Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69909 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69909 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
No. It smells different here.
What happened? Where am I?
Girard sent me with Ines to change clothes. I remember that. I can still see Ines applying and re-applying blood-red lipstick before her vanity as I changed. She looked so strange, so wrong. And then the men took us to the guest house.
I see my father in that cage. He looked like an animal, hands clutched around the bars, panicked, eyes wild.
He’s dead. I know he’s dead.
Zeke had been inside the house. He’d come for me. What had he said, though? I wasn’t Society. The guard had dragged me away and then what?
Then the explosion.
I bolt upright. “Zeke!”
Movement from the corner has me panicking, has me leaping off the bed, but my legs are tangled in the blanket, and I am trapped. Where am I? Where the fuck am I?
“Blue. Blue, it’s okay. It’s Zeke,” he says, approaching quickly. “You’re safe. You’re safe.” A hand closes over my shoulder, and I hear a click. I panic but soft light illuminates the room. The click was the light switch not a gun.
I look up at Zeke. His face is dirty in places, and he has cuts on his face and arms. When he pulls me to him, he smells of fire and smoke.
It all comes back to me then. Like a flood, a tidal wave, it all rushes back. Everything, all of it, from the moment Girard stepped on the airplane to when he sent me away, when Zeke told him to send me away. That I wasn’t Society and I’d spoil his live stream. He knew what Girard would do. I knew too. I felt what it was to kneel before that block. To have my arm stretched across it, my wrist exposed to his ax.
Panicked, I draw back. I touch him, feel his arms, hold his hands. Feel for his fingers. Only when I do, do I exhale.
“You’re all right,” I say.
“More or less. All fingers and toes accounted for.”
I look up at his soot stained, still-bruised face. It’s healing. His forehead is furrowed, concern in his eyes.
“Where am I?” I ask.
“Hospital. You inhaled a lot of smoke. You’ve been out for a while.”
“How long?”
“About twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours.” I push a hand into my hair. The soldiers, from my window I could see what they were doing. They were emptying explosives from their vans and placing them in the main house, then in the guest house. Then they started to leave. All those vans driving away calm and orderly, no panicked rush. It was a calculated exit. “I saw what they were doing but I couldn’t call out to you. They put me at the back of the house.”
“I know.”
“How did you get to me?”
“I did. That’s all that matters.”
No, that’s not all, but I’m not ready to pursue that. “What did he do in the end?” I ask instead.
“He killed Augustus.”
I nod. I can guess how. “My father?”
“Dead.”
“Did he… How?”
“Bullet. It was quick.”
Did he deserve quick? I’m not sure. But that block, the terror of it, it makes me shudder thinking of it now.
“It’s over, Blue. After he killed Augustus, he left. Walked away with Ines and left rubble in his wake.”
I scrub my face, see the cuts on the backs of my hands. I look down at myself, drawing the blanket away to see the bruises and scrapes on my legs.
“You’re okay too, more or less,” he says.
I look up at him, see his small smile, and I smile too.
Zeke takes my face in his hands. I must be crying because he’s doing that thing he does, wiping away my tears with his thumbs. “Don’t think about it, Blue. There’s nothing to be gained by that. It was justice. Cruel, but no less so than what happened to him, what happened to you and Wren.”
I draw a deep breath in. He’s right. But that’s not why I’m crying.
“Why did you come?” I ask, taking his hands from my face and holding them because I need some opening or some closure.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I knew where the drive was, and I didn’t tell you.”
“I know.”
“It was the only way. To give it to him, I mean. It was the only way I could save you.”
“I know that too.”
“I didn’t think… I didn’t know what he’d do but I couldn’t take a chance that Augustus would hurt you or your family because he definitely would.”
“How did you hide it when Augustus’s men came to the house?”
“I put the drive and Girard’s card in the fireplace. Covered them with ash. I was going to tell you where it was but when you said you’d send me away, I had no choice. I didn’t want to lie to you, but I had to.”
“I know, Blue, but the danger you put yourself in. I can’t think about what might have happened to you. My mind keeps imagining—”