Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
But he’d been alone again tonight, and he was done with this sleeping alone shit, and that wasn’t because of the state of play right then.
This schedule would leave Nadia zero time to rebut his plans to talk with his son before he had to kiss her and go get his boy from school.
Now, their good stretch was shot to shit.
But his plans weren’t because that six nights a week at his house was going to be seven if this crap didn’t stop.
Nadia came right to him.
“I told Harry not to tell you,” she said when she made it to him and had her hands on his chest. “I’m fine. It’s good. I was going to give you a call tomorrow.”
He was in no mood to field that right now.
“What happened?” he asked through his teeth, and he didn’t ask Nadia.
He asked Harry.
But Nadia answered. “Riggs, it’s okay. It’s just kids being jerks again.”
He looked down at her. “You set Gia on them?”
She shook her head. “No. Because it’s just kids. She might have hurt them.”
“Riggs, a word,” Harry said tightly.
He was already walking Riggs’s way.
He passed him without Riggs responding, but stopped, looked back, and aimed a hard stare at Nadia. “Please do not follow us.”
“Come here, sis,” Maribeth called. “I’m going to mix us a cocktail.”
He felt Nadia’s attention on him as he followed Harry out the back door.
Harry moved off the porch into the cleared back area and off to the south side.
Riggs followed him there too and stopped where his friend stopped, well out of hearing of the cabin.
“What’s the deal?” Riggs asked, watching his friend carefully.
“I’ll show you the deal in a second, but first, have a word with your woman. She has an exceptionally trained guard dog. If she’s got people on her patch who should not be on her patch, I don’t give a fuck it’s Greta Thunberg scouting a location for a protest, she…lets…that animal…out.”
“Okay. I got a loose hold, Harry, and you’re not helping.”
“Gia started barking well before they started throwing rocks, the barking waking those women,” Harry explained. “Nadia said it’s been happening since she got her because Gia isn’t used to her new space and all the critters who are moving around in the night, and that makes sense. Except for the fact Hutch lives more secluded than you, and that dog has grown from puppy to now, every night, hearing animals moving around all day and all fucking night.”
Jesus Christ.
Nadia, babying her baby.
Fuck.
Harry kept at it.
“Maribeth says Gia eventually started losing it. What she didn’t say out loud in front of Nadia was, the dog was giving a clear warning shit was going down, and it wasn’t going to get better, and Nadia still didn’t let her out. They apparently had words, because Maribeth wanted her to let Gia do her job, but Nadia was dead set against it. In the end, Nadia called my station, but she didn’t let Gia loose.”
“You think Bryce wants payback?” Riggs asked.
“No,” Harry forced out. “Now, I’m gonna tell you, they took out three of your cameras physically. Southside, back, and the one trained this way.”
“God fucking dammit,” Riggs bit out.
“But we checked the feeds, and Maribeth reported timings on what we viewed, and about ten minutes before Gia started barking, the feeds all went to static.”
Riggs chin went into his neck. “Jammed?”
“Yeah,” Harry confirmed. “So we got no visual this time.”
“Grimes saw that video of last time,” Riggs reminded him. “He knows there are cameras. Why don’t you think it’s him?”
“Rus and Karen are here. Wade saw the tracks, and they’ve spent the last half hour following them.”
“Where do they lead?”
Harry locked eyes with him. “To the access road.”
“Fucking shit,” Riggs snarled.
“Brace, brother, and come with me,” Harry said.
Then he moved in the direction of where the stables used to be, and Riggs didn’t like that, but he followed.
He stopped in what Riggs figured was the middle of where those stables were, switched on his Maglite and held it high but aimed to the ground.
Riggs looked that way and felt a chill enter his bloodstream.
Stones were arranged on the ground to make words.
Get Off
Our Land
“Use of an unused access road,” Harry began. “Tracks are the same we saw, male and female. Access to resources, the Wi-Fi jammer. And the word ‘our.’ There are only three people alive who would refer to this land as ‘our,’ and they’re all suspects in three homicides.”
Fuck.
“I’ve never asked, because I thought it was all horseshit, but what kind of crap went down to chase other people off this property?” Riggs queried. “I know about the scratching, anything else?”
“Heard word of whispering outside the windows, as well as scratching on them. What sounded like rocks being smacked together unnaturally. Loud noises of movement in the night in this area, where we are now, that was not the movement of animals. The sound of horses whinnying when there shouldn’t be horses anywhere near. And this isn’t the first message written in stone either.”