Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 138981 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138981 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Slowly, slowly, I stay hunkered down behind some low brush to take in the situation.
It’s the still, all right.
A bunch of big metal tanks as large as small swimming pools, covered with tarps, but more than that, too.
They’ve got sheds. The kind you can take apart in minutes and flat-pack into the back of a truck.
There’s also a hastily erected pen full of—pigs?
Yeah, I’m fucking confused till I remember a lot of brewers use manure to make moonshine. Something about the microbes helping cultivate the yeast.
So I guess they keep a segment of their pig stock at the still, whatever it takes to have a ready supply of fresh shit.
If they really need some more, there’s plenty flowing down on the rest of us from the house up on the hill.
But what really gets me is the car parked on the narrow beaten path through the trees opposite me, a path that says this site has been used many times before.
I know that car.
And I know what it means as I watch Ulysses Arrendell pull the door open to the only lit shed and step inside.
All this time, we’ve been spinning in circles because we’ve been looking for one guilty fuck.
Not two, working in tandem to throw us off the trail.
I can barely hold still, vibrating with pure rage, waiting till Ulysses moves inside so he won’t spot me.
Then I dive toward the shed, keeping to the shadows and holding my breath, praying with everything in me that I’ll still find her alive.
When I flatten myself against one side of the screened-in window and peer around the edge, listening to the voices floating through the mesh, my heart sinks.
Sure enough, there she is.
They’ve strung my girl up from a hook, surrounded by carcasses. Her feet dangle over the floor and a red dress sheaths her frame.
Culver hangs back like the gangly freak he is, watching with a mindless grin while Ulysses paces in front of her.
He’s holding a massive cleaver in one hand.
I feel fucking sick as I watch him smack the blunt side of it against his palm again and again, smiling coldly enough to flash freeze hell.
“You must understand, Delilah,” he purrs. “I do this out of love.”
Rather than shrinking away from him in fear, Delilah’s all spitfire, her blue eyes spinning wild and snapping as she snarls, “You don’t love me. You’re sick.”
“But I do!” he insists, reaching up to stroke the edge of the blade down her cheek.
She tenses, jerking away.
The only thing that stops me from charging in like a bull is knowing he’ll open her up right in front of me before I make it two steps.
Volcanic fury boils inside me as he continues, “The moment you sent in your application, I had to have you. Such pretty photos all over your social media. It’s like you were inviting me, with those eyes full of such delicious anger.” He smirks. “I knew the first time I saw you that you were waiting for me. This delicacy, begging to ripen, to grow rich and full with my love so that when you burst, you’ll be the sweetest I’ve ever tasted on the very first bite.”
Delilah’s eyes widen with horror. “You—you can’t kill me. You can’t. People will come. They’ll look for me...”
“People will believe the note found in your house,” Ulysses says smugly. “You simply couldn’t take the stress of Redhaven anymore, and you ran away. A tale as old as time. You were afraid of someone stalking you, so you decided to disappear, start a new life somewhere else, where you don’t want anyone to find you. It’s almost too easy. Your idiot ex gave me the perfect alibi. Perfect chaos.” He practically pouts, inhaling sharply like he’s getting hard and high off her fear. “I would’ve liked to let you ripen a little longer, though. But you had to go and be nosy, didn’t you?” He shakes his head slowly. “Really, Delilah. Calling that Santos woman from the school phone? Don’t you know we pay the bills and see all call records?”
There’s a moment of silent dread.
My headache amps up to a droning pain. Hell of a time for those painkillers to fade.
“There’s something seriously wrong with you,” she whispers. “You’re saying you posted that job ad just to lure a potential victim? Like this whole thing has been one big mind game to fuck with me. To enjoy frightening me. Is that why you left Emma’s body at my house? To screw with me?”
“Emma,” Ulysses says tightly, “was a mistake. And not mine.”
He doesn’t look at Culver, but Culver cringes back anyway.
I see it now.
The shape Delilah saw running away from the house on her first day in town.
That was Culver goddamned Jacobin, sent to dispose of Emma’s body after Ulysses killed her in Delilah’s house.