Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 128307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Because testosterone has controlled my anger, I move through the maze like I’m on a mission, hopeful I won’t confront a perp made of cardboard. I want him to be real, and for his veins to bleed red like mine.
With each perp I take down, a little piece of anger and the guilt I’m struggling to move past shifts a smidge. I feel like I have a purpose, and that a lie did not squash my entire existence.
As I near the halfway point of the test, I replace the perps’ faces with the bastards I’ve chased over the past fourteen years. I make the game personal, and that ensures I play it to the best of my ability. I don’t miss a single target, and I save over a dozen innocents.
I’m in the last phase of the stimulation when I replace the image of the final cutout with that of my father. His familiar grin and icy-blue eyes barely register for a second, but the guilt they instigate nearly makes me drop my gun.
I love my father, and he loves me, so why would he do what is being accused?
It doesn’t make any sense, and it makes me feel more conflicted than I’ve ever been.
I’m drawn from my thoughts when Macy announces over a speaker above my head that I have nine minutes left on the clock. If I end the game now, I will hold the course record.
Competitive is my middle name, so after taking in the perp’s dark eyes and stubble-covered chin, I kill him with a direct hit to the heart.
I won. The game is over. But the instant the light flicks on, the truth crashes back into me.
This isn’t my reality. I didn’t save Cameron, and I didn’t find her, either.
Crouching down, I fight to replenish my lungs with air. I can’t breathe with the weight on my chest. It feels like it is crushing me, and not all of it centers on Macy’s admission that Cameron wasn’t kidnapped. It’s the fact I’d even considered placing my father in one of the perp’s shoes.
He’s meant to be the good guy, the anchor of our family.
I’ve looked up to him for decades.
That’s done with now. I don’t know if I can ever forgive him for this.
The scent of Macy’s body wash announces she’s behind me a second before her cautionary tone. “You need to forgive yourself before you can consider forgiving your father.”
“I can’t,” I murmur, the truth more crushing than my guilt.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go. I am supposed to save the victims and then take the bad guys down. I’m not meant to look the other way because they’re related to me.
Proof this woman knows how to coerce me out of the darkness shines through when she murmurs, “Then maybe you should retake the test. You might feel different if you get a perfect score this time around.”
I’m as competitive as I am cocky, and that, along with the adrenaline still surging through my veins, has me pushing my anguish to the back of my thoughts for the second time this morning.
When I twist to face Macy, she gives me her handwritten score of my run. She marked it with a red felt pen, the score at the top closer to a B than the A+ I usually strive for.
“Seven out of ten?” My voice is lofty with shock. “I took down all the perps with eight minutes left on the clock. How is that anything less than a ten?”
“You didn’t take down all the perps.”
I snap my eyes to hers, ready to call her out as a liar, but then I remember she is the only person being honest with me, and I need to cling to that faith more than anything else.
“You said there were six perps.”
Macy arches a dark brow, looking smug. “I said six perps entered the mirrored house. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t already someone dangerous lurking in the shadows.”
I track back over the past thirty minutes before murmuring, “The stroller was empty, wasn’t it?” I didn’t hear any cooing or infant cries. I saw a stroller and instantly brushed off the woman behind it as innocent.
Nodding, Macy moseys to a bench beside the stimulator, digs her hand into a bag, and then holds out a bottle of water in offering. Stimulators like this don’t just make you sweat under the collar. They suck the life right out of you.
I accept the bottle before gulping half of it in one go.
When I join Macy on the bench, our shoulders touching, she asks, “Feel better?”
I snort, acting like I hate how well she knows me. It is all a lie. “Yeah.” I rake my eyes over the setup that returned some epinephrine to my veins as a reluctant smile tugs at my lips. “Though I should probably tell you if this is your idea of therapy, you’re shit out of luck. The Rogers don’t do therapy.” My grin vanishes. “Well, not as far as I’m aware.”