Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 67975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“What?” I gasp. “I don’t understand. That was Dax? What ...”
“He’s angry, and he’s goin’ to send a message to that club. His message would have been you. You need to tell Alarick to back down, that he doesn’t know what kind of fuckin’ monster he’s dealin’ with here. That man will kill everyone he loves if he keeps lookin’ into this.”
“I don’t ...”
King’s eyes go over my head and focus in on something. “Briella, get out of here now. Now. Go.”
“King ...”
“Now,” he commands, pointing to a line of thick trees in the complete opposite area of my car. “Go past those trees, you’ll find a road. Catch a cab home. Tell Alarick this has to end. Do not tell him I’m alive. Dax is coming back. Go now.”
I do as he tells me, and I run.
I run toward the trees, and I don’t look back.
I do not look back.
“I NEED A RIDE,” I SAY puffing into the phone, soaked, standing on a street corner after running for god knows how long.
“What’s wrong? Why are you panting like that?” Cohen asks, after taking my phone call when I couldn’t reach Alarick.
“It’s a long story, but I need to see Flick urgently. Do you know where he is?”
“He’s in a meeting. I’ll come get you and bring you to him. Where are you?”
I give him my location and hang up the phone. Even though I’m in public, my eyes still go over every person, looking for Dax, wondering if he’s going to be here, wondering if he’s close by. I’m probably not a great distance away from the cemetery, not really, considering I went the long way around.
I tuck myself against a shop wall and wait for Cohen to come and pick me up.
He arrives ten minutes later in his large, black pick-up. I rush over and jump into the front seat, and he takes one look at me and asks, “What the fuck happened?”
“I saw him, Cohen. I saw ... Dax.”
“What?” he asks, his voice raising a few levels. “What do you mean you saw him? Where?”
“At the cemetery. It’s a long story, I need you to take me to Flick, you can hear it there.”
Cohen turns the truck around and we head back toward his house, where he tells me to message Alarick and ask that he meet us. He feels it’s safer than the clubhouse right now. So, that’s what I do. I message Flick, after all the other many messages I’ve sent in the last half an hour, and tell him to meet me at Cohen’s house. No doubt when he gets out of whatever meeting he’s in, he’s going to see my messages and know that something has gone wrong.
We arrive at Cohen’s and go inside, where he gives me a towel and I hug the shit out of Germy, who makes me feel immediately better when he gives me big slobbery kisses. Only then does the front door swing open and Alarick comes bounding in followed by Mykel and Samson. He stops when he notices me, and exhales. A breath I didn’t realize he had been holding.
“What happened?” he asks, striding over and stopping in front of me.
The first thing he does is look me over, no doubt checking if I have any injuries of any sort, and then his eyes meet mine and I can see he’s a little more relaxed.
“I saw Dax.”
His eyes don’t stay relaxed for long. “What did you just say?”
“I saw him. I was at the cemetery visiting Mom and Magnolia when I looked over and saw this man kneeling by a grave. I didn’t think too much of it at first, just that he was mourning over someone. He came over, introduced himself, and honestly, he was super friendly. Then, he went, but ...”
Shit, I have to lie here. I can’t say King warned me. I can’t say that it was him that saved my ass.
“He had told me his daughter died, but when I looked at the grave he was visiting, there was no grave for a girl that could have been his daughter. I started feeling uneasy, and I looked back and saw he was coming back. I started to run, he called out to me, and I heard him say his name.”
It’s a lie, but it’s the best I can come up with on the spot.
“He definitely said Dax?” Alarick asks, narrowing his eyes.
“Yes, he said something like ‘You’re not afraid of little old Dax, are you?”
That sounds logical, right?
I mean, I think it does.
“Fuck,” Alarick exhales. “He’s getting too close. He wants us to stop, he wants revenge, and he’s goin’ to do anythin’ he can to make us stop lookin’ into this.”
“He yelled out that you had better stop, or he’ll kill everyone you love.”