Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 70488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
My stomach sank.
Randel was very logical.
Chan was not.
But watching as Chan took a step back, a scalpel in his hand, I realized that Randel controlled everything. Chan wouldn’t make a move to do a thing unless Randel okayed it.
Randel read the confusion on my face and grinned. “I let Chan do the killing. I’m more of an ‘in death’ person.”
My stomach soured.
Chan did the killing, and Randel did the defiling after the person was dead.
Bile rose into my throat, and I tasted the hot acid at the back of my tongue.
He took Chan’s previous seat and asked, “Who helped you disappear?”
I didn’t comment.
“And was that your brother I saw the other day?” Randel’s eyes gleamed. “I’ll bet the world would love to know that your brother is actually alive. But who am I to judge a fellow criminal? I’ll let it slide. He’ll need the support after you pass.”
I glared.
He smiled.
“Chan,” he said. “What kind of tools do we have in this shed?”
I started to panic again.
My erratic breathing started up again, and before I knew it, I had passed out.
Twenty-Six
Let’s split up to cover more ground. I go left, you go fuck yourself.
—Hux’s secret thoughts
Hux
I stared at the blinking red dot on my cell phone and wondered what in the hell she was doing at work still.
She hadn’t answered the last four times I’d called, and I was starting to panic.
She was supposed to have been here over twenty-five minutes ago.
She was never late.
I always knew where she was coming from and when she’d be wherever she said.
She was very open and honest about her whereabouts, and according to the last text I’d gotten thirty minutes prior, she was supposed to have been here.
I put the knife down, left the carcass exactly where it was, and slid off my glove. The apron came off next, and I walked out of the butcher shop and into the warehouse that would lead me to my truck.
“Hey, can you move these…”
“Not now, Mother,” I said as I continued walking.
“But Katana can’t,” she said. “And I…”
I walked right out of the building and to my truck.
I drove the four blocks to the clinic and parked behind Bernice’s truck.
She wasn’t inside of it, so I started to go to the clinic but stopped and frowned.
I pulled out my phone and pulled up my tracking app, noticing that the phone was pinging in the parking lot and not the clinic itself.
I followed the dot back to her truck and tugged on the handle.
The truck door opened, and her cell phone fell out of the truck onto the pavement.
My stomach soured as I bent down to pick it up.
She had it to where her cell phone never closed, so when I glanced at it, it was still pulled up to our text thread.
Bernice:
I’ll be there in five minutes.
Terror started to course through my veins.
I glanced into the back seat before going to the clinic to peer inside.
I pounded on the door when it didn’t budge.
I kept pounding on it, expecting to see her coming.
But she never did.
“What the hell, man?”
I looked over to find Odin coming out of the medical examiner’s office. “Is Bernice in there?”
He frowned. “No. She left with Sage.”
I shook my head. “Her purse and her phone are still here. Sitting on her truck seat.”
I pointed at her truck.
Odin stiffened.
“Let me call Sage.”
Sage had no more answers than Odin had.
That’s when the true fear started to set in.
Had someone found her?
It took us thirty minutes to realize that Bernice was nowhere to be found.
Not at home.
Not at either of my homes.
Not with Creed and Birdee.
Not at the store.
Not anywhere.
“Where do we even look?” Creed asked the burning question.
The bad thing was, I had no idea.
At first, I hadn’t been nearly as worried. I’d put the tracker in her shoe, and could easily track her using that. Except, she hadn’t been wearing the ones with the tracker in it. She’d been wearing a new pair that I hadn’t gotten a chance to put a tracker into yet.
Three hours later, a search party had been erected, and people were going door to door in the community.
The Dixie Wardens had formed a massive woman hunt, and they wouldn’t stop until she was found.
I only hoped that we could find her before she was dead.
Because that was the feeling that I had in my heart.
That whoever had her, only had one end in mind.
Six hours after her disappearance, I found myself in Bernice’s front yard, staring at her front door.
“Hey.”
I turned to find the Hubers there, staring at me.
“What?” I snapped.
Patrick looked at his brother and then back to me. “We had a thought.”
I swallowed back the immediate “fuck you” and forced myself to calm down.
They were my first suspects.
But all three of them had been getting drunk at Hopps since noon. There was no way that they were a part of her kidnapping.