Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 120186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
The sound gets louder. Then a familiar head of dark hair rises over the sill.
“What is wrong with you?” he whispers, halfway through the window, taking in the fact that I opened it before he even got there. “I could’ve been anyone. You just throw it open and wait?”
“Any maniac did,” I say, because I’m not in the mood to pretend.
He gets both feet on the floor and straightens up. In the dark, he looks larger than he has any right to. He’s still in his coat, smelling like cold air and a long drive. He looks me over the way he always does, reading me, and whatever he finds in my face makes him drop whatever he was about to say.
“Tell me,” he says.
So I do. I give him the whole thing. Joseph’s face, his voice, every word I can remember. How long he might have been watching me before he stepped forward. Whether any of the people passing on the sidewalk stopped to listen. I pace while I talk because I can’t stand still. Kade leans against the wall near the window with his arms crossed and listens without interrupting, which is one of the only things he ever does that I can’t find fault with.
When I’m done, the room is quiet.
“He’s fishing,” Kade says. “He doesn’t have anything.”
“He seemed pretty sure.”
“They always seem sure. That’s the whole point.” He tilts his head, watching me pace. “There’s nothing. No body, no car, no witnesses. If there was something to find, somebody would’ve found it by now.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can.” He pulls out his phone and crosses the room toward me. “Look.”
He holds it out. The screen is on a local news page. Nothing. The Black Hollow Creek Gazette would’ve plastered something like this across the front page in enormous type if there was anything to print. He swipes to the county sheriff’s page. No reports. No alerts. Not even a missing person’s notice, though I guess the Lowrys might not want to file one if they’re running their own quiet investigation. Plus, I hang my head back and then look again. It’s been like a day.
“See?” He holds it closer. “Nothin’.”
I take the phone out of his hand to check one more time just for myself. He lets me. I scroll through the news page, then the sheriff’s site, then I run a broader search just to be sure, typing Jackson’s name and watching the results come back thin and old. A charity golf tournament from last year. A blurb from some society page. Nothing recent.
I swipe back.
My thumb catches the edge of the screen wrong, and suddenly, I’m not looking at a browser.
I’m looking at myself.
I stop breathing.
The girl in the photo is on the floor. Her wrists are bound behind her back with scratchy rope. Her pajamas. The ones from her own bedroom. There’s a bandanna tied over her eyes.
She doesn’t know the photo is being taken. You can tell by everything about her. The angle of her chin. The way her mouth is open around…
I didn’t know.
The cold hits me in the chest first and spreads out from there, all the way to my fingers, until I’m holding his phone like it’s something dug out of the ground. My brain tries to make it not be what it is. Tries to find another explanation but can’t.
That’s me. He took this picture of me when he…
I look up at him.
His jaw sets. He doesn’t reach for the phone.
“How long?” I say. My voice comes out quiet. Too quiet.
“Allie—”
“How long have you had that?”
He doesn’t respond. That’s answer enough. My hand pulls back, and the slap cracks across his face before I even decide to do it. His head snaps to the side. He takes it. Doesn’t move, doesn’t step back, just stands there and takes it.
“You son of a bitch.” I’m shaking, and it has nothing to do with Joseph Lowry. “I was blindfolded. I was tied up on my own bedroom floor, and you had your phone out.” My throat closes. I push through it. “How many?”
He holds a finger to his lips and stares at my closed door. “Do you want us to have company?”
“Do you think I give a shit? For fuck’s sake!” I want to hit him again, but I settle for shoving him. “How could you do that to me?”
“Do what? I doubt it’s the first slutty picture of you out there.”
I’m going to kill him. It’s not like I’ve never killed before, right? I wince at the thought. No, too soon. “You know this is nothing like that. I didn’t choose this. I didn’t send this to you. You took it. Just like you take everything else… just like you…”
Oh no. I didn’t mean to turn it into this. Talking about the past. It only makes me look weak, and that’s the last thing I want while I’m this pissed off.