Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
I guess I haven’t learned my lesson very well because it was exactly this kind of thinking that had led me down the path to destruction before. I knew I shouldn’t get tangled up with the Hudson sisters and any of their affiliates, but because I didn’t want to come across as a bitch, I’d gone against my better judgment, and that had, in turn, set this whole thing in motion.
Still, it’s hard for me to see a human being going through what she was and not feel something. I couldn’t go behind Ryder’s back to help her, and the only person I could trust with something like this was Sydney, and I’m one hundred percent certain that she’d make things worse for Janie if given the chance.
How can I help her? Should I help her? It was hard to know what to do when there was no one to turn to for the answers. All the people in my life that I would usually look to for guidance I was sure, would tell me to let her rot. But as a woman, as someone who knew the inner workings of Hollywood and the darkness that can be found in certain circles, I’m having a hard time just giving up on another human being who was just too weak to withstand their wiles.
I could’ve been where she is had I not seen them before it was too late. The only difference between her and I was that I was lucky enough to see through the bullshit, and I had mom by my side, guiding me away from that life when I got too close to the flames. Ryder himself had been burned, so he should understand and want to help her, but I guess he was too close to the situation and too full of anger and hate right now to see her as anything other than the enemy.
That’s it, isn’t it? I just have to get him to see things from my perspective. I refuse to let us become like them, refuse to be the kind of people who just wash our hands of someone in need, and if I was sure of anything, it was that she needed help.
***
*Lyon*
“Lyon, you’ve got to hear this.” I looked up from where I had been reading over the last report from Thorpe, who had taken the kids we’d rescued on the last mission back to his place to be taken care of before being placed back with their parents.
“What is it now?” Instead of an answer, Mancini clicked a few buttons, and the wall screen came on, showing a view of Mengele and her girls in the lab.
“What are they doing now?” The others in the room, Flanagan and the SEALs, all stopped what they were doing to look at the screen, and I rolled my eyes at the way they all seemed to come to attention like drones.
“Listen, just listen.”
We seemed to have caught the middle of the tail end of their conversation. “If your teacher was a meth addict, you wouldn’t accept anything he said, right. Most people on meth, crack, or heroin have delusions of some sort; some of them even reported visiting other dimensions and having conversations with beings that were not there.”
“What does this have to do with our teachers?”
“Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche, most of the so-called philosophers did heroin or coke, maybe both, and yet they’re still lauded as brilliant minds. If one of those men or women on the street corners of any major city today tried that, they’d be seen as insane; why? The only difference between them and these great men is the fact that they can’t afford their habit while those others could.”
“It’s preposterous to think that one man, any one man or woman, could know the minds of all human beings. He would have had to be omniscient, omnipresent, omni everything for that to be true. So why do people still buy into the ramblings of a coke head? Well, a heroin addict in his case?”
No one spoke as they stared at the screen, but I was wondering what my nut was up to. I have no idea what she was working on since her shit makes my eyes twitch, but I knew it wasn’t going to be good for my ass. Usually, when she goes off on a tangent, there’s some shit coming behind it that makes my life not as pleasant as it was the day before.
Mancini was grinning from ear to ear and tapping away at the keys on his computer. I worry about him. “What’s she on about Mancini?”
“I’m not sure; I think they had a go at the doctor they snatched, and it set her off.”
“Any sign of him on the island?”
“Nope, haven’t seen him, but I’m almost certain he’s there.”