Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
I couldn’t go back.
I could never return.
I would never see her again.
Pax’s mouth was suddenly so close to my ear, his hold soft where he curled his hand around my elbow. “I know. I know. But it’s too risky. We can’t take this kind of chance again. I can’t take that kind of chance with you. It’s not tied to my name, but that doesn’t mean someone can’t tap in and track it.”
Numbly, I nodded.
“Let’s go.” Pax led me quickly across the lot. I fumbled along at his side, his strides so long and fast I had to almost jog to keep up with him.
I felt a disorder in it. A chaos that clouded. Particles from the piece of me that had been ripped from my soul.
As crushed as the phone had been at my feet.
My thoughts drifted to the past. When my mother had watched me with adoration rather than fear.
“That imagination is something else. I bet you will write a book one day. Promise me one thing?”
Aria gazed up at her mommy, eager to hear whatever she would say.
“Never give that imagination up. Never stop dreaming. It shines so bright inside you.”
Aria giggled and snuggled down deeper in her covers. “I won’t, Mommy. I promise.”
She tapped Aria’s nose. “I love you more than anything in this world. Now, sweet, sweet dreams.”
They’d been sweet, sweet dreams that had turned into our nightmares.
I choked around another sob, and that chaos spun. Into the air, where it whipped like a coming storm.
Dark clouds gathering in the distance.
It covered me in a slick of cold dread that lifted the hairs at the back of my neck.
I stumbled, unable to move my feet as Pax tried to drag me across the dirt lot to where his car was parked in front of the motel.
But I couldn’t do anything but look, my eyes wide as I lifted them to find a man who stood at the door to his semitruck.
I felt it crawl over me.
Evil.
I breathed it in through my nostrils, and it gushed through my veins in a streak of malignance.
Nausea boiled in my stomach and clawed up my throat.
Pax tightened his hold around my elbow, and he pressed his mouth to the side of my head. “Keep moving, Aria. Keep moving. Do not stop. Do not stop.”
He increased our pace, and he hurried me to the passenger side of his car, where he urged me into the seat.
Our bags were already stowed in the back.
He rose, straightening to his full, intimidating height, and I felt the crash of aggression blister through the cold as he glared over the top of the car at the man who remained in the same spot halfway across the lot.
Then Pax slammed my door shut. One second later, he was in his seat, starting the car, and whipping out of the dirt lot.
While my fingertips dug into the door as I watched out the passenger window with wide eyes as we flew by the malevolence that oozed back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Aria
We’d been traveling for almost five hours when we hit the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“Think it’d be worthwhile to hit a library here, yeah? See if we can dig anything up?” Pax asked. “Why don’t you see if there’s one right off the freeway?”
He had another phone, one that was much more modern than the brick he’d given me earlier, this one also unassociated with his name.
I gave him a nod as I took his phone and made the search. “In three exits, there’s one that’s about five minutes away.”
Pax’s nod was sharp, his attention keen, never letting down his guard. He took the third exit and wound through the city, following the directions.
Pax pulled into the small parking lot of the library, located on the side of the two-story redbrick building, and I looked up at it, too afraid to hope that we might find any answers inside.
“We’re going to discover something in there. I can feel it,” he said as he pushed the button to kill the engine. “Let’s get in there and see what we can find.”
Doubt swarmed in my consciousness. “Have you ever searched before?”
Pax sighed. “Once or twice, but I didn’t go deep. Just some stupid searches that never produced anything. You?”
My head shook. “No. I was always too concerned with trying to convince my parents that I wasn’t crazy to take the chance.”
The fierce lines of his expression softened. “You’re not. This is real. You’re real. Don’t ever fucking be ashamed of it.”
As soon as he said it, he quickly clicked his door open, and he was around the car and at my side by the time I was opening mine. He kept a protective hand at the small of my back as he led me around the front of the building, forever on guard as we moved.