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)
“Too smart for my own good?” he asked very seriously.
She took in his solemn face. She wondered who had told him that. She shook her head. “No. Just smart. Perfectly smart. And amazing.”
Cyrus gave her a shy smile, and she noticed that small dimple just below his lip. Elle’s dimple, and the one she’d seen on her newborn. “Thanks,” he said.
“Can I . . . can I give you a hug?” she asked, her voice wobbly with the need to hold this child who was certainly hers.
Cyrus didn’t hesitate—he stepped straight into her open arms and hugged her back. Cami closed her eyes and lived right there in the moment, basking in the relief and feeling this wondrous sense of wholeness.
When she finally let go and stood, Rex met her teary eyes. “We have to call the police now. I doubt the men who were on their way will still be going to the cabin.” He glanced at Cyrus as if deciding whether to talk in front of him. But Cyrus had just survived a kidnapping. He’d been privy to what was happening, and he’d been clever enough to escape. And he now had someone to hold him if he was scared. “Whoever put that video up will have alerted them. But just in case . . .”
“I agree,” she told him as she swiped the moisture from her eye. Perhaps the dead man’s identity would provide answers. She’d been cautioned not to call the police, but that was with the threat that the video of Cyrus would disappear, and she’d have no way to find him. Now . . . now there was no reason not to alert the authorities.
She took Cyrus’s hand in hers, and they walked up the stairs to the porch. Cami reached for the laptop to take it inside. “Rex,” she breathed.
He came up next to her and looked at the screen. “It’s gone,” he murmured.
The video of the empty room was gone. It’d disappeared entirely.
Chapter Thirty-Four
1994
Ever since she was a small child, Josephine “Posey” Kiss had been well aware that her father was in the business of ending lives. Some considered him a villain, she knew. But even so, she loved him fully and completely.
He was the only one who both attempted to understand her and made her feel special. Or more to the point, the only one who made her feel normal.
Because seventeen-year-old Posey was so brilliant, sometimes people considered her more computer than girl. And so quiet that most forgot she was even in the room. And that was fine with her because Posey found the majority of humans utterly boring and thoroughly tedious.
They engaged in entire conversations about the most mundane things. Topics that had no consequence whatsoever.
Her father never leaned toward banality. And he was content to let her be as quiet as she wished. He didn’t attempt to fill the space. When he spoke, it held meaning. He asked for her thoughts about his business. He considered her ideas and even allowed her to advise him on occasion. He appreciated her rational mind. And he liked that she was fully in control of her emotions. Feelings simply didn’t serve, and so, more often than not, Posey chose to set them aside.
But regardless of emotion, her father was discerning about the lives he ordered to be disposed of. He took care to consider all angles of a person’s value, and any alternatives that might overcome a client’s obstacle.
“What do you think of this situation, Pose?” her father asked her one rainy Monday.
Posey nudged her glasses higher on her pert nose and leaned in to see the computer on the desk in front of her, scanning the details in the file. Not all the relevant information was spelled out, but Posey knew the business well enough to read between the lines.
It was the reason the Kiss Operation couldn’t be trusted in just anyone’s hands. It was imperative that it remain in the family.
The case—for that’s what her father called them, his cases—featured a prominent, long-serving politician who was about to be exposed for docking his yacht in a neighboring state in order to save heftily on taxes.
Taxes that he’d imposed under a platform that championed the wealthy “paying their fair share.”
Except him, apparently.
It would be a disaster for the man. Any hopes of reelection would be obliterated.
The entire party would take a hit.
And it might all crumble to dust because of a single auditor who’d learned of his scheme and was threatening to expose it if the politician himself didn’t come clean and issue a public apology.
Posey skimmed the remainder of the auditor’s personal information. The naive man had no clue that his life was now in danger. Posey was certain of that because he’d made no efforts to protect himself. He hadn’t hired a bodyguard or bought a weapon, or opened a safe-deposit box where a copy of the politician’s paperwork might be kept in case of the auditor’s death. What a shortsighted man. He didn’t understand how the world worked, apparently, or at least the world of politics.