Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
They stopped and grabbed their overnight bags from the trunk before walking to the front door. But the moment Kai pushed the door open, everything changed.
Rot and death wafted out of the building, slamming into his face. Kai choked and Dev stumbled back, gagging. He didn’t have to ask. There was a dead body waiting for him in the house.
Dropping his bag on the doorstep, Kai palmed the gun that had been clipped to his side, checked the magazine, and flipped off the safety. He turned toward Dev, who was still trying to suck in fresh air, his eyes watery, and grabbed his shoulder.
“I want you to wait right here. Do not move from this step.”
“But—”
“If someone comes near you, I want you to shout for me as loud as you can. I don’t care if it’s a cop or utility worker or a ninety-year-old woman. You shout.”
“But what is that?”
“Do you understand me?” Kai repeated in a hard, unyielding voice. He needed to make sure Dev was safe, but he did not want the man to enter his house.
“Y-yes. Wait here. Shout,” he recited.
Kai leaned in and kissed him hard on the mouth for only a heartbeat, then headed into the house. He tried to breathe through his mouth, so he wasn’t overwhelmed by the smell again.
Luckily, he didn’t have far to travel to find the source of the smell. The short hall emptied into an open floor plan. The little furniture he possessed had been destroyed. Bits of wood, springs, fabric, and foam littered everything. In the center of the room in an office chair that had been pulled from another room sat the bloated and distorted corpse of Christopher McDonald, though he was difficult to recognize.
He hadn’t been shot like the first victim or stabbed like the second. It looked as if he might have been beaten to death. Though the advanced decay of the body made it hard to tell. At a guess, McDonald had been killed before the other two and left here.
Sadly, he wasn’t the scariest thing in the room. Kai slowly spun around, taking in the demented collage of pictures of Devlin Relic that covered all the walls of the living room, small dining room, and kitchen. The pictures all looked as if they had been taken over the past year. Some even had Jake in them. They were everyday pictures of Dev running errands out in public, mowing his grass, picking up Jake from school. There were some that might have been snagged from the Internet as well as a few that came from newspaper reports.
And in several spots, “Devlin Relic Must Die” had been sprayed over the pictures in red paint.
Kai’s heart stopped in his chest, and his knees threatened to give out. He didn’t notice the smell of death any longer. The horrific threat to the sweet man outside was crippling him. Who…who would want Dev dead? And why?
The only thing that was clear to him was that this person had fixated on Dev because of Kai.
“Kai?” Dev’s voice drifted through the house and footsteps echoed off the hardwood floor. He was coming inside.
Snapping out of his thoughts, Kai spun around, rushing to head him off. He couldn’t see this. He couldn’t know.
But it was too late. Dev stepped into the living room, his T-shirt pulled up over his nose to help block the smell, but it fell off unnoticed when Dev’s wide eyes locked on the pictures.
Kai wrapped his arm around Dev’s shoulders and tried to usher the man outside. “Please, Dev. We need to leave now. We’ll go to a hotel and I’ll take care of this,” Kai said quickly, not even entirely sure what he was telling Dev. He just knew he needed to get him out of that place of hate and death.
“No, I need to see this,” Dev argued. He pushed away from Kai to break free of his grasp and walked toward the closest wall. He spared the body only a brief glance.
“You don’t need to see this. It’s horrible. I want to get you out of here. This…this is fucking wrong. I need you away from here.”
Dev surprised him by suddenly turning back and pressing a trembling hand to Kai’s cheek. “Just a moment. Did you check to make sure he didn’t leave anything behind?”
Kai shook his head. He’d gotten caught in the living room. “He’s not here.”
“But there might be a clue. Trust me, I’ve only got a few more minutes before I shatter like an egg. I’d rather be in the car when that happens. Go check. Hurry.”
Kai reluctantly released Dev, hating to be away from him for more than a second, and made a sweep over the two-bedroom condo. Right now, Dev was clinging to his scientific brain, analyzing what was in front of him with an eye for patterns and other clues as to who this person was.