Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
She chose one of the wider, more well-traveled paths to start on. It was beautiful and quiet, and the peace of her surroundings began to slowly push aside the wild grief and pain of betrayal. She wanted to think more clearly about the things Gideon had said, not focus on his betrayal.
Dr. Peter Whitney. Deliberately she made herself think the name. The moment she did, her body had that same visceral reaction, violently rejecting even the thought of the man. That spot above her temple gave off that strange sensation that made her feel sick. So sick she even stumbled. She refused to give into it. She was alone and walking along a beautiful path toward the lake. There was a slight breeze tugging at her hair. She’d swept it up into a high ponytail to get the thick mass off her neck. Touches of mist kissed her face. She breathed deep, drawing in the morning air.
Whitney wasn’t going to defeat her. Gideon wasn’t going to defeat her. She would figure out what was going on with her without help. She’d been alone for so long and she was used to relying on herself. It was better this way. She just had to go over the things Gideon had told her and determine if what he said was fact or fiction. Just because she didn’t like hearing it didn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.
All right, so Gideon had said Whitney had taken female infants and toddlers from orphanages. That would explain why she didn’t remember parents. If Gideon was correct about where she came from, she didn’t have parents. Once more, she deliberately thought in terms of Whitney’s name. Focused on it. Tried to put an image with the name, but the sickness increased without any visual on the man.
Breathing deep, Rory forced her mind to go blank as she walked along the trail, breathing deep again. She could only take that horrible feeling of her skin trying to peel away for so long. She concentrated on allowing the serenity of her surroundings to bring her peace again. It wasn’t easy, although she was used to taking walks out in nature to calm her mind. It was just that now that she was determined to solve the mystery of her past, her brain kept looping back to the things Gideon had revealed.
GhostWalkers. That term wasn’t familiar to her. The two tattoos on his shoulder weren’t familiar, were they? How could she see them when he claimed no one else could? And what of the tattoo on her ankle he said another woman he knew had? How could all that be true when she knew nothing about it? A small moan of despair escaped. She detested that he’d betrayed her confidence to his friends. If he’d just given her a little time to process the information, they could have worked it out together. She would have gotten there eventually.
And what about Gideon? Why didn’t he want to tell her anything about himself? What was that all about? Why didn’t he give her anything about himself? If he had, she would have been more willing to listen to him. No, wait. She had been listening to him. Until she found out he’d told his friends everything she’d told him in confidence.
Now she was crying again. She cursed Gideon under her breath, grateful she was alone. How would she ever explain to her friends that she couldn’t stop crying? Lydia was close to taking a chance on accepting a date with Detective Larrsen, who appeared to be a good man. The last thing Rory wanted to do was mess up that situation.
Dabbing at her tears and cursing Gideon more, she considered the things he’d told her about Whitney’s punishments. His way of making the girls feel bad about themselves. Training them to be military assets. She couldn’t run. Her lungs were terrible. Had she been experimented on? Could Whitney have done something to make her lungs the way they were? Did she have asthma, or was it something he had done to her?
Was she beginning to believe the story Gideon had told her? That she was one of those orphaned girls Whitney had taken? If that was true, was she a threat to the people around her? Her lungs burned for air, and she had to stop and find her inhaler. She had a terrible feeling the things Gideon told her were true.
Rory had always loved the tattoo on her ankle. She often rubbed the berries and leaves when she sat in the evenings after work, just relaxing. Now the tattoo felt like a brand of evil, marking her as something deadly to others. She even wondered if she should be around her friends at the apartment. Was she a danger to Lydia and Ellen and the others?