Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
I scowled. “She’s not staying with me.”
Linc raised his eyebrows in a challenge. I’d pushed him enough, and his patience was thinning.
He looked at her. “Until the results come back, you can stay here in this cabin. It’s not much, but it has all your basic needs. I’ll bring food out here for you. Will you do that for me? I don’t want to tie you up to make sure you stay.”
She looked at me warily, then back at Linc. “The cabin is fine, but how—I mean, will I be safe?”
She thought I was gonna come kill her when he wasn’t looking. Her hand went up and touched the bandage on her neck.
“No one will hurt you, I swear,” he replied, and then he bent his head to look at her neck. “What happened there?” he asked, pointing at her bandage.
She said nothing, and Linc turned to me.
“What the fuck did you do?” he demanded.
“She’s being dramatic. That bandage is overkill,” I told him.
He turned back to her and took the edge of the bandage, then began to ease it off her. She closed her eyes as he did it, not saying a word.
When he took a look at it, he said, “Tell me you didn’t do this.”
“I was getting a point across.”
Linc turned her to me and pointed at her neck. There was a crusty red line where my blade had been. I’d done more harm than I had meant to. I didn’t react.
“But she didn’t die,” I replied, then made my way to the front door. I’d had enough of this bullshit.
I heard Linc mutter a curse, then start reassuring her that nothing like that would happen again. Truth was, I hadn’t meant to cut her that bad. Just a small nick to scare her. But I wasn’t going to feel bad about it. She was alive. Crosby wasn’t.
Eight
Halo
Linc had left shortly after Bane, saying he’d be back with food. I locked the door behind him, then went through the cabin to make sure the windows were all locked.
There was just the one door. The living area and kitchen were connected when you walked inside. It had a fireplace and only enough room for a sofa. There was no table in the kitchen because it was too small for that, but it had two barstools. There was a doorway that led into a bedroom with a double bed and a nightstand. To the right was a curtain that was open, and behind it stood a claw-foot tub, a sink, and a toilet.
I hadn’t even asked whose cabin this was. The overwhelming ache that sat heavy on my chest made everything else in my life unimportant. Crosby was dead. A tear rolled down my face, and I sucked in a breath. It was my fault. Bane had every reason to hate me.
I sat down on the sofa and stared at the empty hearth. I had no idea where I was, why I was here, what was happening. These people, Crosby’s family—they’d just found out my brother had killed him, and they weren’t taking me to the police. Demanding I tell them. Getting Ares pulled out of boot camp and arrested for murder.
I had no one to call. No one to talk to about this. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but I didn’t deserve to know anything. Because Bane had been right, I didn’t die. Crosby had.
I dropped my head into my hands. Just this morning, I’d thought my situation couldn’t get worse. This was something I had not seen coming.
I’d never expected Ares to do something like this. And he’d been reading my texts? Why?! Why had he cared about what I had been texting to Crosby?
Bane had killed Nicco. Just shot him. Ronnie had held a gun on him, and I guessed I could understand him shooting Ronnie, but Bane killed him, not just injured him. We had walked out of the apartment, leaving their dead bodies there. For who to find? Would the police find my fingerprints on something? What happened when they came looking for me and questioned me?
My life had never been stable, but guns and death hadn’t been involved.
My thoughts went to the conversation between Bane and Linc. I trusted Linc, although I had no reason to. I didn’t even know who he was. I thought he was related to Crosby because he’d mentioned family more than once, but how he was related, I didn’t know. He seemed to think my being pregnant would devastate Crosby’s parents and whoever Saylor was. I’d never heard Crosby say that name, and he had never mentioned a sister, but if she was his family, then what else could she be? They would all hate me, and I would understand why. They might even put the blame of the deaths in the apartment on my head when the cops showed up.