Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
I lowered the phone and scowled. “Okay. One, I don’t know you. I don’t remember Brett mentioning a Chandler Montag—”
“My name is Channing Monroe.”
“—and Brett told me to stay put unless he himself came for me. Don’t know if you’re aware, but I had a couple run-ins with serial killers. That makes me cautious.” I caught sight of the door, that'd been kicked open. “Normally makes me cautious. Plus, I’ve already maybe pissed Brett off beyond repair which was why I was drinking that—” I swung around to point at the wine bottle, and I forgot that I’d opened a second one too. “—because I needed to calm my nerves. Not the best idea, but I felt really bad. And I was talking to my sister on the phone and she was making me feel a little better about it all.”
Lo gasped again through the phone.
“What?” Roger was now squawking. “What? WHAT? Why are you gasping?”
I could hear her tears. “She called me her sister. Roger, she called me her sister.”
I looked down at the phone. I was going to be a blubbering mess in two seconds. “I did. I—” I yelped as the guy crossed the threshold, grabbing my wrist, and he pulled me after him. “Ow! Ouch. I can walk, you know.”
“What’s going on?”
The guy plucked the phone from my hand, shutting the door behind us and tugging me after him. “My name is Chandler—” He cursed. “My name is Channing Monroe.” He rattled off a bunch of information. The phone number for the police department, then the phone number for the Roussou police department. He also gave his own personal phone number, followed with instructions to call his wife with her name and her phone number. For some reason, he gave the number of a restaurant called Manny’s, which I perked up about because Brett mentioned that place too, but for the love of me, I couldn’t understand why he was giving that information to Lo and Roger. Also, I doubted they were able to get everything down by the time he was done because he said it all so fast.
We got to a truck, and he finished the call with, “You can stay on speaker with your sister, but when we get to Roussou, you both need to shut the fuck up.” He unlocked his truck, opened the door and didn’t wait for me to climb in before he hurried to his side of the truck.
I climbed in, shutting the door as he was already starting the engine.
I asked into the phone, “Did you get all that?”
“Yes,” Lo said in wonderment. “With bated breath too.”
Roger added, “We got it because Luna ran in and hit record on my phone. I was still searching for it when he got to the second town’s police department.”
“Thanks, Luna.”
“Oh, she’s gone,” Lo sniffed. “We need to get them to bed, but I can’t leave this room. I’m so wired. Also, I hope Brett’s okay.”
The guy cast an annoyed look at my phone, and his mouth flattened, but he didn’t say anything.
I frowned. “We’re not usually like this. It’s just—the thought of Brett being in trouble isn’t totally computing with us. It’s Brett.” That knot was back and sinking lower in me. “And also—”
The guy shook his head, holding up a hand. His voice came out softer, “I get it. The shit you’ve been through and a stranger’s busting down your door? I get it.”
I finished, “—the quickest way to draw me out of a hotel room is to tell me someone I love is in trouble. I needed to wait a little bit, think it through. The door part without the chain was a drunken mistake.”
He cast me a sideways look, his hand resting on the steering wheel. “There’s a case of coffee in a can at your feet. Drink as many as you need to sober up. Will briefed me a little on what’s going on and he said that although Brett sounded okay when they got off the phone, he wouldn’t put it past him to do something stupid. Hence his call to me. When I called Brett, he wouldn’t pick up.”
“Billie,” Lo said, her voice now very somber. “Get off the phone with me and call your man.” She ended the call from her side, and I had so much dread and fear and panic and all of it was now hitting me at once because I wasn’t the one in trouble. Brett was, or might be, and I’d wasted time in getting to him.
I’d been so foolish.
I went to my call history, went down one name, and called my man.
Please, let us not be too late.
61
BRETT
I turned my phone off as I broke into Shannon’s trailer.
She wasn’t there, and based on the looks of it, she hadn’t been back in a long while.