Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 70488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Twenty-Five
Hope is one shady motherfucker.
—Bernice’s secret thoughts
Bernice
No one got fired that day.
Not that Odin wouldn’t have fired Chan had he come back into work.
But he’d called while everyone was gone and left a message with the clinic’s answering service saying that he was throwing up and wouldn’t be back in today.
It was chaos for the rest of the afternoon, but we jived better than we had in a week.
Later that afternoon, when we were shutting down for the day, Odin took a seat at the edge of Sage’s desk and said, “Maybe we should just take fewer patients.”
I looked at him in surprise. “Yeah?”
“We just keep working the three of us. Eventually, my assistant will graduate. He’ll come work here as soon as he’s done. He’s already confirmed that’s what he wants to do. In the meantime, while we wait for him, we drop down to seeing fewer patients. Block off thirty minutes for each. See walk-ins for the hours of eight to ten. Schedule all patients after ten. Close at four. And just be open and honest with everyone that this is a family-run business, and sometimes we’ll close the clinic for holidays and make this work just the three of us.”
I actually liked that idea a lot.
But…
“That’s not feasible for Sage,” I admitted. “She needs more help.”
Sage winced. “I…”
“Need more help,” I pushed. “Let’s not give up quite yet, okay?”
Odin sighed. “I hate interviewing.”
“Me, too.” Sage groaned.
“Then let me figure that out,” I said. “I’m not altogether against continuing the search. We’ll just make sure we find the right person this time.”
Odin sighed. “It’s more fun to work with dead people.”
I laughed. “You’re so full of shit.”
Odin shrugged. “Maybe.”
Sage glanced outside, her face darkening. “Is that all it ever does here?”
We all looked out to where she was glaring and saw the snow falling heavily. “According to the locals, yes.”
All three of us grimaced.
None of us were “locals.”
We were all from the South where it never snowed.
Being here was definitely a shock.
“It’s time to go,” I said. “I need to stop for gas, and I’m dying to dive into a C-Drama.”
“You and those C-Dramas,” Sage said. “You got me hooked on Pursuit of Jade, and now I’m knee deep in live-in husbands. Do you think Gentry would be willing to be a live-in husband?”
“You never know if you don’t ask!” I laughed as I grabbed Hux’s jacket from the hook and shoved it into place.
My hands touched on the skinning knife that I’d yet to take out.
I gave it a squeeze and let it go, then shoved my phone, keys, and a cookie I’d been given by a patient into the other.
Sage and I walked to the door together as Odin said his goodbyes and walked next door to the morgue.
“So, what are the odds that Chan is actually sick?” Sage asked as she got to her car.
The snow fell into her hair and stuck.
I felt the snow falling into my own hair and said, “I’ll bet he knew he was about to be fired and decided to delay it. Maybe hoping our tempers would cool over the weekend.”
“Doubtful,” she said. “Now, I’m headed to go watch Yan Zheng.”
I giggled as I got into my truck and started it up.
I shivered as I cursed the damn thing for not starting up earlier.
Something was wrong with it, I was sure.
Why else would…
Something covered my face, a hand maybe, then I was inhaling something sickly sweet.
That was the last thing I remembered.
The next thing I remembered was waking up in a barn.
“You’re a hard person to keep alive.”
I blinked and stared at the man in front of me.
It took a few seconds to blink the confusion from my eyes, then the dread started to pour through me.
Randel Conway stood in front of me, looking tired.
“Don’t go messing up all our hard work,” he ordered. “Calm down.”
Our?
Who was the other person to his “our?”
That was answered the next moment when Chan came in, looking angry and ready to commit murder.
“We should’ve just killed her and gotten it over with, Dad.”
Dad?
What the hell was going on?
“Shh,” Randel murmured. “We have to do this the right way. She has to stay with us for a night. We have to give her the full experience, don’t we?”
Oh.
My.
God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
“I’ll bet you’re starting to put two and two together,” Randel said as Chan sat heavily on the horse trough that was tipped on its side. “Do you know how I found you?”
I was staring into the eyes of a serial killer.
And I was already having trouble breathing.
I scrambled up to my butt and put my knees into the wood beneath me.
I shook my head, tears streaming down the length of my cheeks.
I couldn’t speak with the gag in my mouth, but that didn’t make Randel’s impatience any less forgiving. As evidenced by the way he ripped me forward by my shirt and got so close to my face that I could see the pores in his nose.