Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 68598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68598 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
“I did,” I nodded. “It was a buddy’s friend.”
“I also heard that our friendly neighbor helped you find her.” He smiled.
I grimaced.
“She’s a good kid,” Sunny said, noting my reaction and finding it funny. “I have no idea why you dislike her so much.”
“I don’t dislike her,” I grumbled, my eyes sweeping the neighborhood. “I also offered her a job.”
Sunny started laughing. “Well, I’ll let you get to questioning her about where she’s been. I haven’t seen her in a few days.”
The first alarm set off in my head. “You haven’t?”
“Nope,” he confirmed. “She does that, though. Usually, I see her with the kid, getting her to and from school. But I haven’t even seen that, now that I think about it. Maybe they’re both sick.”
In the middle of the summer? Doubtful.
“Anyway, see you around.” He tipped his nonexistent hat and pulled out, allowing me to pull through.
I did, going straight to the house I knew to be hers.
The second alarm inside my head went off when I knocked and knocked with nobody answering.
The third and final one was when I left but sent a text out to Aodhan to ask Morrigan, his wife, if she’d seen her best friend lately.
The text that came back was what had me turning around and breaking into a secure neighborhood.
Aodhan: Hasn’t seen or heard from her in four days. Why?
I got back to her house in five minutes, once again hitting pay dirt when another one of the deputies that lived in the neighborhood came out.
Silvy.
He didn’t stop to talk to me, but he did allow me through with a wave.
Which worked for me because I was about to do some breaking and entering.
When I got to her house, I didn’t bother with going around the back. I went right up to the front door and picked the lock.
An alarm didn’t sound, but a “you are being recorded” could be heard from somewhere in the house.
“Folsom,” I said as I started walking around, noting all the hastily picked through belongings in the house.
Empty boxes sat on the kitchen table.
Clothes were strewn everywhere on the couch.
The bedrooms were worse.
But then I started to notice the lack of clothes in the closet and the bare shelves in the bathroom.
She’d left.
I knew that with a certainty that was chilling.
CHAPTER 6
I look better bent over.
-Folsom to Kobe
FOLSOM
Me: Why are you in my house?
The text would’ve come from my new burner phone.
But, at the last second, I backed out of the message.
“Momma, this place is horrible.”
I looked over at JP, who was glaring down at her tablet.
It didn’t have the fast internet that she was used to.
In fact, if I were being completely honest, the internet was utter trash, and it was no better than a hotspot with spotty cell reception.
“I can’t work like this!” She threw her hands up in frustration.
I agreed.
I couldn’t work like this either.
My first call in the morning would be to Starlink. Remote places like this would definitely qualify for the service.
But it was just one of those things that I had to wait and wait some more for everything to fall into line. Moving around wasn’t easy. Especially when you were trying to do it quietly while also remaining anonymous.
Leaving the house in Accident had been rough.
Not only had I loved it there, but so had JP.
We’d had Morrigan there. We’d been there the longest out of any other places, making it to where we could have a bunch of stuff while also being very happy with our surroundings, friends and anything else that came with being grounded.
Now, everything was once again up in the air.
But just because I was in a different state didn’t mean that I didn’t still have eyes on my old home.
I had someone after me. Someone that was better than I’d given them credit for.
Hence the surveillance continuing on my house. I’d like to know who was on my tail.
It’d surprised me to find him breaking into my house.
I’d missed him making an entrance through my gate, but I definitely didn’t miss his big, hot self breaking into my home.
He walked through the rooms of our house, stopping for the longest in mine. He took in the tornado of clothes packing—of choosing what would and wouldn’t come in the car with us as we moved—and he dropped his head.
It was when he went through the painstakingly cautious relocking of my home that I got the first alert that he’d tried to text my old number.
I’d disconnected it, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t still have a way to access the information that was sent to it—or tried to track from it.
Kobe: Where are you?
Kobe: Did you leave?
When he didn’t get the reply he was waiting for—because normally I was replying before he’d even finished typing the message—he shoved the phone into his pocket and angrily walked back to his bike.