Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
She claws her way onto her side, hikes a leg over mine, put her cheek on my chest, and sighs.
And then, without another word, she’s asleep.
I almost fall asleep too, but Collin Creed is outside on his porch waiting for me to report.
So instead, I come up with an alternative story to the truth.
Because while he did send me in here to get information out of her, he didn’t give me permission to fuck his little sister like a fifty-dollar whore.
I take my time, though. Try to put all the sentences together in a coherent manner. And also enjoy the woman clinging to me like I’m some kind of savior.
Her breathing evens out and her body goes heavy. And after about ten minutes or so, I force myself to slide out from under her and pull myself together.
She doesn’t wake up. Doesn’t even stir.
So I leave, softly closing the door behind me, and hope to God I do not smell like pussy when I go outside and find Collin and his dog sitting patiently on the porch steps.
He turns when he hears me, then stands up. “Well? Did you learn anything?”
I let out a long exhale as I run my fingers through my hair. “Oh, I did. I absolutely did. But before we have this conversation, Collin, I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Where do you boys keep the alcohol?”
Collin takes me back to the church, which is where we had our first conversation about Olive after she stormed out the door to go pack her shit. Collin tried to follow her, but I took a risk and grabbed him by the arm.
The look he shot me—yeah. I believe every story I’ve ever heard about the guy after that look. But I put up a hand and said, “Hear me out, OK? Just give me five minutes to explain what I think might be happening here.”
He and Amon exchanged a look and then Collin let out a breath and gave me his full attention. “Five minutes. Start talking.”
So I did. But I didn’t tell him everything. I needed to talk to Olive first. Not to get confirmation—I don’t care how good I am at deep cover, she’s locked up tight. I should know. I was like that once too. But I could at least carefully dig out some answers with the right questions.
Obviously, Olive and I didn’t do a lot of talking back inside the house. But questions don’t always come in the form of words. I’d already suspected her handler was using some very unorthodox methods to get inside her head, which explains the choking fetish, so that wasn’t even a big revelation.
It was the emptiness in her eyes that confirmed it for me. Well, that and the hot fucking sex. She was out of control.
But then again, so was I.
It makes sense. So this is where I’m at when Collin and I walk across the big open room inside the church and go through a door to a stairway that leads down.
Even though he flips on the lights, it doesn’t light up the stairs, only the room at the bottom, so it’s casting eerie shadows up the walls as I descend. “You’re not gonna kill me and bury my body down here, are ya?” I joke.
He doesn’t laugh. Or answer me.
But when we get to the bottom, the nerves that were creeping up my spine settle a little when I realize what I’m looking at. “Why are we at the SCIF?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Typically, this is where all the fucked-up conversations take place, so it’s where I keep the good shit.” He points to the Faraday box on the side of the door. “Phone.”
I dig mine out and drop it into the box and he does the same.
Then we go inside.
Again, I get that weird vacuum feeling when I enter and all the technology outside is blocked.
Even if we did come down here for the drink—and it’s here, so he wasn’t lying—the SCIF is the perfect place for this conversation.
He grabs two glasses from a makeshift bar cart in the corner and brings them and the bottle over to the table. We sit, he pours, we drink.
When that’s over Collin leans back in his chair and lets out a breath. “How bad is it?”
Which shouldn’t surprise me, but it kinda does. “How much do you know?”
“About her?” He points up at the ceiling. “Nothin’. I haven’t even talked to her since she was in high school. If I saw her on the street, I would maybe look twice, but for all the wrong reasons, if you get what I mean.”
“You wouldn’t have recognized her?”
He shakes his head. “Never in a million years.”
“OK, listen. I’m not trying to pry or anything, but I need to know where you thought she was all these years.”