Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
The other one was also tall, very tall, just not as tall as the other guy. I’d put him in the thirty to thirty-five age zone. He had dark-brown hair, full, short, but the top and sides were longish and slicked back in a stylish way. He had a thick brown beard that was trimmed gloriously and gray-blue eyes.
For a second, I thought he was Chris Evans.
Then he spoke.
Angrily.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Wait.
What was I doing?
Oh yeah.
Suddenly confronting a Chris Evans doppelgänger, I’d forgotten about Elsie Fay (that sounded really bad, but trust me, with these guys, who wouldn’t?).
I shot to my feet and dashed through the kitchen.
That was as far as I got before I was whipped around with a strong hand on my arm and Chris Evans was in my face.
“Again, what the fuck are you doing?” he asked.
“Who are you?” I asked back.
“I asked first,” he returned.
“Do you know that guy?”
“What guy?”
“The one who owns this house.”
“No.”
Okay, I was going with he was a good guy. Maybe a cop. Maybe they were onto this guy like I was.
Yeah.
Anyway, if they were in cahoots with the bad guy, they wouldn’t have cracked his head on the tile.
So I was going with that because there was no more time to waste.
“Elsie Fay,” I said, tore my arm from his hold and raced through the house.
I made it to the door to the room at the end of the hall and was in such a rush, when I turned the knob, I slammed full-body into it because it was locked.
I then grabbed the knob and jostled it and the door violently, like that would magically open it.
I was pushed aside with an order of, “Stand back.”
I did as told.
“Are you a good guy or a bad guy?” I belatedly asked in order to confirm.
“Even if I was a bad guy,” he said while positioning in front of the door, his eyes aimed at it, “I’d tell you I was a good guy.”
Excellent point.
He lifted a beefy (those thighs!), chocolate-brown-cargo-pants-clad leg and landed his boot solidly by the door handle.
The door popped open.
I slipped in front of him to enter the dark room.
I immediately tripped over something, but stopped, righted myself and called into the darkness, “Elsie Fay?”
No movement. No sound.
Chris Evans entered behind me, close behind me. So close, I could feel his heat and the natural badassery that wafted off him (this apparently happened with guys who knew how to bust open doors with their boot), and I felt him move.
On instinct again, I spun and whispered, “Don’t turn on the light.”
The other guy was standing in the doorway.
I turned back to the room, and gingerly, my eyes adjusting to the dark with weak light coming in from down the hall (trying to ignore the fact this room would be pitch black without the door open, and how that would affect the mind of a little girl), I called, “Elsie Fay? It’s me. From outside? You know, the window? You’re okay. We’re gonna get you out and call the cops and your parents and—”
I didn’t finish because a six-year-old hit me like a bullet. She slammed into my legs so hard, I nearly went down. And I would have if I didn’t run into Chris Evans and his hands didn’t span my hips to hold me steady (told you he was close).
I didn’t have time to consider how those hands felt on my hips.
Elsie Fay was clawing up my chinos.
I bent and pulled her into my arms. She was heavy, as six-year-olds were wont to be, too big to be held, too young to realize it, though in this instance, she needed it, and I didn’t have time to consider her weight as she clamped onto me with arms and legs. She, too, fisted her hand in my hair and she did it tighter than the bad guy. She also shoved her face in my neck.
“It’s okay,” I whispered to her. “You’re okay. You’re safe now. Okay?”
She said nothing.
I turned to Chris Evans and his hottie partner.
“Is he neutralized?” I asked.
“Yes,” the hottie partner answered.
“Then let’s get her out of here,” I stated, and didn’t wait for their response.
I pushed through them and got that little girl the hell out of there.
TWO
CITADEL OF DENIAL
I was in denial.
Of a lot of things.
The first part of that denial was what had happened an hour earlier, when Elsie Fay’s parents showed at the police station, haggard, harried, both of them in tears of joy that their nightmare had ended, and that end didn’t lead them to another nightmare. Also, they were tears of fatigue and residual terror because the nightmare they’d endured was hideous.
I knew all about that.
Triggering much?
Hell yes!
The thing was, Elsie Fay would not let go of me. She wouldn’t even lift her face out of my neck.