Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Adam couldn’t understand this woman. She was definitely not the same girl who’d almost walked into him in the hallway outside the courtroom and upended everything he thought he knew about the world, and about himself. That girl had been a whole person, no matter if she was Silent, her personality vibrant in her every word.
Oh, I’m so sorry. I should’ve been looking up instead of at my organizer.
In contrast, the woman in front of him appeared devoid of personality; she gave off no cues by which he might judge her.
All he had were her words, and his finely honed ability to see through bullshit.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he snarled, his chest tight with the hugeness of all the things he could never ever feel for her. “If you wanted to die, there are less painful ways to go about it.” He waited for excuses, perhaps for an attempt at an impossible penance. He’d heard some Psy were out there trying to make up for their crimes.
There could be no making up for what she’d done, what she’d failed to do. Her. The one person in the entire world on whom he should’ve been able to rely. The one person who’d kicked his boyish heart so badly that he still wore the bruises.
She’d hurt him so much that he’d tried to turn cold and unfeeling in an effort to protect himself. It had been Saoirse who’d snapped him out of it. “I’ve already lost Mom and Dad,” she’d said, unexpected tears in her eyes—his sister was one tough cookie who’d been running on anger since the day of the murders. “I can’t lose my bighearted, annoying, loving bear of a little brother, too.”
Chirp and Bear. What a delightful combination of fledglings we’ve made, Cormac.
Not only made, my dear heart, but managed to raise to near-adulthood with only minor calamities and three broken bones between them.
No, Dad, all three broken bones were Adam’s. I’m far too graceful to go flying into canyon walls. Bear, on the other hand…
A cascade of memories upon memories of the family they’d once been, the loving parents whose honor this J had helped desecrate that day in the courtroom.
“There’s a serial killer in this region” was her cold response to his question about what she was doing in his territory.
“The Sandman.” Adam hated the media for glorifying the pathetic waste of space by giving him the pithy sobriquet. “I know.”
“I think he’s based in Raintree.”
Adam stared at her. “Did you pull that out of your ass or do you have actual proof?” He was being aggressive far beyond anything those who knew him would ever expect, but she was lucky he hadn’t given in to his falcon’s urge to shred her the instant he saw her.
The wild creature that was his other self could forgive many people many things, but never her. Not her.
“You knew at once, didn’t you?” he said before she could answer. “I saw it on your face.”
She didn’t startle at the apparent non sequitur. “Yes,” she said again, with no attempt to downplay her involvement in a terrible miscarriage of justice. “I knew Reagan was lying the instant he began to speak.”
“Why shouldn’t I kill you here and now?” He focused on the haze of red across his vision, because rage he could handle. The problem was what lay below, the vulnerability so huge that he’d had to wall it off from his conscious mind all these years so he could remain the brother his sister knew and loved, so he could be a strong and affectionate and generous wing leader.
So he could be Adam and not a broken shadow of himself.
“I could rip you to pieces, throw those parts in the desert. No one would ever know what happened to you.” It was a vicious threat, and he’d made it because he wanted to incite a response—any response.
The emotion inside him was a serrated and massive pressure defined by two moments that had forever altered his future. One in that hallway that had lit up his bleak world…the other in the courtroom that had destroyed it.
“If you kill me now,” she said, with not even a flicker of an eyelash to show that she might be affected by either his words or her own, “you’ll be putting multiple innocent young women in danger.”
Adam made a sound deep in his throat that not many people ever heard from a changeling falcon and survived. At the same time, he heard the clunking engine of a familiar car starting up. Mary had finished her daily morning chat with Mi-ja and would now make her ponderous way to Main Street and the local grocer to pick up what she needed to make that day’s lunch and dinner.
“We can’t have this conversation here,” he said, not sure how he was even managing to sound so rational when she’d smashed into his life all over again. “Go to the end of Main Street, turn left, then take the first right to the very end. I’ll be there.”