Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
She takes the gun. “Let’s get ready for bed.” She starts to walk away and I grab her arm.
“Mom,” I plead.
“We’re good, honey. I’m going to get into that study, beat the cancer, and we’ll be just fine.”
I blink back to the present and remember my mother sleeping on the couch that night with the gun in her hand. She was ready to fight. She didn’t want to kill herself. She didn’t want to die. I later found out that Richard was my father’s “fixer” who died not long after my mother in a car accident, which I found out when I tried to confront him about what happened that night.
My phone buzzes with a text and I grab it to read a message from Blake: The computer system at the hospital was updated to read heart attack on your father’s chart. The early drug testing is clear of toxins. Only it wasn’t a heart attack. It was poison. Just like I doubt Richard really died from a car accident. I consider my mother’s suicide. That was real. She made that decision, but a Kingston might as well have been holding the gun. They did everything they could to keep me out of this family and ironically, I believe Gigi really did think that I was the only way to save it. She’s a fool. The only saving I’m going to do is of Harper.
I reach down and stroke her cheek. She blinks awake and catches my hand. “Eric.”
“Yeah, baby.”
“Any luck?”
“A few leads. It’s late.” I glance at my watch to read midnight. “Let’s go to bed.”
“Bed with you sounds pretty perfect,” she murmurs groggily.
“Good. Because bed with you is always perfect.” I scoop her up and start carrying her toward my room, our room now. The room we’re going to share in the kind of peace that comes only one way: with the end of the Kingston family.
Chapter ninety-eight
Eric
Isleep three hours and lay in the bed holding Harper for another hour, finding the numbers in my head easier to control when she’s with me. Almost as if she’s my Rubik’s cube, which isn’t as crazy as it sounds. As I was trained, it’s about finding a way to ground myself and calming my mind, and Harper does that for me.
I’m fairly certain it would sound ridiculous to anyone but me. Or Harper. I don’t think it would be ridiculous to Harper. She seems to understand me in ways no one else, not even Grayson, has ever understood me. I inhale the sweet scent of her, motivation to solve the puzzle I can feel my mind on the verge of solving.
I grab my cellphone, read an hour-old text message from Blake: Isaac is not only in the city, he’s holed up in a room at the same hotel where your father was poisoned. Some people might be scared of that hotel. Not him. Interesting.
Interesting is right, I think. He’s stupid enough to think that staying at the hotel makes it look like he’s not guilty. He’s wrong. The police are going to see this just like I do. Isaac isn’t scared because he set-up that hit. The blood tests might be negative, but their suspicions were too juicy a morsel to just let go.
By sunrise, I’ve showered and despite it being a workday, I dress in jeans and a shirt, with every intent of staying away from the office, and Grayson. I glance through the bags Mia brought Harper and while she brought her plenty of items, I’m sure Harper wants things she picked out herself. We’ll have to go shopping today.
I exit the bedroom with Harper still completely knocked out. On one hand, I’m pleased that she feels safe here, but on the other, I worry that when she wakes, the adrenaline rush of her attack is going to hit her. Eventually, it will, and I want nothing more than to hold her and help her ride the wave to get through it. But it’s also a luxury we can’t afford right now. Not with my father in the ICU, Gigi on the run, and Isaac here in New York City, but at least he’s a means to an end.
He’s in the monster’s lair and I’m that monster.
I’ve just finished brewing a second pot of coffee when my cellphone rings with an unfamiliar number. I answer it on the first ring. “Eric Mitchell.”
“Mr. Mitchell. This is Detective Rider. I thought you’d like to know that your father had a heart attack.”
“All right,” I say. “I’m not sure that constitutes as good news. Why are you really calling me?”
“I’m fairly certain that you, like myself, believed he was poisoned. Walker Security showed us the man on the security footage that entered your father’s room.”
“Did you find him?”
“No.”
“Was my father poisoned?” I press.