Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 93727 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93727 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
A car pulled up slowly beside us, but Uncle Dalton waved them on, assuring them we were fine.
“Did you leave the house?” Daniel asked, his voice rougher than before. “Please tell me you didn’t fucking leave the house.”
My hand felt numb as I dropped it back down to my side, the phone dangling precariously from my fingertips.
What had I become? Who was this person? Because I no longer felt like me.
I felt like a shell of myself. The strong, independent, capable woman I’d always been had been replaced by this whimpering mess, my body too weak to do anything of note, my mind no longer logical but filled with anxiety and fear.
I was standing on the side of the road—on the verge of collapse—and I’d run there myself, with bare feet and no bra, because I’d been in so much relentless pain and in such a panic that my mate was in trouble that I hadn’t even taken the time to realize I could’ve driven my pop’s truck.
And the whole time, my mate had been perfectly fine.
He’d just lost track of time.
Something inside me splintered.
“I’m sorry,” Uncle Dalton said, catching me as my legs buckled. “I’m sorry. I’ll hurry.”
I knew he was worried that the touch hurt, but honestly? I couldn’t feel it beyond everything else.
I already felt like I’d been run over.
It took only a few minutes to drive me back to Pop’s. It would’ve been funny, considering how long it had taken to run there, if it hadn’t been so fucking sad. As soon as he put the truck in park, I tiredly opened my door and slid out.
Pop was waiting for me on the porch.
“You scared the shit outta me,” he chastised as I made my way toward him. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“She wasn’t,” Uncle Dalton answered for me. “It was instinct. You remember what it’s like at the beginning of a bond—”
The last of his words were cut off as I walked inside. They could talk about me all they wanted. I didn’t really care.
Oh, I looked crazy?
Funny thing. I felt crazy.
I didn’t know who I was anymore.
Chapter 10
Daniel
Chance insisted on coming with me back to Gary’s house, and I relented because after the morning we had, I was feeling pretty raw, and I also didn’t want to take the time to drop him off somewhere.
“Damn, Danny boy,” Chance said, leaning forward to get a better look out the windshield. “Where’s your banjo? Feels like we need some banjo music.”
“Rosemary’s father is really fucking smart,” I replied distractedly. “Lives completely off-grid. If Rosemary hadn’t told me where to go, I never would’ve found the place.”
“And you said he’s ex-Command?” Chance asked with a hum. “Weird coincidence.”
I nodded. “He didn’t want to bring work home with him.”
“Can’t blame him for that,” Chance said, leaning back in his seat. “Bad enough for us, but a human? Fucking forget it.” He paused as the small house came into view. “Looks like Dalton’s here.”
“Good,” I murmured with relief. From the moment Rosemary had called me and I’d heard a car in the background, I’d had to beat back the panic that threatened to choke me. We’d agreed that she wouldn’t show her face in public. She knew that it was for her own safety.
What the hell had she been doing out on the road?
“Time to bring him in on things?” Chance asked.
He’d been pressuring me about it since the moment we’d found the USB drive my brother Zeke had hidden before his death. It was filled with account information and names and dates and photos, but the hundreds of files weren’t labeled, and nowhere in Zeke’s information did he explain how they all fit together.
My baby brother must’ve been gathering intelligence for a long time before his death, and he hadn’t said a word to any of us about it. We’d been scrambling for the past couple of weeks to make sense of the information he’d left, and it wasn’t until that morning we’d finally been able to piece most of it together. We’d gathered to look at photos from when Zeke and Charlie met, and unbeknownst to Charlie or his sister, Zeke had filmed a goodbye video to his mate on Lucy’s camera.
He’d left a cryptic message for us on the video.
The fucking asshole.
If we hadn’t found the files he’d stashed and looked over them until we couldn’t see straight, we never would’ve known what the message meant.
The dipshit couldn’t have just explained what he found. Instead, it was like some kind of fucked-up scavenger hunt, as if we weren’t in the middle of a godsdamn war and didn’t even know who the enemy was.
“We’ll tell Dalton everything,” I confirmed as I parked.
At least he was already at the house, and I wouldn’t need to track him down. After the day I’d had, that seemed like a boon.