Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69303 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69303 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
He picked it up, listened for a dial tone, and dialed 911.
He cursed and hung up. “It has a busy signal.”
I blinked. “Is that even possible?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Phone signal is likely to be out when you have a natural disaster like this. It could’ve easily taken out transmission lines across the area.”
“Plan B?” I asked.
“That friend that I was talking about earlier.” He paused. “My club president is already writing back.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Can you tell where we are?”
He paused and did a couple of things on the iPad before saying, “Arkansas.”
“Kind of close to home,” I admitted.
The baby spit the bottle out and started to squirm.
“Burp him,” my male companion ordered.
I did as he suggested, but apparently didn’t do it good enough because the child was taken from my arms. “He won’t break.”
I watched as he transferred the baby to his shoulder and burped him expertly.
Just like he’d done everything else that pertained to the little boy.
Yeah, the man had definitely been a father once upon a time.
There was no denying that.
The real question I needed to ask myself was why did I find that so sexy?
Why was seeing a man—a scary one at that that seemed incredibly competent hacking into locked things that should be unhackable—holding a baby so damn hot?
Six
She’s a ten, but sometimes shakes her head to get rid of her intrusive thoughts. She’s my little Etch-A-Sketch.
—Apollo’s secret thoughts
APOLLO
My leg throbbed like a bitch.
But it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as holding a little baby again.
Memories assaulted me, yet I kept burping the tiny, breakable thing in my arm until I got a solid burp out of him.
When he’d finished, I handed him back to Dru.
“You can hang on to him.” She smiled weakly.
“Never been around a kid before?” I asked.
She looked incredibly uncomfortable while holding him, yet she’d offered up no complaint.
“Not really,” she admitted as the iPad vibrated. “Webber’s contacting who he can. He’ll get us out of here.”
“Did he know about the plane crash?” she asked.
“No,” I shook my head. “First he’d heard. Though he had heard about the tornado.”
“Great,” she murmured. “This is bad.”
It wasn’t just bad.
It was DEFCON-1.
As in, likely couldn’t get much worse.
I knew that there had been three hundred and thirty-two souls on board that plane today.
As of right now, I only knew of three that’d survived.
Add in to that the destruction of the tornado, and it was shaping up to be a really awful day.
The house shook around us, and both of us tried to ignore the flickering of the lights.
“Ten bucks say the lights are about to go.”
I shook my head. “I think they’ve already gone. I think that the people have a generator.”
“Where?” she questioned.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. But Webber knows my location. If we lose power, he’ll look for us here.”
She blew out a relieved breath. “How long do you think it’ll take?”
A while.
“I don’t know.”
She sat down on the couch and looked up at the roof above her head. “Do you think that the roof will hold?”
“Probably.” I walked around, taking everything in. “Did you happen to see if there was anything to eat?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t look.”
I left her there to go find out what there was to work with.
The baby wouldn’t be able to go long without food without being miserable.
I flicked on the lights in the kitchen, ignored the way the rain was pouring inside from the shattered kitchen window, and started opening cabinets.
I hit pay dirt in the fourth one over.
Powdered milk.
Good.
At least there was something I could offer the kid if we didn’t get anyone here anytime soon.
I grabbed it and walked back to the living room where Dru still sat looking forlorn.
Shocked.
I didn’t blame her.
“Let’s find you some dry clothes.”
She sighed. “What makes you think there’ll be any?”
“Because there’s non-perishables in the kitchen. They live here at least some of the time. People tend to leave clothes behind when they live somewhere. And generally, VRBOs or Airbnb doesn’t generally leave food behind for other people. I wouldn’t trust opened food, and neither would any rational human being.”
She stood up and walked with me through the downstairs.
We hit the master bedroom, and I flicked on the light.
Major cracks spiderwebbed across the walls, and I stopped her from entering all the way.
“You stay out here,” I urged.
She stopped in the doorway. “Guess there was more damage than the roof just ripping off.”
“I imagine that the entire foundation shifted,” I admitted. “It being pier and beam, the air can get underneath the structure and lift it up if it’s bad enough.”
“Hmm,” she said as she watched me start to go through the drawers. “Anything good?”
I held up a pair of pants that were so long that there was no doubt they wouldn’t fit. “Dude must be tall.”