Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77236 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77236 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
It wasn’t until I was pulling into the driveway that I noticed someone sitting on the front porch.
In a big, wide-brimmed hat that cast their face in shadow
But the dog, the dog was familiar.
Frida.
The anxious mess of an English Setter.
Which meant the woman in the hat was Siana.
Siana, who likely didn’t have her own car, if she used ride-shares.
Siana, who seemed like a homebody.
Who likely wouldn’t have shown up on my doorstep without a damn good reason to.
Sure enough, the word police slipped out from between her lips, sending up alarm bells in my mind as I flashed back to the gunshots, the police tape, and the blood covering Siana from her neighbor.
But I needed to keep it cool.
She was clearly already on edge. I would never get straight information out of her if her anxiety took over.
So I led her inside, cursing my lack of furniture, but she seemed mostly focused on me as she followed me into the kitchen.
I grabbed her a bottle of electrolytes, then handed it to her while grabbing a bowl to fill for water for Frida. But Siana had a drink thing in her hand for the dog, so she was clearly hydrated, and walked away from the bowl to sit near the vent blowing cool air instead.
“Thank you,” Siana said, gulping down some of the neon-yellow liquid.
“Sit, baby,” I said, reaching for the only chair in the kitchen. The previous owners had left it, along with a bunch of other junk, in one of the bedroom closets. And while most of that stuff was trash, I figured there was no reason to throw out a good chair.
She lowered down, then reached up to pull off the hat, setting it on her lap.
“I would have called,” she said, gaze downward. “But I’d left my phone in my apartment and… and I couldn’t go back for it.”
“I gave you an open invitation. You didn’t need to call. You been sitting outside long?”
“A couple of hours, I think,” she said. “I don’t really know since I didn’t have my phone. What time is it?”
“About two.”
“Then… yeah, almost two hours.”
Poor thing. Stuck out on one of the most miserable days of the summer.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I went to the hospital this morning,” she started.
“He made it?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah. I mean… the nurse said he hadn’t woken up yet. But I didn’t get to talk to the doctor. He looked oddly… okay. Pale, but he lost so much blood. But… yeah, he didn’t even open his eyes when I was there.”
“Gunshot wounds can be tricky. But people recover from them every day,” I said, knowing it wasn’t much comfort, but not wanting to give her a lot of false hope, either. That would hardly foster any trust between us. And I had this strangest urge to be a sort of “safe space” for her.
“I told them I was his sister to get in,” I admitted.
“Gotta do what you gotta do,” I said, shrugging.
“He has no one, so I figured there was no one to tell them I was lying.”
“They’re probably too busy to care that much,” I told her. “And some ICUs let people in who aren’t family anyway. Depends. Did something happen at the hospital?” I asked.
“No. No, that went… as well as it could. Afterward, I went home to get Frida to take a walk. I was so busy getting water and putting her foot… oh,” she said, suddenly jumping up, and walking over to her dog, lifting her foot, and peeling something off of it.
“Is that a sticker?”
“It helps protect her pads from the hot cement. She hates the booties. But you can’t leave them on. Dogs sweat through their feet,” she explained as she continued to peel them off, then dispose of them in the garbage that I had sitting out because I still needed to install the under-counter one.
“Okay. You were getting ready for a walk,” I said when she sat again, twisting and untwisting her drink cap over and over.
“Right. I was trying to remember so much. That’s how I forgot my phone. Anyway, I was coming out of the front door. And I saw them.”
“Them, who?”
“The guys who… who shot Kylo.”
“You saw them at your building?” I asked, trying not to sound concerned, even if my stomach was tightening up.
“They were getting out of the car. And I… I saw the bald one. With the red and black tattoos,” she explained, and there was just… something about the way she said it, something about her posture—shoulders slumped inward toward her chest, head down—that had me thinking it was more serious than I’d realized somehow.
“Why did you panic?” I asked. “You said you’d seen them,” I added. “But I thought you meant through the peephole. Or out the window. Was that not the right assumption?”