Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Son of a bitch. Seriously.
Maybe I really should stay in Weston. His jokes are going to get me killed here.
Steering toward the kitchen, I see my mom sitting at the island, working on her laptop. Her reading glasses catch the light of the chandelier, and her hair lays over one side of her head as she looks down, taking notes.
“Take some food with you?” she asks, already knowing I’m here.
She looks up and gestures to the two glass Pyrex dishes with lids stacked on the counter.
“That’s actually great.” I inch in. “Thank you.”
She nods and goes back to jotting down whatever she’s researching.
“And thank you for trusting me to be on my own over there,” I say.
“I think that’s what your brother needs.” She keeps writing. “Some time to build life skills, like cleaning his own bathroom, washing his own sheets, cooking some meals…”
I know she’s trying turn my absence into something positive, but I know she wouldn’t choose for me to learn anything by being separated from her.
“What should I have done better with you?” she asks, finally looking up again.
I give a half-hearted shrug, not because I don’t know, but because it’s not her fault.
Parents are parents. Human like everyone else. They project their own dreams and hopes, standards and expectations, because it’s innate to worry that we’ll never figure it out on our own. We’re all screwed up by our parents to some extent, but there was never a time when I didn’t know how lucky I was. Never.
I lean my elbows down on the island. “How about a haircut?”
She smiles and reaches over, digging scissors out of the drawer.
Dylan
At least Hunter didn’t keep backup with him in the Falls. When he said he had something to do, I worried it was because he wanted to see Kade. I hope he does. I’m just glad he seemed to go wherever he was going alone because the Rebels would only encourage a fight.
But Hunter went his own way, and the rest of us stopped at Breaker’s for cheeseburgers on the way home. They’re getting drunk in the street now, but I need a shower.
Just in case the night isn’t over yet. I smile to myself, my mind working overtime with the possibilities.
I close the front door, hearing a phone ring upstairs.
But I have my phone. I pull it out of my jeans. Why do I hear ringing…?
Then I remember the burner Hawke gave me. Right. I bolt up the stairs, into the bedroom, and yank open the bedside drawer, pulling the second phone off from the charger.
I swipe the screen. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Hawke replies. “I got your text. Sorry, I had a ton of classwork.”
“Why are you calling this phone?”
“Because your other one was going to voicemail. Is it dead?”
Is it? I press the Power button, seeing it is, in fact, dead. I plug it into the charger.
“So, what’s up?” I ask, remembering I texted him a rundown of the story Bastien told me yesterday.
“I’ve looked into the names.” I hear a shuffle and a bunch of chatter in the background. He’s probably at his dorm. “Conor Doran declared dead twenty-two years ago. Supposedly buried at Esplanade Street Cemetery. Check it out, okay?”
“What do you want me to do?” I walk to my window, gazing over at Hunter’s dark bedroom. “Dig him up?”
“Just confirm the gravesite and take a picture for me.”
“Anybody could be buried in that grave,” I fire back.
“You watch too much TV.”
Oh, whatever. He knows Murphy’s Law as well as I do. Anything that can happen, will happen, and a gravestone for Conor Doran proves nothing.
“I’m checking Winslet,” he says, “seeing if she’s on any radars after that year.”
“And—”
“And I’m on Deacon,” he assures me. “Deacon Doran. So far, nothing. No social media, no credit history, no transfer paperwork for colleges… Just a birth certificate.”
“No death certificate, though?”
He pauses, but only for a moment. “No.”
So, he’s hiding. Probably because he killed a girl two decades ago and is trying not to get caught.
But it’s too easy. If it were that simple, why would there be any mystery at all? Why the varying versions? Why the confusion about what exactly happened?
We need to start piecing together what she did when she was here. She attended classes, met new people, probably endured a few pranks like I have…
And then I stop in my tracks, thinking.
Like I have…
“If Winslet’s experience mirrors my own at all, being a hostage here, then the Rebels weren’t the only ones targeting her,” I point out.
“Meaning?”
I pace the room. “Is there any proof it was the Rebels at all?”
“You mean other than the creepy text conversations we uncovered?”
I roll my eyes, but at myself. That’s true. The Doran boys, judging from those cell phones Hawke found in Carnival Tower, had a nefarious plan.
But still, that’s not proof they actually went through with anything.