Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
It’s the detectives from last night, people whose names I don’t quite remember. There are still a lot of things that are a blur. “Mr. Alistair, we wanted to come and speak with you personally about developments in the case.”
The woman—I think her name is Jones, maybe—looks over his shoulder to find me standing in the doorway leading from the bedroom. “Miss Peters, I’m glad you’re here as well. Why don’t we all sit down?”
And now I know it’s bad news. Not that I expected anything else. I’m not a little girl anymore. I know certain things aren’t possible, like surviving an explosion and the destruction that followed it. I sit on the sofa, my hands clasped between my knees, and Colt sits beside me. To these two, we are a stepbrother and stepsister family. I have to remember we’re not supposed to be more than that.
The man—Patterson? Maybe?—leads off. “It’s an ugly thing, what I’m about to tell you,” he warns. “After searching Mr. Alistair’s computer at his law firm, we have a pretty clear image of his state of mind.”
“What does that mean?” Colt asks.
“It means we found thousands of images and videos recorded over the course of several years.” His eyes drift my way. “Of you, Miss Peters.”
“Me?”
“You were a gymnast, were you not?” I nod, mute with surprise. “It seems Mr. Alistair had what can only be described as an obsession. He took videos of you during competitions and oftentimes zoomed in on specific body parts.” He clears his throat, his face darkening a little as he looks at his partner.
“The dates on the files stretch back four years to when you were fourteen years old,” she explains in a gentle voice. “I’m sure this must come as quite a shock, especially seeing as how he was your stepfather for a short time.”
“Mr. Alistair,” Patterson continues, looking at Colt. “Did you know about any of this? Did you ever have any idea of your father’s feelings toward your stepsister?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Yes. I did. My brother and I both did. He moved us here so he could be closer to Leni. I knew about it even before we moved. It was the reason he…” His face crumples a little like there’s something he has to say, but he doesn’t know how to say it. “It was the reason he tried to kill our mother.”
I can’t wrap my head around it. I hear what he’s saying, but it makes no sense. Like he’s speaking another language.
“Would you care to elaborate on that?” Jones asks, and now I see she’s taking notes.
“I guess he first saw Leni during a competition. My mom, she was a coach. Leni was one of the gymnasts on another team. And I don’t know. He was obsessed with her. He started taking random business trips, just out of nowhere, last minute. We found out later he was actually traveling to the places where Leni was competing.”
All I can do is dig my nails into my palms as I absorb this. All that time.
“That was what first clued my mom into what was going on,” Colt mumbles. “He was supposed to be at a conference or something, then she found out there was no such conference going on, so she started digging into his travel arrangements and stuff. And then, I guess she found some of his pictures, something. And when she confronted him with it… we thought he killed her, my brother and me. He told us she was in a coma after he took her to the hospital.”
My mouth is hanging open, and I can’t seem to close it for long before it falls open again. That’s what he was holding over their heads?
“He wouldn’t tell us where she was, but he did send us a picture once when he visited her. She had tubes coming out of her and one of those braces around her neck. She was on a ventilator. And he told us if we didn’t do what he wanted, and if we ever told anybody about the things he did, he would end her care. And we would never know where she was, or when she died, or any of it.”
He hangs his head and whispers, “And if she died, it would be our fault.”
“We are going through your father’s financial records, as well,” Patterson tells us. “And it does look like he had some payments through a shell corporation going to a hospital out of state. In fact, we were going to ask you about that. If you knew why your father would be sending money to a hospital under seemingly anonymous circumstances. We’ll dig deeper into that and let you know what we find.”
“You think you can find my mom?” There’s the tiniest bit of a tremble in his voice, and it goes straight to my heart. All this time, James was using her to manipulate them. He knew how much they loved her, and he used it against them to get what he wanted.