Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 668(@200wpm)___ 534(@250wpm)___ 445(@300wpm)
Gideon did have beautiful eyes. So blue. They could be blue like the sky. Or arctic blue like an icy glacier. Or what? Deadly. A piercing predator dark blue with a silver ring around the color. When that happened, he didn’t blink at all, and he looked as if he could see right through skin and bones into the very heart of you, where he could rip out every organ if he desired to do so. She didn’t want to say that. Nor did she want to say there was a part of her that reacted to that part of him.
“His eyes,” Cindy prompted. She looked around the room, sighed and stood up. “My little hooligans were supposed to stay right here or in the library next to us with the door open. Do you see the door open? Because I don’t.”
Lydia stood up as well. Her daughter was looking through a picture book right next to her on the sofa, but having a child, she knew the anxiety it caused when children were out of sight. Rory and the others immediately got up to help look for them. Cindy’s sons made an art of disappearing in the apartment building. They especially loved to hide in the laundry room. There were many intriguing places in the basement for the boys to slip into where adults couldn’t fit. They knew better than to leave the building, and so far, they had obeyed that mandate.
They had always played, running around every level of the building, until the women had gotten the word that Dustin had been murdered. Now the apartment building was no longer a place for the boys to call a jungle gym. They had strict instructions to stay within sight.
Cindy pushed open the door to the hallway and called out for her sons. She had the mom voice down pat.
Isiah, her oldest, came running halfway up the hall. He looked pale, every freckle standing out. “Mom. You need to come now. Hurry.”
He waved his arms at her, his eyes bright, but he didn’t look happy. In fact, Rory thought he looked scared. Cindy must have thought so too because she began to run.
“What’s wrong, Isiah? Where’s your brother? Where’s Moses?” There was a hitch in her voice.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Moses wanted to slide down the garbage chute. We do it all the time, but he couldn’t. He got stuck because Ret was sliding down it before him, and he got stuck and it isn’t nice. MoMo is crying and I couldn’t reach him to get him back out.”
Rory’s heart dropped, and hard knots formed in her stomach. That didn’t sound good at all. She didn’t want to think about Ret. He wouldn’t slide down the garbage chute on his own. If Moses had landed on top of him and had gotten stuck, that meant Ret was dead. Dustin was dead. If Ret was dead and no one had seen Harvey or Jarrod since the cop had been killed, what did that mean? Her stomach lurched at the idea.
“Ret wouldn’t play in a garbage chute,” Janice whispered as they hurried after Cindy, who ran up the stairs, following her son.
“Moses shouldn’t be sitting on top of a dead man,” Lydia hissed, Ellen on her hip, her head turned away from the little girl so she couldn’t see. “He’s too sensitive. He’ll have nightmares for the rest of his life.”
Little Moses was only four. He was a firecracker, bright and funny, but very sensitive. He followed his brother’s lead. Wherever Isiah went, Moses went. What Isiah did, Moses did. But Rory knew the two boys had very different personalities.
“Who will have nightmares?” Ellen whispered into her mother’s ear.
Lydia hushed her.
Rory’s mind had to solve puzzles. That was just the way she was. Now she knew she would be turning the pieces she had over and over in her head until she had more and she could fit them together and make them work, but nothing added up. A detective murdered in their apartment building. Dustin murdered. Now Ret in the garbage chute. Someone had to have put him there. No one had seen Jarrod or Harvey since the detective had been murdered. Were they dead as well?
They rounded the corner of the hall, and Cindy came to an abrupt halt, forcing those behind her to halt as well. Rory caught at Cindy’s shoulders as she rocked back. Isiah had run right up to the garbage chute. He’d propped the door open with a stick. There was a chair directly in front of it the boys had dragged from the little alcove about twenty feet away, where a small visiting area had been set up.
Cindy walked slowly up to the chute and peered down. “Moses. I’m here, baby. Mommy’s here now. I’ll get you out.”