Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 133878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Kingman snorted. “Killed as in shot and dead, and now we gotta haul them all the way back home because I’ve got a place no one will ever find. My own killing ground, which is where you should be right now, but you somehow figured out we were on to you. Mostly I like to do the killing right there, but we’ll transport the bodies and the cops won’t have any clue.”
“I assure you they will, and if you killed everyone in that barn, I won’t help you. I won’t save you. If you killed everyone in that barn, I’m already dead and nothing you do to me will make me talk.” Shane felt something hollow open in his gut. Brooke. She couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t have brought this to her.
In the distance, he heard another crack of gunfire.
Was that her? Had she managed to hide and now she’d been found and everything that was glorious and amazing about her was gone?
Kingman got in his face, taking his jaw in one hand and forcing him to look up. “We’ll see about that. Let’s see how much pain you can take, you little shit. You and your brother think you can take me down.”
“We weren’t thinking about you at all until you pulled this stunt, you dickhead.” Shane wasn’t afraid of pain. He’d had enough of it to know it was simply one more thing to get through. But what this fucker had taken from him was more than pain. It was his whole heart ripped out and shredded on the ground in front of him. His soul would go with hers.
Kingman slapped him. Like bitch slapped him hard, making his head turn, but Shane didn’t make a sound.
If Brooke was dead, he wanted to go with her, but he was going to take Kingman with him.
Kingman stood, and Shane felt his whole body tense.
“This is a clusterfuck,” Kingman announced. “Someone go and see if Jones needs help. I’m serious about getting those bodies out of here. I don’t know who was in that barn, but I don’t want to leave evidence behind.”
One of the men started outside. There had been nine in here at one point, including the three who had come out for the interviews, but Shane had figured out Kingman had sent one to murder everyone in the barn.
The barn where Noah had been teaching Henry and Nell.
Where Brooke and Lucy had been with Henry and Nell.
Nell, who was a do-gooder pacifist pregnant with her second child.
Henry… Henry, who had once been a killer trained and paid for by the Central Intelligence Agency. Bay didn’t believe the hype about Henry. He thought it was all Bliss antics. Brooke, too. They’d talked about it one night while they laid in bed and Brooke told stories about the Bliss of her childhood. She thought he’d likely been an analyst or some sort of consultant. But that’s not what Shane heard.
Henry was a ruthless protector, trained in a way very few people ever were.
Henry might be smart enough to figure out what was happening and turn it back on his attacker.
Shane felt a surge of hope as Kingman railed on about how they might as well burn the place to the ground and then they wouldn’t have to worry about Bay’s drawings. Someone mentioned he might have it on him and they were debating that when Shane saw the hint of movement outside the window. It was nothing more than a flash of brown hair as someone moved past the kitchen, obviously toward the basement walkout. He could access the house from there.
Henry fucking Flanders.
If Henry was alive, there was a shot that Brooke was, too, and that she needed him.
“I know where it is,” Shane said quietly. “You could burn down both houses and the barn and the dorm and not find it.”
Kingman stopped yelling and turned his way. “All right, where is it?”
He had to buy Henry time. If it was Henry. No. It was Henry. It had to be Henry, and he would get them out of this situation.
If Brooke was alive, he had to buy her time, and he had to believe that at least someone else in that barn was alive or Henry would go about this entirely differently. He wouldn’t sneak in while his wife and child were lying cold on the ground. He would torch the place and not care. So if he was being careful…there was a chance.
Shane had learned a bit about acting in his weeks helping Brooke at the theater. You sold a scene with more than words. He let his jaw go tight and hoped he looked like he was thinking things through. “I think I saw him working on it this morning. We’re out in the foreman’s house. We haven’t been in the dorms for days, which is why it wasn’t in the safe.”