Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
"Then they'd get a gold star and some fame," my father says.
"Their own kills tucked away to never haunt them," I add. It's not the worst idea, but it's stupid. You're taunting a killer when you have no fucking clue who they are.
"They caught me one night." Silas stands, lifting his shirt to show a jagged scar across his side. "In the sense that they've seen my face. I found an old veterinarian's clinic and stitched myself up. I was in and out of it for almost a day. When I was finally about to get my footing, they had already closed in on Bonte." His eyes always soften when he says her name.
"And then they used her as bait to try and find you again." Silas nods. "Then everything went to shit; they shipped her out."
"Bonte is never far from me. But it can take time to find her." Silas reaches into his coat, pulling out a black device that appears similar to a phone. "It took me time. She has to be within a certain range for it to pick up her signal."
I snatch the device out of his hand and toss it to my father. "You have a tracker on her."
"What are you doing?" He lunges to his feet, trying to grab the tracker, but I'm quicker, locking my hand around his throat.
I don't hold him; I fling him back toward the couch he's been sitting on in my father's office. I don't think he'll stab me again, but the man is good with knives. I'd rather keep him at arm's length for now.
"Don't." I stay on my feet to loom close to him but not too close. "If I understand you correctly, you went from city to city until it picked up her signal."
"It took me years." He sounds defeated.
"We don't have time to be roaming around. Now answer the damn question. The tracker. What and where is it?"
"I got it from a guy I knew. Retired special ops."
"It's older," my father says. "It gives off less of a signal. So if you're caught and they run a scan over you, it won't come up. The downside to it is you have to be close enough for you to track it yourself. It worked well for a few years for ground operations. Isolated areas of attack. That is most likely where you'd be captured by the enemy." Dad never takes his attention away from the device as he fills us in on what it is. "You're lucky it still works all these years later. They weren't made to stay in the body for more than a few years. I'm guessing this to be ten years old."
"Yes."
"In the arm?" My dad asks.
"Told her it was a flu shot."
"Keep going."
"There isn't much beyond that. I found her, and she was content. What was I to do? Drag her back to what? So I simply watched over her. I didn't care for the people she was with, but they let her be. So I let them live."
"You killed them," I remind him.
"They were no longer useful, and I needed to draw everyone out of hiding. My little girl went missing." His cold gaze hardens on me.
“You can be pissed all you want, motherfucker, but you’re the reason we’re all here.” Silas’s jaw ticks.
“I’d been killing long before Bonte came into my life,” he admits.
I saw Naomi press her lips together tightly. I know she wants to fire off rounds of questions, but she knows now isn’t the time.
“I should have let her be adopted. Have a normal life, but her mother—” His nose flares, that anger still right there. “She wanted to keep her, and when I held her that first time, so did I. It didn’t take long for me to see her mother only wanted to keep Bonte to use against me. When her mother realized I would simply kill her, she tried to kill my daughter.”
“Drown her. Did she try to drown her?” Naomi leans forward to ask. She can’t contain herself any longer.
“Yes.”
“I knew it,” she mutters under her breath.
“But you’re right. This is my own doing. I want to get my daughter back and give her a choice of the life she wants. If I make it out of this.” His cold gaze slides back to me. “But I’m not sure you’d give her a choice.”
“I would never harm Bonte.”
“That’s not what I said.” He cocks his head. “I’d never hurt here either, but here I am because of my own selfish choices. We could free her.”
“We have a problem.” War comes into the office. We’d given him a heads-up about what was happening. I’m sure the rest of the family will be showing up too.
“What?”
“Got this.” He hands me his phone. I stare at the picture of Bonte. She’s sitting on the ground, pressed into a corner, her hands taped together in front of her and blood splattered across her. I search the picture for more details. I don’t believe the blood is hers. That splatter is from a distance.