Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
“What?” He braces his arms on either side of the doorframe, looking as wrung out as I feel.
It’s late, long after our usual bedtime, but I knew he was still in the armory, changing the cables on his crossbow.
As I rise to my feet, frustration gets the better of me, and I kick a box of electronics toward him. “Look at this!”
He sifts through the parts, his interest guttering like a dying flame. “It’s a box of junk.”
“They’re circuit boards.” I open the furnace door and grip a nest of wires in the lower housing. “These wires should be connected to one of those boards.”
“Does this mean…?” He dives back into the box with renewed vigor as if the boards hold the answer to everything.
One of them probably does.
“Denver removed the circuit board and left the box for us to find.” A bitter taste fills my mouth.
“Another sick game.”
“Without a doubt.”
“Fuck.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and groans. “So whatever he did to the power…You’re saying it was never going to be fixed in the generator room where we caged him?”
Where Kody removed his clothes and intended to surrender his body in exchange for electricity.
“So it seems.” I grit my teeth.
The realization sits between us, laden with the gravity of our choices and their unforgiving consequences.
Denver’s cooperation was a lost cause from the start.
Who knows if Denver would’ve actually gone through with his end of the deal if Frankie hadn’t intervened? And who cares? The cost was too fucking high.
“Can you fix it?” He pushes the box back to me, his gaze intense, challenging.
“I’m not an electrician.”
“You built the dirt bike and repair every machine that breaks—”
“Engines, yes. Circuit boards, no.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You fucking serious?”
“What’s going on?” Frankie squeezes in past Kody, her presence a soft, welcoming warmth in the cold, cramped space. Wearing a fur pelt like a robe, she holds a flame of light in a tin can. “Did you get the water heater converted?”
I’m reminded of my original task, another problem I haven’t solved.
In the past twenty years, the pipes froze twice that I remember, and both times, Denver switched the plumbing to wood-heated hot water. The backup system only works for the primary bathroom, which sits on the other side of this wall. That’s all we need if I can figure out how to do it.
“Not yet, but I found this.” I show her the wires and box of circuit boards. “This is how he disabled the power.
As I explain my assumptions about the missing control panel, her sexy little mouth forms an O.
“Where’s an electrician when you need one?” She blows out a breath, making the flame dance in her hands. “There are too many wires. Even if we try every combination on every circuit board, it will take time and resources we don’t have. We don’t even know if the correct board is here. The box could be a decoy. I hate to say this, but I think we need to forget the generator. It’s a dead end.”
I arch a brow at Kody.
“Come to bed.” She extinguishes the candle on the floor and ducks out, expecting us to follow.
Of course, we do. We would follow her to the ends of the earth if we weren’t already standing on the edge.
“What is that you’re holding?” I catch up with her, eyeing the flickering can that lights our way.
“I solved the candle problem.”
“What candle problem?”
“We ran out.”
I knew we would eventually run low, but I’ve been too consumed with the generator to register much else.
She leads us to the bedroom that once belonged to Denver. It’s our room now, empty as it is.
Kody dismantled all the furniture for firewood. Not much remains in the rest of the cabin, either. We’ll be tearing wood walls off the surrounding buildings next. Everything that’s nailed and not nailed down will be used as fuel.
Except the books in the library. We’re not desperate enough to burn those yet.
As Kody heads to the hearth to stoke the fire and prepare the bathwater, I take in the project Frankie’s been working on.
“Oil.” She follows my gaze to the jugs that line the far wall. “Cooking oil, mineral oil, paraffin oil, inedible animal fats, basically anything I could find to burn.”
“How does it work?” I examine one of the many tin cans in a nearby crate.
“I thought you knew.” A rare grin glows in her green eyes. “I read about it in one of your survival books.” She grabs a spool of gauze from the supplies and twists it into a six-inch rope. “Fill the cans with oil, punch a hole through the lid, and the gauze works as a wick. There’s a little more to it, but I worked out the kinks. According to the book, we should get a hundred hours out of each one.”