Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 779(@200wpm)___ 623(@250wpm)___ 519(@300wpm)
“You want the door closed?”
“What?” She looked up. “Oh, yes. Please. Thank you.” She typed on her phone. Once the door was closed and I sat at the far end of the table, she stopped. “Okay. Tell me about CBX news. They said you did well last week.”
She paused, but I just waited. I knew a bait when I heard one. She wanted something from me.
She kept eyeing me. “The clip is still trending.”
I grunted. Fuck that clip. I was still pissed a week later, but I couldn’t figure out her hook—not Kim’s, Willow Harm’s. I’d been interested the moment I saw her walk past my room, and I’d stayed by the stage on purpose because I wanted to see her walk past for her segment on the show.
Then she’d tripped.
And after I’d watched her do her segment, and holy shit. She’d gone to a friend’s house for a playdate when the Midwest Butcher showed up. He’d killed everyone except her. She’d been hiding, and the speculation was that he hadn’t been looking for another child in the house. I was jaded from knowing the worst of the worst, and nothing much shocked me.
Her story shocked me. It made me feel cold to the bone that she’d gone through that.
She’d gone into foster care after that, which made me wonder what had happened to her real family. Had something already happened, and that’s why that friend’s family was watching her? That made sense. Foster care was hard. It pushed my buttons. Anyone who fucking decided to foster children, not for the children but for the money, deserved to be destroyed. Which I’d done. And I enjoyed it, especially when it was my fucking sister, who’d tried four times to foster a kid. I’d never let her do that, not when she barely raised her own.
If my sister had a heart of gold and was doing it for the right reasons, I’d be a big supporter. She didn’t. She was a parasite on society.
Shit. Was my sister after the con? It was something Shannon would do. Find someone she knew I’d like. Prep her with the right things to say. Willow Harm likes football. She likes odd shit, like chickens. She even named a fucking chicken after an activist. I liked all of that, a lot. It’d been too good.
I didn’t know how she’d done it, but it all made sense now. My fucking sister. She could do the long con, do her research, find out when I’d be doing another promotion on CBX. Shit. It was within her abilities to make friends with someone on staff and get her “friend” booked because somehow surviving a serial killer was related to highlighting domestic abuse?
This was the month for it, for fuck’s sake.
And having the girl trip? That was also classic Shannon. Make me feel like a stud, like I needed to save the damsel. Though if Shannon had been the one who’d tripped and been rescued, she would’ve already had a hand snaked around my back, lifting the wallet out of my pocket.
Willow Harm’s face flashed in my mind—her big, doe-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights look. She was a knockout.
She also had no fucking clue she was a knockout.
I’d fallen for it. All of it.
Now what? This was take two?
I waited to hear Kim say they wanted me to do an event with Willow Harm.
Or hell, maybe I needed to step back and stop thinking like a fucking calculating asshole like my sister. Maybe none of it was a con and I’d misjudged everything?
Jesus fucking shit. I wasn’t sure what to do right now.
“You have nothing to say?”
Kim was hella smart. She had eyes like a hawk, missing nothing.
I didn’t respond.
She tapped on her phone. “Okay. Not that you’re a big talker anyway, but what’s this?” She turned her phone around and slid it my way.
Street noises came first, loud and invasive, and my voice came second. “…I mean this with the utmost respect. But fuck off.”
Kim took the phone back. She left it on the table in front of her, sat back in her chair, and folded her arms over her chest. “The rest of the video shows you manhandling Willow Harm back into the station.”
I cursed again. “That’s not what happened.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Care to fill me in? This is the third video that’s been released since that show. I’m sure they’re doctored for a negative slant, but this month is domestic abuse awareness. Not to mention, Miss Harm isn’t just some survivor. She survived a monster who killed sixty-two people up and down the entire middle section of this nation. She’s the only one who survived, and his story is still selling headlines. People love sports, but they also love the shit out of serial killers. Willow Harm is this shiny toy everyone wants to talk to, love, protect, shield—and by the way, she’s notorious for wanting nothing to do with any press. Nada. Zilch. No one even knows where she lives. People used to try to follow her. After a while she caught on and drove to a farm outside of town. The guy, no joke, met their cars with a rifle. After that it was widely known that if you wanted to find out where Willow Harm lived, you needed two extra tires because that rifle wasn’t a toy. He shot out the tires.”