Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 75193 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75193 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Bile rose in my throat.
Ridley’s office was set up in a way that his desk wasn’t centered in the room; so, although Connor had stepped through the door, he wasn’t standing directly in front of me.
He was more to the side and to the left of me.
Meaning that when the bullet hole filled his forehead, it didn’t have any chance of hitting me.
It passed directly through Connor’s head and slammed straight into the wall just to the right of where he’d been standing.
Connor’s body stood motionless for a few long seconds before it dropped down, hitting his knees first, and then falling face first into the scarred wooden floor beneath his feet.
It started and finished in less than a minute, but I felt like my whole life had changed before my eyes.
My eyes went to the hallway where I’d heard the Sheriff’s voice, then my eyes fell down to where he was lying bleeding in the middle of the room.
Men had swarmed him, and a gun lay at the side of the Sheriff.
“Oh God,” I said, hurrying forward.
I dropped down to my knees, shucking off the t-shirt I was wearing and pressing it down hard on the man’s bleeding belly wound.
“Did you shoot him?” I asked the Sheriff.
“Nobody else can shoot that good,” the sheriff countered.
I laughed.
The man at my side, Leffron, laughed, too.
“You’re so full of shit,” Leffron said.
That was the end of the joking, though, because then it got chaotic.
Paramedics arrived within two minutes, and two minutes after that Ridley arrived like the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels.
***
Ridley
“What the fuck happened?” I asked the room as a whole.
“A whole fucking mess of shit,” Kelly sighed, rubbing his head.
His eyes never left my brother’s prone form, however.
“How about you explain before I lose my fucking patience,” I said through gritted teeth.
I watched in silent horror as my brother’s lifeblood, an hour old now, sank into the wooden cracks of the station’s old wood flooring.
Idly, I observed that most likely we would have to get the floor replaced. There was no way in hell all that blood would be removed from the wood. It was like the old flooring had sucked it up, forever keeping it as a memento of the day.
I felt numb.
This hadn’t really happened, had it?
Something soft touched my arm, and I looked up to see Freya standing there.
I hadn’t even heard her walk up.
How had she snuck up on me without me knowing?
“You okay?” she asked softly.
My eyes studied her face, and the reason she was even gone from my side in the first place after this shit day we’d just had.
I cupped her face, running my thumb lightly over the bandage on the side of her cheek.
“You could’ve lost your eye,” I said softly, studying her, gauging the state of her health after everything that had just happened to us.
“I’m fine,” she said, smiling lightly. “I can’t believe I didn’t feel that happening,” she cupped her hand over mine. “It hurts now.”
I grimaced.
“I’m sure,” I said. “A piece of wood, even a splinter, would hurt anyone if it’s coming that fast and hard.”
When the bullet had hit the wall, pieces of paneling and wood particles had sprayed out from where it’d impacted the wall.
Freya, unfortunately, had been on the receiving end of the wood splatter. Although she had about ten places on her body where wood had cut her skin, the one by her eye was the worst.
It was also the one responsible for my freak out.
I’d arrived just in time to see the blood pouring from Freya’s head, not even noticing it’d been my own brother responsible for it all until Kelly had shown up.
I hadn’t even had a chance to go talk to the Sheriff, who’d refused to be taken away until his wife arrived, knowing she’d be scared after hearing all the ‘hullabaloo’ on the police scanner.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” Kelly said. “I don’t even know…”
He shook his head.
My grip on Freya’s face slackened, and I dropped it to pull her closer to me.
“Please leave,” I said softly to her. “Peek’s over there. Go to him. Sit with him and Alison. I don’t want you here right now. Not looking at this.”
My eyes were on Connor’s body, but my words were all for Freya.
I just couldn’t look away from the horror show behind me.
It was a horror show, too.
This was the biggest fucking joke I’d ever been told.
“Okay,” Freya said softly, placing a kiss on my jaw, finally breaking my gaze and bringing the attention to her once again. “But hurry. I think your sister needs you.”
I nodded my head and she let her body slip from my grasp, leaving me feeling empty and broken once again.
Griffin replaced Freya on my right side, and Wolf came up on my left, effectively giving me strength when I felt like breaking.