Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 108342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
She returned to the couch and placed the other mail onto the coffee table. Who is this from? Turning the white box to and fro, she saw an address she didn’t initially recognize. And then it hit her…
Medicine be damned. It was now impossible to steady her rioting pulse. Nikolai’s work address…
Taking a deep breath, she tore the package open. Inside was a book, its cover a rich currant red, and there was no title or other words written on the outside. She slowly opened it to find a small handwritten note inside, the words scripted across the back of a crinkly grocery receipt.
It read: Porsche. Please read this book. My book of Whispers. It will explain everything. You deserve to know the truth. I am about to lose my freedom, and you will not see me for a while. Maybe I was never free though if I had to keep this terrible secret?
She smashed the book closed and set it beside her. I need a second… just a second!
This was it. This was where he either confessed his sins, or he somehow exonerated himself. This is where the rubber met the road.
And once she began reading, there was no way she’d be able to stop, or to tell herself her gut had never failed her. She stood and started to pace back and forth, then returned to the couch. Sitting down, she grabbed the book with shaky hands and opened to the first page. She read page after page that detailed nothing more than projects he was working on around his house. There was a playlist of songs he’d put together for his shop, as well as a short poem he’d written about his mother. Then work and miscellaneous stuff—contracts he’d fulfilled, his opinion about various local companies, merchants and customers, and duties he had for his shop.
She turned another page and found details about the police interrogations of him—dates, locations, duration, and the names of the officers and detectives involved. She looked at the time—about thirty minutes had passed, though it seemed like only a few seconds. After a while, she came upon a series of pages where the writing was in black ink, as opposed to the others where everything was in blue. Not only that, but it also seemed to have nothing to do with work-related notes, sweet words dedicated to his mother, or domestic chores…
12 – It’s him. I know it’s him for sure now. I can just feel it. But how? He doesn’t stay in town anymore.
28 – He came by Dad’s, out of the blue. I was there. I placed my Air Tag from my work bag in his car when he wasn’t looking. While he was in the house talking, I hid it in a place he’d never find it. If I didn’t, he’d disappear on me again.
30 – He was at Dad’s again. He’s been staying there. That’s strange. He told me that he was moving to New Hampshire. He moves all over the place, but it sounded like a lie. He was living in Vermont for a few months. Then, he was back here and didn’t tell me, Mark or Dad. He keeps coming back here and not visiting or telling us.
13 – I watched where he went for weeks. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Then, I saw he was at the beach. I figured he was with some old buddies for a night out. But then, two days later, another murder had been committed, within walking distance to where the Air Tag said his car was parked.
14 – I called him and asked if he wanted to hang out next Saturday. He turned me down. He never says no to free drinks.
21 – I watched that Air Tag. He is at the beach again. It’s far too late at night for him to be there. He’s up to something. That’s it. Someone has to put a stop to this.
She kept reading, her heart like a siren in her ears. Her eyes moistened with angry, sad, and horrified tears. They dripped down her face and her body became a fortress of pain.
22 – I saw him on the beach, dragging someone. I can’t describe how I felt. The man was limp. I looked closer. Fuck. He was obviously dead. I yelled out his name. He turned from standing near the ocean, and looked at me. I started to yell and cuss him out. I had no words. Just yelling and obscenity. I was so shocked and enraged that I took the only thing near me, a shovel from the back of my truck, and raced towards him. He dropped the man in the water as I came for him, and the guy floated away in the ocean. I pulled and yanked him, and the shovel fell out of my hand. He laughed. He was screaming, then laughing. He asked if I was proud of him, then told me I ruined everything because he wasn’t finished. I told him he has to stop. That I was there to make him stop, since he couldn’t on his own. He punched me in the gut so hard, it knocked the wind out of me. As he tried to escape, I grabbed him. We started to fight. Dmitriy’s rage and evil nature has made him insanely physically strong. It drives him forward. We kept fighting, and it was like fighting myself… I picked up the shovel, then hit him over the head with it. Not as hard as I could, but hard enough to make him pass out. It worked.