Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72969 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
And I believed him.
Some days I wish he were my dad. Or maybe just that he lived down the hall and not in downtown Summer Creek.
Because when Ted’s around, I don’t feel like an interruption.
I feel like a kid who matters.
Present Day…
I haven’t been able to get Daniela out of my head.
I went outside today, worked the land with my hands. It’s what I do when my mind is racing.
Because besides Daniela…
There’s the issue of the missing body.
Falcon is meeting me later to discuss it more fully. We’re having dinner at his place. Savannah is going into Austin to see her friend Gert. She’ll be gone a few days.
I met Gertrude Levinson once. At the time, I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Dark hair and eyes, great body. I guess I have a type. Still, it never occurred to me to approach her.
She’s Savannah’s friend, after all.
But enter Daniela Agudelo, and wham.
Younger than Gert and even more beautiful, and I can’t get her the hell out of my mind.
And I have to, because I need to focus.
Something’s going down, with that body being gone and all.
With my father being hospitalized and aphasic.
And Eagle…
I swear to God I believe him. He didn’t have anything to do with this, and he never told a soul about that night.
Despite everything else he’s put me through in the last eight years, I fucking believe him.
Plus, he’s my brother.
I love the shithead.
I drive to Falcon’s, but instead of inviting me inside, Fal is waiting beside his truck.
“What gives?” I ask.
“Savannah left us fried chicken for dinner, but fuck, Hawk. I can’t eat.”
I frown. “Yeah, I’m not too hungry either.”
Falcon adjusts his cowboy hat. “If you’re not hungry, I know it’s bad.”
He’s not wrong. Of three teenage boys with monstrous appetites, I could always put away the most while we were growing up. Every so often I’d catch some curt remark under my mother’s breath about how I was eating her out of house and home. Falcon and Eagle ate nearly as much as I did, but they never seemed to be on the receiving end of those muttered comments.
“It’s early yet,” Falcon says, looking at his watch. “Only four o’clock. I want to go check the site.”
“Fal, the more often we’re there, the more likely someone could see us.”
Falcon spits on the ground. “Don’t care. I was up all night thinking about this. I want to see for myself.”
“You think I’m lying to you?”
“Hell, no. I just…” He takes off his hat, rubs his forehead. “I just want to see for myself. That’s all.”
I nod. I get it. If I were in his shoes, I’d want to witness everything firsthand too.
“Okay.” I slide into the passenger side of his truck.
Falcon’s place is slightly closer to the border than mine, so we get there within about twenty minutes. He makes the turn onto the dirt road that leads to the old barn. Tires crunch over the dirt and gravel, and neither of us talks.
In fact, we haven’t talked since we got into the car.
He pulls up by the barn, and we get out of his truck.
“Shit,” I say. “The shovels and work gloves are in my truck.”
“You think I didn’t come prepared?” He gestures to the back of his truck. “I don’t anticipate that we’ll need to dig anything, since you guys already did that, but I’ve got everything we need just in case.”
I simply nod, and he and I go into the barn.
“Here it all is,” I say.
“What did you do with the drugs?”
Fuck. They’re still in my truck. I forgot all about them.
“I took care of it,” I say.
Or I will, first thing when I get back to Falcon’s house. Shit, my truck is parked in his driveway. Anyone could drive by and see the garbage bag in the back.
But Savannah’s not home, and Falcon’s security guards are certainly trustworthy. And it’s not as if the cops have any reason to come sniffing for drugs here at the Bellamy ranch.
Everything may not be as above board as the residents of Summer Creek think, but one thing we don’t mess with is drugs.
Still, I’ll be on edge until that shit is flushed down the toilet.
Falcon goes over to the hole Eagle and I dug and paces around it. Then he kneels, looks inside.
“Goes pretty fucking deep,” he says.
“Yeah, that’s why I stopped digging after a while. Especially after I found that red bandana. Whoever was down there, he isn’t there anymore.”
Falcon simply nods.
“And I have a feeling…”
“What’s that?”
“It’s just… What if they just moved him? Or what if…”
“First of all,” Falcon says, “who would they be? You, Eagle, and I are the only people who knew about this.”
“Except for those two goons.”
“Who were stopped at the border and never heard from again,” Falcon says. “They probably got sent back across the border and were killed for their trouble.”