Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 62923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
They were going to kill him before Ryder could stop them. Those men would literally beat him to death. Ryder didn’t have to work in construction every day to know how much time they’d already put into painstakingly spread what had just stomped through. Ryder jumped the cinder blocks and yelled at the men to stop, holding his badge up…yet again. What was it about Remi that made him try to abuse his power as an officer of the law?
“Remi! What the hell, Remi?” He yelled as he gingerly made his way across the cement. He wasn’t sure why he tried to be careful; Remi had already done enough damage that it would call for a complete re-do of the entire foundation.
“Help me, Ryder! I’ve got to find him,” Remi screamed back.
Remi had dropped to his knees and searched the area with his hands. He looked crazy…there was no two ways about it.
“You’ve got about two seconds to get that motherfucker off our site before I cover him with fucking concrete” one of the men yelled. The same man stepped right into Ryder’s personal space and dared him to argue. “Two fucking seconds.”
Ryder glared back at him, knowing damn well he could kick the man’s ass if it called for it, and said, “You’ve got about two seconds to get out of my face.” Ryder took a step closer, putting them nose to nose, and added, “And if anybody lays a hand on him, I’ll kick their ass and then haul them to jail. Understood?”
“Here! Oh, my God! He’s here, Ryder! Hurry!” Remi screamed as he clawed furiously at the ground. It wasn’t an easy task. Before pouring a concrete foundation, the dirt was compacted, compacted, and then compacted some more. It didn’t seem to bother Remi, though. He just kept trying to dig his way to China, one scrape of his fingers on the compacted dirt at a time.
Ryder shoved past the man blocking him and ran toward Remi. He didn’t have a fucking clue what Remi was talking about, but every instinct in his body told him to put his trust in him. He dropped to his knees next to Remi and asked, “What is it, Remi? What do you think is buried here?”
The man who’d threatened Remi loomed over them, but Ryder wouldn’t allow himself to be intimidated. All he could focus on was the frantic look in Remi’s pale blue eyes, the sickening white pallor of his skin, or the way sweat dripped off his body even while he trembled with cold chills. Then his gaze dropped to the three inches by three inches hole in the dirt foundation, directly next to where Remi had been clawing frantically. From what he could see, there was an opening with some sort of tube and it was flush with the ground. He looked up at the man standing over them and demanded, “What’s this for?” Ryder didn’t know a lot about pouring foundations, but he knew enough to be certain that any piping that needed to be there would have been extended above the ground…not flush, practically hidden from the naked eye.
The man frowned as he leaned down to inspect the odd hole. “I don’t have a fucking clue. It wasn’t there yesterday.” He turned to yell at one of his men. “Malcolm! Bring me the blueprints and hurry the fuck up! We don’t have time for this shit today!” The man kept muttering beneath his breath, but one look in his direction told Ryder that even he realized something was seriously wrong with what they were looking at.
Ryder looked around the construction site and noted other pipes came up from the ground but, as he’d expected, they were all at least two feet above the foundation site. He looked at the hole again and noticed that Remi continued to claw at the compacted dirt with his fingers. He’d worked so hard that blood already seeped from around the edges of his nails. “What do you think is down there, Remi?”
Remi looked at him. “Not what, Ryder. There’s a person down there. A young man. He’s buried alive and this tube is the only way he’s getting air.”
“That’s bullshit,” the contractor hissed, but his voice didn’t hold the necessary conviction to convince Ryder he knew for certain Remi was wrong. “I was here yesterday when we compacted that dirt for the last time. There’s nobody buried there, most certainly not somebody buried alive.”
“You’ve got to believe me, Ryder. He needs help. The man down there needs our help. I can’t do this by myself.”
“Did you put this tube here?” Ryder asked the contractor.
The man jerked some blueprints out of another guy’s hands and squatted next to Remi and Ryder. With erratic motions, he spread the blueprints out and started studying them. A frown caused his brow to crinkle as he looked at the blueprints and then to hidden tube.