Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
The polar blast had passed us.
With the temperature rising, the layer of snow on the ground might be all but gone by tomorrow. Except I didn’t think most of the people on the estate would survive till dawn.
Chest painful with the scream I couldn’t release lest I go mad, I ran to find clean towels—and took both knives with me, dropping them in a hip-height ornamental vase on my way to the laundry.
I was careful, never allowed my bare fingers to touch the weapons.
After returning to the living room—where, contrary to my fears, no one had moved—I pressed a thick white towel to Darcie’s stomach, the other to Grace’s side. Since I couldn’t keep pressure on them both, I went to the junk drawer in the kitchen. I’d found it while in there with Aaron.
The roll of duct tape was right at the back.
I taped the towel around Darcie, then Grace, as tightly as I could. Hopefully I wasn’t causing harm by compressing their guts, but what use were guts if the two women bled to their deaths?
Duct tape in hand, I sat back again, my gaze going from one to the other.
It had to be Darcie. Grace was a stranger, a person with no reason to hurt us.
Someone who had nothing to do with Bea.
But . . . Grace was a stranger. And Darcie’s horror at the presence of the woman who looked like Bea had been real.
Darcie also had no reason to stab Ash. Ash was her golden prize, the man she’d wanted since the day she’d laid eyes on him. No, Darcie would’ve never stabbed Ash.
But Grace was wounded. And Darcie had been trying to tell me something about Grace.
Grace had also been holding a butcher knife.
Jaw set, I pulled Darcie’s hands behind her back and taped her wrists together so strongly that escape was impossible.
I did the same to Grace.
I didn’t trust my instincts. Everything was a mess. None of it made sense.
Worried that one or both might throw up while unconscious—especially if one of them had been drugged—I put both into the recovery position, then did the same for Vansi and Kaea.
It would’ve been child’s play to drug Vansi. She might look together, but her grief was a wound as bloody as Darcie’s. A drink offered by a friend and she would’ve accepted it with thanks.
Either Grace or Darcie could’ve doctored Kaea’s soup with whatever it was they were using to poison him. The risk of anyone else taking a bit of that sickbed soup would’ve been low to negligible.
No, the ugly stuff had made its way into its target.
Having got everyone into the best position I could, I forced myself to go to the woman with Bea’s face. And I made myself look at her. Really look at her. Thinner than the Bea I’d known, but with the same full lips, the same gentle roundness to the jawline. The same thick hair, so silky and such an intense shade of chocolate. Brushing it away from her left ear with trembling fingers and lungs compressed until there was no air in them, I counted the holes in her earlobe.
One at the top. Two at the bottom.
The tiniest blemish where she’d had a stud put into the inner part of the shell one year before deciding she hated it.
I sat back. Stared. And decided to check her feet.
My feet are weird. Do you think boys will care?
A conversation from a lifetime ago, a world of crushes and school dances and notes passed in hallways.
Tugging a white sneaker off her left foot, I encountered a thick woolen sock. Neither went with the lacy dress that was more Darcie than Bea, but it made sense in this house. My brain liked that. At least something made sense.
I pulled off the sock without really looking at her exposed foot. First, I put the sock beside the sneaker; next, I retrieved a mental photograph of Bea’s “weird” foot; and then I looked down. A second toe that was at least half an inch longer than her big toe. A little toe that was half the size it should be to be in proportion but still had a nail painted in Bea’s favorite shade of plum.
My eyes burned, dry and hot.
I wanted to believe.
Don’t think. Just do. There’s a lot to do.
Once I’d put her sock and sneaker back on, I forced myself to get a can of Coke from the kitchen, along with several granola bars. I checked the seal of each and every one before I took a sip or bite.
I ate without tasting anything, my only intent to fuel my body.
I couldn’t just sit here and wait. Many of my friends would die, become corpses cold and blue. Shoving the base of each palm against my closed eyes, I gritted my teeth, tried to work out how to move Ash and Aaron here, where at least it was warm.