Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 94313 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94313 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Standing naked, my skin pink from scrubbing, I suddenly froze and glanced around the cabin. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, everything was how I’d left it, but something was off. Someone had been there.
I glanced at the door to make sure that it was bolted shut and slowly spun in a circle, cataloging everything. The sleeping bag was still neatly rolled at the end of the couch, the food in the kitchen still stacked how I’d left it, the floor littered with the new bags I hadn’t unloaded yet. My suitcase still sat closed against the wall. I stopped, my eyes on the wood stacked next to the fireplace. The top two pieces were missing. I remembered them because when I’d stacked them that morning they had rolled off the top of the stack because each had a knot in the center that had made them hard as heck to split and made them weirdly shaped. I looked at the fire, which was still burning and shouldn’t have been.
Quickly, I started for my suitcase, and my foot caught on a little lip in the floor that I’d never tripped on before. I’d paced that cabin a thousand times in my stocking feet, and I’d never once snagged my foot. Cautiously, I knelt down, shivering, and ran my fingers along the floorboards.
It was a trap door that I would’ve never noticed in a million years, except whoever had been in the cabin hadn’t closed it properly.
I got dressed quickly, putting on boots and a coat in case I needed to run, and grabbed the pistol my dad had left me. It had seemed strange when he’d set it down on the kitchen counter before he left—why in the world would I need a pistol—but the weight of it in my hand felt suddenly comforting.
Then I threw open the trap door with one hand.
I shouldn’t have bothered—with the clothes or the pistol—because there was no one inside the little room under the floor. My jaw dropped open as I looked around the space and the stacks and stacks of crates, some open and some closed. The open ones were filled with rifles, not the kind my dad used for hunting, the kind that looked like something out of the future.
I dropped to my butt, stunned, as I stared down into the room. Where in God’s name had they come from and why were they there?
Chapter 4
Otto
It had taken me a couple of days to remember exactly who I’d fucked on the front seat of my Mustang, and if I was being honest with myself that was probably because a couple months later I still couldn’t quite believe it. Esther Allen was a good girl and the absolute last person on earth I would’ve ever thought would get down with me, especially in a public place. The only thing that made me feel a little better about the whole situation was the memory that she’d been stone cold sober.
Once I’d realized exactly what I’d done—I’d gone to find her. She’d been pissed when she left the party that night so I hadn’t expected a warm reception, but fuck, I hadn’t anticipated how freaked out she’d been when I showed up at her work. She’d been so panicked by my appearance that I’d asked her to meet me later.
It had been almost four months since my dumb ass had sat at the high school for hours before realizing that Esther wasn’t coming, and with each passing week, the thought of just forgetting about Esther became harder to stomach.
I wasn’t sure if I should try to reach out again. The thought of just never speaking to her again made my guts twist, but I also knew that her family was seriously strict and I didn’t want to cause any trouble for her. It wouldn’t matter that she was legally an adult—if she was still living at home, they still controlled everything she did. There was a whole group of the ultra-religious families that I’d gone to school with. Some were more strict than others, but everyone knew that Ephraim, Esther and their little sister were from one of the stricter families. She never wore anything but skirts, for fuck’s sake—even during PE in high school.
How Esther had gone to the party without her family knowing was a goddamn miracle, but what I couldn’t figure out was why she’d hooked up with me. We’d never even spoken before that night.
It was driving me fucking crazy.
I wasn’t current on the views of their little fundamentalist church, but I would’ve bet my house and my bike that they believed virginity was still a requirement before marriage. So why the hell would she jeopardize all that for an hour in the front of my Mustang? I could still see her eyes when I closed mine, and she’d been clear-headed. She hadn’t even wanted a beer that night—the entire reason we’d walked over to the car was to get her a water bottle from my back seat.