Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 146477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
“Start talking, Harper. I’m not fucking around this time. Give it to me straight.”
“Can you at least pull over to the side of the road? I don’t feel like becoming roadkill tonight.”
I groan and hit the gas, moving over just enough to satisfy her before fixing her with a heavy stare and completely cutting the engine to make a point. “The fuck is going on?”
“Okay, so last night—”
“In the morgue?”
“Yes. I was working on a report—”
“Alone?”
“Jesus. Yes. Are you going to interrupt every sentence that comes out of my mouth?”
“Only if you don’t hurry up and give me the information I’m looking for.”
Harper scowls at me. “You’re impossible. You know that right? You’d think as a trained officer, you’d have a little more patience with shit like this.”
I grip the steering wheel, white-knuckling it as I try to find my composure. “For the love of all that’s holy, Morticia. Tell me what the fuck happened in that morgue.”
Her eyes blaze with fire, and I have no doubt that she’s itching to argue, but she thankfully gets on with it, sensing that I’m reaching my boiling point. “Okay, so I was writing up a report when I got this strange feeling that I was being watched. I had shivers going down my spine and goosebumps everywhere. It freaked me out, so I looked around but couldn’t see anyone, and my desk is right by the door. Nobody could have come in or out without me knowing, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to calm myself. “Then what happened?”
“I figured it was all in my head, so I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, but when I came back, there was a black rose just lying in the middle of the autopsy table.”
My back stiffens, and I stare at her.
“A black rose?” I question, my mind instantly reeling, going through all the stalking cases I’ve ever worked on and trying to see if anything rings a bell, but there’s not enough to go on. I’ve never had a case where the suspect has left a rose before, particularly a black one.
“It was messed up, and I didn’t want to hang around to find out how it got there, so I ran. Which is how I caught my shoulder on the door, by the way. I wasn’t lying about that.”
“Fuck. Give me your phone.”
Her brows furrow, but she hands it over, and I immediately put my number into her contact list, not even bothering to check if it’s already there. “I’ll check it out,” I tell her. “But if anything like that happens again or if you feel unsafe, even if it’s just a feeling, you call me. Understood? I’m turning your location on and sharing it with me, so I’ll know where to find you if I have to.”
“You don’t need to do all of that,” she tells me. “It was probably all in my head. Working alone in a morgue was bound to get to me at some point.”
“I’m not just offering you a ride home to be a good guy, Harper,” I say, handing her phone back. “This could potentially be your life. Don’t fuck with that. If there’s some guy out there, and your life is at risk, I need to know about it.”
She nods, and I push her on it, certain that she’s going to shrug my warning off, just as I’ve seen so many young women do in the past. “Promise me, Harper. Tell me you’ll call.”
“I’ll call,” Harper vows.
I hold her stare for a moment longer, and seeing a strange uncertainty within her eyes, I turn and focus on the road ahead, giving her a moment to breathe.
The thought of someone stalking this girl makes me feel sick, but realizing that there’s not a damn thing I can do to help her right now, I let out a breath and start the engine before pulling back out onto the deserted highway.
We drive in silence, and the heaviness sinks around me. I itch to reach out to her, to tell her it will be okay, but how the hell can I possibly promise that? I don’t know if it’s going to be okay. I don’t even know if any of this is real. I’ve never wanted someone to be delusional more than I do right now, and up until she told me about the black rose, I could have almost believed that it was all in her head.
Time passes quickly in our weighted silence, and before I know it, I’m pulling up to the curb outside her apartment complex, not a word exchanged between us since the highway.
“Umm . . . thanks,” Harper says, glancing toward me, only to look away as fast as humanly possible, an awkwardness settling between us. “I—wait. How did you know where to go? I never told you where I live.”