Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Again nothing.
I typed:
I’m not who he told you I am. I’m a lot of fucked up, but whatever you were told, I’m not it. Don’t shut me out.
Green bubble. Failed to deliver.
Had she turned the phone off? Did she cancel her number already? Who got to her? The questions hit me like a semi-automatic handgun one after another in rapid succession.
The garage around me went quiet in that mean way that says nothing’s actually quiet. A ratchet ticked somewhere, someone’s radio bled a country song through a wall, and my brothers’ voices from the main room were smoke on the air. None of it got through the damn blue bubble message.
“Gonzo?” Burn’s voice from the doorway. “You okay, Prez?”
I didn’t speak.
“You okay?” he repeated.
“No.”
I pocketed the phone, walked past him, shoved through the clubhouse and into daylight. The sky was October-glass blue and cold enough at the edges to sting when you breathe wrong. I breathed wrong the whole way to the bike.
The Harley-Davidson fired up like the faithful bitch she was, and I pointed her toward campus without telling anyone where the hell I was going because everybody already knew.
Students moved in herds that afternoon—backpacks thumping, earbuds in, laughter careless. I parked in visitor spillover like I owned it and took the footpath past the statue of a founder who looked like he’d never punched anything harder than biscuit dough. I didn’t know which class she’d have; I knew where she normally emerged. After the window of time came and went, it was evident she didn’t attend class today.
That was enough.
I knew where she lived not far from campus. That was my next direction. Luckily for me, she lived in a high security campus owned apartment complex. Meaning it was treated similarly to a dorm to optimize the safety of the residents. This also meant a paper trail with a log of people coming and going and visitors. I was determined to get to the bottom of this.
The apartment desk had a kid behind it with a lanyard and a thick pair of glasses. “Sir, you can’t—”
“I can,” I said. “And I am.”
“Only residents and registered guests past the lobby.” He swallowed like he’d just heard himself say it. “That’s… policy.”
I leaned on the counter, not touching him, but close enough for him to smell road and a morning that went bad. “You know a resident named IvaLeigh Walsh?”
He looked at his screen. He wasn’t supposed to. He did anyway. “She signed out. Says ‘home.’ This morning.”
“When?”
“An hour ago? Maybe two.”
“Who signed in earlier?”
“Sir—”
“Who was in this building today going to her apartment?”
His eyes snuck to the visitor sheet and then away. “I can’t say—”
I looked to the sheet in front of him. The name I expected was written there clear as day. “You just did,” I explained, and put a hundred on the counter. “You didn’t see me.”
“What?” His eyes went wider at the bill than they had at the leather cut. “I—uh—didn’t see you.”
“Good man.”
I took the stairs two at a time anyway. Policy is a door; most doors open if you’re willing to lean.
Her hall stank like popcorn and aerosol perfume. I didn’t knock. I didn’t need to. The door to her room was propped with a shoe and Darla—I’d met her once, bright and lacquered—stood in the middle of a hurricane of laundry and makeup like a queen in a kingdom of plastic.
She saw me and rolled her eyes. “You can’t be in here.”
“Wasn’t asking.”
She put her hands on her hips. “She’s not here.”
“I know,” I said. “Tell me where she went.”
“Home.” She shrugged, hair flipping with the move. “Said she needed a break.”
“What did he tell her?”
Darla’s smirk was a thing that wanted to be a shield and failed at it. “Who?”
“Stanley.”
Her chin jerked back. “You think I’m gonna help you? The way you rolled in here and mixed her up in the head worse than I did fucking her ex-boyfriend in her bed.”
I let that hit. I deserved it. This would be the bitch’s only pass. “I asked you what he said.”
Darla looked at me a long, long beat and then away, like she couldn’t stand me and couldn’t stand herself for what she was about to do.
“He sat in that chair,” she said, flinging a wrist toward her desk. “Leg over the knee like he was posing for a magazine. He told her she was a toy you were using because of her dad. He told her her dad’s got secrets, and he keeps them. He told her to run. Paris, Rome—like he was travel agent to the damned.”
“Did she cry?”
Darla squared up, defensive. “She went silent.”
“You done?” Darla asked. “Because I have class. And a life, by the way.”
“You got a boyfriend?”
“None of your business.”
“If he comes around IvaLeigh again, he’ll meet me.”