Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 132649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Oh, and really rude, impatient drivers.
She could get all of that back home.
She glared down at the completely flat rear tire balefully and screamed in frustration. Annoyingly, the sound was torn away by the wind.
Jesus, had her biological father ever had to work this hard on any of his assignments? Because this felt like piling on.
She knew the car had a spare. It had been drilled into her by her dad—the one who’d raised her—to always check for that when renting a car, but she doubted she’d be able to get the tire changed in this crazy wind. Her best option was to walk while she still had enough battery power on her phone to follow the GPS.
She checked the map again… it looked like a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk. Probably closer to half an hour in this weather, lugging her small carry-on bag that at least contained a pair of clean undies. She could call a tow truck or mechanic in the morning and get the rest of her stuff then too. For now, it would be best to get to the house and shelter.
Provided the GPS was right this time. And her phone didn’t die. And she didn’t tumble off a cliff in this blackness—because putting on her phone’s flashlight when the battery was this low was not an option.
God, maybe she should just stay in the car, dig out her cable, charge her phone, and call for help in the morning. Surely that would be the best option?
But it had only just gone six p.m. and the sun wouldn’t rise until just before eight in the morning, and she was not keen on staying out here for fourteen hours. Also—she checked her phone—yeah, there was no mobile service out here. Which meant she’d have to trek to Trystan Abbott’s place before calling for a tow truck anyway. Might as well bite the bullet and do it now. Better than spending an uncomfortable night in the car.
“This is so dumb,” she told herself as she got her carry-on wheelie suitcase out of the boot. “This is how people get murdered. Or eaten by animals. Or abducted by aliens. Or attacked by sharks, or zombies, or frikking vampires.”
Still, she was going to do this. She had to do this—it was the shittier of the two options available to her, but the most logical one.
She zipped up the puffer jacket she’d bought at the airport after discovering how cold it was, and put one resolute foot in front of the other as she continued to backtrack until she came to the turn she hadn’t even noticed earlier.
A reckless five-second switch to her phone’s flashlight told Iris that the road was lined with tall skeletal trees whose bare branches entangled many meters above her to form a brittle canopy above the road. The branches squeaked and scraped against each other in the strong wind, which was now blowing straight at her. The occasional gunshot-loud crack warned her that more branches were likely breaking and falling, making this foolhardy course of action even more treacherous.
One bright spot, the GPS didn’t seem to indicate any cliffs in the surrounding area, but that didn’t preclude deep ditches and holes, of course.
And now that the thought had crossed her mind, she kept imagining herself plunging into one with every step she took.
Thankfully, the howling of the wind was loud enough to drown out any potential howling from animals, which meant it was easier to put the threat of death by animal mauling and predation from her mind.
Sometimes she cursed her over-active imagination.
In fact, it was the absolute worst thing for her to have. She was trying to be a journalist over here, not an author of gruesome horrors.
She could use this in her feature. Set the scene…
It was there—among the dead trees, stormy seas, and wild animals—that I finally tracked down the elusive Trystan Abbott. The legendary actor hiding in a remote cottage in the wilds of—
What was that?
She stopped dead in her tracks and canted her head to the side as she tried to ignore the wind and listen for the sound she thought she’d heard beneath the cacophonous wind.
A growl. She was sure of it—a low, menacing growl that—
There it was again.
Oh God, she glanced down at her phone. According to the map, the house was straight ahead, just fifty meters away. She couldn’t see it. But it had to be there. It just had to.
She picked up the pace, but felt almost certain she was being stalked. She was practically running by now and when the trees abruptly ended and the gravel road changed to paving beneath her feet, she let out a grateful cry at first sight of the huge, creepy house, with its unlit windows, and dropped her case as she darted through a small garden toward what looked like a back door.