Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
We were supposed to be settling in for the night.
But she seemed to sense my plummeting mood and decided to rally, getting up, then walking over to let me attach her leash. I forewent her harness and all its patches declaring her a service dog. I mostly just planned to walk around the apartment complex a few times until I was too tired to stay awake with my thoughts driving me half crazy.
So we took off and started walking.
Ten minutes became twenty, then forty.
Sugar and I were both dragging our feet by the time we were closing in on an hour.
“Wanna go home?” I asked as we rounded the side of our building.
Only to have the anxiety come surging back.
This time, though, with good reason.
Because there were three bikes lined up in one of the guest parking spots.
Maybe it was nothing.
Actual guests who just fancied motorcycles.
But my gut was saying it was too much of a coincidence, that I had been seen, that they’d tracked me down.
As always, I trusted my gut.
It had kept me alive this long.
I turned and ran, pulling a confused Sugar with me until she broke into an easy run too.
I didn’t go far. I couldn’t. I had no car. And I damn sure wasn’t leaving Sugar behind. So I ran through the complex and down to the storage shed that was never locked because the groundskeeper was a raging alcoholic who was always too smashed to remember his keys.
“I know, baby,” I said once I got the doors open and started to pull her inside. “But we have to do it.”
I tugged the leash a little harder, and she stepped inside far enough for me to close the doors.
There was a mini window on the roadside, but the night had come in dark, the moon hidden behind clouds. I couldn’t see anything once we were closed in.
Inside, it smelled strongly of weed killer and gas from the tractor.
I worried about the chemicals inside, about Sugar and her curious nose. “Sorry about this, baby,” I said, reaching to close my hand around her snout so she didn’t try to eat anything dangerous. “We’re going to be okay.”
I wasn’t sure if I was talking more to her or to myself.
They weren’t going to come look for me. Not in the shed. They’d look too conspicuous. Someone would call the cops.
I just had to wait them out.
I would hear them leave.
I could watch out the window to make sure all of them left.
Then I could climb out.
And, what?
I couldn’t stay here. Not anymore. Not now that they’d found me. They would come back eventually. They’d kill me. They’d do worse until I was begging for death.
I had to go.
Start over.
It was over an hour before I heard the bikes purr to life.
“Come here, baby,” I said, pulling her with me to the window, keeping one hand on her snout and leaning up to watch out the window, seeing all three of them pulling off. “They’re gone,” I told Sugar, as if she had any idea what was going on. “We’re just going to wait a little bit longer before we go back.”
That ‘little bit’ ended up being almost an hour. Until I had a wicked headache from the fumes and had walked into at least a dozen clinging spider webs.
My heart was in my throat as we crept back to my apartment. But there was no one lying in wait. Just a slightly ajar door and a completely wrecked apartment.
“Fucking assholes,” I growled, spotting my kit in the kitchen.
They took my freaking syringes. Every last one of them. And, yep, my damn insulin as well.
Great.
That was just fantastic.
Just what I needed.
My pulse was throbbing in my temples as I zipped up my test kit and took it with me into the bedroom.
“Of course,” I grumbled when I realized they’d raided one of my stashes of money. The biggest one.
“Girl, this is so bad,” I said when Sugar came up next to me with one of her toys in her mouth. “We have to go. Now.”
I guess there was one perk to having completely started my life over just about a year ago. I didn’t have much. I wasn’t attached to anything that I did have. All the furniture was from secondhand shops or on clearance at a box store. Nothing was quality. Very little had to come with me.
Wherever we were even going.
I didn’t have time to think about that, though.
I rushed through my room, grabbing clothes, toiletries, medication, chargers, and electronics. Then, when I was sure I had everything I would need to survive for a few days—minus my insulin, which I’d have to figure out as soon as possible—I started gathering Sugar’s favorite toys, her treats, food, and bowls.
“This is a lot,” I declared, looking at my pile of bags.