Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
I scan the list of markings, same as on the left. Another record of measurements. Another sibling?
Hunter moves in. “What’s this?”
“I think we missed something,” I tell him.
I read the name in jagged, slanted script. “Manas?”
He studies it closer. “He was older.”
“How do you know?”
“Extra layer of paint,” he replies. “Or two. Look.”
He takes my phone, pointing it lower in the inside of the frame, and I see the earlier markings look like they were barely dug into the wood, but the carving gets deeper and deeper the more Manas aged. I glance at Deacon and Conor’s grooves that appear more pronounced. They have one or two less layers of paint covering them.
I look at Hunter. “Three brothers?”
He shakes his head. “Not necessarily. Could be a previous inhabitant.”
But something starts unraveling in my head.
“You said ‘them.’”
Bastien looked up at me.
“You said ‘a few of us like to think she escaped them.’”
If Conor is really dead, and it’s just Deacon, then who else…
I blink rapidly, staring at the kitchen floor as this feeling starts to puzzle itself together, and I’m not sure where my thoughts are leading, but I know it’s right.
I drop my backpack and run upstairs with my phone.
“Dylan!” Hunter yells.
He runs after me, following as I open the attic door and race up the wooden steps, onto the third floor.
I don’t look for a lamp or light switch, the sunny fall day outside streaming through the windows.
There’s a bed—rather large, perfectly made with sheets, pillows, and a blanket, neatly tucked in under the mattress. I see the rocking chair near the window, the varnish on the wood long since worn away and faded, and the rope tied to a spoke on the back, the other end disappearing out the window.
There’s a bedside table, and I walk over, opening it, but all I see is a padlock. The shackle is closed, and there’s no key.
Remembering the key from the grave, I pull it out of my pocket and try the lock. It doesn’t fit.
I stuff the key back into my jeans and drop the lock into the drawer.
There’s nothing else in the attic.
No empty liquor bottles, no condoms, no pizza boxes, no graffiti. Aro was right. The Rebels don’t disrespect this house.
A whine sounds behind me, and I look over my shoulder to see Hunter checking a window to make sure it’s locked. The floorboard underneath him creaks again as he shifts on his feet.
I cross the room toward him. “Stop.”
He faces me, and I nudge him back just a little as I squat down and lift up a floorboard. A newspaper sits inside, and I remove it, opening it up.
Pictures spill out, and Hunter dips down to grab them. I stand up, inspecting them with him.
Two brown-haired boys, one crying and one gazing at the camera with big blue eyes. Same age, same face. “Twins,” Hunter whispers.
The other picture is of a woman at a picnic table outside. She wears a simple dress, and the table is covered with food. Deacon and Conor look about thirteen years old as they sit on the bench seat.
“Twins,” I say, pointing to the boys and guessing Deacon is the one who looks pissed about something in this photo too. “Deacon. Conor.” Then I point to an older boy propped on the edge of the table who looks about sixteen. Black hair, brown eyes. “Manas.”
Manas wears the No Fear T-shirt on my body now.
“Oh my God,” I breathe out. “There were two brothers here with her, but not the twins. Conor did die.”
He did commit suicide.
I meet Hunter’s eyes. “It wasn’t Conor and Deacon texting on those phones. It was Deacon and Manas.”
I don’t know if Hawke or Kade filled Hunter in, but he doesn’t ask me to explain.
The brothers who went after her were the twin who survived and the older brother.
I look at Manas in the picture. He’s the one in the notes who comes down from the attic.
Something about the way he’s perched on the edge of the table in the picture just like….
“Your parents were around?” I asked Bastien.
“No.” He shook his head. “I still couldn’t come and go as I liked, though. Siblings.”
Younger siblings.
I study the newspaper, seeing the headline for the flood the night she probably disappeared.
A picture of water spilling onto the river banks and covering the streets in the mill district stares back up at me as images flood my head.
Resting on the edge of the table, just like…
Just like he leans on his desk at school.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
He lightened his hair to dark brown, and he’s more than twenty-five years older than he was in this photo, but that’s him.
“Can we stop at the school?” I ask Hunter.
He nods. “Yeah.”
I snap a quick picture of the newspaper and the photos for Hawke and put everything back where I found it. The phones, the notes…someone is feeding us.