Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
“Tell me something, Nae-nae,” she’d murmured sleepily after I’d finally got her stripped and tucked into bed.
“Hmm?” I’d curled around her, my intent to keep her warm and protected through the night.
“Would you bury a body for me?” Curved lips.
My answer hadn’t been a joke at all. “Yes.”
Later, after her breathing evened out and her body went lax, I’d added the rest. “I’d do far worse for you, Bea.”
26
Iwoke to the sound of feet slamming down the staircase and raised voices that turned into shouts. Rain continued to pelt the windows. Still dazed from sleep, my head thick from a wine hangover, I stumbled out of bed in my pajamas—fighting my way past the curtains—and wrenched open my door.
“What’s going on?” I yelled to the only person in sight—and she was running to her room.
“Kaea’s throwing up.” Grace tightened the tie of her beautiful silky robe. “It’s bad. Aaron found him when he went down to make pancakes. Looks like he’s been sick most of the night.”
Not bothering to grab a cardigan, I ran down in my bare feet.
It was the smell that hit me first—that thick, sour scent that could only be old vomit. While Kaea was bent over a bowl right now, he’d clearly not made it to the toilet or found a bowl earlier in the night. Regurgitated whiskey and stew splattered the floor beside where he would’ve been sleeping.
Thank God he hadn’t choked.
Able to breathe now that I’d seen him—he looked gray as hell, but he was sitting up on his own—I ducked into the laundry, found the mop and other cleaning supplies, and got to work. A shirtless Phoenix, his lower body covered in a pair of black sweatpants, was beside Kaea by then, checking his temperature, pulse, and whatever else he could, given the limited supplies he had available.
I passed over Kaea’s emergency kit when Nix asked for it, but otherwise stayed out of his way.
“I’m sorry,” Kaea groaned after Nix was done.
I patted his knee. “It’s not the first time I’ve cleaned up after you.” I hated the drawn look on his face, the sunken shadows under his eyes. “Nothing will ever beat the rager you had for your twentieth.” Afterward, I’d told him to consider my cleaning services his birthday present.
To his credit, he’d shamefacedly admitted that he’d overdone the celebrations, and had made it up to me by taking me to the fanciest restaurant in town. A dinner we’d both raved over for weeks, but that neither one of us could’ve afforded if he hadn’t used a chunk of his birthday money.
He was a good friend.
Now, he tried to smile, but shudders wracked his body before he could make it. He bent over the bowl again, dry-retching so painfully that it hurt me to watch him. I stroked his back, brushed his hair off his feverish face, and was about to ask Phoenix if there was nothing else we could do, when Vansi walked into the room, Aaron and Grace behind her.
While Aaron was dressed in his day clothes, my best friend wore powder blue shorts and a matching camisole, over which she’d thrown on a haphazardly belted gray fleece robe. Her feet were as bare and no doubt as cold as mine.
“I’ve checked our own emergency kit as well as the little one that Grace has,” Vansi told Phoenix. “There’s nothing in either to stop him from throwing up. You have any luck with Kaea’s kit?”
Frowning, Phoenix shook his head. “I think we should let him get it out of his system anyway. It looks like food poisoning.”
“Shit,” Aaron muttered, “it had to be something I cooked.”
But Grace, who’d taken a clean rag from the supplies I’d gathered, and begun to wipe dry the area I’d mopped, said, “You were eating things on the trail, weren’t you, Kaea? Berries and leaves?”
He nodded, but couldn’t speak.
I could see Grace’s point, but I didn’t believe it. Kaea had forgotten more about bush tucker than the rest of us would ever know. He’d given me tons of things to nibble on during our hikes over the years, from the tips of fern fronds to pieces of chewy bark, and not once had I ever gotten sick.
First his shoes and now this.
Kaea was right; it was one too many coincidences. But I couldn’t see a connection between Darcie and Kaea that would lead to them both being targeted. It definitely wasn’t a clandestine affair—that was Kaea’s line in the sand. He was a serial monogamist, didn’t cheat. Ever.
He didn’t help others do it, either.
“We need to get liquids into him,” Phoenix was saying. “Aaron, could you make a thin but nourishing soup?”
“I could do a bone broth with pureed vegetables.” Aaron rubbed his hands on his thighs. “No chewing required, and I can season it according to what Kaea can stomach.”