Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
I was supposed to be working on the case Catalina accepted for a friend, and I was making good progress when Leon called. Leon was my younger cousin. Mom had adopted him and my older cousin, Bern, on account of my aunt being a heinous bitch, and they were more like my brothers. One time I called Bern brother-cousin in public, and then we had to leave the wedding reception for Mom’s friend because everyone kept giving us weird looks. It was hilarious.
Leon kept the call short. “I fucked up. Come help me and Grandma. Don’t tell Catalina.”
I wasn’t planning on telling Catalina anything. She had her hands full.
A quick investigation revealed that Grandma Frida was gone and so was the Brick. The armored vehicle was her new baby. She took one of the Humvees we claimed when some idiots attacked our warehouse and spent the last three years turning it into an indestructible monstrosity. She never let any of us drive it, which meant that Leon must’ve called her first and she took the Brick and went to help him.
Leon had been working the Yarrow case, named so because of the subdivision where the woman he was investigating lived. I didn’t know much about it except that the woman worked as an accountant and apparently embezzled money from her friends’ businesses. None of that required either Grandma Frida or the Brick.
I jumped into my car and drove to the address he texted.
Yarrow Northwest was a master-planned community in Katy, which was technically its own city west of Houston. In reality, Houston sprawled in all directions, like some giant amoeba that gobbled up the neighboring municipalities. It swallowed Katy a while ago and now there was no way to tell where Houston ended, and Katy began.
The Yarrow boasted about seventy homesites, all featuring EcoSmart technology, large yards, amenities like tennis courts and an onsite waterpark with slides and a lazy river, and prices of a million and a half and up. According to Leon, they actually measured the grass on each lawn with a ruler. It was so trendy, it made me want to spray paint unicorns pooping rainbows in their driveways just to add some life to the place. Buying a house in Yarrow made a statement. I am successful. Look at my house, look at my beautiful family, look at our lazy river and our precision trimmed lawn and perfect little flowers and despair, for we are better than you.
Who would want to float in their lazy river anyway?
Logically I could think of some reasons why someone would want to live in a place like that, but it wasn’t for me. We worked too hard for our money. When we bought a house, nobody would tell us how long our grass could be, what color we could paint the walls, or where we could park our cars. If I wanted a turret on my roof, I would get a damn turret…
When we bought a house… All of us had been working very hard toward that magical house, but so far we hadn’t found a good one. A house would solve a lot of our security problems. The warehouse wasn’t defensible, and we were all too old to live together. Bern had to be dying for his own place. Leon, too. Trouble was we needed something large enough for all of us and secure, and while there were plenty of mansions and compounds around Houston, there wasn’t much available in our price range. Catalina had gone a little crazy trying to get this taken care of and I watched her closely. We didn’t need a repeat of the other incident.
I took the exit, drove up the road to the side street, and took a short drive to the gated entrance of Yarrow. I smiled at the guard in the booth and punched a code into the digital display. The heavy iron gates parted, and I steered the Mercedes through. The guard smiled back as I drove in. The car was fancy enough and I looked the part – a pretty nineteen-year-old blonde in a designer grey dress driving a Mercedes.
“Call Leon.”
The phone rang, and my cousin answered through the car’s speaker. “Are you almost here?”
“I’m in the neighborhood. Which house is it?”
“Keep going. You’ll see it.” He hung up.
And that wasn’t ominous. At all.
I guided the car down the lane. To the left of me, a beautifully landscaped median offered flowerbeds and picturesque shrubs. To the right, driveways peeled off, each leading to a walled estate secured by an identical gate.
You’ll see it.
All the houses looked the same. Some had stucco, some were brick, but at their core, they were all the same, slightly modified version of a McMansion…
The house on my right was missing the gate. That fact took a second to register, and I drove right past it. I reversed and backed up. The gate lay in the inner yard, twisted. Past it, a large vehicle-shaped hole gaped where the front door should have been.