Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81076 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
“Right or left?” Wimpy curses as he slams on the brakes too hard at a stop sign, and the van hydroplanes a few feet into the thankfully abandoned intersection. “Fuck this rain. I’m so fucking over it. It never seemed to rain this much when I was a kid.”
“It didn’t,” Rex says. “The ten warmest and wettest years in the history of Minnesota have been recorded in the past twenty-five years. It’s climate change, man. Warmer oceans mean more water in the air and more intense precipitation on land.”
Wimpy snorts. “What are you now? A weatherman?”
“No, but I read Scientific American, dumbass,” Rex says. “Not all of us want to stay uneducated just because we dropped out of high school our senior year to join the family business.”
“I don’t believe in that stuff,” Wimpy says with a sniff. “I probably just didn’t notice the rain when I was a dumb kid because I was a dumb kid.”
“You’re like the human embodiment of that meme,” Rex says, sounding increasingly annoyed with his cousin. “The one where the dog is sitting in a building that’s burning down all around him, sipping a coffee, saying, ‘this is fine.’ This ain’t fine. Ross just texted that there’s three feet of water in the basement in his house on the west side of the property. If this keeps up, our entire compound is going to be underwater by the time we get back to town.”
Wimpy shoots him a sharp look. “No shit? But my baseball card collection is in the cabinet at Nana’s. Should I call and ask someone to take it up to the attic, just in case?”
“Yeah, Wimps,” Rex says in a sarcastic tone that seems to go right over Wimpy’s head. “You should. We should take a time-out in the middle of our criminal enterprise here, and call home about your baseball card collection.”
Wimpy pulls out his cell. “Okay, it won’t take—”
Rex slaps the phone out of his hand with a disgusted sound. “You’re not calling anyone, you dumbass. We’re in the middle of a job and we’re going to finish it and get rid of these people before this gets any messier than it has already.”
A shiver runs up my spine at the phrase “get rid of these people.”
That didn’t sound like he plans on dropping us at the nearest emergency vet…
I shift my gaze Bear’s way. Our eyes meet and I can tell he’s worried about that phrase, too. I give a small nod, he nods back, and a silent understanding that we’re going to make a run for it the first chance we get passes between us.
I turn back to our kidnappers, pulse jittery as I say, “Maybe you should let Bear drive. If that’s how he usually finds the warehouse, then—”
“Shut it, Blondie.” Wimpy glares at me over his shoulder, the eye Matty blackened for him a little narrower than the other. “We’ve got this under control. This ain’t our first rodeo.” To Bear he says, “Look up the address. In your email or whatever. I’m sure you’ve got a record of it somewhere.”
Bear subtly perks up. “Sure, give me my phone, and I’ll see what I can pull up.”
They took our phones and turned them off as soon as we left the hotel parking lot, obviously concerned about us texting for help or our movements being tracked by loved ones or the police.
Rex snorts. “Yeah, no, my man. You can sign into your email on my phone.”
“I’m not sure I can,” Bear says. “I don’t have my password memorized and in order to get it reset, I’ll have to send a code to my cell phone.”
“Fuck it, I’m going left,” Wimpy says, continuing to prove that patience and impulse control are not in his wheelhouse. “Left feels right. The warehouses are smaller over there, and why would he need a big warehouse for a bunch of toys?”
“Yeah, I think it’s left, too,” Bear says. “But I don’t know where. I usually turn by the taco truck and the entrance is behind that and to the right a little bit. But I doubt the taco truck is out today.”
“He could just use his phone for a minute or two,” I say as Wimpy creeps along the road at fifteen miles per hour through the torrential downpour. “That wouldn’t be long enough for anyone to track it and you could—”
My words end in a squeal as the van dips sharply down in the front. I grip the door handle with one hand and brace my other against the back of Rex’s seat. The rear of van bobs into the air for a second before sliding forward, driving the front of the van even deeper into one hell of a ditch.
I can see it now through the front windshield, a gully filled with brown grass, rushing water, and a faded red soda can, trapped in a nest of leaves.