Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 64571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
“Yeah,” I agree, not feeling so confident anymore. We’re really going to be in trouble.
We’re heading back to the car, cones in hand, when I spot a black sedan, tinted windows, parked across from Teddy’s convertible. There are two men inside, watching. I notice a few cigarette butts lying on the ground next to them.
Not watching. Waiting.
“Teddy,” I whisper. “Have you ever seen them before?” She doesn’t come to town often, but she’s lived here most of her life.
She follows my line of sight. “No. But…”
“Yeah, trust it,” I tell her, and she nods in understanding. If your spider senses are telling you something, you listen. My dad drilled that into me. “Let’s cross that way.”
We aren’t going back to the car, but when we turn to head in the other direction, they both open their car doors.
“Run,” Teddy says, dropping her ice cream cone, and I know it’s serious now. So we do what we both hate: We run.
If I thought we were in trouble before… I think I might actually get one of those spankings Tristan has threatened over the years for this.
Chapter Twenty-One
TRISTAN
Killian leads me through the greenhouse, past rows of orchids and something that looks like tomatoes but probably isn’t. Does that Roland garden? What does that man not do?
Killian stops at a stone bench, bends down, and lifts a section of flooring I would’ve sworn was solid. Oh shit. I already know where my mind is going, and I’m sure it’s what he’s likely been thinking about the space since he found out about it.
“After you,” he says.
I descend a ladder into darkness. The air changes, becoming cooler, with the smell of concrete and metal. When I reach the bottom, lights flicker on automatically.
I take it in. The room is a decent size, larger than I expected. The walls are solid, there’s a drain in the center of the floor, and there’s a table with restraints folded neatly against one wall and a metal chair.
“Soundproofed,” I say. He found this and made a kill room out of it.
“Was this on the blueprints you have?” Killian asks, a little smug, even proud.
“No, it was not. What was this even used for?”
“Beats the shit out of me.” He shrugs. “Maybe Teddy’s grandma was more badass than we know.”
I walk around the room, checking the ventilation and power system.
I pull out my phone. No service. No signal at all.
“I can fix the service issue,” I say, showing him my phone. “Install a blocker too. So you can turn it on and off. Total communication blackout when you need it.”
“That would be useful.” He nods, folding his arms over his chest. When I step more toward the stairs, my phone buzzes, having caught some sort of signal.
“I got a small bar, but maybe it...” I trail off because that can’t be right. “It’s telling me that Lily left the property.”
If all those trackers I’d placed on the clothing I intercepted at the post office before having them then delivered are glitching, I’m going to be pissed.
“Thought you said no service down here,” Killian says.
“There isn’t.” I climb the ladder fast, and one bar pops up. The alert came through during the transition, caught in the dead zone between systems.
Killian follows me up, dropping the door back down. His phone starts to go off, a soft, melodic sound that doesn’t match the spike of adrenaline that’s coursing through me.
“What is it?” A sense of unease begins creeping in. My shit doesn’t glitch. Not since the fifth grade.
“Just a delivery; these girls get shit every day.”
I check the tracking app. Lily’s dot is moving fast and toward town.
“Not a fucking delivery.”
Killian’s head snaps up. I hold out my phone. His jaw tightens as he swipes through his own phone. I watch as he pulls up his own tracker. Guess we have the same thought.
We’re already moving, running back to the main house. Killian grabs keys off a hook as we enter the garage.
“They’re in town,” I say, sliding into the passenger seat of Killian’s SUV. “The ice cream shop.”
I pull up the security feeds on my phone, scrubbing backward through the time stamps. Side door. Garage bay. The convertible left twenty-two minutes ago.
“You hacked my security cameras?” Killian grits out.
“Can we talk about that later?”
He grunts, picking up speed. We hit the road that leads to town doing eighty. I’m watching the dot on my screen when Lily suddenly starts moving faster and cutting through an alley too narrow for a car. It’s erratic. She’s running. Which means someone is chasing them. My blood runs cold. Adrenaline begins coursing through my veins or it could be fear.
“Something’s wrong.” I glance over to him. “They’re running.”
Killian goes eerily quiet, and I pull up the street cameras, hacking through the town’s traffic system in seconds. I find the footage and rewind time. I watch them park and get out of the car, talking and laughing. I scan the area all around them.