Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
He knocked again, this time louder, and from behind him he heard a door open and a woman step into the hallway. “What the hell is all the racket?”
He looked over his shoulder to see an elderly woman in a green bathrobe, holding a spatula in her hands. The smell of something frying met his nose. “It’s too late for this kind of noise. Brandy’s obviously not home.”
“Have you seen her recently?”
The woman lifted her gaze, as though considering. “Not for a couple days, but—”
“I think I hear a baby crying from inside.”
The woman frowned, walking to where he was and placing her own ear against the door. “You’re right. That’s Nadia. I hear her.” She looked up at him. “Ah, shit. Brandy left her alone again. I told that girl to bring her over to me if she needed a sitter, but she swore she only left her if it was for less than an hour and she was sleeping. Stupid girl.”
“Do you have a key?”
“No. The maintenance man has one, but he’ll already have gone home. The owner is an agency or corporation, and they never answer calls. They don’t even have an email, just a box on their website where you’re supposed to let them know you’d like a call back. Such bull—”
Ambrose stepped back, lifted his leg, and easily kicked in the door as the woman next to him cowered to the side. The door bounced back off its broken hinges, allowing him access. The cry could be heard more clearly now that the door was open, and he drew back at the smell of death. Ambrose moved toward the cry, the sounds of the neighbor woman following behind.
His heart dropped when he stopped in the bedroom doorway and saw the scene inside. A woman, her body purple and bloated, lay dead on the floor, the needle she’d overdosed with still stuck in her arm. And next to her, a toddler girl lay on the floor, hand clutching her lifeless mother’s shirt.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” the woman behind him chanted. “Oh, Nadia.”
Ambrose swooped up the baby girl, the scent of decay heavy on her clothing, her face red and streaked with tears. She’d soiled her diaper, and the scent of that mixed with the smell of rot almost overwhelmed Ambrose, but he breathed through his nose and held the little girl tightly to him as he left the room.
The little girl, Nadia, started screaming more loudly, twisting in his arms and reaching her arms out for her mother. Jesus Christ, what was this going to do to the child?
“Shh,” he cooed. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. You’re safe.”
He heard the neighbor on the phone with the police, giving them the address of Brandy’s apartment. Help would be here soon, and Ambrose couldn’t be around when they arrived. The neighbor hung up the phone, and Ambrose handed the sobbing child to her. She laid her head down on the woman’s shoulder, obviously exhausted by whatever she’d been through over the past few days while her mother’s body bloated with gas and began to decay in front of her. “Take care of her,” he told the neighbor, who looked shell shocked, her skin a sickly tint of green, as though she might be sick any moment. But she nodded, managing to hold it down as she stroked the little girl’s hair.
Ambrose turned, taking a moment to glance around the living room and into the kitchen on his way out. Nothing looked out of place, but he spotted a single business card stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. He took the few steps to it, sliding it from beneath the magnet and slipping it into his pocket. Inspector Lennon Gray. Just as he’d suspected, Lennon was still on the case, whether she had permission or not. Something about that made him strangely proud, but he also had the urge to swear and topple a table. He did neither, merely leaving through the broken front door, finding some solace in the fact that the baby had stopped crying and the police sirens could be heard drawing closer. She’d been saved. He only prayed she wasn’t like the countless children who experienced similar circumstances and were thrown out of the frying pan and into the fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Courage, dear heart.
—C. S. Lewis
Seventeen Years Ago
Patient Number 0022
Jett followed his guide as she flew down the dirt road that led from the farm, gliding and soaring but never dipping out of sight. And when Jett felt scared or confused, his guide sensed it and immediately came to perch on his shoulder, those feathery wings brushing against his cheek, comforting. Back, forth, back, forth.
He followed the dove into the small town where he’d gone to school. Jett walked through the playground, misty images of children running and swinging and climbing the jungle gym, echoes of their laughter a tinny ringing in his ears. He saw strings of light connecting each child to the other, twining and then untangling as they crossed paths, illuminated numbers rising in the air that were slightly off, with odd slants here and double lines there, that he didn’t know the meaning of. But somehow he also understood that they weren’t really numbers but some language he didn’t know that his brain had converted to mostly recognizable digits.