Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Because something within me told me that this wasn’t like every other time Josh had possession of my sister.
First, because she’d run away from him, had stayed away from him. That distance had clearly been eating away at him for a long time. Enough so that he’s been willing to put his hands on me after breaking into my apartment.
Second, though, he’d seen Wren with another man.
I mean, objectively, the two of them were probably just walking side-by-side, not doing anything romantic. But to a possessive, abusive, narcissist like Josh, that was unacceptable. That was “his” woman trying to step out on him. That was some other man trying to take her from him.
I knew as I threw myself into a cab that this was it. This was going to be the “big one.”
There were so many times in the past where I thought that things had gotten as bad as they could get with Josh. Times when my sister was more seriously injured than before, more emotionally beaten down, and even sickeningly thinner than ever.
And while he wouldn’t have the time to emotionally manipulate her, to make her starve herself until she lost most of her weight, he could have the time to absolutely batter her, maybe even permanently, fatally.
“Please, please go faster,” I begged the cabbie. His gaze looked up at me from the rearview, taking in the desperation in my gaze, then gently tapping the gas with a little more force.
He didn’t have a huge head start.
I was going to get to her in time, damnit.
And Josh was going to want to rant and rave for a while. Scream. Strike.
As much as my heart crushed in my chest at the idea of Wren being at his utter lack of mercy for even five minutes, at least if he was raging and hitting, he wasn’t strangling her or something like that.
Even at just the thought, it felt like a hand was closing around my throat, squeezing, cutting off my air, making me gasp, causing my head to go fuzzy.
I knew he was capable of that.
I’d sported the bruises for well over a week.
But it took several minutes to strangle someone. And I was running on the assumption that they hadn’t been far from the diner when they’d been intercepted by Josh, that Liam hadn’t been knocked out cold, that he’d ran as fast as he could back inside to me.
That left them, what, five minutes ahead of me? Ten, tops.
“This is it,” I said, hitting the partition when the driver didn’t seem like he was slowing down.
I barely managed to toss a tip at him before I was all but spilling out of the cab, rushing up the front steps, and hitting every button for each apartment in the building.
“Come on come on come on,” I whimpered, running my hand over all of them again.
“Is that my pizza?” a voice called through the speaker.
“Yep!” I answered then rushed to the door as I heard the buzz of it unlocking.
I was painfully aware of the twists and turns of the building. I could run it in my sleep.
I braced myself for the cries, for the screams, as I got to his door and found it locked in my hand.
But all I heard from the inside of the apartment was the loudest kind of silence.
“Open this door!” I yelled, pounding my hand on the unyielding wood as my other hand plunged into my purse, rummaging around for a bobby pin or anything like that.
I was no pro at it, but I’d gotten myself out of those handcuffs when I was desperate. I could get his door open too.
“Goddamn it, Josh! Open the fucking door!” I shrieked.
“Ah, he’s not here,” a voice said behind me, making me jolt and turn, finding a teenager standing there with an energy drink in her hand and her hair pulled up in spacebars.
“You’re sure?” I asked. “He should have gotten in just a couple of minutes ago.”
“No. He hasn’t been around in a few days,” she said. “I don’t like him, so I keep an eye so I don’t accidentally run into him.”
“You’ve got good instincts,” I told her. “Stay the hell away from him.”
Could I have beat them to the apartment?
Not unless they stopped somewhere first.
But if he hadn’t been around his place in a few days, why would he bring Wren back?
He wouldn’t.
Where would he take her, then?
I don’t ever remember Wren saying he had another apartment or anything like that. He didn’t have that kind of money.
“Think, damnit, think,” I hissed to myself, trying to sort through all the ugly abuse conversations I’d had with her to find the conversations where she was, once again, gushing about him.
To be honest, I half-zoned out during those. Maybe that made me a shitty sister, but I think it was a coping mechanism for me, a way to muzzle myself to keep from screaming that this was the guy who’d given her a black eye and a split lip and a dislocated shoulder.