Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“Eddy will be here soon. We need to wrap this up.”
My mom’s voice.
“She’s not supposed to be here for at least another hour.”
Dad’s voice.
I walked to the edge of the wall and peeked inside.
What I saw had my knees weakening.
Bile instantly rose in my throat.
With shaky fingers, I lifted my phone from the pocket of my jeans and hit the camera button on my home screen.
When the red icon popped up, I lifted my phone and took a video of what I saw.
I didn’t know what all I got on video.
I was shaking too badly to make sure.
Only when I was sure I’d gotten enough did I back away from the room and shove the phone back into my pocket.
I climbed the stairs as quietly as I could.
Then I ran.
Straight to the sheriff.
Two
People say that love is the best feeling, but I think finding a toilet when you have diarrhea is better.
—Eddy to Nettie
Eddy
Four months later
“You want me to what?” I asked.
Deputy Ryan and Sheriff Black exchanged looks.
I knew they were thinking that I was losing it.
And I was.
I was having to pretend to love my father and mother when I’d lost all respect and love for them when I’d witnessed what was happening in their basement four months ago.
And they wanted me to keep playing the fucking game.
I was tired of the freakin’ game!
“You need to try to slip into that room. Find it.”
I was already shaking my head. “I’m not going to do it. I have nightmares. I just…can’t.”
Sheriff Black studied my face. “What can you do?”
I thought about it for a few moments.
“I can let one of you in,” I said. “Give you the grand tour. But I won’t do it by myself.”
“Got a friend that’s an electrician and lineman,” Deputy Gentry Ryan suggested. “Maybe Eddy pretends like she’s having electrical issues at their house. Tries to do a favor for her parents. Maybe Eddy calls him in, gets him to fix something, and they stumble upon it together. He feels obligated to call it in. Mandatory reporter and all that. Which gets us in.”
“Borderline illegal,” Sheriff Black said. “But it’s looking like our only option.”
I was thinking that, too.
I couldn’t do this anymore.
I couldn’t pretend like I hadn’t seen something so fucking disgusting and disturbing that murder sounded better.
I’d given Sheriff Black the video four months ago, and they’d been using their time wisely, looking into everything.
They’d found plenty of stuff, of course.
Fraud. Embezzlement. Tax evasion.
All stuff that a church should not have in their records.
But none of that was what they really wanted.
What they wanted was what I’d shown them in that video.
That’s what I wanted, too.
“Get your friend in on this.” Sheriff Black leveled his deputy with a stare that could peel paint. “Give him everything that he’ll need to go in there and do this willingly. If he knows, he can prepare.”
I didn’t think you could prepare for something like this…
Three
Women say we have trust issues. But here’s the thing, we put our most prized possession in a mouth full of teeth. If that doesn’t say trust, I don’t know what does.
—Weaver’s secret thoughts
Weaver
My phone rang, and I looked at it in my jeans pocket and contemplated not answering it.
The phone stopped ringing, then started right back up again.
“Fuckin’ answer it,” I heard my partner call out from the ground. “I’m going to take a piss!”
I sighed, pulled one glove off with my teeth, and pulled my phone out of my pocket.
Fuck, it was cold.
My fingers were so damn stiff that I could barely hit the answer button before placing it to my ear.
“Yeah?”
“Weaver,” Gentry said gruffly. “I need a favor.”
“Does it need to be right now?” I wondered.
Because I sure the fuck hoped not.
“No.” He hesitated. “But soon. Can you come by my place after you get off work?”
The fact that Gentry was asking this of me was making me nervous.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Are you having issues with your power or something?”
I was a certified electrician as well as a lineman for the county co-op.
The only time people called me was when they needed their house rewired.
Well, that wasn’t fully true.
People called me all the time.
The club was a busy place, and there was always someone wanting to do something somewhere.
When I’d joined the Dixie Wardens MC, it’d been out of necessity.
Part of the new life Apollo had made up for me was that I was prospecting for a motorcycle club. According to the dossier I’d been handed upon arrival in Sawtooth, Montana, I’d graduated from the University of Wyoming. I’d become a lineman right out of college, and had become an electrician during my off hours for the hell of it.
The local motorcycle group—the Dixie Wardens MC—had vouched for us and given us a good cover story so we could assimilate easier.