Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
When he doesn’t reply, I press harder. “Why do I feel like we’re game pieces you’re moving around?”
“That’s not my intention.” He takes a sip of something, maybe coffee. “I would’ve preferred Hawke never find the tower, and Quinn and Dylan never sleep in that house, but every cast of players has their role, and I have very little control.”
“Winslet didn’t die during Rivalry Week,” Quinn tells him. “But you knew that.”
“A month after the car went into the river, I started hearing stories of home.” He pauses. “Three murders—all Pirates. And Winslet can get very angry.”
“Did you return to Weston?” Quinn questions. “Did you see her?”
“Yes.”
Quinn meets my eyes. Such a quick and simple answer. She was right. Their trail doesn’t go cold after the Night Ride. More has happened in the years since.
He adds, “But you’re not at that part in the story yet.”
“Where did you see her?” Quinn asks. “Just tell me that.”
For a moment, I don’t think he’s going to answer. Then, he says, “Camp Blackhawk.”
The summer camp before it was renovated and reopened. She was hiding there after she survived the river.
Her own friends tried to murder her. She couldn’t go home.
Or she didn’t want to. She wanted her revenge.
“What did you do when you saw her?” I ask him.
“It was a long night, I’ll tell you that.”
I shake my head.
“Why are you leaving a trail for us?” Quinn begs him. “What do you want?”
But he simply counters with another question. “How did she look?”
How did she look?
Quinn thinks it was Winslet who saved her tonight. He knows she’s here?
“Younger than I thought she would,” Quinn tells him.
“Because we stop aging when we die,” he points out.
“You believe that?” I narrow my eyes in disbelief. “That Quinn saw her ghost tonight?”
I don’t mean to mock him, but come on…
“I believe…that I can still taste her on my mouth and smell her on my clothes.” His voice seems like mist, a whisper. “And I believe she’s still where I buried her. At Blackhawk.”
Quinn’s eyes widen, but before I can say anything, the line dies.
“Wait!” I growl.
We call back, but it goes straight to voicemail, as if he’s turned the phone off. This phone will never be on again. He’ll ditch it.
Quinn searches my eyes. “What do we do now?”
I don’t know.
But at the very least, we can write everything down while it’s fresh and fill everyone else in tomorrow.
And we can add to the murder map at Carnival Tower. Time to focus Hawke’s research on a new lead.
Quinn
I hover outside my father’s office, listening with Lucas at my back.
“It’s not our fault!” Madoc shouts.
“It is absolutely your fault!”
I wince, my dad’s voice more of a growl than a bellow. Lucas holds my shoulder, rubbing his thumb over the back of my neck.
My parents got home late last night, and when they found out everything they’d missed, they wouldn’t even listen to me. My brothers were summoned. Jared, Madoc, and Jax haven’t been in there more than sixty seconds, and there’s already shouting. I can just picture them lined up in front of my father’s desk like they’re back in high school facing the principal.
I don’t hear my mother at all. Usually, she can shorten my dad’s leash, but if she doesn’t, then she must agree with him.
“I have raised her for twenty-one years without incident!” my dad screams. “I leave her with you three for a week, and she moves out, jumps into bed with an older man, and almost gets herself killed!”
I half roll my eyes. He’s just as bad as my brothers. As if he wasn’t an older man, seducing my mother when she was younger than me.
He keeps railing, my brothers not saying a word, and I turn my head, lifting my eyes to the only man I’ve ever wanted. As if they couldn’t see this coming my entire life.
“He’ll come around,” I say.
My dad is like him. And like my siblings. He tends to react before he reasons.
“I’ll speak to him tonight.” Lucas dips his nose to my hair. “I need to talk to Farrow first.”
He takes my hand and leads me through the kitchen where Juliet, Hunter, and A.J. make breakfast, and out of the house, around the back. Everyone showed up here this morning to get all the news and the full story from Lucas, but he’s avoided talking to anyone until he can see my father. Farrow stands just inside my father’s second garage, checking out his boat.
Lucas reaches into his breast pocket and hands Farrow documents in a trifold—the deed to Green Street, I assume.
Farrow lifts the corners of his mouth, looking pleased, but he doesn’t smile, and he doesn’t say thank you for a free building.
Instead, he holds out his hand, asking, “Your key?”
I shift my eyes to Lucas.