Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 119476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 597(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 398(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 597(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 398(@300wpm)
“You said Nora lived with your dad, right?”
“Yeah,” I croak, a fresh wave of dread sending acid into my throat.
“You’re sure?”
“Say what you’re going to say,” I snap, regretting it instantly. Ellis is doing me a favor and damn sure doesn’t deserve my vitriol.
“There’s hardly any food in the house. One of the spare bedrooms appears to be an office and the other is jam-packed with junk. Boxes of paper—newspapers and shit.”
“What are you saying, Ellis?”
“I’m saying she doesn’t have a bedroom here…”
“I sense a but coming.” I swallow roughly, trying and failing to keep my cool.
A bead of sweat drips down my spine as I try to assemble the puzzle of my dad’s disappearance with the pieces Ellis has given me.
“You ever been down in the basement?”
“Not since I lived at home, why?”
“He’s got a lock on the door.” Ellis heaves out a breath. “A lock on the outside. He wasn’t keeping someone out, man…”
“He was keeping someone in.” My knees give out and the floor rushes up to meet me as my thoughts tumble and spiral, twisting and tangling together into an undistinguishable mess of anguish and disbelief. “Surely he wasn’t keeping her—”
“There’s a cot,” Ellis whispers. “In the corner of the room. There’s a cot.”
“Fuck!” I shout, pounding my fist into the floor at my side. I knew he wasn’t well, but I didn’t think he’d lost his goddamn mind. How long has he been locking her up? Was he feeding her? Was he hurting her?
“I’ve gotta report this, you know that, right?”
I force myself up from the floor, shove my feet into my boots, grab my keys, and then head for the door. “I know.”
“Shouldn’t fucking be doing this,” he mutters to himself, before speaking directly to me. “You can come by first if you promise not to flip out or mess with anything.”
“I’m already on my way.”
After holding my breath for damn near the whole drive, I let out a relieved exhale when Ellis’s car is the only other vehicle in my dad’s driveway. I know he has to file a report about what he finds here, but the thought of anyone other than him being here with me has my chest all kinds of tight.
I jump out of my truck and charge up the steps, only for Ellis to stop me with a hand pressed firmly to my chest.
“You gotta swear not to lose your shit, Atlas,” he says gravely, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end.
“I won’t.”
His lips twitch. “You won’t swear or won’t lose it?”
Fuck. I grip the back of my neck, digging my fingers into my flesh. He’s asking a valid question, because I already want to flip out and I’m not even over the threshold. “I’m good. I’ll be good.”
He searches my eyes for a long moment before finally relenting and lowering his hand from my chest.
Once I’m inside, it’s as though I’m a hound dog hot on a trail; I couldn’t care less about the mess all around me—my focus is singular.
The basement. I need to see the basement. The lock. The cot. I need to make sense of this shit.
I take the steps two at a time, both trying and failing to rationalize the sight before me.
Ellis wasn’t lying—not that I thought he was. But seeing the lock bolted to the frame and hearing about it are two different things.
What in the hell was he thinking? Is he really so far gone that he’d lock her away down here? Better yet, am I really so self-involved that I missed the signs? It’s not like he lost the plot overnight.
I prod at the open lock with trembling fingers. It’s sturdy; the kind when it’s locked, nothing’s getting past it. Especially not Nora. Last time I saw her she couldn’t have been more than a buck-fifteen soaking wet.
A line of narrow windows near the ceiling let in just enough light for me to make out the shape of a cot along the wall, but not much else.
Part of me has seen enough—I mean, what else is there to see, really? It’s pretty obvious what this room was for.
But the rest of me needs to know, conclusively.
“Where’s it at?” I mumble, running my hand along the wall just inside the room, feeling for the light switch.
“It’s out here,” Ellis says, flicking the switch on. The tightness in his voice matches the uncomfortable pinch in my chest. She had no control over the light switch. There’s a wrongness to this room, and it’s fucking palpable. A living, breathing thing.
A single exposed bulb blinks to life, creating just enough light to cast shadows in the damp, rank room.
“Ellis,” I exhale his name on a long sigh as I venture further into the hellhole below my father’s house. Because that’s what this is, plain and simple. Hell.