Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 68735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Had I…
No, it couldn’t have been.
Surely not.
“What’s her file say about the day it happened?” he asked.
And the horrors just kept coming.
“Happened at a party. Some senior splash day or something. All of the seniors went to a party after their senior splash day at school…” Apollo kept talking, but I’d heard all I needed to hear.
No more words were necessary.
Walking up the back staircase, I searched for a place to disappear for a little bit that wasn’t crowded with people.
I’d had a long day, and the last thing that I wanted to do was go to a party at Laney’s house. But Laney would’ve guilt tripped the hell out of me, so I chose the lesser of two evils.
I went to the party, but I’d spent the last hour trying to find a different place to hide.
Someone always found my hiding spot, and I would have to search for a new one.
My next hiding spot was Laney’s parents’ balcony.
I was going to slip into their room and lock it, then go outside and hide, hoping no one would find me.
I’d just popped the door open on their parents’ room—using the code that only a few of us knew—and came to a dead stop when I saw Creole and Jordy on Laney’s parents’ bed.
I took one look at that mass of curly hair and disappeared as fast as I’d entered.
I didn’t take note of anything else but the fact that the room was occupied.
“Shit,” I grumbled as I turned around to look for somewhere else to hide.
And preferably die of mortification and other things that I refused to admit to myself.
“Why did it say Jordy removed himself from school?” I asked, knowing he would’ve checked.
“Because he was moving to Alaska for some military training camp. He actually went, too. Court ordered. But on a different charge. He’d been accused of anger issues multiple times prior to his latest arrest that led him to court that in turn sent him to that camp. The night of the party was his last night in town before he was sent off to Alaska for a year until he turned eighteen,” Apollo said. “He assaulted two police officers and tried to use daddy’s money to get it fixed. When that didn’t work, the father offered up the military school. The judge accepted and the cops agreed to it as well. He was shipped out the next day after she reported it.”
Throughout the entire explanation, Webber had remained quiet.
Until then.
“Where’s this Jordy guy now?” Webber asked.
“The military. Flies Blackhawks for the Army,” he answered. “In pretty good social standing, according to his records.”
I didn’t give a flying fuck if he was a goddamn pope somewhere helping the poor and giving up his life’s savings. If he’d done this to her, there was no goddamn way that I was going to let it go.
The only problem was, I needed to talk to her about it.
And that made my beer threaten to uproot itself from my belly.
“What else were you going to tell us when you sat down, Apollo?” Webber asked, really pushing me.
I didn’t think I could handle anything more.
“Kory is a closet stalker. He looks up her Facebook and Instagram accounts every five minutes. Or he would if she had social media. He types her name into his search bar every day,” he explained. “I got worried, and I wanted to make sure that you kept playing along with the boyfriend thing. Maybe he’ll back off. Also, I changed your Facebook and Instagram photo to a picture of you two from tonight.”
I glanced over at him. “We didn’t take a photo together.”
“You kind of did.” He shrugged. “I changed it because he’s already looked up your social media. He found your business page.”
I rolled my eyes. “He’ll find a bunch of nothing.”
“I know, which was why I put that personal picture of you two up as your profile picture on your business page,” he said.
“How would that relate to plumbing in any way?” I wondered.
Not that I cared.
I barely ever got on there. My front office ran the page and updated it from time to time to make it look like the business had a social media presence.
“You’re a family business. You have a kid and a new girlfriend. People eat that shit up.”
That was another thing.
In for a penny…
“That’s another thing I need to talk to you about, Webber, but I’m going to wait just a bit longer,” I said carefully.
I knew that I needed to let everything hang out there.
Maybe they could help me figure out this situation while I figured out other things…
Other more scary, life changing, I have to fix it now, things.
Not that the Cakes/Lottie thing wasn’t important.
It was.
But fuck.
I needed to talk to Creole first.
I found her on the beach overlooking the ocean.