Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 124923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
I turn and walk away before he can say another word.
Holden
“Hurry the fuck up,” Thayer says from the doorway. He’s keeping watch while I rifle through my uncle’s desk drawers, looking for anything of significance. Christian’s room wasn’t fucking helpful at all. It looked the same it did before he disappeared. His bed was made. All his clothes were hanging in his closet. Not a single sock on the floor, nothing out of place. I don’t even know what I was looking for. Signs that he’s been here, something to tell me where the fuck he went, anything.
“We’ve been up here too long,” Thayer says, rushing me. “We’re not going to find anything without the password to his computer.”
“Just give me a minute,” I snap, slamming the top drawer before moving to the one below it. He’s old school, still preferring filing cabinets and manilla folders to files on a computer. I flip through some folders I find, but they might as well be in another language. All legal jargon that makes zero sense to me. “Do you care?” I ask idly, still frowning at the paperwork.
“About what?” Thayer asks.
“Finding Christian. Making him and Samuel pay for what they did? About any of it?”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” He steps away from the door, coming closer to where I stand behind the desk.
“I get that you have Shayne and you’re happy for once in your life, but—”
“But what?” He’s already on the defense. “You think Shayne and I are just going to ride off into the fucking sunset, happily ever after? Well, I wish the fuck we could. Because we’ve been through enough. You have gone through enough.”
“So, what, we just let them get away with it?” We’ve lost too many people due to our fucked-up family and their need to get rid of anyone who poses a threat.
“Dad said—”
“Since when do you listen to Dad?” I almost laugh. “It’s been a year. And if we learned anything from Danny’s death, we’ll be waiting a lifetime if we sit around waiting for Dad to give us answers or make a move.” If Shayne never came back into our lives, we’d still be sitting around wondering what the fuck happened to our brother.
I drop my attention back to the drawer, sifting through the contents. Thayer might be right. We should put all of this behind us. But it doesn’t sit right with me, and I can’t pinpoint why. Shayne would say it’s because logically, I know Danny’s death was an accident, and that deep down, I still love my cousin. I disagree. Thayer got to yell and scream and beat the shit out of Christian that night. I sat there, frozen in my shock at the betrayal of it all.
I don’t remember what I said to him, if anything at all. After his confession, he promised to turn himself in the next morning, and lulled into a false sense of security thanks to the cold, hard proof we all had on our phones, Shayne and Thayer went to bed like nothing ever happened. Christian and his partner in crime friend left. The party ended. And it was just me. Me and the bottle of tequila left on the counter. Valen had just stormed off after her piece of shit boyfriend and my freshly wounded ego took a back seat to the grief that was suddenly threatening to swallow me whole.
I abandon the drawer, not finding anything helpful, and move to the computer on his desk instead. Racking my brain for possible passwords, I try the one for their Wi-Fi first. Doesn’t work. His birthday doesn’t work either. I type in 12345…nothing. I’m about to give up when I try one last possibility.
Bingo.
“Who the fuck sets their password as password?” I don’t know what I’m looking for, but his email seems like a good place to start. He doesn’t have much in his inbox other than court-related shit like scheduled hearings and upcoming cases. I check through his sent folder next. Nothing.
“Hold—”
“I’m almost done,” I say, cutting him off, not wanting to hear whatever is about to come out of his mouth. A text message flashes in the upper right-hand corner of the screen from someone by the name of CJ. “His phone is connected to his laptop.”
I appreciate your discretion. The wire transfers will now come from Providence Harbor Bank. They have a reputation for being discreet, and transferring across state lines will provide an additional layer of anonymity.
“We gotta go now,” Thayer says.
“Well, he’s definitely up to some shady shit—”
“Samuel’s with Valen.”
That stops me in my tracks. My head snaps up to find him looking at his phone. “What?”
“Shayne said he’s on his way up here, but Valen’s buying us time. We need to go.”
A cold sensation starts in my chest, spreading out through my body. My reaction doesn’t make sense. It’s not like he can hurt her with a house full of people, but the thought of my uncle even knowing Valen exists fills me with a foreboding sense of dread.