Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Bone people.
Forensic anthropologists, I think they were called. They’d have to be brought in if the bodies had been shattered into innumerable shards. So many pieces that they couldn’t tell if two or three people had been inside that house.
Because Ackerson still hadn’t contacted me with an update on the number of fatalities, despite the fact that the forensic teams had been working the site since late the previous day.
“The Alfa Romeo’s down there, isn’t it?” Tim’s face was sympathetic when I made myself look away from the carnage. “Cops say when you can have it back?”
I shook my head. “They’re treating all the vehicles as part of the crime scene. I’ll need to rent a car. Can you recommend a local place?”
Tim looked over to the room that flowed onto the deck. The kitchen, I realized after seeing the long sink tap in the window. A small rectangle of glass, the majority reserved for the walls that faced the lake.
“Hannah and I were talking last night,” the other man said, “and we’d really love to lend you our spare vehicle. It’s a beater and we were planning to give it to our boy when he got his license, but he’s okay with us lending it to you. No rush to return it. Joseph isn’t planning to sit his learner license test until after he finishes up the school year, and then he has to take driving lessons.”
The generosity made my hands clench on the balcony railing. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. And if you need a place to stay, we have a spare room.”
I couldn’t stand the idea of being stuck with people who’d be watching me with sympathetic eyes the entire time. And if worse came to worst, and Ackerson didn’t drop her suspicions, they’d start to look at me with fear or judgment or prurient curiosity instead.
I’d been through it all before.
“Thank you,” I said, “but I found a place near the hospital.” The nightly fee was one I could afford even with my depleted accessible account, and the family-owned motel was clean and well maintained.
If I did run out of funds, I’d ask my father to transfer me some money. He’d send it, no questions asked, but only up to a point, so I had to be careful with my spending. Because behind closed doors, feared attorney Anand Advani answered to his wife, any money he sent me coming out of his assigned “personal” funds. The rest went into Anand and Audrey’s joint account.
And Audrey would burst a vein at the idea of giving her second son a single red cent. Which was why I’d stolen it. Slowly, and with infinite care, over a period of years, until I had a seven-figure sum sitting in that offshore account. I’d also managed to hang on to it through sheer spite even as I flushed the rest of my money down an endless black hole. Because it had mattered that I have the money, Audrey’s money. A revenge I’d told myself was ice-cold but that had been born in a child’s anguish.
Now that emotion-fueled decision could hang me if it came to light.
It won’t, I told myself. She doesn’t have a clue, will never have a clue. That’s the whole point. To make a fool out of her in front of her face and laugh over her grave when she dies.
Yes, I had a shit ton of mommy issues.
“Oh right, it makes sense you’d want to be close to Diya and Shumi.” Tim’s smile was open, his eyes searching. “Will you have breakfast with us?”
“No, but thank you.” All at once, I didn’t want to be near the house, the smell of soot and fire in my every breath. “If you’re sure about the car?”
“Of course. Let me get the keys.”
The car wasn’t as much of a beater as he’d made it out to be—a small gray sedan, it started straightaway and only had a couple of minor dings in the door. It was a few years old, with knobs and dials for the temperature and other controls, and a radio with a limited bandwidth, but it’d get me where I needed to go.
After thanking Tim one more time, I drove out to the nearest mall to grab the charger I needed, along with a second pair of jeans, a pack of socks, extra boxer briefs, and a stick of deodorant.
The last thing I wanted to do was stink of sweat while talking to Ackerson or the other cops; they’d take it as a sign of guilt.
Dumping everything in the trunk afterward, I shut it, then drove right back to the hospital.
The first ICU patient I saw when I walked in was a Māori man whose age I couldn’t tell due to his injuries, his body showing signs of some kind of a catastrophic accident. The woman who sat beside him was reading quietly to him from what looked like a doorstop of a fantasy novel.