death wasn’t recent. She’s already been through rigor mortis and has come back out. My guess, since she’s starting to decay, is that she’s been dead for at least three days.”
“A lot can happen in three days,” Rez murmured, wondering if Decker was going to address the condition Sadie was found in and what it all meant.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Decker was like a stick of dynamite with a fuse about to finish burning. While Rez felt an urgency to find Nox, they also needed to be there for Decker. Rez would also need to answer questions for the police that showed up since he was the first to discover the body.
“That sick motherfucker took advantage of it. He pimped her out even after death. He found a different type of perverted fuck to make money off of.”
“The dark web,” Rez murmured. “He had to be offering her up on the dark web. It’s the only place he could get away with it.”
“For fuck’s sake!” Finn shouted. “Women aren’t even safe from sexual assault when they’re dead.”
“Women never catch a goddamn break, I swear,” Rez growled.
“Jesus Christ. None of this hits Sloane’s ear. Not one fucking word. I’ll tell her Sadie OD’d. Nothing more.” Decker roared, “Jesus fucking Christ!” and scraped his fingers through his hair.
Next to him, Finn muttered, “Sick bastards. They need to be removed from society. Who the fuck is into that type of shit?”
Rez offered a possibility. “I could see incels jumping on that opportunity since no woman living, breathing and with a functioning brain will touch them. They’re forced to have sex with someone who can’t consent. Drunk, drugged up, passed out, even dead.”
“What we did to T-Bone isn’t good enough.”
Rez agreed. “A-fucking-men, brother.”
“You had the coroner dispatched already, right?” Decker asked Rez.
“County dispatch said they would notify him. But, brother…”
“Oh God, what? I’m not sure I can take any more shit.”
Unfortunately, he had no choice. He needed to know… “Nox was by my side when we found her. This might’ve fucked him up more.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding!” Decker dropped his head and shook it. When he finally lifted it again, he said, “I hate to speak ill about the dead, but that woman in there...” He jabbed his finger toward the motel room and breathed through his rage. “You know, I truly don’t hold hate for a lot of people but I… fucking hate her and what she did. She not only fucked up her own life, she fucked up Sloane’s. Now Nox, too? And he was just starting to get out of his fucking funk and live life again.” He turned toward the motel room and shouted, “Fuck you, Sadie. Fuck you and all the damage you caused.”
Sadie didn’t deserve to die like she did, or be treated as she had been afterward, but Rez wasn’t feeling any kind of sympathy for the woman who caused a whole lot of heartache.
Especially to Decker’s woman, who drained herself emotionally and financially to find and help her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
They were mentally and physically exhausted.
Worse, they never did find Nox. All the calls and texts they sent went unanswered. They left so many voicemails, his mailbox became full and they couldn’t leave any more. Because Nox mostly stayed at The Plant—the exception being the construction work they were doing at the Demons’ church—he wasn’t assigned a task force phone, so they couldn’t even track him with that.