Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
She looked at her hands and shrugged.
They were positively shredded.
There wasn’t a single part of her hand that didn’t have rips and tears on it.
Shit.
I pulled the white handkerchief out of my pocket and handed it to her.
She took it with the better of her two hands, then fisted it between both palms.
“I’m following you because I like to do research on the people that I’m helping,” I said. “You left in a rush, and I was curious what had you so out of sorts. And, since I’m such a cynical guy, I thought that maybe you were privy to some of the things that I was told today and that you were going to meet someone to discuss it.”
I didn’t really believe that, but it was better for me if she hated me.
It’d help keep me away.
“That’s…pretty good.” She sighed. “I think that’s a great excuse to follow someone.”
My surprise must’ve shown on my face because she said, “I don’t think you can be too careful.”
No. You couldn’t.
I would fucking know.
I’d been doing this so long now that it was still a surprise at how awful human beings could be.
Every once in a while, one still crept up on me and surprised me.
I’d dealt with my fair share of people who acted like they needed help when, in fact, they didn’t. They wanted to eliminate me from helping.
What better way than to lure me away from my protection and kill me?
That happened to be why I’d snuck into the circus today.
I’d had to do research on what I was told, and to do that, I had to do some sleuthing.
I’d yet to find a locked building that could keep me out.
“Glad that you think so,” I mused. “Are you done here?”
She looked at the shattered remains of the headstone.
“Yes,” she said. “I just need to burn his body first.”
My brows rose. “You’re joking, right?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“How do you think you’re going to do that?” I asked.
I mean, it wasn’t like you could just go digging up a grave with torn apart hands.
“Him,” she pointed behind me.
I looked and sure enough there was a guy heading our way from so far off that I couldn’t make out his facial features. I could see that he was on a tractor, though. Why he was on a tractor at a cemetery in the middle of the night, I could only guess.
“You called in reinforcements,” I said.
“I had to,” she murmured. “I’m not gonna be able to dig a grave up to do what I need to do without it.”
“Why do you have to do this?” I asked.
She looked at the concrete remains for a long moment. So long, in fact, I could hear the sounds of the tractor making its way toward us.
“My dad was buried with some of his favorite things,” she finally said. “I want to see what those things were.”
“What kinds of favorite things are we talking about?” I asked, curious now.
“The kinds of things that were suspicious at the time, but he asked to be buried with them in his will, and everyone decided to just humor his last odd ball request,” she answered.
CHAPTER 7
On the bright side, I’m not addicted to meth.
-Text from Crimson to Winston
CRIMSON
I guess I could add ‘grave digger’ to my list of skills on my resume.
Well, if I was being honest, I could add standing there and looking like I was doing something to my list of skills. The man of the hour—or the man who kept following me—was the one to do the digging.
The man who’d brought the tractor had said he’d be back for it in an hour and wanted nothing to do with our thievery.
I smiled and said thanks and had intended to get on there and figure out how it worked, but Winston had beaten me to it.
Which led me to now.
I was staring down into the grave at the broken coffin lid.
For it being buried in the ground for a while, the top of the lid still looked fairly decent.
“Do we just break it and jump in there? Or do you think we should bring it all the way out first?” I wondered.
Winston, in his crisp white shirt that was now rolled up at the forearms, and unbuttoned three buttons at his throat, climbed down off of the tractor.
He did it so gracefully in loafers, too.
The man was a stone-cold killer.
I just knew it.
“That.” He pointed at the crowbar that was hanging partially out of a toolbox attached to the tractor. “We’ll use that to pry it open.”
“Yay,” I said as I grabbed it and then jumped down into the hole.
I guess maybe I overestimated how strong the casket would be because when I landed, my left foot went all the way through the lid and into the open space beneath.