Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
She opened like a flower and let me in, and I sunk into the kiss like a drowning man, pulling her little body in closer so that I could feel the beat of her heart against my chest. I came alive, we both did, as our bodies remembered each other, and it was hard to pull away when time started to get away from me.
“Soon, I’ll be back soon.” I kissed her nose and forced myself to walk away, promising myself that it would be the last time.
Chapter 54
*Ryder*
There was a lot to be done, not just me turning up at the house. I had to call Janie’s dad and my manager, and anyone else who would be affected by this change with the pretense that I cared. Things had already been worked out where I’d have an excuse for not being here and not being able to spend any time with Janie at the hospital since she was in quarantine. This was all explained to me on the way to the house, and I don’t know how many times I asked the question of whether three little girls had really planned all this.
It seemed so meticulous, calculated even, that it was hard to wrap my mind around it. My only answers, though, were usually grunts and nods, if that, and I was left to draw my own conclusions. I was driven around to the back of my home, a place I don’t think I’d ever seen before we filed out of the three vans that came.
We snuck inside without being noticed, and it was then I was told that the men in hazmat suits who were going to show up were part of Lyon’s squad and that they would be staying behind, at least some of them, to finish the job Tyler and Zak had started. They were going to be going over my house with a fine-tooth comb and going through all the electronics to find anything having to do with the trafficking business.
They suspected that Janie had shared correspondence with the others through those devices, plus they wanted to go back through the security cameras to see who had visited in the last five years, especially Mary and Scott’s visits, which they seem to think coincides with certain disappearances. I’m not sure how they plan to do all that going back so many years, but they seem to think it could be done.
They also, in a roundabout way, answered a pressing question I had. How much did Janie know? It was one thing for her to be a crazy fan who’d hit the jackpot and quite another for her to be completely involved in the trafficking business. I didn’t come right out and ask, but the fact that they wanted to go through her stuff like that spoke volumes. At least I felt better knowing that they hadn’t found anything on any of my devices to be suspicious of, and though they hadn’t said so, I didn’t kid myself that they hadn’t gone through mine as well.
I also felt certain that Elena was in the clear. I don’t think they or the nieces would be going to bat for her like this if she wasn’t. Is it strange that I’ve been in the industry for so long and have always been surrounded by people, adoring people, people who claimed to love me, and this was the first time I really felt like I was part of something?
I guess it’s that feeling of doing something worthwhile after pissing my life away for so long. There’s a new purpose in my day that hadn’t been there before. And the cherry on top, I get to go home to my girl at the end of the day from now on. There’s nothing like coming close to losing something that essential to your life to realize its value and knowing that you should do everything within your power to hold on to and cherish that thing, that certain someone.
Walking into the house felt strange; not even the memories I’d shared here with Elena could take away the tainted feel it now held. I felt something heavy, dark, and depressive as soon as I walked through the door. Or maybe that’s my imagination working overtime after the story she’d told me. I shook it off, though, as the guys went about doing their thing and got down to what I came here for.
The phone calls were some of the hardest I’d ever made, especially having to pretend to be the same witless fool they’d turned me into. The fact that I was no longer high must’ve been giving them fits, so I had to play as if I was still none the wiser. Her dad wanted to come out, but I convinced him that since she would be in quarantine for an unspecified amount of time, it didn’t make sense for him to do that.