Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
See you then, he replied.
But he felt sick about that too.
Because the minute he sent off that text, he got it.
He got where Mika was decades ago when she made the decision she couldn’t be his friend. It would hurt too much, being attracted to him when he was unavailable.
He got it because that was why he felt sick.
He was attracted to her. He wanted her. Her body. Her mind. Her time.
He wanted to explore a relationship with her.
But he shouldn’t.
And he couldn’t.
Because she deserved better.
Now, in the short run, he was fucked. They were connected by that envelope.
But in the long run, he had to find a way to end it.
Ending other things, however, was something in his control.
It was also something he could no longer allow to be delayed.
And if Paloma wouldn’t pick up, he had no choice but to circumvent her decision.
He did it by calling, and since she was still playing her game, he got her voicemail.
Therefore, he left one.
“I’ve phoned repeatedly, Paloma, and texted, making it clear there’s something important we need to discuss. I sense you know what I wish to talk about. I hate to do it this way, but I think it may be best at this juncture to be direct. I’m afraid I feel we don’t have a future. I would have liked to end things with you more thoughtfully, but this shouldn’t drag out for you or for me. If you wish to talk about it, you know how to reach me. I’m sorry, Paloma, we just weren’t that to each other. I thought you felt the same. But since you don’t, you should feel free to find someone who gives you what you need. Take care.”
He rang off and was considering taking a run to try to work through all he was feeling when his doorbell rang.
He’d lived there long enough, it had ceased being an odd sensation that there was no barrier between him and the world, something they’d had to make sure was in place when he and Genny were together, for her safety, and their kids’.
He understood after the fact that he had unconsciously, but nevertheless purposefully, selected a community that wasn’t gated.
It was patrolled by security.
But it wasn’t gated.
It had felt like a kind of freedom.
Now he was wishing he had a call from the gatekeeper as a heads up.
Feeling heavy, he went to the front door rather than to his room to change clothes.
The good news was, that heavy vanished when he saw who was outside.
The bad news, it was replaced by a jolt of foreboding.
He signed for the envelope, which was the same manila that Mika had received.
He inspected it.
Just his name and address on the outside, exactly like Mika’s.
Nothing else.
“Do you know who sent this?” he asked.
The courier hit his machine with his stylus and answered, “Information, Limited.”
Bogus.
“Thanks,” he murmured.
The man jerked up his chin and moved off.
Tom opened the envelope the instant he closed the door.
There were fewer sheets of paper, and all of them were the same thing, albeit from different years.
Lists of Core Point board members during the years they sponsored Andrew Winston.
“Fucking fuck,” he gritted, that jolt of foreboding becoming a shock of apprehension, as he saw, on each, one name highlighted in yellow.
AJ Oakley.
Judge’s estranged grandfather.
And Jamie’s estranged father.
Tom understood why he got this information.
But he didn’t like the coincidence of his phone call to Jamie that day, Judge and Hale’s relationship with Core Point being negotiated, and how that might factor in his nebulous-until-very-recently connection with Mika, who had incomprehensibly been recruited into this fucking mess.
He couldn’t take a run because he had to call Jamie again.
He was not looking forward to it.
Though one thing was certain.
By tomorrow, Jamie’s investigator would be all over it.
CHAPTER 10
THE CIRCLES
Mika
“This is proof,” Nora drawled from the seat beside me in my car. “I have lived a fiendish life. As such, I have died and gone straight to hell.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty gross,” Cadence agreed from the back seat. “But what are all those big green areas?”
“Darling, don’t look,” Nora said urgently. “Turn your eyes away or it might beckon you. I’ve heard its power is strong. If it takes you, your mother and I will be forced either to wade in and save you or wander along with you in a new circle of hell. I love you, my dearest, but if you’re lost to it, I’ll warn you now, I won’t follow.”
“Stop it, Nora,” I ordered, then to my daughter, “It’s a golf course.”
“It’s…pretty?” Cadence asked like we could answer her.
I really wanted to find them amusing.
I wasn’t in the mood to feel amused.
Tom had backed out of dinner that night, and I got it.
But it didn’t put me in a stellar mood.
“This is…it’s…” Nora was so beside herself, she was stammering. Unsurprisingly, she got over that quickly. “Surely God, in heaven above, wished for us to build up as our way of reaching Him. Not sprawl out, destroying all He created,” Nora noted.