Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Could he take him from mild intrigue to bloodthirsty?
The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t fucking like it, and when he turned and started back in our direction, I hurried Aria down the stairs. By the time we hit the bottom landing, we were close to a jog, me at her side and rushing her toward the front door. “Keep moving, Aria. Don’t look back.”
We were almost through the door when from out of nowhere a hand reached out and gripped Aria’s arm.
Aria’d had her head down, and a yelp of surprise left her at the contact. I whirled, getting between the person and Aria, backing her out of the threshold while I prepared to fight.
“Stay the fuck away,” I growled before I could even process who was there.
My tension minimally eased when I realized it was the older Black woman who’d been working the checkout.
Fear over the way I’d responded to her was clear in her expression, though it was mottled with something I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Still, I kept moving backward, edging Aria through the door while I made myself a barricade of protection in front of her.
The woman stepped forward, and she reached out like she was trying to grab on to a ghost. “I know what you are.”
She whispered it in reverence.
In grief.
Shock blew my eyes wide. What the hell? Did she just imply what I thought she did?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I gritted out.
We couldn’t trust anyone.
I could feel Aria trying to peer out from around me. Shock rippled across her flesh, and her heart beat manically against my back.
“You do. You know,” the woman pressed.
She reached again, though this time, I noticed she had her hand balled around something she held in her palm. I stalled out, my gaze sweeping from her to the man who was now downstairs.
She swung her attention his way before she turned back to me and urged, “Take it.”
I resisted for only one moment before I accepted the crumpled piece of paper from her hand. The second I did, she turned and called, “What can I help you find?”
It was a clear distraction.
I swung around before I could watch anything else play out, and I took Aria by the elbow as we darted back onto the sidewalk. We rushed, our feet pounding on the concrete as I led her back to the car. I jerked open her door and she jumped in, and I rounded the front and slipped into my seat. I peeled out from the lot, heading back in the direction of the freeway.
Aria blew out the strain, her fingers driving through the long locks of her black hair before I felt her gaze washing over me. Confusion and hope bound her spirit. “The woman. She knew what we were.”
My stomach clutched, and I exhaled as I passed over the piece of paper that I still had crumpled in my hand. “Think so. What does it say?”
Cloaked in anxiety, Aria unwrapped it. “It’s her name and a phone number. Maria Lewis. And there’s another name: Charles Lewis. She wrote that one in all caps, like she wanted to emphasize it.”
“She wants us to look him up,” I surmised.
“I think so.”
“The next place we stop, we’ll find somewhere to do it.”
Aria sank back in her seat, taking in a bunch of breaths before she whispered, “I feel it, Pax. It feels like maybe the answers are right there, hovering all around us, and we just can’t see them yet. But I also can feel the devastation coming, too.”
Fear clamped around my heart, and my teeth ground as I uttered, “Then that means we have to head it off.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Aria
It was strange not having a real destination. We were simply driving, although it was clear Pax wanted to put as much distance between New York and ourselves as possible, so I assumed we were going to end up somewhere on the West Coast.
We’d driven all day and well into the dark, and it was past ten when we pulled into another crummy motel about fifty miles on the other side of Saint Louis, Missouri. This one was two stories, the doors also accessed directly from the outside.
Pax said it was safer that way; it was best if we weren’t trapped inside a building if we needed to make a quick escape.
We climbed the exterior steps to our room on the second level, each of us loaded down with bags, plus I carried a large brown sack from a local burger place where we’d gone through the drive-through.
Pax slid the key into the lock, and he again went inside and searched the room before he gave me the all clear and I shuffled in.
It was much the same as the last one, though here the interior was a dingy, dust-tainted blue.