Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 100275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Fitz: Maybe something that can double as a testicle lube because it has nut oil
I grab my keys and head out before the sun rises. There’s a good chance I won’t return home for several weeks.
Just as I climb into my truck, my phone vibrates.
Jaymes: It’s 4 am here. You’re an asshole
I grin, and it feels like life. By the time I get to the base, there are two more texts from her.
Jaymes: I’ll have it sent to u.
Jaymes: Venmo me $30
Fitz: U make more $
Fitz: U should gift it to me
“It’s too damn early in the morning for any rational human to have that monstrous smile. Who sent you titty pics?” Todd asks when we reach the door at the same time.
“Your sister.” I open the door for him.
“She sent them to me last night too. I had to rub one off just to get to sleep.”
I shake my head. “You’re a sick son of a bitch.”
He shoots me a self-satisfied grin over his shoulder. “I’m an only child.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket when it vibrates while heading back to the ready room.
Jaymes: Don’t die today unless u specify in your will that u owe me $30
Gary plucks my phone from my hands. “Todd says you’re rapturous today.”
I snatch my phone back from him. “Rapturous isn’t in Todd’s vocabulary.”
“He might have said perky.”
“I’m perky every day.”
“Jamie, huh? Why does she think you might die?”
“No idea.”
“Tell her you have more lives than a cat.”
“Let’s get serious. We have a job to do,” I manage to say with a straight face while collecting my gear.
Gary chuckles. “Yeah, but not a serious one.”
Eight men and four women load up for the trip to McCall.
Chapter Twenty-Six
JAYMES
A bear killed Dwight Keane’s wife.
He chased the bear but lost the hunt.
Until . . . he burned down thirty-two thousand acres of wildland to avenge his wife’s death. If it weren’t so tragic, it would be heroic. Dare I say romantic?
It’s been years, and Dwight still talks about that bear—it’s all he talks about. The doctors believe he’s on track to spend the rest of his life in a California mental hospital. He’s been released four times and recommitted each time.
“Dwight, it’s vanilla yogurt and strawberries.” My finger taps his gray fiberglass tray before running across the peeling surface of his dusty laminated desk. “Your favorite.” I open his yellowed curtains the rest of the way. Light floods the room, illuminating the unmade single bed crammed into the corner of the dinky bare-walled space. The room reeks of bleach and urine. Today, the pungent urine wins with a full-on olfactory assault. Sometimes, Dwight enjoys marking his territory.
Beneath his bushy black-and-gray eyebrows, Dwight’s vacant gaze points out the window overlooking a courtyard of weathered flagstone walking paths, decaying flower gardens, and a basketball court at the far end, with a few patients milling around. His full head of mostly gray hair, with a little dark brown still clinging to youth, could use a trim. It covers his ears in a style reminiscent of something from the seventies.
Some days he’s Mr. Chatty. And some days, he doesn’t have much to say. Instead, he narrows his brown eyes a fraction, like they are right now—pinpoints of concentration. When he’s not focused on things that trigger memories of the bear chase, I find him poring over books about bears.
“Claire said you were waiting on me. Why don’t you try some yogurt before it gets warm?” I drag a green vinyl upholstered chair next to him at a ninety-degree angle in the hope that he decides to focus on me.
After an eternity, he blinks, and his arm twitches.
I rest my hand over it and sit with him for a few minutes. Dwight relaxes with me because he occasionally thinks I’m his family. It assuages his anxiety.
“I heard you joined a book club.”
He responds with a blink.
“Do you like working in the gardens?”
Dwight offers me the slowest nod. At first, I think he’s dozing off, but he just as slowly lifts his head after his chin taps his chest. This has been his home for twenty-two years. Most people stay until they complete a competency evaluation to determine if they’re mentally capable of standing trial. Others stay until they recover. And a few, like Dwight, become gravely disabled after being found not guilty by reason of insanity. It’s heartbreaking.
A few hiccups have squashed his minimal progress. Tying up one of the nurses with her knee-highs and attempting to escape wearing her pink plaid trousers and blouse wasn’t one of his finer moments. Neither was pissing on another patient, whom Dwight swore was on fire and spewing vitriol. That’s when the marking started.
Stories have been passed down through the years, despite staff turnover since he was first admitted. Dwight’s on his way to becoming a legend around here.