Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 79314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Ros hadn’t known that this was the answer he needed. So maybe he was tumbling down the morality hill, but neither of them was a murderer at least. While Pete’s downfall had been his own, Ros didn’t think his conscience would allow him to make any more money on the stuff that killed the poor guy, even if he’d just have gotten it somewhere else otherwise.
“That’s good to know. Wait. What was that?” Ros flinched, because he could swear that a large shape had moved somewhere on the edge of his vision, right behind a wrecked car they’d passed.
“Stop the car,” Shane said, and opened the window on his side before sticking his head out. “It’s Shane! For fuck’s sake, go bother someone else!”
Ros heard a low growl that made his hair bristle, but then a raspy voice followed from the edge of darkness.
“Did you lock the gate?”
“Of course I did! I always lock the gate! I don’t need a fucking babysitter,” Shane said and pulled up the window with a deep scowl. He gestured at the road ahead. “Let’s go.”
“Who was that?” Ros asked as they drove on. “You have guards here?”
Shane grunted with displeasure and placed his hand on Ros’s thigh as they made their way between the massive piles of unwanted stuff. It only now hit Ros that he had no idea what the purpose of a junkyard was. Were they repurposing stuff and selling it on?
“Just this guy. Frank found him injured by a big cat and took him in. He’s not right in the head.”
“Oh. But not in, like, a dangerous way?” Ros asked, but could already see the glow of lights far off, beyond the mountains of trash.
“He runs around with a spear and a bow, so I wouldn’t venture too far away from the house on your own, if I were you,” Shane muttered, shifting in the seat as the junk hills opened into a flat valley with some vehicles and machines scattered around the edges and a bungalow sitting ahead, with a slope of rusty metal rising beyond it.
“Guess we’re not in Kansas anymore, eh?” Ros let out a nervous laugh, because what was he to say to that? A spear? Then again, who was he to judge what was normal when he’d arrived here with a dead body?
Shane snorted and glanced at him with a little smile that shouldn’t have gotten to Ros in their situation, yet absolutely had. So Shane wasn’t the greatest person in the universe, but maybe he’d just been dealt a bad hand and the questionable ways in which he’d advanced his situation had been the only available to him? What really counted was that his actions tonight had proved he was worthy of Ros’s trust, dependable and caring as a boyfriend should be.
“Very far from Kansas, but I’ll make sure you have a soft landing. Come on,” Shane said, getting out of the car as soon as it parked in front of a fence that most definitely did not belong here.
Someone had left a pot hanging on one of the pickets as if this was a cottagecore fever dream, not a desolated nightmare where people came to disappear.
Ros was grateful for the assurance though, and was quick to stand close to Shane once he left the car. “Thanks for… not leaving me with all this,” he said, unwilling to acknowledge the lump resting in the back seat. Shane’s arm slid up his back and settled on his shoulders. He nudged the little white gate with the tip of his boot and pulled Ros toward the porch, through a garden of dry weeds.
“Oh… that’s nothing. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
Before he could even knock, a middle-aged man who could’ve compared in size with the bear they’d encountered in the woods appeared from behind the door. He wore several chains around his thick neck, with a whole variety of scrap hanging off them like trophies, and his fingers were adorned with enough signets to serve as an impromptu knuckle duster. He opened his mouth, but then his eyes settled on Ros and he closed it with a deepening frown. It felt like having the human equivalent of a tank point its gun at Ros.
“You stayin’ the night?” he asked, eying Ros from head to toe.
Shane’s fingers tightened on Ros’s shoulder. “This is Rosen. I told you about him.”
Frank’s broad nose wrinkled, but when he didn’t move, Shane went on, “There was a problem. Someone at the frat OD’d. He’s in the car.”
Ros slid his hand to Shane’s back and clenched his fingers on the jacket. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled even though Pete’s drug habit wasn’t his fault. He’d never pushed any pills at anyone, only helped provide what people already wanted, but he still felt numb, constantly under threat of a looming breakdown.