Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 67490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Getting into our group chat that excluded Addison because we didn’t like messing with her time discrepancy, I texted.
Me: Everyone okay?
The youngest twins, who had second shift, answered first.
Gable: All good.
Garrett: Fine.
The next to answer was Quaid, part of the triplet group.
Quaid: Okay.
Atlas and Auden came next, the first twin group.
Atlas: Everything’s okay here. Why?
Auden: Perfect. Just fuckin’ perfect.
The last to answer were Quincy and Quinn.
Quincy: Other than being undercover in a hell hole, I’m fine.
Quinn: Just got done with work. Why?
I answered instantly.
Me: I just have a really bad feeling.
Mom: Dad and I are fine. Nothing wrong here.
That feeling grew the rest of the day.
Not even the text exchange between Keene and I helped. The feeling stayed with me so long that I had to reach out to Addison.
She didn’t answer, and that feeling grew.
It grew and it grew and it grew until I did something she might very well hate me for tomorrow.
I called her commander.
It wasn’t like we didn’t know him, though.
Funny enough, the commander used to be one of Quaid’s best buddies when he was active.
Tobin McGraw was a great guy. He was married now with a kid, but at one point in time, when Quaid had brought him home during Christmas break, we’d started low key dating. After about a year of that, it was decided that the two of us weren’t really cut out for each other, but we’d remained friends anyway.
It was just funny that he ended up being Addie’s commander after that.
Tobin picked up on the second ring. “Now’s not a good time, Ande.”
I felt that in my gut.
“I know,” I pleaded. “I realize that your wife will flip her switch, but something’s wrong with Addison.”
There was a long pause, and then a feminine screech that had Tobin sighing long and loud.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I have this really bad feeling, though. She’s not answering her phone. And she never does that to me. You know she always answers.”
Addison and I were best friends. It was kind of hard not to be when you were twins like us.
When she’d moved away and had been unable to contact me for six weeks because of bootcamp, I’d never been more depressed in my life.
She’d been much the same way, and we’d found that we couldn’t go too long without talking or we’d get really down.
“I know that you’re not seriously talking to her right now!” Tobin’s wife, Crissa, growled.
Crissa came along about six months after we’d parted ways. She hated my guts because I was the last woman to have him, and she went out of her way to make Tobin miserable if he even considered thinking about me, let alone talking to me.
Which was hilarious because he and Quaid were still really great friends.
Being the better person, I tried very, very hard not to have any contact with him whatsoever.
But the one thing that Tobin hadn’t done was block my number, much to his wife’s chagrin.
“Something’s wrong, Crissa,” Tobin snarled. “Shut up for a minute.”
“I’ll call you right back, Ande. I’ll send someone over to check on her now,” he promised.
It took five minutes for him to call back, but before I even answered the phone, I knew.
She’d died.
“Hello?” I asked in a very small voice.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
“She’s dead,” I said, heart in my throat.
“Yes,” he paused. “It looks like it was self-inflicted.”
My stomach sank.
No.
No, she’d never do that.
“She’d never do that,” I said quietly. “She’d never…”
She wouldn’t… would she?
“It looks like she did,” he said. “There’s a pill bottle next to her, empty.”
“She doesn’t take medication, Tobin!” I cried out. “She’s so freakin’ crunchy that she’d never take medication that might kill her, let alone medication at all. Do you remember how hard it was to get her to take some Tylenol last year when she had the flu?”
She’d moved to Germany last year, and when she’d gotten there, she’d promptly gone down with the flu. Tobin and I had to go back and forth with her to force her to take it so her fever would come down.
She wasn’t happy, and still hadn’t forgiven me for hurting her temple of a body with that ‘filth.’
Addison was avidly against any and all things that weren’t natural.
And from that moment on, she’d gone out of her way to find more natural ways to cure fevers.
“I know,” he said. “We won’t let this go without doing a thorough investigation.”
I heard some grumbling in the background, and I had to clench my teeth and fist my free hand to keep from punching the wall.
The woman wouldn’t even grant me this?
“Enough,” Tobin snarled.
There was an angry expletive, then stomping, followed by the slam of a door and then a baby screaming bloody murder.
The crying stopped, but I could hear the baby making sniffling noises, indicating Tobin had picked him up.