Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Waiting for him to figure out what she was communicating with those two names—one a person and one an event. And how knowing about those two things would help him help her. It must be somewhat straightforward. There was no reason Josephine would use riddles.
I’ll be right back, he typed.
Rex opened up another browser and typed in the name of the doctor. Gerhard Ellingson was a physician who specialized in spinal cord injuries and practiced in the DC area. Okay, so he was likely Josephine’s doctor? He sat there for a moment, stretching his fingers as he considered what this meant and how knowing the name of her doctor might assist him. Did she have an appointment? Something occurred to him. He picked up his phone and dialed the office number, and an answering service picked up.
“Yes, hi,” he said. “I’m calling on behalf of Josephine Kiss. She has an appointment with Dr. Ellingson.”
He waited, breath suspended as the woman on the line hummed as though she was looking up that information. “Yes, sir. The house call tomorrow morning at eight a.m.? It’s the doctor’s first appointment with the patient? Is there a problem?”
“Yes, actually. I’m sorry to say something has come up, and Ms. Kiss will need to reschedule.”
“I’ll let the doctor know, sir. What date would you like instead?”
“I’ll have to call back once I have Ms. Kiss’s calendar in front of me. I just wanted to ensure the doctor knew tonight so he doesn’t make the trip unnecessarily.”
“Absolutely. I’ll make sure he knows. And he’ll look forward to making Ms. Kiss’s acquaintance in the near future.”
Rex hung up, blood buzzing as he began to understand the plan Josephine had obviously already come up with.
Rex looked up the auction next, finding that it was an event that was held every year in London. An event that happened to be tomorrow evening. Rex scrolled through the site, stopping when he got to the list of the board of directors. “Anton Kiss,” he murmured.
Her brother was on the board of the art auction that would be held tomorrow night in London. He’d have almost certainly left the country already. He would not be home.
Okay. Rex wasn’t certain why that part was important but apparently it was.
He looked up as a member of the janitorial staff exited a closet just down the hall from where Rex was sitting in the open lobby. He caught sight of a white coat hanging inside.
Rex returned to Hollis’s internal website, where the reply box was still open, cursor blinking.
I understand, he typed. And then he logged off.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Posey was good at waiting. She’d been waiting for decades now, since she was an eighteen-year-old girl. But never, in all that time, had her hope soared quite as high as it did now.
Despite her practiced patience, it had been a very long night.
Please don’t let me down.
Her hope wasn’t baselessly contingent on the competency of others, however. She’d calculated and crunched numbers. She’d “war-gamed,” as her father used to say. And so now, all she could do was trust that the man she counted on was exactly as she perceived him to be.
She couldn’t possibly do what needed to be done next without him.
Posey heard the distant ringing of the doorbell, the ventilator quickening along with her breath. Calm, calm. Remain calm.
Posey closed her eyes. The waiting was almost over. Ten minutes, she’d calculated. No more than twelve.
If you ever try to tell anyone what happened that night, or if you attempt something stupid, I will unplug you, Posey, do you hear me? Or I’ll put you in the dark, and I’ll leave you there. No windows. No sunshine. Be grateful for what I give you. I don’t have to give you anything at all.
After the attack and the accident that was no accident, she’d spent two years wishing to die—grieving both the catastrophic loss of her mobility and the terrible betrayal she’d suffered. “Kill me,” she’d told her brother from the hospital bed he’d set up in her room, and maybe that’s why he’d kept her alive. Then, one day, Anton arrived with a newspaper in his hands and read from an article. Tatum Devore, the man who had left her surrounded by evil, had drunk a bottle of whiskey and jumped off a ten-story roof.
Anton thought it would devastate her.
But instead, Posey decided to live.
She decided to calculate.
She’d had so little to work with, and so many things had gone wrong too many times. She’d remained steadfast, however, confident in her own abilities, patient despite such incredibly limited resources.
No use of either her hands or her feet. No mobility at all without her chair. Strict controls over any technology. No phone. Only caregivers that Anton had approved of in advance, which was to say, strict rule followers with little to no empathy for a helpless, wheelchair-bound young woman. Two had been vicious, the others merely cold.