Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Tonight, though, thankfully, despite his traveling a thousand miles to see me, his words don’t read that way at all. But neither do they read like a worried friend, and why would they? My father would have told him I am okay. No. There is something else going on here, something I am not going to like, and I want to get whatever it is out and on the table.
“Come in,” I say, stepping back to allow his entry. The sense of danger outside, beyond the door, bites at my nerve endings, but thankfully, Oliver is already inside and shutting it outside.
I claim my chair in the corner, which offers me the comfort of a full view of the door. Oliver steps closer, towering over me and my footstool, where my MacBook rests. “The way you’ve refused my calls…” He hesitates on a choice of word before adding, “It’s been curious.”
I indicate my computer. “I told you. I’m writing a novel. I needed to shut myself away from the world and think.”
He moves my MacBook to the top of the coffee table and sits down on the stool in front of me, intimately close, but we’re always close. That’s his point. “And the funny thing,” he continues, “is that you tell me everything, and until you disappeared, you’d never said a word about wanting to write a novel.”
“I don’t tell you everything,” I argue, though for the most part, before my little piece of Jeremy hell, I had. “And it’s not exactly a novel. It’s an outline of the trial.”
“Huh,” he says, leaning his elbows on his knees and studying me with a piercing green stare known to make the most confident of people squirm on the witness stand.
And I have to admit, with one word—if you could call "huh" a word—along with that stare, he certainly has me squirming. Still, I’m not about to tell him I’m seeing dead people, and therefore I’m hiding from the rest of the world, him included.
“Huh, yourself,” I shoot back, going into avoidance mode. “I guess me not telling you about the book is like you not telling me you were unapologetically self-absorbed during our first date. It just didn’t seem relevant. You knew I was rattled and needed some time to myself.”
He doesn’t snap back as he often would. He studies me a moment too long for my comfort and then scrubs his jaw, the light brown stubble rasping against his palm. He laughs, a bitter laugh, his shoulders softening, and his mood with them. “You’re never going to let me live down that date, are you?”
“Yes.” I pause for effect. “Eventually.” I direct us back to the matter at hand, whatever that might be. “I know you didn’t come all the way to Colorado to talk about our bad date.” I hold up a hand with realization. “Let me guess. You called my father to check on me, and he sent you here to bring me home.” I lower my voice to sound like him. “Knock some sense into her, Oliver. I didn’t pay for law school for her to write some damn book that will never be published.”
“Your father didn’t send me.” No humor to that announcement.
My stomach clenches a moment before footsteps sound on the porch. The hair on my arms lifts.
“That would be Detective Ryker and the reason I’m here,” Oliver explains. “I asked him to give us a few minutes alone before he joined us.”
A blade of foreboding begins tracing a line through my most vital organs, including my vocal cords, as I squeak out, “Ryker?” questioning the unfamiliar name.
Oliver stands up. “I called your father to help me hunt you down because Ryker has a concerning case he thinks you need to hear about.”
My fingers dig into my palms, my hands by my sides, one close enough to the edge of the cushion to grab the gun if I need it. The idea comforts me in some barely measurable way. “Couldn’t he have just called?”
“He did,” he says. “You didn’t return his calls. Your assistant, in turn, was quite clear that you were not taking calls or messages unless it was from a client already on contract.”
“Oh,” I say flatly, wishing now that I’d handled messages a bit differently.
He arches a brow, hand still on the doorknob. “Can I let him in?”
No, I think, but nod. “Yes.” My voice is measured, cool, and calm while I’m screaming in my head. Danger may lurk on the porch, just beyond my comfort zone, but I go with it, invite it inside, dive right into the deep, dark, choppy water, and just say, Bring it. I slip my hand down beneath the edge of the cushion, fingers on the butt of my weapon, ready to ride that proverbial bicycle if that’s what it takes to survive. Because while this visitor might well be a detective, everything in my gut says he’s more, and I will not allow him to leave this cabin with Oliver by his side. Or rather, the opposite. Oliver won’t be leaving this cabin with a demon by his side. I don’t even try to analyze how out of character my line of thinking is right now.