Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Hattie Miller comes in with two very big men. I can’t tell if they’re the same ones who were accosting me back in the room, but it seems likely. Which means they saw me naked. Someone put these clothes on me because Riggs and I were in the middle of—
“Good. You’re awake.” Hattie’s voice is loud and commanding as she slams a folder down on the metal table. All this noise echoes off the walls of the nearly empty room and my body begins to shake the way it did the other night. There’s a chair across the table from me and she pulls it out, dragging the legs along the floor with an earsplitting screech.
She takes a seat, opens the folder, and starts flipping through pages.
I don’t say anything. Neither does she. She just keeps flipping pages. Then she abruptly grunts and closes the folder as she looks me in the eyes. “You’re Lowyn McBride’s best friend.”
It doesn’t feel like a question, so I don’t say anything back.
Hattie sucks in a breath between her teeth like she’s getting ready to deliver bad news.
As a child growing up in the town of Disciple, West Virginia, I learned a thing or two about non-verbal cues and gestures. Specifically, how to use them to convey emotion while performing in the Revival. Everyone in fourth through sixth grade attended acting classes over the winter break. This was about the age when some of us were getting too old to sing in the children’s choir and were moving on to other roles—newsie boys and girls, or dancers, or sometimes, if you were particularly adept at the acting side of things, we got to be cripples in wheelchairs who were healed in the tent.
I was a cripple once. But just the once because I kept laughing when the people started crying over me. An actor, I am not. But I certainly recognize this teeth-sucking thing Hattie just did as an act.
She’s about to lie to me.
“It really sucks to be you,” Hattie says.
Which is sorta confusing, because it’s not a lie. I’m in a very unfortunate situation at the present. Again, this is not a question, so I decide to say nothing.
“I think I owe it to you to tell the truth here.”
I can’t help it, I scoff. It’s just a tiny one, but more than enough for Hattie to take notice.
“I know,” she says, putting up a hand, palm towards me. “I get it. I don’t know how much Riggs told you about me, but I will assume it’s enough to understand how I operate. So I don’t expect you to trust me. But I’m gonna tell you anyway. Riggs has accepted an offer to save himself.”
My eyebrows go all crinkly trying to decipher what this might mean.
“Yes,” Hattie says. “Unfortunately, saving himself involved throwing you to the wolves. Or the wolf, as it stands. Which is me. I’m the wolf.”
I sigh, tired of this whole thing—the kidnapping, the emotional turmoil that came with falling for my captor, and now this. “Can you just get to the point?”
Hattie leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. “I thought I just did.”
“Try again,” I say. “And use more words this time.”
“All right. I’ll be blunt. I like to be blunt.” I bet she does. “He sold you out, Clover. I made him an offer. In his defense, it was a good offer. Hell”—she laughs—“who am I kidding? It was a great offer. He gets to pass his little test—because that’s what this assignment was—and go home with me. He’ll never see the inside of those dark tunnels again. He’ll never know that feeling of hopelessness. He’ll get promoted, I’ll retire, we’ll get married, make ourselves a little home, throw parties for his comrades, and live out our happily ever after, just as we both imagined it as kids.”
I’m not sure when, exactly, I started laughing during her little speech, but by the time she finishes, it’s a full-on incredulous chuckle. “Come on, Hattie. You don’t really expect me to believe that? I mean, he hates you. He told me.”
Her face doesn’t change. Not even a twitch.
But her eyes—bright blue as they are—go dark.
It only lasts for a moment, though. And in the next one, they’re shining again. “Yeah. He hates me. Always has. Because I remind him of all his shortcomings. I was the child his father wished he had. Riggs was… well, to call him a disappointment would be an understatement.”
“What do you want?”
“Calm down, I’m getting there. I painted a rosy picture of a fictitious future between the two of us. To make you jealous. Oh, let me be very clear here, though. Everything I just said will happen. He might not be in love with me, but we’re getting married.”
“I thought you were getting to the point?” I hiss these words out through clenched teeth.