Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
She’d come here because she’d been scared. The guilt that came with that realization wasn’t helping my need for destruction.
“Anyway, ninth was in my locker again. Tenth was on one of the boxes of things I moved out of the house the day it was cleared out completely. The eleventh…” She hesitated. Although the letter had already told me where the eleventh one had been, I wanted to hear her tell me. “It was on the coffee table beside the sofa I had been sleeping on after selling the house. A friend of Momma’s let me stay there, but he…he got inside. He left a note. I…it wasn’t safe for her or me.”
I prepared myself for what I was about to ask because when I went to Linc, I needed all the facts. Shit he’d not cared to find out and ask because she was just a problem in his estimation. Her life was of no consequence to him. But he’d left me with her, and I’d started to fucking care about her life.
“Is this why you called Baskin?” I asked.
She blinked, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. I was ready to put my fist through the windshield of my truck.
“Yes.”
Fucking hell. She’d been desperate all right. But not for the reasons we’d assumed. She had been running away from a stalker. And she’d called the only person she knew to call. Someone who didn’t live in Monroe.
“And this is the twelfth letter?”
She nodded. “Yes. He…he found me. I’ll have to go somewhere. Move again. I just don’t know where.” Hearing the franticness in her words felt like someone was shoving spikes into my chest.
“You’re not going anywhere. This fucker”—I held up the note—“has messed with the wrong man.”
I didn’t believe he’d gotten in my truck. But he’d stuck the damn note in something of hers. She’d only been at school one day, but that was the only time I could think that he would have had the chance to get close to her.
I stuck the letter in my back pocket and gently took her wrist to pull her to me, then closed the truck door. When she was inches from my chest, I wrapped both arms around her. She was stiff and unsure. I’d never embraced her before.
“I’ll handle this. You’re safe with me. The cabin is safe. I swear,” I reassured her.
She laid her cheek against my chest, but said nothing. I knew she didn’t believe me, and I couldn’t blame her really. I’d done nothing to earn her trust. But I was about to start.
Twenty-One
Than
I gripped the back of the seat that Ransom was sitting in while going over the security footage. This was the third time we’d sat here and watched it.
The first time, I’d thought that I was right. There was no one near my truck all day until Montana walked to get her hair tie. However, Ransom caught something, and we watched it a second time. He paused it to zoom in so that we could see the blue heart-shaped letter on the seat. He’d then rewound it to show me the frame before, and there was no blue letter.
This time, we watched it closer with him watching the right of the screen and me watching the left for anything that stood out. Ransom paused it several times and went back to rewatch something. I didn’t know what it was he was seeing because I saw fucking nothing. But then Montana sitting in the chair over in the corner of the room, still pale and being so fucking quiet, was making it hard for me to concentrate.
“There,” he said and pointed at the screen.
“What?” All I saw was the fucking whiskey barrels waiting to go inside.
“How many are there?” he asked.
Why were we doing math?
“Thirty,” I said, annoyed. I knew how many because the extra order had come in yesterday and thirty of them had been delivered.
“Right, and”—he pressed play, then pause immediately—“now how many are there?”
The end closest to the entrance of the distillery had less barrels than the second before.
I counted. “Twenty-six.”
“Yet we don’t see anyone take them,” he pointed out.
The tips of my fingers bit into the leather on the chair. “Motherfucker,” I hissed.
Ransom glanced up at me. “This isn’t some kid with an obsession. This was done by a professional. One who knew how to break into our security and pause the cameras for a certain amount of time.” He turned back to the screen.
Who the fuck was stalking her?!
We had the best security that money could buy. It was on all our homes and businesses. Wilder Jones—the computer genius in the family who lived in Ocala and worked directly with the boss—had made sure that what we all used was something others couldn’t hack into.
“I’m leaving,” she said, breaking her silence.