Total pages in book: 266
Estimated words: 250787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1254(@200wpm)___ 1003(@250wpm)___ 836(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 250787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1254(@200wpm)___ 1003(@250wpm)___ 836(@300wpm)
I try to talk, but my lips won’t move. Where is Ashtyn? She was with me.
The sound of cabinets banging and drawers opening and closing fills the room.
“What the fuck is that for?” one of the men asks.
“What you have on him now won’t be enough,” Devin explains. “Once the adrenaline hits, he’ll be hard to keep down. I need him as immobile as possible, especially if I cut him open.” He tightens something over my waist and a couple more on my legs. It makes it even harder to breathe, much less move. “Open,” he orders.
My eyes find Devin hovering over my face, and I take in a long, shallow breath, forcing my lips to work. I need to know if she’s here. Alive. “Ash-tyn?”
One of the guys laughs. “That bitch is as good as dead. You’ll be lucky to join her.”
I open my mouth to argue, but Devin shoves a mouthpiece into it. Then I feel the familiar pain that takes what little breath I had left away. My body bows up off the table, straining against the restraints. My jaw locks down on the mouthpiece, and my heart races.
The adrenaline makes me feel invincible even when I’m on the verge of dying. I try to fight, but they’ve got me strapped down too tight. Devin places a hand on my chest, and then I feel pain like I’ve never felt. My vision fades in and out as if someone is playing with the lights. The voices fade into the background, and it feels like my insides are being ripped out.
Warm liquid covers my skin as if someone is pouring buckets of water all over me. I could be drowning or on fire. Honestly, it all feels the same. Thankfully, my eyes fall closed, and I openly welcome the darkness. Accepting your death is the most peaceful part.
My hand tightens, pulling back the throttle as I adjust myself on the bike, getting ready for a set of curves coming up when I speed past something white that I catch out of the corner of my eye. I pull on the front-brake lever so hard that my back tire comes off the pavement, putting me in a front wheelie—stoppie—position. Once the back comes down and touches the pavement, I spin it to turn tightly in the road. I speed back and come to a stop when I see the back of the Rolls Royce Cullinan parked in the center of a dead-end gravel road. I park behind the SUV. Getting off my bike, I walk up to it. It’s still running, and the driver’s side door is open. Looking inside, I see a purse in the passenger seat. I know this SUV. I’ve seen it countless times on the Carnage cameras. It’s Charlotte’s. I grab her purse and start going through it. Feminine products, lip gloss, a mirror…everything looks to be there except for a cell phone and wallet.
Where the fuck did she go, and what the fuck is she doing out here of all places?
Getting out, I remove my cell from my pocket and call Adam. He answers on the first ring.
“What’s up, man?”
“Four years ago…we had the meeting with that detective at the house of Lords,” I remind him as if he could forget.
He’s silent for a second, and his voice goes cold when he asks, “What about it?”
“The missing high school girl…they found her BMW? What were the details of the scene?” I ask, looking over Charlotte’s SUV. It seems oddly familiar.
He sighs. “The news report said it was found on the side of the road. Abandoned. No girl, no phone, and no purse. It was still running, and the driver’s side door was wide open.”
The rumor was Adam was the last one to see the driver of that car. He was being set up to look like he killed the senior cheerleader among other women who had gone missing.
“Why all the sudden interest?” he asks.
“I just found a car, and it’s similar.”
“Similar how?” Adam demands.
“Abandoned on the side of the road, still running, driver’s side door wide open. But there’s a purse in the passenger seat. No cell or wallet, though.”
“Send me the picture of the car, including the license plate.”
Placing him on speakerphone, I step back and take a picture, sending it to him. “Done.” Charlotte’s been calling me, but I’ve ignored her. Just like Kashton and Ashtyn.
Seeing her SUV here, so close to my house tells me I’m not getting the privacy I want. And it makes me think she set this up. It wasn’t a secret what happened to those women. None of them were connected to the Lords—except a single picture that showed Adam and Ashtyn’s mother with one of them—so the local news was covering the disappearance of the bleach-blond cheerleader who went missing before it went viral and made national headlines. And she wasn’t the only one. If I remember correctly, it was around twenty.