Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“The fuck is going on?” I ask, reasonably.
“I assume that’s also rhetorical,” Alec says. I throw him a don’t fuck with me right now look. “I don’t know, bru. I’ve no fokken idea.”
When I look at Christine, her brow is furrowed. “What is it?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “The voice, it…”
“You know it?” I don’t even try to keep my mild shock out of the question.
“Maybe?” she says. “Something—”
“Allo?” The polite, call-center voice again.
Taking the phone off mute, I say, “Yeah? What?”
“Who is with you?” he asks. “Right now. Who is with you?”
“Go fuck yourself,” I offer in return. “Who the fuck are you?”
Another, shorter pause. “Mr. van den Berg is there?”
What the fuck?
I look at Alec. He raises his eyebrows: I have no idea. Then he nods: Sure. Tell him.
I bite my lip. “Yeah. He’s here. He—”
“Is he all right?”
No. But seriously. What. The. Fuck?
Before I can say anything else, Alec chimes in, “I’m fokken aces, man. Who is this?”
Yet another beat. Then… “Hold onto this phone, please. We’ll call again with further instructions.”
All of our eyes go wide. I thought nothing could surprise me anymore, but…
“Also,” he continues, “just so you know: She’s fine. The little girl. Alexandria.”
… I was very, very wrong.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Think,” says Danny.
“I’m trying,” I tell him.
The ride is bumpy. I feel like this truck doesn’t have any shock absorbers at all. Danny’s driving, I’m once again in the middle, and Alec sits on the passenger window side of the long, cracked leather runner seat that spans the cab, holding his scarf over the wound in his shoulder.
When the park warden drove up to the scene of the fucktastrophe we created in his beautiful habitat, he seemed concerned initially. Confused, obviously, but also worried about what had happened and who was hurt and all that.
When Alec drew a gun on him and told him we’d be commandeering his city-owned work truck, his response was unexpected and kind of hilarious. He put his hands up in a traditional “don’t shoot” posture but then said, “Feckin’ tourists.” I think he was just nervous and let his innermost feelings out. You learn a lot about a person when they have a gun pointed in their face.
“When did you hear his voice before?” Danny repeats for the fourth time.
“I… don’t know. I’m not a hundred percent sure I did. I hit my head pretty hard when the van tipped over.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Alec chimes in. “They said they’ll call back. And, more importantly, we now know the child is all right.”
It’s interesting. Alec alternates between calling her “the” child, “his” child, and just Andra. He has not once called her by her full name, Alexandria. I don’t know if that’s a choice or not.
“You believe them?” I ask.
“I do,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because there’s no incentive for anyone to voluntarily offer that information if it isn’t true. When’s the last time you recall telling someone something they didn’t explicitly ask after if your intention wasn’t to use it as a bargaining chip? If they’re offering that up, it’s because they intend to use Andra in some sort of exchange.”
He’s not wrong. But it’s still very confusing to me. Because they didn’t reach out to us. They reached out to Brasil’s man. And speaking of Brasil…
If he wasn’t the one behind all this—taking Alec and Lars and keeping them at that country estate, kidnapping Andra and her uncle Theo, whatever the hell else I’m forgetting—then who is?
And now, again, that flash of someone. That face I kind of remember. The scarred one. Who the fuck is that? Someone Lars introduced me to, maybe?
The voice on the phone. Why is it familiar? When did I hear it before?
I thought that my bouts with memory loss were over. Or at least over enough that whatever I still couldn’t remember wouldn’t matter anymore. But that is clearly not the case. In fact, it seems like what I can’t remember right now might be the most significant parts.
“Cillian!” I blurt out, shocking myself.
But not nearly as much as I shock Danny.
“What did you just say?” he asks, staring at me with something like wonder.
“That’s the name of the guy who threw me in the truck.”
“Yeah, I know that. How do you know that?”
I think, straining really, really hard to answer the question. “I… don’t know.”
There is silence for a moment, and then I say something else I’m not planning to say and don’t really know what it means. “The diamond.”
“What?” asks Alec.
“What?” I say back.
“What diamond?”
“What?” I repeat.
“You just said ‘the diamond,’” Alec says. “Which diamond? What are you—?”
“I don’t know,” I interrupt.
I really don’t. I don’t know why I said it, in the same way I don’t know why I know that the dead guy back there is named Cillian. I just spit it out of my mouth like I realized I had accidentally drunk poison.