Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 75248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75248 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
I nodded my head, but my cup half empty nature reared his head.
“What do we do if we can’t get there?”
Core smiled.
“I have a dinghy.”
“You have a dinghy,” I replied blandly.
“Sounds kinky,” Griffin offered his two cents.
I rolled my eyes.
And twenty minutes later, four grown ass adults all two hundred plus pounds, shoved into Core’s fucking dinghy and paddled the last five hundred yards to our worst nightmares.
***
We arrived to a quiet diner.
Nothing was out of place. No boats were in the open.
Nothing.
Not a damn thing.
“Well, what now?” I asked the other three men with me.
“Shh,” Core pointed. “There’re lights in the diner.”
We paddled our way up to the tiny sliver of grass that surrounded the diner and got out.
“Push it into the bushes,” I pointed. “It’s black and won’t be seen unless they’re actively looking for it.”
Core pushed the boat into the bushes at the same time I started making my way around the building.
I went for the kitchen entrance instead of the front or back entrance, thinking that it was the better choice.
It wasn’t.
And I didn’t find that out until I got a belly full of birdshot blasted from a shotgun the moment I made my way stealthily around the corner.
Apparently, my thinking I was stealthy and actually being stealthy were two different things.
Luck was on my side, though.
The man that shot was too far away, meaning instead of getting shot straight into my stomach, the shot had time to spread and slow.
My belly still had birdshot embedded in it, but instead of being buried deep, it was buried shallowly, not having penetrated past the first layer of skin.
Ducking down and rolling into the water, I surfaced ten feet away from where I’d previously been, and came up shooting.
The man went down, taking one shot by me, and one shot by Peek who’d followed me around.
I shook the water from my face and started to trudge out of the water.
“Fuckin’ A, man,” I grumbled, lifting up my shirt to see my belly.
There were no lights, though, and I couldn’t see a damn thing.
I felt it, though, that was for sure.
We breached the kitchen door moments later, and came to a sudden standstill when we found the kitchen full.
Not with men, but with women.
***
Thirty minutes later, I was still just as surprised as I was when I’d entered the room.
“Do we have a story that’s been confirmed by more than two women?” I asked Griffin.
Griffin shook his head.
“Fuck no.” Griffin took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair.
I’d lost my hat about five minutes into the fiasco I’d dubbed Project: What the fuck.
When we’d entered the diner thirty minutes ago, it was to find over fifty women in the room.
The diner was set up like one large room. From the front door where you entered, you could see the back door, the side door that entered the kitchen, and the area that led to the men’s and women’s bathrooms.
There was a large bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room where patrons were more than welcome to sit, and then there were about twenty tables scattered sporadically throughout the room.
And every one of those tables had women occupying them.
All of them were in various stages of dress.
Most were dressed in little more than rags, almost as if when they’d been taken, they’d been in bed.
Others were in jeans and t-shirts. Some short sleeves, others long. Which, in my mind, meant that they’d come from different areas of the country. It hadn’t been cold enough in the last month and a half to warrant snow boots like some of the women were wearing.
Still, others were in fucking dresses and heels.
Every single woman looked tired and in need of a bath, and they all were scared.
And there was a sleeper among them, which was why they were still shoved in this fucking diner instead of on their way to a police station somewhere where they could be questioned and then released.
I don’t know what was telling me that there was someone here that was potentially harmful.
All I knew was that there were two armed men outside patrolling the perimeter, a missing man with—get this—strange, eerie blue eyes, and not a single person inside that was there to watch and keep control of the situation.
Yeah, I wasn’t born yesterday.
“Separate them by amount of time. Start by questioning the women who’ve been held the longest and ask them about the new arrivals first. Use the women to check each other,” I ordered.
Ridley, who’d shown up at the end of my order, nodded his head in agreement.
“I’m in agreement with you, though. It doesn’t make sense that they would’ve left all those women in here by themselves. Someone was keeping them in check on the inside, and we haven’t found that person yet. We can’t just let them go until we know who that person is,” he agreed.