Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
The words, Hang up! Run, were on the tip of my tongue.
“Winzy?” Perry’s voice came over the line.
Hearing his voice hit me with a rush of emotion that clogged my throat.
“Yeah,” I choked out. Thankful he was alive. That he had a phone that he could call me on.
“Why are you in Louisiana? Who are you with?” he asked, sounding slightly frantic.
My eyes swung back to Oz’s face. He had taken me to Louisiana? I’d assumed we were still in Mississippi. I wanted to ask where in Louisiana I was since Perry would be able to see that.
Oz was close. Too close. He would be able to hear everything Perry said. If I moved away, he’d still have the phone.
“I’m, uh…” What was I supposed to say?
Oz nodded his head, as if to tell him the truth. Was he setting a trap for him? But then if he knew, maybe he could get Marley to call the police if he was in fact running from the Feds.
“Winzy, did someone take you?” Perry asked.
“Yes,” I replied just above a whisper.
“Fuck!” His voice was a mixture of fear and concern.
“They’ll be tracing this call then. I gotta go. But tell them nothing,” he told me.
What did he think I was going to tell them?
I opened my mouth, but the line went dead. He’d hung up. Shocked, I stood there, saying nothing. Perry was scared. He wasn’t innocent. He’d never hung up on me in my life, and he had just done it after finding out someone had taken me. This didn’t feel real.
The phone was taken from my ear, and Oz tossed it onto the island before pulling one from his pocket and texting. He was telling one of them. The cowboy Mafia gang that Perry had apparently screwed over.
Had he known they were criminals when he did it? Where had he even gotten the money? Who had made it?
I gasped, thinking about the five thousand he had put in my checking account. Was that counterfeit? Would the bank find out? Would I go to jail? I couldn’t replace the thousand dollars I had spent at Hobby Lobby. But I could return everything I bought. Give them back the money. They wouldn’t arrest me then, right?
“What is it that you know?” Oz asked me. The accusation clear in his tone.
He thought I knew something and that I had been hiding it from him.
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I replied honestly.
I had a sinking feeling of betrayal from what Perry had just done. He would have known they were listening. He had made it sound as if we were in this together. That I was the Bonnie to his Clyde.
“DON’T FUCKING LIE TO ME!” Oz shouted angrily.
I jumped, startled and now terrified by the threatening look on his face.
My throat clogged, my pulse raced, and my eyes burned. I didn’t know anything. I wanted to wail that I was innocent. But doing so did me no good, thanks to Perry’s choice of words.
“Nikola, um, a uh, James,” I said on a small sob. I began to list the names I had heard my brother talk about while at Stanford. “William and uh Fredrick. Last December, he went to a party at a guy named Hans Warren’s house. I think he said it was in Portola Valley, if that’s near San Francisco. I know for certain he was in San Francisco. Life360 alerted me when his flight arrived.”
Oz’s expression remained enraged. There was a brutal savageness about it that made it difficult for me to take a deep breath.
“What does he not want you to tell us?” he asked, but this time, there was a violent inflection in his tone.
My eyes filled with tears from the sheer intimidation. I wasn’t scared of returning to the basement. I was terrified of what he’d do to me physically if I didn’t tell him what Perry had meant.
“I don’t know.” My voice came out whisper soft.
The words had barely left my mouth when Oz’s large hand wrapped around my throat, and he shoved my back against the cool metal door of the refrigerator. His grip tightened until I could just barely suck in oxygen. The slate-gray of his eyes was now the color of a stormy sea, harkening the impending doom.
When I tried to breathe deeper, his hand squeezed until I could get nothing to my lungs. The fear and panic exploded into utter terror as I stared back at him. He was going to kill me. I was going to die out here at the hands of a man who was unfairly beautiful, hiding the twisted evil that dwelled inside him where a soul should reside. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks.
The ringing of a phone broke the deadly silence, and his hand eased as he stepped back to grab his phone from the island where he had left it. I fell forward, coughing and gasping as I inhaled air again. My knees were shaky, and my vision was slightly blurry. Grabbing my knees, I stayed bent over until I could find my balance.